Some studies suggest that the body also has a peak of creativity in the evening around 9 pm. Of course, these rhythms are not always accurate. They may vary depending on the people, their sleeping hours, or their eating rhythm.
But it is generally the normal functioning of the human body. When working from 9 a. First, we are on meal break exactly when our brain is most active. Then we spend almost a third of the day from 1 p. Because of the accumulation of cerebral fatigue, working all this time is connected to lower results in both cognitive and intellectual tests. Some research goes so far as to say that working more than 8 hours a day sitting at an office is as bad for health as smoking tobacco.
And above all, more and more studies tend to prove that an individual can focus only their attention on intellectual work for a limited time! Some studies say 52 consecutive minutes , others say 1h30… But overall, the results show that in a day, we are only really intellectually productive for about 6 hours, provided we take good breaks.
The countries with the highest average working hours are also the ones with the lowest productivity. And those where work days are the shortest are the most productive.
As well, there are also studies saying that companies that impose their employees daily working hours are also less productive. In the end, scientists generally agree that the ideal daily working time is around 6 hours , and more concentrated in the morning. This is what is being practiced in Sweden, and they are currently experiencing significant success.
Thus, workers take advantage of the hours when they are most productive, and concentrate in the afternoon other daily activities including social, sporting and cultural. This freedom allows employees to better manage their fatigue, their work-life balance fundamental for productivity , and also allows them to rediscover everyday life outside of work. Experts in psychology have shown that this way of organizing working time short working days punctuated by short periods of vacation is the one that makes employees happier , together with working longer and taking longer vacations.
It is, therefore, better to work less daily and take small frequent holidays, especially since long holidays seem to have a detrimental effect on mood and productivity! In short, over years later, almost all companies are still working under the 8-hour journey premise. Science has shown our whole way of organizing working time is unsuited for our psychology. Rather than working long hours each day, working shorter hours means more intense and concentrated productivity. And rather than spending our whole day at the office, we should fragment our working time, and concentrate it more in the morning.
And it may start by spending less time at work! Log in and interact with engaging content: show how they matter to you, share your experience First Name. Last Name. See all. Published at , September 25 th What if we got out of work a little earlier? Show how useful this article has been. Welcome back Log in and interact with engaging content: show how they matter to you, share your experience To get the most comprehensive perspective on working hours possible, many countries aggregate data from these surveys with data from other sources — such as censuses, tax records, and social security registers — in an economic measurement framework called national accounts.
National accounts, and the surveys they rely on, are standardized to a degree across countries, which can facilitate international comparisons.
But these comparisons often have limitations because many countries still implement the methods in different ways. For instance, countries might bring together different data in their national accounts, or aggregate it differently. But researchers like Huberman and Minns 24 have been able to fill some of the gap by reconstructing long-run trends for a selection of countries. How do they do it? Through often painstaking effort, researchers have been able to find and piece together the relevant historical records that do exist.
In the work of Huberman and Minns, one of the key sources for historical data on many countries is a report from the US Department of Labor published in To reconstruct the trends in later years, Huberman and Minns pulled together data from the International Labor Organization, the work of peer researchers, and other sources. This was an impressive feat of reconstruction, but historical records like this do have limitations.
For instance, as exhaustive as they were, the establishment-level records used by Huberman and Minns still excluded agricultural work, part-time work, and many smaller firms.
The work by Huberman and Minns is an important example of how researchers often combine and adjust underlying sources to produce one-off cross-country estimates. Besides these one-off estimates, several international organizations and research centers aggregate the working hours estimates published by national statistical agencies into cross-country datasets. These both draw on national accounts estimates when available, but they can differ in the other sources they use and their method of aggregation.
In the chart you can compare annual working hours data from these four datasets. The data is shown one country at a time — with France currently selected. As expected, there are differences between the sources. In , for instance, Bick et al. These differences are due to the use of different underlying sources and methods. Bick et al. The difference between sources in is at most hours, while the historical data from Huberman and Minns shows that from to annual working hours in France decreased by 1, hours from 3, to 1, hours.
The analysis here shows that working hours data can have limitations — due to differences in the sources or the way the method is implemented — but that what these matter for our interpretation of the data depends on the context.
In a context where precise comparisons of similar countries is important, smaller differences between sources can really matter. This is why to compare recent working hours levels in the US and Europe, Bick et al. But as a trade-off, it was only possible to look at a small selection of richer countries. In a context where we want to focus on a larger scale — such as the long-run historical trends we see in the chart — the limitations of the sources are not large enough to undermine our conclusions.
Large international datasets like PWT do not have the highest levels of cross-country comparability, but they allow us to look at many more countries across the world and uncover broad and important trends, such as the large differences in working hours between the richest and poorest countries. PWT and OECD are also useful in contexts where we want an exhaustive picture of the trends in individual countries, since they are often based on national accounts that bring together data from many sources to give a comprehensive perspective on working hours.
Summary Working hours have decreased dramatically in the last years for many countries. But there are still large differences between countries: workers in poorer countries tend to work much more than workers in richer countries. The primary way to measure working hours is with surveys, but the data can have limitations that are important to understand.
All our charts on Working Hours Annual working hours per worker Annual working hours per worker, various sources Annual working hours vs. Labor productivity Average daily hours of work in summer, by industry Average daily hours of work in winter, by industry Average daily hours of work, by occupation, United States Average daily hours worked, by industry, United States Average daily work hours, by industry Average hours of work per week, by industry Average hours worked per person employed Days off from work for vacations and holidays Hours of work per week Hours of work vs.
Working hours throughout history. Working hours per worker have declined after the Industrial Revolution. Click to open interactive version. In recent decades working hours have continued to decline in many countries, but there are large differences between countries.
Shorter work days, but also more holidays and vacations. Why should we care? Working hours and prosperity. Working hours tend to decrease as countries become richer. People are able to work less when they work in more productive economies. The key driver of rising national incomes and decreasing working hours is productivity growth. At the heart of the link between productivity, incomes, and working hours is technological innovation.
What we learn from this. Measuring working hours. How are working hours measured? Surveys Surveys are the primary way to collect data on working hours. National accounts To get the most comprehensive perspective on working hours possible, many countries aggregate data from these surveys with data from other sources — such as censuses, tax records, and social security registers — in an economic measurement framework called national accounts.
How do researchers reconstruct long-run historical trends? How does the data from different sources compare? What does this tell us about the study of working hours? Data Sources. Huberman and Minns By continuing using our site, you accept our cookie policy and consent to the use of cookies.
Read more. Toggle navigation Toggle search box Calendar Working Days in Instructions If you would like to keep the changes you have made to the table you can obtain a unique link by clicking on the "Get a link to your calendar" button just below the calendar. Read more Contact Privacy Policy.
0コメント