Should the Work Day Be Shorter

There was a poll today on the NY Times.  Results at 8:52 AM CDT showed that 75%+ of the respondents felt our workdays were too long, they should be shorter. 

Who doesn't?

American workers have the longest work day for workers in any industrial nation.  And its  impact is seen in higher productivity, higher wages but also all the associated stresses of higher health care needs, families breaking up, drug use among teens, etc. And I'm brushing lightly over some huge topics. But at the same time, "what you put your attention on grows stronger in your life". And if that's your job, to the greater or lesser exclusion of everything else then everything else will suffer a decline in quality.

Not rocket science, here.

What seems to be rocket science is that a longer day doesn't necessarily produce a greater product or service or result. Granted, at times, yeah, a longer day is needed.  But too many times it seems that a longer day produces declining results.

It's the old declining marginal utility idea.

The longer days, especially in bigger companies, arise not from more productive activity but from more meetings. And then there's more meetings to fix the problems that came from bad decisions made by tired and distracted workers. Tired from the long unproductive hours; Distracted from the problems those long hours. Spending their day at the office taking care of personal issues.

And the answer seems to be ....let's work a few more hours. Get it right. Then let's get back to a routine. Nice gig if you can get it.

Once the long hour routine is in place, it generates its own reality and rules to support it. No one wants to be seen leaving at a normal hour, to be with their kids and family, or just to have a life. You don't want to be the lone car driving out of the parking lot at 5. The concept of "face-time" becomes the reality. Gotta show your face around the office to let your boss know you're there.

I worked at a company where this 'reality' (actually it was a nightmare) grew steadily until my day was completely spent in meetings. Just meetings. Maybe one in 10 produced a result. Most were to meet about what hadn't happened since the last meeting. But there was no time to accomplish the goals from the prior meeting so we had to have a meeting to address the impact, then reset timelines (reset the adrenals, really) and then meet in the hallways to commiserate about the absurdity of it all.

That company's a shell of itself in personnel, customers and revenues.

What's my point? Meet less, accomplish more. Work less; Accomplish more. Pick your spots. Mine every day is "what can I do that will either increase revenues, decrease expenses or keep pointing us in the right direction for creating employee AND customer evangelists." To the extent I'm successful, we're successful. Emphasis on "we're". And we do it with a minimum of meetings and a maximum of production AND family-time.