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Lets hear it for the four-hour working day
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of The Guardian (One of the UK's leading newspapers)
Posted: September 4th, 2017
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2017/aug/11/oliver-...
How much proper brainwork not zoning out in meetings, or reorganising the stationery cupboard, but work that involves really thinking should you aim to get done in one day? The answer isnt some sophisticated version of: It depends. The answer is four hours. That, anyway, is the persuasive conclusion reached by Alex Pang in his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. This column has evangelised before about the truth of that subtitle, what with the nine-to-five being a relic of the industrial revolution with no relevance to modern knowledge work but whats so striking about Pangs argument is its specificity. Ranging across history and creative fields, he keeps encountering the same thing. Charles Darwin worked for two 90-minute periods in the morning, then an hour later on; the mathematician Henri Poincar from 10am till noon then 5pm till 7pm; the same approximate stretch features in the daily routines of Thomas Jefferson, Alice Munro, John le Carr and many more. And maybe its not just creative work. Half a century ago, the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins caused a stir by suggesting that people in hunter-gatherer societies arent ceaselessly struggling for survival; on the contrary, theyd built the original affluent society, by keeping their needs low, then meeting them. Crunching numbers from Africa and Australia, he calculated the average number of hours hunter-gatherers must work per day, to keep everyone fed. Thats right: it was three to five hours. Dont you think its time we took the hint?
Note: For more along these lines, see concise summaries of deeply revealing health news articles from reliable major media sources.
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