Work Smart Versus Working Long Hours
So an article from Optimist Daily is shedding some light on working long hours versus working smart. Smart wins every time......
"An underlying assumption driving today’s pervasive cult of productivity is that the more hours you work, the more you get done. This seems like a logical enough formula, but it is also leading to an epidemic of job-induced stress and burnout. Regardless, being perpetually “busy” has become a 21st-century status symbol; the option to work fewer than the average American’s 34.4 hours a week (or a whopping 47 for full-time workers) is usually a privilege reserved for the leisure class.
But according to a growing anti-workaholism movement, the counterintuitive key to greater productivity could be working fewer hours. In Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less, Silicon Valley consultant Alex Soojung-Kim Pang makes the case for a four-hour workday. “Decades of research demonstrate that the correlation between the number of hours worked and productivity is very weak,” says Pang, a Stanford University visiting scholar and founder of the Restful Company.
One study from Illinois Institute of Technology in the 1950s found that scientists who spent 25 hours per week in the workplace were no more productive than those who spent five. Scientists working 35 hours a week were half as productive as their 20-hour-a-week colleagues, while workers who put in 60 hours or more were the least productive of all. More recent research echoes these findings.
While implementing shorter workdays might be a hard sell for managers and executives, “a few companies, including Tower Paddle Boards, as well as many companies in Scandinavia, have found their businesses actually grew—and employee satisfaction surged—after cutting employees’ work hours,” Pang says."
