The average workday increased during the pandemic’s early weeks (2020)

I do not believe that people are more productive after about 4-5 hours a day of work.

The fact that the productivity metric used here is emails sent kind of proves my point: I send emails when I'm worn out with real work.

I've seen real teams cut hours and get more productive, so if the workday is extending that should be a red flag to employers: productivity is going down, and they need to push back on it.

If somebody runs a team or an org here and wants to A/B test it, I'd love to see the results. My anecdata is historical and not properly tested.

> I do not believe that people are more productive after about 4-5 hours a day of work.

You may be less productive after 5 hours of work, but even if your output 50% less in the next 5 hours, you'll still produce more by working more.

Employers don't care about productivity, they care about your total output. And it's not only employers, if you want to improve or pass a selective test or anything, you have to put the hours.

There may be some threshold where more work becomes detrimental, but it's definitely not 5 hours.

You can in many cases run multiple shifts if you need the same hours of output.

>its definitely not five hours

Why are you so sure?

Because I've seen it with my own eyes on multiple occasions. Students studying for selective examinations (medicine, law, maths) routinely work more than 10 hours a day. I've also seen closely very successful academics who worked a lot.

And frankly, 5 hours a day isn't that much. It's perfectly fine is some people wants work life balance, but you will do more by working more, and if you're ambitious, it's hard to avoid putting the hours at some critical moments in your life.