Tesla CEO Elon Musk declared in 2018 that you need to work "around 80 hours a week" to change the world. But research suggests that Musk — whose contributions to "changing the world" are dubious at best — has it completely backward when it comes to his absurd work schedule.
Studies have shown the ideal work day is actually around five hours long, with some researchers even suggesting that we're only truly productive for less than 3 hours a day. Just think: You've almost certainly done what you'd consider a "day's work" is far less than the standard eight-hour workday. I'm also sure you remember times when you've done nine or 10 hours of "work" that didn't feel like it contributed anything to the ultimate success of the company. Employees burn hours working on agendas, reports, summaries, presentations, meetings, and other tasks that feel like work but ultimately fail to produce anything meaningful. A survey of over 10,600 workers by workplace software company Asana found that workers spent 58% of their day doing "work about work" and a 2013 Harvard Business Review study found that workers spent an average of 41% on "tasks that make [them] feel busy and thus important."
It's time to do away with this busy work. Instead of focusing on the act of working or the number of hours spent under the boss' gaze, employees and companies need to focus on results. In fact, the most successful employees are those who don't look like they "work hard" but instead effectively deliver value for their company while also maintaining a healthy balance with the rest of their lives. In other words, they work smart, not hard.
Companies are focused on the wrong thing
A great deal of office-based, white-collar work has become a performance — a way to justify one's position at a company in ways that often do not produce a useful outcome. It's a common refrain in toxic workplaces that leaving on time is "bad optics with the boss," because it shows you're not "dedicated" to the company. But the massive growth of remote work accidentally exposed the underlying dissonance of this corporate charade. Does your boss want you to complete your tasks and create value for the company? Or do they want eight hours of work (or more) from you, safe in the knowledge that you're trapped there? Companies claim that they want to be lean and efficient, but spent years conflating "working hard" with "working for a lot of hours," romanticizing the consumption of time and making heroes of inept leaders who work 80 hours a week.
But instead of trying to rethink how they value employees when they aren't in the same physical space all day, companies have spent much of the pandemic clinging to the old model of "more hours = more productive." Take for instance the pearl-clutching around the concept of "cyberloafing," or using the internet for non-work purposes while at work. The BBC claims cyberloafing is "crossing the line between rejuvenating and wasting time." The term is part of a scare campaign about "coasting" workers who aren't dedicating every fiber of their being to creating value for the company but appear to be doing everything that their job requires them to do. But contrary to the scare tactics, new research shows that cyberloafing may actually be productive because it allows people to take time to rejuvenate and stimulate their creativity.
The moral panic over cyberloafing is the symptom of a larger problem in corporate America. Managers and executives have become completely disconnected from the workforce and the actual outputs of a business. The executive sect has to imagine what a good, hard worker does, which often defaults to "works a lot of hours and always picks up their phone." And because the outputs of much of our knowledge work are difficult to measure, it is easier for managers to base their evaluation of employees on how often they appear busy rather than doing the work to determine their actual value.
This is why you see companies like JPMorgan instituting draconian surveillance technology to track their employees' movements that leaving workers "stressed, exhausted and scared to talk about what's going on." These tools are sold as a means of "making sure work gets done," but really they just create the pressure to work longer hours and constantly look over one's shoulder. Researchers have even concluded that it may actually inhibit productivity.
The case for not working "hard"
I have a crazy idea for the future of work: fewer hours, more outputs, and happier workers. Corporate America has become an inefficient, ugly monster that conflates hours worked with outputs created, thinking that capturing and draining workers of their time and happiness makes them more money. We need to build a corporate culture that focuses on the creation of actual outputs, one that is entirely disconnected from the number of hours you're "working." A more output-driven corporate America would be one that benefits the vast majority of workers and corporations, one that eschews the idea of overworking laborers and appreciates the mental and physical health of those who create value.
Workers that are given the freedom to focus on actually creating value rather than performative busywork will be happier, more productive, and more likely to stay with the company. A University of Warwick study found a 12% increase in productivity among happier workers, with the lead researcher concluding that "happier workers use the time they have more effectively, increasing the pace at which they can work without sacrificing quality." But instead of fostering that happiness, 95% of workers currently feel external pressure to overwork despite research that shows the diminishing returns of working more than 50 hours a week. And there is a continued hostility towards those who are not working at least 40 hours — performatively "working hard" for their company.
The future's most successful companies are going to be the ones that have innate gratitude toward both the worker and their work product. The most important metric for employee retention, according to a Boston Consulting Group study, was an appreciation for a worker's actual work. This doesn't just mean giving them a shoutout in a team meeting, but having fundamental respect and appreciation for their output — giving them the mental and physical space to actually get stuff done without the distractions and frustrations of minor tasks. If a worker can do their entire slate of work in 3 hours, they should be applauded rather than critiqued. If a person can do their best work at home, give them the freedom to do that. If they can produce high-quality outputs but prefer to do it between 2 am and 9 am, more power to them.
Another way for companies to become efficient and show appreciation for their employees is through unions. Instead of viewing unions, not as a problem of cost, companies should embrace them as a way of standardizing workers' rights so employees can focus on making the company money. A union-negotiated contract is one that literally tells a corporation what workers want and then ratifies that in contractual form. Instead of sucking up individual employees' time in back-and-forths over every raise, benefit, and disagreement with management, a collective voice for employees will allow them to feel heard and allow them to spend more time on their actual job. What greater respect is there for the worker than listening to their demands and legally binding yourself to them?
Instead of valorizing "hard work" and "hustle culture," companies and employees alike should push for a worker-friendly society that appreciates labor and outputs over nebulous concepts like "managing up" and office politics. The greatest companies will be the ones that embrace that society and see their workers for what they are: professionals who must be treated with respect, empathy, and gratitude.