It often feels like there are only 3 productive hours in typical American white collar work day.
What if we just cut out the rest?
Edit: Some great responses. So responses must have also been said about the 5 day and 40 hour work weeks.
As a non-white-collar worker, I always find conversations like this very alienating. The idea of being on the clock while not working is bizarre to me.
Why would you be on the clock? You work 3 hours and that pays enough money.
That’s why a lot of roles like this are salaried. My productivity can’t be measured by how fast I turn a crank.
Yeah at that point in the career, the comp is for being available during business hours and moving work in professional, reliable and competent manner. Nobody is checking unless somebody is complaining.
People could add tasks but there is no pay incentive so why bother. That’s just give out labour for free lol
Dont be a bootlicker. Get paid!
For many jobs, it won’t change much. My advisor comes to the university 3 days a week, and stays for 4 ish hours. But he’s a very good researcher with high research output. (I do math, this might not be possible for lab based researchers.)
Usually these jobs can’t be measured in hours you spend in your workplace. You’re kind of always working since you can’t really turn your brain off while working on an interesting problem, but what others see is that you’re sipping coffee with your laptop open.
I thoroughly believe that 4 hours is the limit for most people (on most days) on how long they can focus deeply on a problem. That was at least my experience as a mathematics grad student. In math this is more evident because most of high level math requires this deep level of understanding.
Of course one thinks about these problems while doing other things (obsession is a common consequence of prolonged deep thinking), which is why visits to the restroom, walks outside and so on are famous to prove very productive.
Either way, math is also social (most problem solving benefits from discussion) and it is in my opinion much more productive to set some time off for talking about / working on stuff with others than grinding through longer. This is still work and incidentally also good time and resource management.
Of course. My friends who are doing research on Physics or Biology tell me that I always seem to be free. The truth is, I’m always kind of working. It’s very hard to shut off your brain when you’re tackling with some intriguing problem. I’ve found myself think about work while out with the boys for drinks lol.
For many office workers, it would be about the same.
morning coffee, break, afternoon coffee, go home
Congratulations you just figured out how to have four jobs without breaks.
The only problem that I would have with the 3-hour work day is that sometimes they’re generally is more work to do. Average is probably only about 3 hours but occasionally you need more.
Although quite a lot of time could be saved by not having meetings about meetings about when you’re going to have a meeting to book the meeting. But let’s be reasonable that’s not happening.
I think the problem would be getting everyone’s 3 hours to line up.
Yes. A whole lot more would need to be asynchronous.
You couldn’t organise anything. I honestly can’t see how h the status quo can be changed.
Then you miss out the unmentioned part of the work - idle thinking. Not only the time spent typing something on the keyboard is work. All the time spent thinking how to solve a problem is also work.
That’s not how my employer measures productivity. They use keystrokes per minute. Gotta get good at idle typing.
All the time spent thinking how to solve a problem is also work.
try telling that to every manager i’ve ever had.
Or the fact that most jobs are not behind desks or keyboard…
Office drones forget that society requires different types of work done to function… They ways got that bias lol it is cross cultural too
“I got no work done at all today, it was all back to back meetings!”.
My wife, regularly.
This is true. I tend to do my best thinking away from work, and not part of my current work time.
Walking to get a coffee is when I’ve solved some of the most complex problems in my head. Walking to get a coffee was also one of the few times I’d leave my desk. What even was lunch…
It sounds great! The real trick would be finding any company willing to pay the same 40 hours of wages every week for 15 hours of work. There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
Not that I’m advocating for it, but… Working 3 jobs @ 15 hours a week each would mean you’d be a lot more resilient against layoffs and would be able to quit any of those jobs at the drop of a hat if things got shitty (knowing you’d only be losing 1/3 of your income, rather than 100% of it). It would represent a solid shift of power into the hands of the workers.
i’ve been down that road before. three part time jobs means no benefits and no employer-sponsored health coverage. it’s also extremely difficult to schedule multiple part time jobs so they don’t conflict with each other while still giving you something resembling ‘weekend’ off.
True, but the whole point of having a shorter work week would be to have more free time wouldn’t three jobs kind of defeat the whole purpose? That would just mean I wake up dreading three jobs instead of one…
And all the wasted time getting from one job to the next. Even if the travel is all virtual you still have to get setup/organised, put one thing down and pick another up.
And what happens if job 2 doesn’t start for like 2 hours after job 1 and job 3 doesn’t start until 3 hours after job 2? That’s now a 14 hour day where your either working or getting ready to work with just enough “down time” to not really get too much accomplished… AND you’re going to get taxed on each paycheck. That sounds awful
I would struggle get anything done. 3 hours is just not enough time. Sometimes it feels like 8 isn’t even enough.
Sounds like a management issue tbh
Oh yeah it 100% is. I don’t mind though because I like being busy and of I don’t get all the work done no one faults me. Me days feel like they are 5mins long it’s great. I arrive at work get stuck in and then look at the clock and fuck its 5pm time to go home.
5 would be decent i think. If you can’t get through a “part” of a task, however you define that in your field, that should either be broken up more there are other issues
Some meetings are BS while others are legitimately helpful - I think a 3 hr day would make those good meetings hard to squeeze in.
After 3 hours you’d go to your next job.
As opposed to going to your next job after 8 hours?
no but you could have 2 jobs and still work less.
You’d get paid a lot less
Under Capitalism, sure.
Yeah under communism you wouldn’t get paid
Depends on the stage.
you get up at 12 and start to work at 1, take an hour for lunch and then at 2 you’re done.
What about my 15 minute breaks?
Ok. Let’s say we have 4 hour workdays, 4 day work weeks. Not just for white collar.
A business would require to hire 2 more people to cover a 24h continuous prosuction line (3 8h shifts to 5 4h shifts).
there would be more employment and higher productivity. More happiness I suspect.
I’d take it.
6 x 4 = 24
you are entirely correct., and the first person to spot my simple math mistake.
thanks for correcting 😊
A lot has been said about that when talking about universal basic income. The idea is that people could work half shifts and make the rest up under UBI
