Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six-hour working day

Re:Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six... by douche on Thursday September 17, 2015 @02:45PM (#10235290)

When I was working a blue-collar, industrial job, I would be happy to work 10 or 12 hour days. Usually the schedule was 4 10s, with the Mondays and Fridays rotating to give a four-day weekend every other week. Of course, longer days meant overtime pay, too, if it added up to more than 40 hours in the week. I was also commuting about two hours a day, so shorter days didn't really give me any extra free time (downside of government holidays was that they only paid 8 hours, so you'd end up still working 4 days, just for 8 hours each instead of 10).

Working as a programmer now, I find that I mostly can put in about 4 hours of real work in a day, before my brain is mush. Although there are other blessed days when I get in the groove and have plenty of work to do with no interruptions, and I might work steady for 12 or 15 hours straight. It takes something of a miracle for this to occur, though, since two or more 30 minute meetings, or having to bounce around a couple different projects doing email support can wreck any attempt at getting into a flow for the day.

Physical labor might be strenuous, but I generally find it to be less exhausting than mental labor.

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Re:Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six... by agumonkey on Thursday September 17, 2015 @03:36PM (#10235563)

I fondly remember digging trenches[1] in a hot summer. It was the most painful thing I ever did, but I approached levels of zen I rarely have now. Everybody is built differently, but there's something deeply good about physical exhaustion. When you know the job, you get in flow easily. When done you feel all reset, the next day you feel a bit sore but it's the good kind, you even anticipate it.

[1] And if some kind of tasks are too brutal, there's always swimming (or even qigong).

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Re:Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six... by mikekchar on Thursday September 17, 2015 @10:05PM (#10237178)

I'm working as a remote programmer with a 9 hour time difference from my colleagues. It's been a real hassle to organise my life because our team likes to pair program a lot. This has meant some pretty bizarre schedules for me.

Lately, I've been experimenting with a split schedule. I work 8-12 in my morning time zone solo, then I work 5-10 with a 1 hour dinner break in my evening. This gives me 3-4 hours of pairing (depending on how my partner and I schedule lunch/dinner). Between the hours of 12-5, I do some cycling, go shopping, do some cooking, and importantly have a 1 hour nap.

While it's not ideal (would love to get in a few more hours of pairing), from my own personal perspective it has been extremely good. I am able to concentrate fully for the entire day. I never feel tired at work any more. The nap is amazing!

Of course, it is 11 am and I'm writing a post on HN (bad Mike...)

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Re:Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six... by blazespin on Thursday September 17, 2015 @06:25PM (#10236461)

Mental labor is hard, but learning I find fairly easy and quite relaxing. I only do about 2 hours or so productive mental labor / output a day, the rest of it I spend self training and learning. I honestly can't imagine how far I would be behind my peers if I didn't do that.

Sometimes I do a fair amount of training / mentoring for junior engineers as well. That can be pretty relaxing too and productive for the company.

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Re:Efficiency up, turnover down: Sweden experiments with six... by lordnacho on Thursday September 17, 2015 @05:03PM (#10236045)

You may only be typing code or reading docs 4 hours a day, but I'll bet you do useful thinking when you're not at your desk.

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