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Science Says You Are Not Working Enough - 70 Hrs Vs 40 Hrs

11,711 views Wait, is this logic right? • Oct 04, 2024
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Slog Reference: The 70-hour work week

Description

Should you work 70 hours a week or 40 hours a week? How does stress affect our work life balance? This episode highlights the popular 70 vs 40 hour work week debate, 70 hours rallied by Narayan Murthy and 40 hours famously supported by Satya Nadella, among several other big names. But what does science have to say in this debate, and which one should you choose? Listen to us elaborate on all these questions.

Here are more videos you might enjoy:
Stress Will Literally KILL You: https://youtu.be/GYuh6Hhdaec
The Power of Compounding Explained: https://youtu.be/KheKQbax0ME
How to Become Expert in Anything? Deliberate Practice: https://youtu.be/tysT6DMFGH4

Click below to buy the books mentioned in this episode:
Drive by Daniel H Pink: https://tapthe.link/Drive-Daniel-Pink
Start With Why by Simon Sinek: https://tapthe.link/Simon-Sinek

Hope you enjoyed FutureIQ by Navin Kabra and Shrikant Joshi. Do hit us up on Twitter:
@ngkabra http://twitter.com/ngkabra
@shrikant https://twitter.com/shrikant

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Watch other episodes of The FutureIQ podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAppTB0r5_TaYueZ0adD42Wiw5X-wTE4v

Chapter:
00:33 Team 70 Hours
02:10 Team 40 Hours
03:38 Team 40+30 Hours
04:58 What does Economics Say?
07:01 What does Medical Science Say?
09:23 Effect of Stress
10:18 Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose
14:21 Stress vs Passion
17:16 Is 70 hour work week for YOU?
20:07 SO WHICH TEAM IS THE WINNER?

