Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers

http://m.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/science-that-proves-the-9-to-5-day-is-hell-for-creative-workers/282331/

by wellpast • 13 years ago

170 96 13 years ago

m.theatlantic.com

badelynge• 13 years ago

Proves? Hasn't this been common knowledge for a long time? Why else would jobs that need workers that are creative, but not __too creative__ demand a 9-to-5 day?

wskinner• 13 years ago

The original title, "Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers", might be more appropriate.

programminggeek• 13 years ago

It is completely unsurprising to me that this could be true. If you look at efficiency gains over the years relative to wages, people are working more and earning less. I think the statistic is something like we should be working like 15 hours a week to get the same productivity as was the norm in either 1950 or 1970.

I think a lot of people would love to work half the time to make something like 2/3 or 3/4 of what they are making now, especially considering what wages should be given productivity increases.

Let's face it, the reason the 40 hour workweek exists anymore is a habit, not because it's the correct amount of hours to work. Everyone expects a 40 hour work week because that's just what full time employment is supposed to be right?

tokenizer• 13 years ago

One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it. Almost every country in the world adheres to it more or less. We have set store hours at either 8 or 16 or 24 hours, again based on shifts of workers, and we have a complex economy that I'm sure our leaders would argue depends on it.

Not saying I agree with that argument, or that something better isn't possible, just stating a potential defense to the "tradition" of our 40 hour work week.

Any solution would take a ton of logistics and considerations in terms of wage parity during any transition period, less you want people starving because of bad policy. OR it would take one class of people, those who own the means of production, to create this policy on their own. I see no reason why they would.

eru• 13 years ago

In lots of poorer economies people are asked to work more than 8 hours.

In which countries are store hours are usually set at multiples of 8 hours? (I have never see that being usual. But then, I grew up in Europe.)

weland• 13 years ago

One argument for the 40 hour work week is that we've simply built a complex global society around it.

Which I passionately hate. Banks around here strictly adhere to the 40-hour work week, which obviously results in banks only being open when, you know, everyone is at work. Consequently, if you need to interact with a human at the bank, the only option you have is to skip lunch break.

xur17• 13 years ago

I'm curious to see what company is first to use shorter work weeks as a perk (if it hasn't happened already) with a lower salary. I personally would love to work 20 or 30 hours a week, and have more time for side projects, etc.

I think part of the problem is that an employee has a set of fixed costs (healthcare, hr, etc) that don't decrease as an employee works less hours.

xivzgrev5• 13 years ago

I agree, but man would it be tough for a company to offer this.

As CEO you have shareholders, competitors, customers, blah blah blah all expecting growth or seeking to take your growth.

So to do this, either a) everyone works more efficiently, but how many will hold themselves accountable to this? b) you hire more people, but creates more organizational complexity c) you ask people to work more hours

Seems most companies would take C.

coderzach• 13 years ago

37signals. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/opinion/sunday/be-more-pro...

digitalengineer3• 13 years ago

It's the law in the Netherlands. If you want to work 4 or 8 hours less, an employer can't stop you (unless your presence is critical). I work 36h, a lot of my colleagues work 32. Some female colleagues work 3 days. I work for a creative agency with clients like Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestlé and more. I enjoy my afternoon with my kid. (Side-projects and studying during the evening).

xivzgrev5• 13 years ago

Unfortunately capitalism gets in the way.

Suppose you're a factory owner with 4 workers working 40 hours per week. You invest in a new machine that lets everyone be twice as productive. If you don't have demand for the extra output, then do you cut everyone's hours in half or let two people go?

Think the far more common solution is to let two people go. So even though productivity went up, hours worked per week stayed constant.

And I think 40 hours per week is status quo. Suppose you get a job offer, and ask to work just 30 hours per week. There are a number of forces conspiring against you: 1) If you're salaried, the employer would see this as less efficient (even if you're actually more efficient) 2) If you're used to a particular way of living, 30 hours could entail pay cut 3) Others are willing to work 40 hours per week, and hence employer gets more "value" out of hiring someone else per week

I think best bet to achieve that reality is to be your own boss. Friend of mine works as a UI consultant and bills out at $200 per hour, works maybe 20-30 hours per week. It's a brilliant gig.

annnnd3• 13 years ago

I don't think the factory owner example applies here (the article is talking about creative workers.

