Why Working 9-To-5 Hours Doesn’t Work For Everyone
On average, Americans work 8.8 hours a day. This is undeniably the norm across most of the Western world. Most employers expect a 9-to-5 work schedule.
However, you might be surprised to learn the traditional 9-to-5 workday doesn’t always work, and has actually been shown to be more inefficient than a less structured schedule. Despite its popularity, there is nothing about the eight-hours a day, 9-to-5 work schedule that creates a more effective work environment.
You’re probably wondering, if the 9-to-5 schedule doesn’t always work, why it’s so mainstream. The answer lies in the history of the workday. The eight-hour workday wasn’t always the norm, and it was actually unheard of until the Industrial Revolution in the mid-1800’s. During the Industrial Revolution, companies were laser-focused on increasing labor as much as possible, which often led to incredibly long workdays of up to 16 hours a day.
Unsurprisingly, it turned out that 16-hour workdays were not sustainable, and people began to protest these conditions. A man called Robert Owen started a campaign to have people work no more than eight hours a day. He determined this number by the reasoning that people should have eight hours of labor, eight hours of recreation, and eight hours of rest.
This formula, at the time, was thought to produce the best workers. The Ford Motor Company was the first to implement the eight-hour workday in 1914, and it has been accepted as standard ever since.
While Owen’s formula for the perfect worker sounds reasonable, there are actually many reasons why the 9-to-5 work schedule doesn’t always work, particularly in today’s digital world. In recent years, the workforce has changed at a breakneck pace as more and more people, particularly millennials, walk away from the standard workday.
In this post, I’ll look at the five main reasons why the 9-to-5 workday doesn’t always work and shouldn’t be accepted blindly – as represented in this infographic:
Human beings are not machines. We are unable to focus on a single task for prolonged periods of time without succumbing to distractions. This doesn’t mean we can’t be skilled, successful workers, but we do need to recognize our natural rhythms.
Research shows that humans are unable to focus on things for more than 90-120 minutes without needing a 20-30 minute break. These breaks allow valuable time for recharging mental energy. In fact, without these breaks, performance lowers.
The 9-to-5 workday does not allow for these breaks every hour and a half, and people often find themselves distracted because of it.
It goes without saying that some tasks are simply completed more quickly than others, regardless of what industry you work in. For some employees, they need an extended amount of time to work on a particular task. For others, they can complete it in under two hours. Does that mean one employee is more efficient than the other? Not necessarily, or not across all tasks.
The 9-to-5 workday does not accommodate for differences in task duration. Many employees complain of excessive downtime at work – or they struggle to understand why they must stay in the office until 5pm if they’ve already completed the day’s tasks. This is proof that the 9-to-5 schedule is increasingly becoming inefficient and obsolete.
