If work was based on science

By Nimue Brown on August 1, 2024

(Nimue)

The eight hour working day, the five day working week, and the shift patterns we have are not well evidenced concepts. They owe more to people trying to get some basic rights around not being worked to death, than they do any research into what's optimal.

Imagine how different life would be if our approach to work was based on evidence about what's effective. Imagine if our working lives were structured to maximise our effectiveness and health.

Studies on four day working weeks have shown repeatedly that this is more effective. Pay a person the same amount of money for a four day week and they become more productive, more effective, less likely to quit.

We don't actually know what the most productive approach would be. We do have some evidence that people are not effective for a lot of the time they spend at work. There's some evidence to suggest that typically in office jobs, people only do about three hours of effective work in a day. There are issues about how long anyone can concentrate for, and how much more effective we all are when we get time to pause and gather our thoughts, or to let our minds wander so as to find solutions.

Humans are not machines. We do not thrive in environments where we are supposed to be relentlessly grinding out work hour after hour, day after day. We don't work well on those terms. Our physical and mental health suffers.

It seems remarkable to me, given how much study we do as a species, that there hasn't been more exploration of this. If we understood ourselves better, and looked for optimal approaches, the changes would be radical. No more wearing people down with over-work or job boredom. Exhausted and unengaged people make more mistakes, and don't make the best or most inspired choices. People who have time to think are better able to come up with genuinely new ideas and to solve problems. We know this about ourselves, yet we aren't invested in finding the best ways of organising ourselves.

Instead, we slog on with old models of work that waste a lot of time and resources. So much good could be achieved through a commitment to making work work.