And I also think that a lot of stuff is negotiable - you just need to show your worth. It is all too easy to go the same path as all others did, just because we think this is somehow expected of us.

But then again, I work 9-5 too and hate it (just the working hours, not the job), so I guess I should fix that first before I lecture others... ;)

mseebach• 13 years ago

You invest in a new machine that lets everyone be twice as productive. If you don't have demand for the extra output, then do you cut everyone's hours in half or let two people go?

You let two people go, and they go work at another factory that has higher demands for its products. Then that factory invests in a machine and the process repeats. The output of products increased with the same number of workers. This process is known as "The industrial revolution" and is generally considered a pretty neat thing, not "capitalism getting in the way".

I think best bet to achieve that reality is to be your own boss.

You're absolutely right. I don't think it's coincidental that experiments with different styles of working (remote, flexible hours etc) is coming out of the businesses more associate with low-cost entrepreneurship (ie. the industries where the barrier to entry is a good brain and a laptop). Ironically, this is capitalism at its absolute best.

mike_esspe• 13 years ago

The answer to this problem is to offer discount to your employer when you want to work 30 hours.

mattlutze3• 13 years ago

do you cut everyone's hours in half or let two people go?

I think the argument here is to take a third option - offer to double the 4's salaries and simultaneously cut their hours in half. You maintain the same workforce and productivity but, non-traditionally, allow your employees and not just your profit numbers to benefit from good business decisions.

brized• 13 years ago

Suppose you're a factory owner with 4 workers working 40 hours per week.

Your analogy doesn't work because its premise doesn't apply here. This article regards knowledge/creative workers like programmers and engineers, not line workers like retail and factory workers.

In line work, the hourly threshold at which you see diminishing returns is much higher compared with knowledge/creative work. There's also generally less need to be physically present at work as a knowledge worker, while as a line worker it's inherent to the job.

Florin_Andrei• 13 years ago

Unfortunately capitalism gets in the way.
I think best bet to achieve that reality is to be your own boss.

In other words, the system (capitalism) is broken for the vast majority out there who are not their own bosses.

If something is broken, then it needs fixing, is the way I see it.

Avshalom• 13 years ago

the reason the 40 hour week still exists is because (after much blood shed) we managed to make it difficult to expect a 50 hour work week or a 60 but I don't see any reason to think people wouldn't be sitting around writing essays about how maybe we should scale.down to 'just' 40 if we didn't have the existing labor laws in place.

InclinedPlane• 13 years ago

The 40 hour week is also enshrined in law because our labor laws are codified around the ideal of factory jobs. If you want a job that has benefits then that's a "full time" job at ~40 hours a week, a 15 hour/week job is considered to be a completely different sort of beast by the government (something more akin to a temp summer job).

superJoy• 13 years ago

I only work when I feel I can be productive, and am currently averaging 6.5 hours per day. As a graduate student I am somewhat disconnected from the whole "show up at x, leave at f(x)" concept. I also tend to work on the weekend. Basically if something has to be done, I make time for it.

The disadvantage to this approach is that whenever I want to meet people, I have to modify my schedule. There is value in the idea that everyone involved in a project is at the office for a mandated period of time. It may not be best for everyone, but it sure is nice to be able to interact with people without the ordeal of establishing a common meeting time.

arxpoetica• 13 years ago

As a creative, I easily could have told you this. ;)

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

I think we may be overestimating how much of the average developer's job actually requires creativity.

Most programming jobs combine creativity with more mundane work. For example, tracking down bugs or answering e-mail questions from co-workers or customers generally doesn't require the amount of creativity that solving a previously unsolved problem does. Neither does figuring out how some open source API works (whoever designed it originally did the heavy lifting for us).

