Comment by robinwarren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by robinwarren | Hacker News Reader

I'd like to believe this article, and in fact strive myself to reduce my working hours one day and have more time for all that other good stuff the article mentions. Shorter weeks could bring a lot of benefits with them to those who can enjoy them. Some problems I have with the article however:

1. Working less may well not result in getting more (or the same amount) done. The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output.

2. The idea that because the Dutch apparently spend all their free time riding around on bikes means the brits would if given more free time is a joke. We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?), not suddenly become some imagined healthier happier version of ourselves.

All in all a pretty poor article I think as a result of the above isssues.

> The article mentions a correlation between shorter working hours and higher productivity. As always, correlation does not equal causation. Most likely those countries with shorter work weeks are developed countries which have higher output per capita than less developed ones not because working 40 hours a weeks is more productive than working 80, but that utilising a higher level of technology gives superior output.

The article is comparing the UK (long working hours, terrible productivity) with Germany (short working hours, very much better productivity).

It's unlikely that there's much difference in the technology available. And they both surely know about all the modern methods of organising a workplace.

I mostly agree with point 2, but

> We'd spend it doing the things we enjoy (damaging our livers?)

Maybe the reason so many british people drink too much is because they're working too much, and they're (mis)using alcohol to wind down.

Purely anecdotal I know, but since giving up my job in the city and going freelance I have indeed spent far less time drinking and far more time exercising.

A quick one after work was far too common. I buckled far too easily to peer pressure and conformity. After all it's the done thing to do right? A crap day at work is solved by a pint (or three) after? And a good day at work... well that could be considerably more ;)

What is the cause of the reduced drinking? Reduced hours worked meaning you're happier? Or no work colleagues to lead you astray?

The reduction in hours has allowed me to do activities which overall make me happier and less inclined to drink.

I now do a lot of running and bodyweight fitness. Drinking decreases my performance in those two activities and so I tend not to drink as I get far greater happiness from dropping a second in my minutes per mile than I do from having three pints during the week.

The article linked to this one http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/09/working-...

That compares data across the OECD, so fair enough this isn't comparing Papua New Guinea to the UK or similar. However, it mentions in the article the difference between Germany and Greece as examples of higher average hours and lower average productivity. I'd still tend to believe this isn't because the Greeks could get more done by working less but that Germans are tackling different work or using more technology in their work than the Greeks.

> Maybe the reason so many british people drink too much is because they're working too much, and they're (mis)using alcohol to wind down.

Maybe. It seems like we agree on this anyway. I was being slightly tongue in cheek here, not trying to suggest all the freed up hours would be spent in the pub :). I'll leave it at that.

i agree that working less should not always result in getting more done.

one of the potential benefits mentioned by the article is the climate change perspective. from that perspective, the whole point of working less is a mechanism to reduce the rate that stuff gets done.

the downsides of this would be:

1. less stuff gets done 2. on average people have less income 3. on average people have less income, and this hurts poor people far more than wealthy people 4. perhaps the economy doesn't grow, and we don't know how to run society that way

the upsides might be:

5. there's a reduction in negative side effects (both generation of pollution and rate of depletion of non-renewables and unsustainable depletion of renewables (fish stocks, timber, soil, ...)) 6. we've got more time to do stuff that isn't work. hurray! 7. we've got more time to think carefully about what we're doing before we hit some hard limit 8. a lot of stuff that gets done is unhelpful, and now there's less of it 9. it's fairly obvious that we cannot keep growing the physical economy indefinitely, it might be a wise idea to try to learn how to run society in a different way before we're forced into collapse.

e.g. see the book "Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet" by Tim Jackson.

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