The number of working hours per week for the highest productivity - 35

We continue to acquaint you with the translations of Chris Bailey's articles, where he shares the tips that he learned during the “a Year of Productivity” project . We have previously published articles by this author, they are available in our blog in the "personal productivity" section .

So we give the word to Chris!

Many people think that the optimal number of hours to work per week is 60, but research shows that this figure is almost two times less and is 35 hours.
')
An interesting thing happens when this time is exceeded [1]:


Although your performance at the first time may be at altitude, but then it decreases sharply, even if you do not notice it immediately. It exhausts you, and you can not stop and look at your schedule as if from the side, moving away from the work itself.

The problem is that the more a person works, the more productive he feels, even if it is not (multitasking has a similar effect):


According to research, if you give one task to two teams, one of which works overtime, and the other only 35 hours a week, then the last, surprisingly, achieves better quality results. [one]

The reason is that if a person works more than 35 hours a week [2], his productivity decreases, even despite a longer time of employment. This is due to large losses in the workflow:

• The cost of time, money and energy in correcting errors in their work;
• Improper prioritization in business (i.e., if you incorrectly determine what you need to do first);
• You miss a lot of opportunities due to constant concentration at work and fatigue.

Although this study is mainly related to creative work (as opposed to routine production processes), it shows how important it is to take frequent breaks and rest from work in order to relieve stress and fatigue.

Productivity is not only the work you have done, it also includes the time and energy that you spend as a result of making the wrong decisions and correcting mistakes. Studies show that working more than 35 working hours a week will do you more harm than good, especially when it comes to creative work.

As one manager put it: “If you have a programmer who writes 10 programs a week working overtime, imagine how much more successful your project would be if he completed 8 programs that do not require correction, instead of 10, 5 of which have correct errors and redo them. "

If you constantly work more than 35 hours a week, then it probably decreases your productivity.

1. Source: http://www.slideshare.net/flowtown/rules-of-productivity-2756161
2. Studies have shown that it does not matter how you distribute this time.

PS from the translation editor : if you are interested in reading other articles of the author, we highly recommend learning “10 lessons on how to increase productivity, which I learned by working 90 hours a week for a whole month” or “Everything you need to develop "Dynamic thinking" . "