So if we reserve the hard stuff for our hours of peak creativity, we could optimize our creative output while still getting a lot of other useful stuff done in the remaining hours of an eight hour day. Even if my brain is completely fried, I can usually find something to do that pushes my work forward.

GuiA• 13 years ago

I think you may be overestimating what a "creative job" actually entails.

My girlfriend is an artist (teaches fine art 50% of the time, does commissioned work 50% of the time). I think a lot of people would agree that this falls within "creative work". And yet she also does a lot of tedious things, like applying several layers of varnish to a finished piece, repeating a certain pattern hundreds of times (eg. feathers on a bird), etc (and this doesn't include stuff like generating invoices with clients, scheduling times to talk with them, etc.).

What's the ultimate "creative job" to you?

I think that a developer's job (unless you're in something ~extremely~ repetitive) is highly creative- just that highly creative jobs still have a lot of tediousness. I was in research for a while, which I'd consider "creative", but I spent a lot of my time doing things like reviewing paper drafts for typos, figuring out why some code wouldn't compile, etc.

Even in the most creative job ever, 90% of your work will likely be "daily grind".

derefr• 13 years ago

What's the ultimate "creative job" to you?

I'd hazard "Creative Director." You know, the role the creator of a character or story setting (e.g. Stan Lee) gets put in when they consult on a movie tie-in. Basically involves talking to people and writing down what you talked about to make sure everyone has your vision in their head. ("Game Designer" is also a pretty isomorphic job, given the games industry.)

henrik_w• 13 years ago

"Tracking down bugs" is a previously unsolved problem. It may not be difficult, but it also may require as much creativity as writing something new.

ddebernardy• 13 years ago

+1 this. And the same for answering customer support issues. There's no limit to how creative customers can be at breaking everything they touch. Prey tell the focus you need to even begin to imagine what is wrong when they vaguely describe some convoluted behavior.

mattlutze3• 13 years ago

+1 as well.

I'd say it can be just as difficult to track down and fix a bug than solve a novel problem. In fact, in many cases it can be harder and require more creativity in how to go about discovering the bug, if we assume that the bug fixer didn't write the code nor design the original solution.

greenyoda2• 13 years ago

I agree that some bugs require a great deal of creativity to track down (maybe even writing a new debugging tool), but in my experience, most bugs are caused by a minor oversight and can be found by straightforward techniques like examining logs, or examining program state in the debugger where a segfault occurs, or running a few experiments to do a "differential diagnosis" (it happens when I do A and B, but not when I do C, so the bug must be here). These are things that I can still do when I don't have the mental energy to synthesize new code designs.

bonjourmr• 13 years ago

On a related note, I would even prefer working 4 days for 10 hours to make this quota if absolutely necessary, and though I am not particularly supportive of said work hours per week, I do obey the system. I understand that there may have some W/OHS related issues with this of course.

I wonder what sort of impacts these things would have on things of a grander scale, such as the economy, transport, employment rates, inflation etc. I refer to either lowering the hours & pay per employee per week (as discussed in other comments) or overlapping shifts such as half the employees work 38 hrs Mon>Thu and the other half working 38 hrs Tue>Fri (rough schedule of course).

Have there been any remotely similar studies on this?

techsupporter• 13 years ago

Sure, it's called most any support/operations team in large IT shops. Since most IT places staff ops and helpdesk for coverage, they get more creative and flexible with shifts. Developers are seen as task-oriented so they get the business hours when the boss is in the office. A 4x10 shift is what keeps me in my current role, by and large (also because I work a "shift," I can completely cut off from work when I'm not at work because other people are paid to work the other hours). Our current shifts run 10 hours days, 10 hours swings, and 10 hours nights with each "side" of the week working four days. Each shift on the same side of the week overlaps with the preceding and following shift by two hours and all shifts overlap at some point on Wednesday.

bowlofpetunias• 13 years ago

Are there any non-self employed developers/engineers here that are still being "forced" to work 9-to-5 or similar?

Because in my experience, for most software centric companies it's just a paper obligation which is ignored with mutual agreement as long as the job gets done.

