Re: Average Hours Worked

[Peter <pnewman1 -at- optonline -dot- net>]

Bruce Byfield wrote:

> Another point that somebody mentioned to me off-line, after eight hours,
> most people's productivity goes way down.The tenth hour of work is
> rarely as productive as the first, or even the fifth or sixth. As a
> result, over-time quickly reaches the point of diminishing returns. I'm
> worked at several companies where the first thing I did each morning was
> correct the mistakes that I or somebody else made while working over
> time the evening before.
> 

Your last point is probably the most valid business justification for
not putting in too much OT. I consider the idea of balance in life more
important from a job satisfaction perspective. Some people are morning
people and others who can't get started until late in the day. When the
morning person comes in and finishes of good day's work, often the
evening person's first getting started. From a perceptual viewpoint when
the morning person leaves the evening person thinks, "that guy isn't
really working." There probably is an element of denial by the evening
person that he was mentally asleep until sometime in the early
afternoon. Unfortunately for the morning person, management still gauges
too many workers on hours behind the desk rather than good productivity.
We recently had a rather lengthy discussion on slow technical writers.
>From the diversity of opinions one can easily conclude that productivity
in technical writing is difficult to gauge. Therefore the pinheads fall
back on strictly hours behind the desk. I can recall on many a
discussion with my ex partner on that subject. It was not unusual for me
to live in the office sometime about 6:30 AM and leave sometime about
3:00 o'clock. He would rarely arrive before 10:30 AM and he would not
sit down to work until about 2:30 in the afternoon. Therefore we could
not have any meaningful discussions regarding office problems until late
at night. I wound up putting in far more hours than he did and resenting
it. On the many days that I would leave in the early afternoon he would
resent it. Although we gradually accommodated each other's schedules are
too well understand how management would view the differing work habits.
Earlier in my career, at one place I worked, both my supervisor and I
were morning people. We would both finish our day's work sometime around
noon. We would then go out for an extended lunch. (Between 4 and 5
hours.)


-- 
Peter

"When a man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a 
minute. But let him sit on a hot stove for a minute-and it's 
longer than any hour. That's relativity,"
- Einstein-


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