- Hey friends, Dave Burkus here.
Welcome back to the DailyBurk.
Today we are answering the question:
How many hours a week should you work?
Or how many hours a day should you work?
And if...
This is a really, kind of timely topic.
In the past couple of weeks there have been stories
from superstar of CEOs boasting
about how all of their people
are expected to work 80 to 100 hours a week,
because they're trying to change the world.
And then other books coming out from CEOs
who are notable for pushing their people
to work less hours every single week.
And it begs this actual question.
Like how did the standard become 40?
And what should the right standard be?
Well how the standard became 40
was actually relatively easy.
There's a couple of different stories
about Henry Ford and whomever,
but really it was labor laws from the late 1930s in the U.S.
that really established 40 hours a week
as a regular, reasonable period of time.
Now what do we know about that period of time?
When we think about it what do we know?
Well we know that was a time where people
were working 12, 14 hour shifts in factories.
Where children were working in factories,
where women and
I mean everybody was trying to work.
Trying to beat their way out of poverty and the Depression.
There were factories taking advantage of it.
And so somebody had to come in and go,
"Whoo, okay.
"What is the reasonable amount of time we could expect,
"like, the human body to do industrial level work.
"And beyond that is reasonable.
"And while we're making those laws,
"let's make some ones for the kids, too
"because this is just disgusting."
So that was the period of time that we sort of convalesced
around this idea of 40 hours a week.
And fast forward almost 100 years,
the nature of work has changed dramatically
to where people are doing
what Peter Drucker would call knowledge work,
what I would actually call creative work.
Most people in the economy in North America,
but in really any developed country
are doing work that involves solving problems,
figuring out systems
that involves creativity among all else.
And so...
we should be thinking, okay, it's a different type of work
let's re-evaluate this.
Now two studies kind of come to mind
when I think about this.
The first is that one thing that we know
from a myriad of research
is that when it comes to this creative work,
more hours does not necessarily mean better.
And in fact one of my favorite studies
comes from a group of researchers
led by one from Stanford University
that showed that after about 55 hours a week,
any increase was actually sort of a decrease in production.
Where people who were working 70 hours a week
were just as effective as people
who were working 55 hours a week.
Which kind of makes you think about these people
boasting about 80 to 100 hour weeks.
Well, you're actually only doing as much
as any human is capable of doing in like 50 to 55 hours.
So it's great that you're wasting time at the office and all
but you're not really getting work that creates value done.
Now another line of research suggests that we're...
Again we're talking about creative work,
we're talking about knowledge work,
that people can kind of work in bursts,
with deep focus in this creative task for about 90 minutes
and then they need to take a break.
So you start doing the math,
okay 90 minutes,
then a little break maybe 30 minutes,
maybe an hour meeting et cetera.
And really if you think about how many cycles of that
could you get through in a day,
yeah, you could get through four,
but you probably couldn't.
Right?
Because you're gonna have meetings,
you're gonna have lunch breaks,
you'll have client calls, et cetera.
So really I think you shoot for two to three
of those deep work cycles for about 90 minutes per day,
and then you can kind of fill the rest of the day
with whatever meetings or calls that you have.
We're honestly talking about six or seven hours
of really productive, effective time every single day.
If you're expected to be at the office for eight hours
because we've inherited all of those things from the 1930s,
then I totally get it.
But know that like, unless you're doing
that deep focused 90 minutes spurts,
you're probably not gonna be all that effective.
What does this mean in terms of the overall week?
Well, we're looking at something that looks
a lot less than 40 hours a week.
We're looking at maybe 35, maybe 32, maybe even 30 hours.
And suddenly these companies that are actually boasting
about how their people actually work
Monday through Thursday or what have you,
start to look a whole lot more reasonable.
We need to separate out this idea
that in a knowledge or creative work economy,
presence equals productivity.
It just doesn't.
Understand how you work,
for how long of a period of time do you need focus,
which is probably gonna be 60 to 90 minutes.
Get as many repetitions of that in a day
as you can that's reasonable.
But recognize that
that's really probably gonna be two or three,
and then after that any additional time
is not actually all that productive.
Don't boast about how many hours
of work a week that you work
because we know that if it's more than 55
you're ineffective.
Honestly, start boasting about how much value you create
in the short amount of time that you work
and I think things'll go much better for you,
for your sanity.
But I think people are gonna begin to appreciate that.
Who can create the most amount of value
with the shortest period of time.
That,
not the number of hours a week that you're putting in
is gonna be the new thing to brag about
in the next five, 10, 15 years.
Thanks so much for watching this episode of the DailyBurk.
Leave a comment, let me know...
Do you want to admit it?
Let me know how many hours a week you work
in the comments below.
And whether or not that's working for you.
And while you're leaving that comment,
make sure you are followed or subscribed to the show
because we're posting new episodes of the DailyBurk
every single week day,
designed to help you do your best work ever.
And I wanna make sure that you don't miss.
So click that follow, click that subscribe
on whatever platform that you are watching this on,
and we'll see you tomorrow.
If, tomorrow's a weekday.
For more infomation >> SOS #79 "Are There Any Limits To How Much We Can Judge?" - Duration: 1:34:30. 
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