In fact, I don't know of anybody still forced to work 9-to-5 without a contextual reason (opening hours, shifts etc).

aianus2• 13 years ago

There's a lot of social pressure to be in the office during the core hours. People will schedule meetings onto your calendar during those hours and expect you to be able to make it, etc.

VexXtreme• 13 years ago

Are there any non-self employed developers/engineers here that are still being "forced" to work 9-to-5 or similar?

I used to work at such place. The "office hours" were 9-6 and people were expected to adhere to that. I was an architect on a project and engaged in highly creative work so I tried to make my hours slightly more flexible, because honestly, my output was very high and I didn't think it mattered whether I was there 9-6, 10-7 or whatever. Soon enough I got called into a meeting with the company president and an HR person and was sternly told that if I didn't start showing up at 9am straight that I would be let go. I tried to argue that the hours don't really matter for creative work and was told "Don't try to make this company into something it's not".

Some places are completely fucked up and beyond toxic. It also just so happens they're run by idiots.

guangnan2• 13 years ago

There is no such thing as job gets done. There are always jobs waiting for you.

ryanbrunner3• 13 years ago

I think that might be the wrong way of asking that question. I don't know many people who are forced to work from 9 AM to 5 PM specifically, but I do know plenty of places where there's an expectation that you're putting in more than 40 hours a week regardless of how much work you're getting done, and a manager not seeing anyone in the development team's area at 6:30 is in and of itself a problem, regardless of whether the sprint is finished.

In fact, one place where I don't see this attitude at all is a place that does enforce a strict 9-6 schedule. It's more than 40 hours a week, but they're extremely rigid about it - no laptops go home, and working outside of those hours is more or less prohibited.

teddyh• 13 years ago

I wish I had a 9-to-5. In Sweden, business hours are 8-5. They still call it an 8 hour workday, since they exclude the lunch hour.

guangnan2• 13 years ago

China is the same. The norm is 9-to-6.

dongchongyubing• 13 years ago

not true for gongwuyuan

SkyMarshal• 13 years ago

Same in the US, we just call it 9-5 anyway.

nawitus• 13 years ago

Move over to Finland. True 9-to-5 workday. 30min lunchbreak and 37.5h work week.

kamaal3• 13 years ago

Well, reading this article makes me wonder where I'm. If a 40 work week is tough, what about people like me who are having a routine 40 hour work week job and trying to bootstrap a company/work on side projects by the evening and night.

I am sleep deprived regularly, often I just come to home totally tired after work and travel. Only to find I have to pick myself up and throw in another 5-6 hours. Add to this stress when things don't workout,an occasional bad day and occasions when I have to face failure after days of work. Plus I have a family to which I have to tend to. Often they feel I'm just not spending time with them.

I completely agree that currently I'm in some sort of tiring march. I'm tired already. I see wins rarely, but continue to put in record efforts. On the other hand, I see the only reason I'm doing this is because.

    a. To some extent I enjoy what I'm doing.
    b. I want the money.
    c. I see I'm literally getting addicted to it.
    d. If I don't put such efforts, I feel guilty
       that I might just be getting lazy, or
       under performing.
    e. There are good deal of people whom I would like to 
       prove wrong.

I've discussed this with my mentor, who is a veteran of 3 successful start up's and has had a great career so far. He tells the modern internet techie's narrative of stress and tiredness is just plain whining, complaining and asking for sympathy. Though he agrees its a little stressful and tiring. Smart people eventually realize achieving something big demands hard sacrifices.

I also see many other smart successful people putting ridiculous efforts day in and out to win. And its in every profession. Whether its sports, medicine, software, hardware etc.

I feel at the end of the day, its just like a rubber band. You can stretch until it breaks. Some people just practice it stretching enough number of times to keep the breaking point a little high. After some time you just get numb, and absorb failures, stress, big sacrifices and just keep moving forward. And then what happens doesn't really matter.

Nursie4• 13 years ago

>If a 40 work week is tough, what about people like me who are having a routine 40 hour work week job and trying to bootstrap a company/work on side projects by the evening and night.

