We went from a standard 60 hour week to a standard 40 hour week. The underlying intention was to provide more jobs for the unemployed. Business leaders screamed and kicked the whole way, and then to their astonishment discovered that the employees were MORE productive in 40 hours than they'd ever been in 60. (My mother was in the midst of her training to become an RN when that change occurred. I'm very sorry I never questioned her more closely about this.)
A while back I read a lengthy article (probably in the NYTimes but I'm not completely certain) that looked at the behavior of people in Silicon Valley and the intense work 100 hours per week standard they had. It concluded that not only were those kinds of hours crazy, but they were entirely counter productive, and that in fact the iphone would probably have come to market two years earlier had the employees working on it only put in 40 or at most 50 hours per week.
People cannot work at peak efficiency for much more than 8 hours per day on an extended basis. Which is one of the reasons that the relatively recent trend to have nurses work, 10 hour or 12 hour shifts is totally nuts. Personally, I do not want to be a patient of a nurse who is in the 11th hour of her/his shift. I've done shift work. I was an airline ticket agent at Washington National Airport, and there were many times when I worked 10 or 14 hours straight, but at least no one's life depended on me or my being alert.
Way back then, when I was an airline employee, I became aware of people who worked in the GO (General Office) of a different airline, who, at budge time, were putting in insane hours. 12, 14, 16 hours straight. I knew, based on my experience at the terminal, that it was simply not possible that they were performing with any kind of efficiency.
I've long thought that the justification for the hours medical interns put in make no sense. I do not want an exhausted beginning doctor to be taking care of me. And I do not want an exhausted fire fighter or police officer taking care of me. I want people who've had a decent night's sleep to be on the job.
Oh, and the hours beginning attorneys put in. Don't get me started.
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