It seems worth clarifying what you mean by “productive”. As Raemon and waveman mention, the answer will depend on whether you are talking about “hard” work a la Anders Ericsson’s idea of deliberate practice, or about more routine type of work. I suspect that you are talking about the former and that people will interpret it as the former, but it still seems worth clarifying.
It also might be worth mentioning that you are referring to “standard” cases of healthy individuals who aren’t using any performance enhancing drugs or anything like that. I took that as a given, as the question of how unnatural things like that could change the default seems like a different question, as does the question of how things like anxiety or lack of sleep reduce your capacity.
These kinds of questions feel premature, given the absolute lack of data. I’d be interested in “returns drop off after N hours of deliberate practice” or “meetings go net negative after M minutes.”
It seems worth clarifying what you mean by “productive”. As Raemon and waveman mention, the answer will depend on whether you are talking about “hard” work a la Anders Ericsson’s idea of deliberate practice, or about more routine type of work. I suspect that you are talking about the former and that people will interpret it as the former, but it still seems worth clarifying.
It also might be worth mentioning that you are referring to “standard” cases of healthy individuals who aren’t using any performance enhancing drugs or anything like that. I took that as a given, as the question of how unnatural things like that could change the default seems like a different question, as does the question of how things like anxiety or lack of sleep reduce your capacity.
These kinds of questions feel premature, given the absolute lack of data. I’d be interested in “returns drop off after N hours of deliberate practice” or “meetings go net negative after M minutes.”