How to Boost Creativity and Capture Your Ideas
- 7 Min read
Did you know the hours you work can affect your productivity and happiness, which means affecting the quality of your life?
To make the most of each day and increase your productivity, you need to review your work hours, how you work, and why you work the hours you do.
Long work hours and productivity has been studied for many years. Anyone who has spent time measuring the effects of working more than a 38-hour workweek has reached the conclusion that long hours negatively impact your productivity.
Why?
Working longer than 40 hours per week can lead to burnout. This is because you don’t have any more energy left after a certain point in time. This is a sabotaging productivity law. This makes it important to pay more attention to your workweek.
Burnout is a state of mental and physical exhaustion caused by prolonged stress, frustration and the inability to relax.
Other risks you take when you work over 40 hours and up to 55 hours per week, include:
When you work too much, the sabotaging productivity law kicks in and it becomes difficult to maintain good relationships, and you can also lose sight of your priorities. This can cause you to become less focused on what really matters.
There isn’t a magic number of hours everyone should work. Measuring productivity is an important focus because that affects a company’s bottom line.
There are a few different optimal numbers of hours you should work each day if you want to be as productive as you can be.
According to Adam Grant, The Wharton School’s top Associate Professor, the typical 9-to-5 work day should end two hours earlier, making it a six-hour work day. This means shorter work days and shorter workweeks.
In an experiment in Sweden, when employees at a nursing home adopted a six-hour work day, productivity and health in the workplace improved.
So it’s never about the number of hours you work if measuring productivity is important. It’s about how effective you are when working so you maximize the time you have, which is why it’s valuable to invest time measuring how productive you are.
Countries and companies are now adopting alternative work schedules. These include:
The happiest countries have flexible work hours and also offer flexible vacation days. Some countries like Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and the UK allow people to work different hours depending on their preferences.
Rarely do workers in the happiest countries in the world work more than 55 hours. Even though 40 hours is the norm in other countries, those in the happiest countries aim for a 38-hour workweek or less.
Working fewer hours means more time for other activities in life, which can include time with family, time for hobbies, health, and other activities. It also allows you to relax and get some rest.
It’s important to find what works best for you, especially if you’re a business owner, and to take advantage of options available to increase your productivity.
The belief that working long hours will make you happy because you think you’re getting more done is not true.
For example, you may feel like you would get more things done if you worked longer hours, but you also might experience higher levels of stress.
Happiness is a feeling that’s generated in your mind. When you feel stressed, not only can it reduce your happiness, it can also lower your productivity.
High achievers often don’t know when to stop. The more they achieve, the more they want to achieve, so the cycle continues. This often does not lead to a healthy work-life balance.
When you’re feeling stressed or burned out, you won’t enjoy the little moments in life. Instead, you may focus on the negative aspects of life, which will further reduce your happiness.
The benefits of working fewer hours include:
If you work long every week, steps you can take to work less include:
FuseBase (formerly Nimbus) started as a note-taking app, similar to Evernote and Notion, but has now evolved into a collaboration hub. This includes internal collaboration with your team or external collaboration with clients.
Features FuseBase offers include:
Work smarter, not harder. Try FuseBase to make it happen!
Question for our readers: What was your biggest takeaway and how will you adjust the hours you work to improve your productivity and happiness?
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