To build on this, most online articles aren’t even based on the research that lynettebye was covering here. Instead, they’re based on polls and surveys, often by marketing companies. If we’re lucky, it’s associative data from epidemiological studies linking work issues to disease.
In those polls and surveys, they’re often pointing out that people are wasting time on too much frustrating, un-chosen work, and that as a consequence of the amount of nonsense they have to put up with, they only get a few hours of productive work in per day.
This gets spun as “people can only work a few productive hours per day,” as if it was innate human capacity, rather than crappy work conditions, that were the limiting factor.
Yeah. How long I can work depends on how crappy the work is. This could also explain why CEOs and similar are happy to spend long hours at job… they probably have way more power over their working conditions than I do. Pretty sure they have a room where they can close the door for a moment.
Sounds like you’re describing autonomy, mastery, and meaning—some of the big factors that are supposed to influence job satisfaction. 80,000 Hours has an old but nice summary here https://80000hours.org/articles/job-satisfaction-research. I expect job satisfaction and the resulting motivation make a huge difference on hours you can work productively.
With motivation, focusing on your work is easy. Without motivation, you burn your self-discipline, and then you give up.
So, without motivation it becomes a question of how many hours worth of self-discipline you have, or rather how many you can pretend you have. With motivation, it is only a question of what else do you also need to do during the day.
To build on this, most online articles aren’t even based on the research that lynettebye was covering here. Instead, they’re based on polls and surveys, often by marketing companies. If we’re lucky, it’s associative data from epidemiological studies linking work issues to disease.
In those polls and surveys, they’re often pointing out that people are wasting time on too much frustrating, un-chosen work, and that as a consequence of the amount of nonsense they have to put up with, they only get a few hours of productive work in per day.
This gets spun as “people can only work a few productive hours per day,” as if it was innate human capacity, rather than crappy work conditions, that were the limiting factor.
Yeah. How long I can work depends on how crappy the work is. This could also explain why CEOs and similar are happy to spend long hours at job… they probably have way more power over their working conditions than I do. Pretty sure they have a room where they can close the door for a moment.
Sounds like you’re describing autonomy, mastery, and meaning—some of the big factors that are supposed to influence job satisfaction. 80,000 Hours has an old but nice summary here https://80000hours.org/articles/job-satisfaction-research. I expect job satisfaction and the resulting motivation make a huge difference on hours you can work productively.
Yes.
With motivation, focusing on your work is easy. Without motivation, you burn your self-discipline, and then you give up.
So, without motivation it becomes a question of how many hours worth of self-discipline you have, or rather how many you can pretend you have. With motivation, it is only a question of what else do you also need to do during the day.