You people are crazy!

Now sure, you may achieve something huge and it might all be worth it. But in the mean time you're missing what remains of your youth and neglecting your family.

You don't have to put that sort of time in to 'win' at life with software. You can make really good money and live a life inaccessible to 99.5% of the world's population by working 37 hours and being good at it. If you need to be part of the 0.5% then don't let me put you off trying, but I'd be giving serious thought to whether I really needed it or if my life would he better scaling it back and taking time with loved ones.

icelancer2• 13 years ago

I am trying to change the world. So far, I've had some decent success. That will cost me part of my life, just as it has for everyone else who has changed the world in some meaningful way.

It is the price we pay. And I'm not getting any younger. (Early 30's.)

beat3• 13 years ago

Which is crazier? A year or two of super-long hours to free yourself from the dayjob, or just working 40 hours a week for someone else until you're too old to do it anymore?

I'm in the same boat, doing a spare-time startup while holding a day job. And I"m not young - my kids are grown. But I'm paying for their college, so I can't just quit and do the startup full-time, not until I've got it generating at least a little cashflow.

The trick is to overwork but try to get on the shortest (leanest) path to revenue.

But keep in mind that not everyone is doing a startup to get rich. Getting rich is a nice side effect, but the heart of it for me, and for a lot of others, is personal freedom.

icelancer2• 13 years ago

He tells the modern internet techie's narrative of stress and tiredness is just plain whining, complaining and asking for sympathy.

Pretty much. When I was starting up my company, I was putting in 50 hour weeks at my IT job that I hated and another 10-30 (depending on mood) developing the tech and business processes for my current startup.

We don't get to punch the clock and expect greatness.

ryanbrunner3• 13 years ago

But isn't this article saying the exact opposite of this? It may be counter-intuitive, but every serious study I've seen regarding the amount that people work consistently says that 40 hours (or less) is ideal, and exceeding that for an extended duration (where "extended" is a very small amount of time like a few weeks) leads to negative productivity.

It seems like there's often a lot of cognitive dissonance going on in these threads - when we're talking about managers or people other than us telling us to work > 40 hours a week, it's widely accepted as counterproductive, but when we do it ourselves, we ignore the data and revert back to platitudes about pushing yourself harder and not being complacent.

flurdy• 13 years ago

Plus I have a family to which I have to tend to. Often they feel I'm just not spending time with them.

Working 40 hours week plus 5-6 hours afterwards every day does not mix with having a family, or especially not if you got kids. Maybe if you got a 5 minute commute you can do some hours but not 5-6.

I also see many other smart successful people putting ridiculous efforts day in and out to win. And its in every profession.

And then there are the really smart people who realise they are most effective by not over doing the hours, but maximise the hours they do put in. You still have to put a good amount of effort as few fat sportsmen are successful, but also they know not to over train (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining) and reduce risk of injury.

I also refer to another recent HN article (http://mikehadlow.blogspot.co.uk/2013/12/are-your-programmer...) and its linked book (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Mathematician's_Apology).

kamaal3• 13 years ago

>does not mix with having a family

Well that's the most stressful part.

Its stressful because you need to be surrounded around by people who can appreciate what you are doing and why you are doing it. Either way what is I see is, and this is the case with nearly every one. Everyone's family wants a rich dad/husband/brother/wife/sister/mom, but no one really has a clue of what it takes to get there- Until they've done it themselves.

I guess this is the reason why people marry in the same professions. To an extent it helps the spouse understand what the other person is going through.

Also from the blog post you linked to:

"I would submit that the appearance of hard work is often an indication of failure."

Sorry but the author totally lost it when he wrote that.

robertjwebb• 13 years ago

Why would your employer want you to start a company or work on side projects? Think of this from the boss's perspective - they want you to dedicate all of your energy to their work, not something else that won't even make them money.

chris_mahan2• 13 years ago

Perhaps they don't have your best interest at heart. But then again, that's your job.

porker• 13 years ago

I've discussed this with my mentor, who is a veteran of 3 successful start up's and has had a great career so far. He tells the modern internet techie's narrative of stress and tiredness is just plain whining, complaining and asking for sympathy.

