[lbo-talk] People today just don't have the work ethic they used to!

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Tue Jun 10 16:48:18 PDT 2008


On Mon, 9 Jun 2008, andie nachgeborenen wrote:


> Actually sleeping less and working longer hours does not make you more
> but less productive. This is a result of industrial psychology that is
> so robust it could be the foundation of the field. I know of no, zero,
> zip work even disputing it, and every one of the dozens of studies that
> look into this variable suggest that more sleep and shorter hours make
> you more productive. I mean every single study, without exception. If
> you make people work 14 hour days over six or seven day weeks, you will
> get no more work, in fact less, than you would if you had them work
> about five hours (the limit of productive work) about four days a week.
> You just get the same amount of work done spread over more time.

This is quite cheering to the point of utopianism as to what's possible and counter all prevailing wisdom. If it's so hegemonic in industrial psyche, are there some classic works you could cite? I'd love to look at them.

Michael



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