#futureiq #worklifebalance

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The 70-hour work week

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Transcript

should you work 70 hours a week like Naran morti says or 40 hours a week like Satya nadela says the answer is 40 hours a week both are right what so to explain here is what we will do let's create two teams oh team 70 hours and team 40 hours okay I'm team 40 hours obviously and team science will be the Umpire okay and make sure to watch the episode until the end because the final results will tell you how you should work and how you should plan your career okay interesting so let's start with Team 70 hours right Narayan morti of course in an interview said that India's work culture needs to change right youngsters should be
prepared to work 70 hours a week if the country has to compete effectively on the global stage yeah okay he did say that Ellen musk agrees Ellen musk says that you cannot change the world without working 80 to 100 hours right so he's in like team 100 hours he changed a lot of things including the world so I kind of see the point he's making there I don't agree with him I see the point yeah jackma the founder of Alibaba Tau t-all and basically the creator of e-commerce in China favors what is called 996 that you are supposed to work from 9:00 a.m.
to 9:00 p.m. 6 days a week yeah and we have seen the results of it again I don't agree with jackma but uh the results are there for every to see so he says I personally think that 996 is a huge blessing how do you achieve success you want without paying extra effort and time H okay Steve Jobs says I'm convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from non-successful ones is pure perseverance he is also in favor of working hard and long hours yeah he was ratan Tata Mukesh Amani Sund pic amitab bachan have all extoled the virtues of working long hours especially in the beginning of your career yeah team 7rs
has a lot of Heavy Hitters man I mean this is not fair who does team 40 RS have please tell me we have some good people on our side our side is your side okay I not yet declared my side but Satya nadela who says that empathy mindfulness balancing work with personal well-being is important harsh mariala founder of so you must have definitely heard of parachute oil SAA oil right he says hard work is not synonymous with number of hours worked right I agree with him VOD kosla one of the top investors ever right he has said that working less is fine as long as you are willing to live with the consequences right you may not
get the biggest house or car to show to your neighbors but you can make that choice yeah I mean okay okay I me this kind of seems slightly backhanded but I'll take it I'll take it yeah also you know if you think that women might be mostly in one team I'll give two examples Marissa Mayer former VP at Google and CEO of Yahoo was clearly in team 70 but cherl Sandberg COO of Facebook was clearly in team enjoy life and have a balanced approach to work I like chery I don't like where she works but I like Cher yeah for her thoughts so team 40 seems to have some decent hitters they're not as heavy as team 70
clearly but they're decent they they're good heavy names right but we are not through yet okay at this point we need to clarify something right the people in team 40 H what are they doing with the rest of their time right there are two possibilities here one is that they are spending time with family and hiking and hobbies and TV and all of that right mm or they work 40 hours for their employer and then they work 30 hours for themselves to improve their marketable skills to improve their long-term uh career prospects and so on right yeah I mean yeah now I can think there are three different teams right okay team 70 hours are the people saying 70 hours you
have to work for your employer okay team 40 hours which is work 40 hours on your career rest of the time chill still relax do other things okay and third I'll call team 40 + 30 which is 40 hours for the employer and 30 more hours on Career related things but which you do for yourself I I am still team 40 only because I kind of like to have a life outside of work you know family Hobbies uh some bit of TV not all of it but I like to spend time not stressed about work let's just see let's see what teams science has to say right you making it sound like team 40 is winning but team
science might have surprises okay team science has three referees okay there is economics there is biology Medical Science and there is psychology and personal development okay so team economics okay has done a lot of studies of people how much they work and what kind of output they get basically it is called productivity right the science of studying productivity and those results are pretty clear up to 40 hours you are the most productive okay right 35 to 40 hours is the peak right from 40 to 50 hours you're still producing your total output keeps going up but the output per hour keeps slowly going down right so you are it's reducing productivity diminishing returns 55 onwards is pretty
much negative okay at 70 hours your total output is not more than 55 hours oh so by from 55 hours to 70 hours you're basically undoing all of the work you've done kind of right yeah a slightly different research uh looked at what happens when you switch from a 5day work week to a 4-day work week okay and it showed that performance improved oh or sustained on 22 out of 24 measures of output turnover which is people quitting right attrition dropped 39% wow and motivation and mental health of the employees improved those are solid numbers and it seems like these numbers are all in favor of Team 40 only so far oh yeah biology medical science is also
on your side yeah I know I'm trying to take the wins wherever I can because I kind of s to know how his brain works and what's coming next okay so biologic and medical science right that likes to talk about sleep stress and burnout correct okay so if you are not getting enough sleep right there will be all kinds of problems health issues as well as ability to work right yes with low sleep 33% increased chance of stroke 133% increased risk of heart disease if you are working 55 plus hours okay it reduces cognitive function so you are sitting there for so many hours but your brain is not quite completely there creativity goes down problem solving
goes down yeah I I read a research uh that when you're are actually awake without sleep it is as good as being drunk so that is why people are advised not to drive if they had haven't had enough sleep so yeah it it checks in it clocks in with this so question is how do you know whether you are getting enough sleep or not like people like to throw a number saying sleep 8 hours every day yeah but I know people who sleep only 4 hours and they're extremely productive and there is no problem right so it is a very person dependent thing okay if you wake up feeling refreshed right if you're are able to stay alert
