Why We Need to Kill the 40-Hour Workweek

The 40+ hour workweek is a relic from the industrial age, where the production function of the individual employee was linear in time spent working: An extra unit of work added and extra unit of output.

In the information age, more and more people deal with the production and distribution of knowledge rather than with the production of physical objects. The knowledge production function, however, is a highly nonlinear one, and 8-hour workdays in open offices are glaringly inefficient.

Knowledge is produced by thought. The higher the intensity of thought, the greater the knowledge-output per unit of time. The relationship is most likely convex, so that the most intense and exhaustive thinking is orders of magnitudes more productive than moderate intensity thought.

This differs fundamentally from the production of physical objects. Rarely can one influence the rate of output of things by increased exertion alone. The assembly line does not run faster just because you work with greater intensity.

The primary path to increased industrial output is by working more hours; the primary path to increased knowledge output is by working at higher intensity.

Unfortunately, high intensity and long hours of work are antithetical. It is either high volume or high intensity — never both. The longer you work, the lower your work intensity will necessarily be. The highest intensity you can uphold for eight hours, is much lower than the highest intensity you can uphold for two. And because the production function is convex, two hours of intense knowledge work may outperform eight hours of moderate-intensity knowledge work.

A schedule for the efficient production of knowledge thus looks more like the training schedule of elite athletes than the work schedule of industrial workers: One or two intense sessions per day of at most a few hours each with plenty of rest in between.