Let me begin this post with a few disclaimers: I have never in my life worked a 9-to-5 job. This is not to say that I haven’t worked a few long days here and there. As a video producer and corporate consultant, I have worked my fair share of 14 hour days. But as a sole proprietor, my daily schedule is up to me to plan, and I sometimes wonder if I am working at maximum efficiency when I look around and see so many people working day in and day out from nine o’clock to five o’clock.
I have an unusual perspective on the idea of a work week. When I was a bass player, the standard "work week" of a full-time major symphony orchestra does not consist of Monday through Friday, 9-to-5 days. Instead, it consists of approximately 8 "services," which can be any combination of either rehearsals or concerts, during a six-day period (e.g., three rehearsals and five concerts each week). But if you add up the actual hours, it comes out to be a 21 hour work week, more or less.
That may sound like a part-time job, but the intense demands of focus and concentration are so great in that environment, that you cannot work more than 21 hours a week doing that kind of work without burning yourself out to a cinder. So when I went into being a creative writer/producer/public speaker, it never occurred to me that I could work at my highest levels of capacity for more than 25 hours a week. So I have often wondered why people work 9-to-5, at least in creative/ problem solving work, when I know full well that real high-end brainwork can only be done 25 hours a week by most. It just runs counter to my experience and observations.
I did a little bit of research on the concept of a 9-to-5 day and a 40 hour work week. A brief summary: the whole idea of a "workday" started in the industrial revolution. Prior to that, most people were either serfs or independent farmers. Back then I would imagine that some days were busier than others, depending on whether you were sowing or reaping or milking, but back then folks were pretty "in tune" with the cycles of nature. Also, there were no clocks, so who knows how long anybody was working?
Anyway, during the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, people starting working in factories six days a week, 14 hours a day, as that was as hard as you could work people without killing them. After a while, workers organized, and the idea of eight hours of work, eight hours of play, and eight hours of rest took hold. And it was Henry Ford who really was the one who made that the standard workday in a typical United States factory. The law mandating an eight hour day was finally passed in 1938 by our beloved Congress.
Needless to say, in the intervening 70 years, things have changed. In the 19th century, the majority of people worked in repetitive assembly line manufacturing, not "knowledge" work. And bricklayers and factory workers were not commuting on expressways.
So here we are, still working with a time management system our great-grandparents created in response to child labor abuses. Is this really optimal? Are we really to believe and accept that the people in the 19th century were so omniscient, and that their time management concepts were so perfect, that they should be applied to us today without question?
Of course, to make a change, one must think originally. And being original almost always involves having to somehow overcome the inertia of tradition, and that is the biggest problem here. If the tradition were removed, I truly doubt that any knowledge worker environment would adopt an eight hour a day schedule, as it is monstrously inefficient on its face.
Obviously, there are some jobs that are very time related, such as minding a retail establishment or manning the phones in a call center. But I’m willing to bet that in work that involves problem-solving, decision-making, and imagination, productivity would not be at all diminished by going from an eight hour day to a six-hour day. In fact, just as quality in professional orchestras is enhanced by demanding super high focus during limited work hours, creative productivity in your workplace might actually go up, as people wouldn’t have to pace themselves so much, and they wouldn’t be burnt out by Friday.
There is also the health-care consideration: if we can get the same productivity out of people with fewer hours during the day, this means more time for sleep. People in the 19th century, who were no strangers to hard work and long hours and long days, put their lives on the line in strikes and protests line to get eight hours out of the day set aside for rest. The average American gets only 7.5 hours a night. Sleep deprivation has been shown to be a major factor in traffic accidents and health problems. It was just on the news last night that heart attacks jump by 5% in two weeks following the spring daylight savings changeover, and they are reduced by 5% for two weeks when we get an extra hour’s sleep in the fall.
Even Bill Clinton pointed out that sleep deprivation has become a problem in the federal government, as senators spend so much time traveling to fund raisers that they get sleep deprived, and it makes people crabby and irritable and you’re able and less likely to negotiate. Why we don’t take sleep deprivation more seriously in terms of national policy escapes me. I am convinced there are people who were just sadistically anti-sleep, and they take pleasure out of kicking people out of bed at some ungodly hour of the morning. Jerks.
It is time that this stoic American "work ethic" that is so anti-adequate-rest be called out and shown for what it is– a shame issue, a power issue, a bullying issue. Right now, anyone who says they want or need more sleep is a "sissy." We need to change that. I’ll go first.
Just speaking on my own behalf here, I often do some of my best creative work just after I wake up from a nap. If I ran a company with creative people working for me, I would have couches galore and a daily siesta policy. How many of you reading this wish you could take a nap right now? And how much more productive are you when you are well rested? How many ideas come to you just as you are dropping off to sleep, or just waking up? How much is the creative process aided by "sleeping on it"? This is not rocket science, they’ve been doing it in Spain and Mexico for centuries.
It is time to rethink the concept of an eight hour day. Creating a system that is different from something that has been a tradition since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution will require some expertise in originality thinking, but don’t you think it’s time to upgrade?
I am available to consult. But don’t call me until 3, I’m taking a nap.
© Justin Locke
Further reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight-hour_day
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