{"id":2026,"date":"2017-08-11T16:00:17","date_gmt":"2017-08-11T14:00:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/2017\/08\/11\/lets-hear-it-for-the-four-hour-working-day\/"},"modified":"2017-08-11T16:00:17","modified_gmt":"2017-08-11T14:00:17","slug":"lets-hear-it-for-the-four-hour-working-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/?p=2026","title":{"rendered":"Let\u2019s hear it for the four-hour working day"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Are you working your brain too hard? Take it easy \u2013 like Charles Darwin, Alice Munro or Thomas JeffersonHow much proper brainwork \u2013 not zoning out in meetings, or reorganising the stationery cupboard, but work that involves really thinking \u2013 should you aim to get done in one day? It sounds like a trick question. We think of creativity as fundamentally mysterious, and of humans as extremely varied. Plus there are so many kinds of white-collar work: why assume the same answer for lawyers, academics, investment bankers and engineers? But the answer isn\u2019t some sophisticated version of: \u201cIt depends.\u201d The answer is four hours.That, anyway, is the persuasive conclusion reached by Alex Pang in his book Rest: Why You Get More Done When You Work Less. This column has evangelised before about the truth of that subtitle, what with the nine-to-five being a relic of the industrial revolution with no relevance to modern \u201cknowledge work\u201d \u2013 but what\u2019s so striking about Pang\u2019s argument is its specificity. Ranging across history and creative fields, he keeps encountering the same thing. Charles Darwin worked for two 90-minute periods in the morning, then an hour later on; the mathematician Henri Poincar\u00e9 from 10am till noon then 5pm till 7pm; the same approximate stretch features in the daily routines of Thomas Jefferson, Alice Munro, John le Carr\u00e9 and many more. To avoid charges of confirmation bias (what if he\u2019s only mentioning those who prove his point?) Pang draws on the research of the Swedish psychologist Anders Ericsson, whose studies of violinists \u2013 also the basis for the much-debated \u201c10,000-hour rule\u201d \u2013 support the same finding. We\u2019re rhythmic creatures, and the part of the cycle that involves not taxing the mind is no less essential to the result. Continue reading&#8230;<br \/>\nVia: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/lifeandstyle\/2017\/aug\/11\/oliver-burkeman-four-hour-working-day\" target=\"_blank\">Let\u2019s hear it for the four-hour working day<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Are you working your brain too hard? Take it easy \u2013 like Charles Darwin, Alice Munro or Thomas JeffersonHow much proper brainwork \u2013 not zoning out in meetings, or reorganising the stationery cupboard, but work that involves really thinking \u2013 should you aim to get done in one day? It [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2026\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theworldwidejournal.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}