I believe hours worked is only relevant to the type of work being done. Yet I think it is overall unrealistic to expect a forty hour week. Having been raised on a farm I know that forty hour weeks are a vacation to some, even now self employed people would scoff at forty hours. We have great examples of what happened to many of these prized union jobs that limited work to forty hours on top of rules that prevented people from doing "other people's work". Not many of them are good, hence they moved into government jobs where there it is much harder to bankrupt the employer for lack of production.
You work forty hours a week to be average. No one I know who is well off works only forty hours a week. Now they don't do the same tasks all those hours but they are doing something. The key is making sure the hours you put in are beneficial not just "doing work".
The rest of the world certainly isn't going to work just forty hours a week. They upcoming economies are going to put in whatever it takes to get where they want to be. Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by denouncing such hours are only going to end up being passed by.
tl;dr
Working hours longer than 40 leads to counter productivity in the short and long term. 40 hour workers are more productive in all situations except those where workers have an abnormal singular focus (apparently symptoms of aspergers).
Comments
I believe hours worked is only relevant to the type of work being done. Yet I think it is overall unrealistic to expect a forty hour week. Having been raised on a farm I know that forty hour weeks are a vacation to some, even now self employed people would scoff at forty hours. We have great examples of what happened to many of these prized union jobs that limited work to forty hours on top of rules that prevented people from doing "other people's work". Not many of them are good, hence they moved into government jobs where there it is much harder to bankrupt the employer for lack of production.
You work forty hours a week to be average. No one I know who is well off works only forty hours a week. Now they don't do the same tasks all those hours but they are doing something. The key is making sure the hours you put in are beneficial not just "doing work".
The rest of the world certainly isn't going to work just forty hours a week. They upcoming economies are going to put in whatever it takes to get where they want to be. Those of us who sit back and claim enlightenment by denouncing such hours are only going to end up being passed by.
These concerns are addressed in the article.
tl;dr Working hours longer than 40 leads to counter productivity in the short and long term. 40 hour workers are more productive in all situations except those where workers have an abnormal singular focus (apparently symptoms of aspergers).