and focused throughout the day without dozing off in meetings right if your mood is stable you're not extra irritable or extra anxious or extra emotional and any physical activity like a workout doesn't leave you excessively sore or tired physical recovery should be solid right so if all four of these things are happening then you are getting enough sleep if one of these is not happening then you should look at whether you should be sleeping more that's an interesting point about physical workout or not leaving you excessively tired because I hadn't actually uh thought of that with in conjunction with sleep but it does make sense if you have had restful sleep then physical uh exercise will not Tire you
out and leave you sore a very good point to remember this is one of those things right where our brain is just very weird when you do that exercise and when you are tired you don't think of connecting it to sleep which was like you know 12 hours ago but there is a connection there's a very clear connection right so sleep also seems to be in my favor yeah next level up from there is stress stress can literally kill you and mess up a whole bunch of physical systems in your body yes uh there's an entire episode we have on that check it out I am not going to go into those details just to sum it up stress affects your
cardiovascular systems your lungs your kidneys your skin your immune system your gut your brain your heart your uh everything ENT and diabetes and diabetes no so let's focus more on what causes stress and in your workplace what can cause stress okay right y because if long hours are causing you stress then that's bad you should not be working those many hours right work only as much as you can work without stress so the question is why do some people get stressed at just 30 hours and why do some people not get stressed even at 80 right yeah so there's a book called drive by Daniel pink which points to three things autonomy Mastery and purpose okay these are the three things
if you have them you will be very motivated at work and you will not feel stressed and when any one or more of them are missing stress is going to cause problems okay makes sense autonomy means you have the freedom to choose how you are going to complete the tasks that you have been given right if there is micromanagement or there is no Freedom about how or when or where work gets done or there is no visibility or predictability on when a task gets assigned to you and what kind of task gets assigned right I mean oh Sunday night suddenly your boss sends an Excel spreadsheet saying do this analysis by 9:00 a.m. tomorrow right all of those
are going against autonomy and those will cause stress this is giv me flashbacks to my previous life man well just now this is in the news this kind of stress caused problems to an employee at a well-known company right yeah let's move on to the next one Mastery right not having Mastery means that you are not going to the next level in your skills right either you're doing the same things over and over again and it is getting boring right you're not learning anything new you are bored stagnant frustrated disengaged or you get tasks which are so challenging that you can't do them you don't have the tools to do them you don't know how to
do them right you're frustrated so lack Mastery is that your tasks are just a little bit above yourr level so that you do them with some difficulty and in the process you learn something and you go one level higher right yeah H this actually again gives me flashbacks to some of my older work and I am realizing that there's a pattern to why I quit the jobs that I quit but go on you said there is a third thing also purpose you can see the connection between your work and the value it is creating and there is a connection between the value your work is creating and your value system what you think is important in the world right those two
connections if either one of those connections is missing you see your work as pointless and that also leads to stress I just had a wonderful Insight the jobs that I joined were uh because I looked into the autonomy Mastery and purpose that those jobs had and the jobs that I quit were jobs that didn't give me the autonomy that didn't lead me to Mastery and that didn't uh create the purpose that I wanted with those jobs in my life yeah and those were the same jobs because when you joined you had a certain idea and when you quit you realized the reality yes yeah I was trying to keep them separate but thank you for making it very
clear those are the three important big ones and a few others which are sort of related right unclear expectations lack of recognition toxic relationships and social isolation at work right and mismatch and value so all of these result in you being frustrated at work and that causes stress okay yeah he's he's basically drawn a portrait of all of my previous career all of my previous jobs not career this career is going well so far and when the stress goes beyond a certain level you can s suffer from burnout burnout is a serious medical condition and I personally know people who had to quit their job take time off for 6 months or one year and
then very slowly come back to working life because they suffered burnout right so it's a very very serious thing do not get into that situation I have taken four year sabatical man I some of it may have been because of burnout I'm not saying all of it was burnout but yeah burnout is a very serious medical condition and not just a word to be thrown out burnout off it's not that but here's the thing all of which you've explained even in the medical and biology science aspect still is team 40 only yeah so I want to read a quote by Simon synic author of start with why okay he said working hard for something we don't care about is called stress
working hard for something we love is called passion ooh interesting so all the problems that we talked about so far there are two main things about them right one is that they were not really caused by long hours they were caused by the stress from bad conditions yeah and second is that they are averages yeah okay and the thing about averages is that you might not be average okay yeah 16% of people are definitely not average okay so you might be in the top 16% who can do 70 80 90 hours of work yeah and do great right yeah even though I was stressed I was still passionate about those jobs the careers that I in so yeah
