+27 (0)79 505 8841
WB Consulting - Crafting Successful Brands
  • Home
  • About us
    • Resumes >
      • Wilna Beukes
      • Natalie Sokolich
  • Services
    • Website Design
    • Email Marketing and Newsletter Management
  • Clients
  • Contact
    • Newsletter subscribe
  • Blog

The 8 hour work day.....

10/21/2015

0 Comments

 
​https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-8-hour-workday-doesnt-work-you-what-do-instead-jeff-haden
Any company trying to achieve more is constantly seeking ways to improve employee efficiency and effectiveness, to find techniques to help their teams work faster/smarter/better... they're constantly seeking an edge.

Then why do so many companies stick to the 8-hour workday -- and why do so many entrepreneurs do the same thing? 

Good question, and one that Leo Widrich, the co-founder of Buffer, has helped me answer. Here's our take on what's wrong with the 8-hour workday -- and how you can be a lot more productive without working longer hours.

The first thing we did when we started hiring awesome people for the Buffer team was kill the 8-hour workday. Why? Not only did it feel unnatural, it seemed counter-productive to what we all wanted to accomplish in a given day.

Still, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. At least, those are the official statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics:
Picture
That's fine... but knowing how long the average person works every day has little to do with knowing how efficient or productive that workday -- and that individual's output -- may be. With all the success stories of people working 4 hours a week to 16 hours a day it’s hard to know if there is an optimal workday.

So instead of going with my gut, I did some research on how to optimize work time for success and happiness.

Let’s dig in:
Why is there an 8 hour work day in the first place?
The typical work day is approximately 8 hours, but how did we come up with that? The answer is hidden in the birth of the Industrial revolution.

In the late 18 century companies wanted to maximize equipment usage by running 24/7. Of course that meant people had to work more hours, so 10 to 16 hour workdays became the norm.
These incredibly long work days weren’t sustainable, though, and soon a brave man named Robert Owen started a campaign to have people work no more than 8 hours per day. His slogan was, “Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest.” 

Owen's efforts notwithstanding, it wasn’t until much later that Henry Ford actually implemented an 8-hour work day:
“One of the first businesses to implement this was the Ford Motor Company, in 1914, which not only cut the standard work day to eight hours, but also doubled their worker’s pay in the process. To the shock of many industries, this resulted in Ford’s productivity off of these same workers, but with fewer hours, actually increasing significantly and Ford’s profit margins doubled within two years. 

This encouraged other companies to adopt the shorter, eight hour work day as a standard for their employees.”
So there it is: The reason we work 8 hours a day isn’t based on science. It’s just a century-old practiced based on running factories efficiently -- and is irrelevant in today's creative economy. Today the right focus is on your energy, not your hours, according to the author Tony Schwartz, who says, “Manage your energy, not your time.”
Schwartz explains we all need to manage four different types of energies every day:
  • Physical energy: How healthy are you?
  • Emotional energy: How happy are you?
  • Mental energy: How well can you focus on something?
  • Spiritual energy: Why are you doing all of this? What is your purpose?
Machines move linearly, humans move cyclically 
For an efficient work day that truly respects our human nature, the first things to focus on are ultradian cycles.

Generally speaking we can focus on any given task for 90 to 120 minutes. After that a 20-30 minute break is needed so we can recharge and be ready to achieve high performance on our next task.

Here is a representation of the ultradian rhythm:
Picture
So instead of thinking, “What can I get done in an 8 hour day?” I’ve started to think, “What can I get done in a 90 minute session?”

The foundation of a productive work day: Focus
Now that we know we should split everything in 90 minute chunks, it’s time to break down those 90 minutes sessions further.

In a stunning research project, Justin Gardner our brain uses a two-step process:
1.) “Sensitivity enhancement”: Start by picturing a scene or setup and taking it all in. Then focus on what needs your attention. Kind of like “a blurry photo that slowly starts to come into focus,” describes Lifehacker.

2.) “Efficient selection”: This is how the actual zooming in on a task happens, allowing us to enter into what Mihály Csíkszentmihályi calls “flow” state. That's when our actual work on a task happens.

The following figure may describe it best:
Picture
In figure A, as our brain is presented with only one task, and we are able to separate out distractors (blue) from what’s actually important (yellow).
In figure B, as we are presented with multiple tasks at once, our brain is increasingly easy to distract and combines the actual tasks with distractors.
The key conclusion Gardner suggests is that we have to:
  • Stop multitasking to avoid being distracted in our work environment.
  • Eliminate distractors even when only one task is present
Sounds fairly obvious right? Still, doing it every day is much easier said then done. Here are some hands-on tips.
4 Tips for Improving Your Productivity
For my daily workflow at Buffer I’ve made four distinct changes to better implement the above research. Here's what works best for me:
  • Manually increase the relevance of a task: It can be hard to maintain focus, especially if what you're doing doesn't have a deadline. Overriding your attention system, and adding your own deadline together with a reward can significantly improve task completion, according to researcher Keisuke Fukuda. 
  • Split your day into 90 minute windows: Instead of thinking about an 8, 6, or 10 hour work day, split your day into four or five 90-minute windows. That way you will have, say, four tasks you will get done more easily.
  • Plan your rest so you actually rest: “The fittest person is not the one who runs the fastest, but the one who has optimized their rest time,” says Tony Schwartz. A lot of the time we are so busy planning our work day that we forget about “how” to rest. Plan beforehand what you will do to recharge: Nap, read, meditate, get a snack, etc.
  • Allow zero notifications: One of the best ideas I’ve ever had was to follow Joel’s advice on zero notifications. Having absolutely no alerts on my phone or computer that breaks my focus has been a huge help. If you haven’t tried it, try to turn off every digital element that could become an alert.
Now it's your turn: What do you think is the best way to structure your work day?
0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Wilna's Blog

    Staying relevant, delighting guests & crafting successful brands excites me.

    Here is a collection of articles that have interested me - definitely not all written by me, but all personally read and found by me!

    I hope you find them informative too!

    Categories

    All
    Advertising
    Brand
    Humour
    Leadership
    Marketing
    Motivational
    Namibian Insights
    Online Bookings
    Online Trends
    Self Improvement
    Service
    Social Networks
    Time Management
    Travel Agents
    Travel Trends

    Picture
    Thought Salad! 
     our monthly newsletter. 
    Subscribe HERE

    RSS Feed

    View my profile on LinkedIn

    Archives

    March 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    May 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    January 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011


Home
Services

About us
Contact 

Resumes
Clients
Web Design
Blog

Photos used under Creative Commons from Martin Cathrae, Andrew Stawarz, laura padgett, Dave Dugdale