"Some of the superheroes of our time, they are the guys who say, 'I work 90 hours, 100 hours, 120 hours,'" says design company director Marei Wollersberger. "People read those figures and they say, 'That's what's going to make me successful, I'm going to do the same,'... but that's not true." Staff at her company, Normally Design, in London, work a four-day week but are paid as if they were doing the traditional five days. The days remain eight-hours long.
She says it's key to the company's success - they can be just as profitable in fewer hours, as employees work more efficiently. In fact, working outside of business hours is not seen as a positive - managers check if there is anything wrong if it happens.
"There's a social encouragement to make sure you use that fifth day for yourself and not to do work," he says. "You're not going to get Brownie points for replying to emails on the fifth day."
Ms Wollersberger says: "We've seen people wait for their whole life for the big moment when they retire and then have the luxury to do all of the things you really want to do and fulfil your dreams. "But we've seen in a few cases that never happens as you get ill or you're older by then. Maybe we can just flip that round. Maybe we can take that time and move it forward and give it back to ourselves and our employees."
I think if this attitude were more prevalent, the world would be a happier place. The goal of having a strong economy should be improving living conditions, not generating an even stronger economy. Work should serve a purpose, not be the goal in itself.
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-42705291
For the first 15 years of my coding career, I worked a lot of overtime: my heroes and mentors were workaholics. I couldn't manage expectations effectively: everything became a push-push get-it-done-yesterday sort of effort. It took a serious toll.
ReplyDeleteIt was about that time when I got serious about productivity. It took the form of doing metrics against version control. I figured out there was a diminishing law of returns against how many hours I was working: I'd get strung out and make bad decisions in code, then have to come back to fix bugs. Fixing a bug takes far longer than doing it right the first time.
I started sleeping more, taking more time off, going for walks, even in the middle of the day. I wrote more spec, quit rushing to implementation. I started taking it easier on the people around me.
And I got more done that way.