Or he could be self-filtering - after all, he made it and if others can't then they're wimps and not tough enough.

Men are especially good at this. By the path he's chosen I would guess he's an alpha male to begin with.

beat3• 13 years ago

I totally feel your pain. I'm in the same boat, day-jobbing while trying to bootstrap a startup. What I hate are the weeks where life interferes and suddenly I've gotten almost nothing done for a week.

But keep your eye on the prize. Work toward liberating yourself from the day job. You may not work any less, but at least you'll be working entirely for yourself.

thu• 13 years ago

And yet, the only way for me to bootstrap my own company is by working those 40 hours per week and working at home after the one-hour commute, and on weekend. Now it's no longer 40 hours as I have swapped job and work only 4 days per week instead of five.

And I would say that I even have to be more "creative" since bootstrapping a company involves a lot more different work than a regular day job.

But still I agree with the article; it's been a long time since I promised myself to offer a four-day flexible week to my future employees.

Evgeny• 13 years ago

Today, workers are putting in increasingly more hours(!)—so much so that the 40-hour week has become a relic of the past.

(!) - in the US/UK, I guess, and some other countries ...

I moved to Denmark recently, there are goods and bads, but the 37-hour work week is almost a religion. And there are 6 weeks holidays per year. Creativity and innovation should be safe in this country.

JackMorgan• 13 years ago

The really funny thing, my wife works at a sort of creative job writing helicopter manuals, and all her coworkers call her crazy for only working 40 hours: they all actually get overtime pay!

mark_l_watson• 13 years ago

I was surprised about the article content about the brain taking up to 4 hours to ramp up in the morning. I usually work (mostly) from home and I find the three hours when I first wake up from about 6 to 9am are my most productive. I usually then take 2 or 3 hours off for hiking or other exercise, then start working again. Sometimes I also work for an hour after dinner.

I am working as a contractor on-site at Google right now, and it is challenging working non-stop without long breaks. I get into work by 6:30am and the first three hours is great (quiet, almost no one there, and also that is my best time of day). I find that short 15 minute walking around the block breaks don't really reset me back into work mode like a long hike does.

jotm2• 13 years ago

"Kellogg’s discovered, was that employees were happy to work less when they were paid 12.5% more per hour, meaning the company was able to offer more jobs"

I don't get it, how were they able to offer more jobs when they paid the same wage (6hrs/day with a 12.5% increase)?

ksmiley• 13 years ago

Perhaps Kellogg's limiting factor was not their salary budget, but maximum occupancy on their assembly lines. Switching from eight hours to six means you can hire a whole additional shift of workers, assuming the machines run 24 hours a day.

If 6 hour workers are 112.5% as productive per hour as 8 hour workers, then this turns out to be a good deal for Kellogg's.

jotm2• 13 years ago

Oh, that makes sense!

moron4hire• 13 years ago

I've been saying for a while now that the only problem with the 9-to-5 schedule is its adherents' insistence that it's the only valid lifestyle.

mrcactu5• 13 years ago

  A shorter workday works particularly well for knowledge
  workers—people in creative or professional jobs—who can
  work productively for about six hours a day, 
  compared to the eight hours manual laborers 
  can churn out, according to Salon.

Since when do we care about the well-being of manual workers - or professionals? The focus on management has been to (fail to ) extract as much labor as they can from their workers and paying them the least. This can be formalized through various management mumbo jumbo.

How do we re-educate managers to "risk" losing productivity by trying these alternative means?

kbelbina• 13 years ago

I run a consultancy so its easier but we pay hourly and provide benefits (payroll taxes, health, 401k). People can work whatever hours they want and from where ever they just keep the team updated and request a workload consistent with their expected hours. I have team members who work 50 hours a week and some who work 20 hours.

Why the 9-to-5 Day Is So Tough on Creative Workers

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