it checks tracks uh and you could find ways of working long hours without the stress as long as you do the Mastery autonomy and purpose purpose right absolutely the simple question to ask is that are you choosing to work 70 hours or is your employer forcing you to work okay if your employer is forcing you to work then you should ask the question what is in this for me right are you getting paid double or more right are you learning skills that are extremely hard to get in any other company right are you getting like serious resume value out of this right three years at mckeny is insanely stressful and very long hours agreed but it stays on your
resume for the rest of your life 30 years later people will see and say oh this is a MC guy right so you know it can give a significant boost to your career compared to Alternatives and maybe doing that for a short while like 3 years 4 years or so is totally acceptable right it is similar to studying for JE right three years of hell but then you are an Ian yeah right so in fact in my personal case I did study very hard until the J exam and then as soon as I entered IIT I made a decision that I will never work so hard again I will always balance studies and work with all kinds of other
extracurricular activities and I was stuck to it right but as vode kosla says I have given up things right I'm not at the same levels where my classmates or colleagues are and they are not at the same level as you are when I'm happy with my choice right so I'm very happy with his choice right the other question you have to ask is can your body your personality handle it right some people are more anxious and they cannot handle uh the long hours even if everything else is right right and again anxious here refers to the anxiety disorder and not just a general feeling of anxiousness and there could be many other reasons why you can't do it and it
is perfectly okay to choose to not be in that boat right correct another problem that you have to look at carefully is that do you end up working long hours because of indiscipline because you sit there wasting time and then you are forced to do all nighters to get your task done on time right there are a lot of people in that category I know that if they just worked with Focus they could get done in 25 hours a week but they're working 60 but to that I will add the point that if this uh sounds like you then you might want to get tested for adult ADHD it's a very real thing and uh sometimes it is difficult
to focus because ADHD makes it difficult to focus it's neurological but again like he said uh the bigger question here is you have to check for yourself whether it is happening to you nobody can tell you that yeah and look online there are all kinds of techniques to improve your focus right for example there is a technique called Pomodoro see if that works for you right important thing to remember right is that if you want to make something great of your career you are the ambitious type then the research says that a large number of hours right it's called the 10,000 hour number don't Focus too much on the 10,000 number but the fact that a very
large number of hours are needed for you to become really good at something the second part of that is that it can't just be random hours you put in it has to be deliberate practice which is challenges which are just a little above your level and there is someone or some system telling you which things you are not good at which things you need to improve we have a episode on that please check it out right yes the last thing I want to point out is that hard work is important but not necessarily in terms of hours per week right it is really hours over a 10year period because Bill Gates law it is called we underestimate
what can be achieved in 10 years and we overestimate what can be achieved in one or two years right so being focused on one thing and putting in 10,000 hours on that thing over a long period can get you to a lot of places right yeah and we've kind of done an episode on that the power of compounding do go check that out but nain here's my question who finally wins in this three-way Mexican standoff team 40 only team 40 plus 30 or team 70 yeah the point of this episode is that you need to choose which team works for you all three are right okay so let's summarize okay first figure out your level of ambition right it is
completely okay to not be ambitious as vinod kosla said right you can say that I choose happiness over achievements I choose relationships over career and things like that and you can choose to be chilled like the dude in which case you are team 40 and you spend rest of the time on your relationships your hobbies and whatever makes you happy generally having a chill life right if you're ambitious then work as hard as possible but not any harder right okay makes sense sleep is essential yes okay having friends and family relationships is important as Satya nadela points out yes right and the number of hours per week is not important the total number of hours you put in with deliberate
practice with Focus over a 10e period as Bill Gates says that is more important okay long hours in short is okay okay that doesn't cause any serious long-term problems and it might be necessary especially when you are young you're doing a startup or something exciting or so on right but this is not sustainable it is not something you want to do in the long term and you want to spend 30 to 40 hours working for your employer you want to spend around 30 hours working on self-improvement getting skills important for your long-term career now some people might get lucky and that can happen at your employment in which case you are working 70 hours for your
employer others that remaining 30 hours has to come from external sources H so the Crux of the episode seems to be you will somehow need to work 70ish hours a week but how you spend those 70 hours where you spend those 70 hours how you split up those 70 hours and what portion of those 70 you allocate to the family also kind of matters and makes a difference in the long term one thing I want to add is that there are people who can do great things with less hours right my PhD adviser was one of the top people in the world in his field okay in the 8 years I knew him I never saw him
come to office before 9:00 a.m. and I never saw him stay in office after 6:00 p.m. except for three times in 8 years okay and yet he managed to be one of the top people so if you can focus then you can do it in less hours but if you are average like us then you probably need a few more hours okay probably I don't spend those few hours but I do spend a few more hours than the typical 40 hours is what I'm realizing after all of his explanation so in my case I think I tend to work 40 plus 15 hours and spend a good chunk of it with my family because to me that's important but to you
something else might be important and what that something else is is for you to decide and for you to know yeah and uh I think most important is do not get stressed okay because stress is literally killing you check out our episode on that stress is literally killing you and we are trying not to get you killed Shri Kant naven future IQ