How long do you need to work during the day

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

The effectiveness of the eight-hour day has long been questioned. To increase productivity, you need to follow the optimal balance of time spent on work and rest. The article contains rules that will help you organize your working day as efficiently as possible.

The eight hour working day was introduced during the Industrial Revolution to reduce the number of working hours for workers in human factories. At one time, this innovation was a real breakthrough. But by the present moment, such an approach to organizing working time is hopelessly outdated.

We are now still expected to work eight straight hours with little or no respite. Many people work even during their lunch break!

Such a schedule does not help us to be more productive. Rather, the opposite is true.

The best way to organize your time

Using a special computer program, IT-company Draugiem Group conducted a study of employee productivity. This program measured how much time workers spend on various tasks and assessed their overall performance.

The research has shown amazing results. It turned out that the length of the working day affects productivity only to a small extent. How workers organize their day is really important. In particular, employees who regularly took short breaks showed higher levels of productivity than those who worked for long periods of time.

The study found the ideal ratio of 52 minutes of work followed by 17 minutes of rest. Workers adhering to this regime showed remarkable concentration on the tasks they performed. For almost a full hour, they were 100% involved in the work they needed to do.

These workers did not go to social networks for "just a couple of seconds" and did not respond to private messages. When they felt tired (just after about an hour had passed), they took short breaks, during which they tried to completely abstract themselves from work. This helped them to take on other tasks with renewed vigor during the next hour of productive work.

Your brain will tell you how to be more productive

People who discover this great ratio perform better and easily outperform their competitors. The point is, they figured out how to meet the fundamental needs of our brains. For about an hour, he is able to work at full capacity, and then his activity declines, which lasts from 15 to 20 minutes.

The best way to counteract fatigue and various distractions is to be mindful of load balancing.

Instead of working until you can no longer focus on the task, listen to yourself. Fatigue or a desire for distraction should be a signal to you that it's time to take a break.

Taking regular breaks is much easier when you know they are improving your performance. Fatigue often wins our fight for productivity because we keep working even when our energy is almost completely depleted.

In addition, we take breaks that actually prevent us from getting enough rest. Checking emails or watching YouTube videos doesn't recharge us as much as taking a short walk.

Basic rules for a productive organization of the working day

With the right time management, you will be able to work more efficiently during the traditional eight-hour workday. If you perform tasks during your natural peak times, it will be easier for you to cope with large volumes of work. Here are four basic tips for getting it right.

1. Work diligently for hourly chunks of time and divide your scheduled tasks into multiple parts according to time frames. We usually plan to finish work by the end of the day, week, or month. But practice shows that the efficiency of completing tasks increases if we concentrate on what we can do right now. The right work schedule will not only help you catch the right rhythm for productivity. He will also make tasks that are intimidating in their volume more doable. You will naturally start dividing them up.

If you want to follow the results of the described research exactly, you can work hard for 52 minutes. But in general, hour intervals are just as effective.

2. Focus fully on your work. The principle of this strategy is to work at full strength for relatively short periods of time. If you get distracted, the whole point of such a regime will be nullified.

3. Rest well. This study found that employees who took breaks more often than the optimal work-to-rest ratio suggests were more productive than those who did not rest. And those who managed to completely abstract themselves from work performed better than workers who were resting randomly.

To improve productivity, during breaks, you need to stay away from your computer and phone and forget about tasks. Take a walk, chat with colleagues, or read a book. This will help you not think about the work ahead for a while and thus give you more energy.

If you have a lot of work, the temptation to spend your rest time on calls or texting is great. But remember that this will not allow you to get a good rest during the break. So don't waste a lot of time on these activities.

4. Don't wait until your body forces you to take a break. It will be too late, you will miss the period of time that needed to be spent on rest, and you will be knocked out of the regime. Then you will need much more time to recover.

If you follow these rules, your performance will increase, you will complete tasks faster and you will feel much better.