system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: I don't entirely believe the premise that shorter workday = more productivity

I know there's an argument that shortening the workday supposedly increases productivity.

However, I don't really buy the premise.

Part of my reason for this is that personally (anecdotally), I feel like I work better in bursts. I have some productive time in the morning and I have some productive time in the afternoon. I don't think anyone really works productively for the straight workday (i.e. for a whole 6 hours straight), but rather there's periods in the day that they're most productive. Some people might be most productive in the evenings or others might be most productive after waking up.

Arbitrarily ending the workday sooner doesn't feel like it would increase productivity to me, esp. considering meetings, lunch, and other unproductive time that is going to happen regardless of how short the legal workday is.

Even if it it did increase productivity, mathematically it's obvious that there's a certain point that shortening official work hours isn't going to yield a net increase in productivity. A 1-hour workday obviously can't be more productive than a 8-hour workday.

IMO, ideally it's just better to salary individual (paid per day) and work whatever hours they want and make their own schedule, allow work from home / unlimited vacation days, and ultimately assess employees based on endpoint metrics (i.e. # of services provided or bonuses for achieving certain goals).

EDIT: Someone asked me to clarify what I mean by productivity. I'm most interested in the lens of gross societal economic productivity (does shortening the official work day benefit the economy?), as in this hypothesis: "Changing the US norm of an 8H workday (9-5) to a 6H workday (10-4) will not result in an increase in productivity in the macroeconomic perspective (i.e. GDP)"
gpt
The whole point of Less work hours = more productivity is people will drag out their work more if they have longer work hours vs if you could just get it done and go home. Because if you finish it too fast you going get more work or you going be sitting around doing nothing doing more work isnt fun and doing nothing doesnt look good for the boss.