The Rise of the 9 p.m. Work Hour (theatlantic.com) 84
An anonymous reader shares a report: Last week, Microsoft published a study that offers an eerie reflection of my working life. Traditionally, the researchers said, white-collar workers -- or "knowledge workers," in the modern parlance -- have had two productivity peaks in their workday: just before lunch and just after lunch. But since the pandemic, a third and smaller bump of work has emerged in the late evening. Microsoft's researchers refer to this phenomenon as the "triple peak day."
For the new study, workers allowed Microsoft to track their "keyboard events" -- a funny euphemism for sending emails or engaging with productivity applications on a work computer. While most people didn't show a third mountain of work in the evening, 30 percent did. They were working almost as much at 10 p.m. as they were at 8 a.m. Several underlying phenomena are pushing up this third mountain of work. One is the flexibility of at-home work. For example, parents of young kids might interrupt their workday or cut it off early for school pickup, dinnertime, bedtime, and other child care. This leaves a rump of work that they finish up later. Other workers are night owls who get their second wind -- or even their primary gust of creativity -- just before bed.
For the new study, workers allowed Microsoft to track their "keyboard events" -- a funny euphemism for sending emails or engaging with productivity applications on a work computer. While most people didn't show a third mountain of work in the evening, 30 percent did. They were working almost as much at 10 p.m. as they were at 8 a.m. Several underlying phenomena are pushing up this third mountain of work. One is the flexibility of at-home work. For example, parents of young kids might interrupt their workday or cut it off early for school pickup, dinnertime, bedtime, and other child care. This leaves a rump of work that they finish up later. Other workers are night owls who get their second wind -- or even their primary gust of creativity -- just before bed.
Not me (Score:4, Funny)
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But the TFA says productivity, but what was measured was "keyboard events". So I'm not really confident that they're measuring productivity at all.
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My peak production hours are 7:00 am
Oh same. I do some of my best dreaming at 7am. The trick is not making the dream too long that I miss my 9am wakeup.
9pm-11pm (Score:5, Interesting)
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Same. No distractions from pets or family, and I feel like I can get stuff done without a looming sense that I'll be interrupted at any second - changing gears mentally has a large cost in time.
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My brain turns on when the sun goes down. Bad for sleep but great for getting things done.
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I'm the say way. So let me ask you, very curiously, the following questions: 1) Do you prefer cloudy days over sunny ones? 2) Do you believe you may have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder [psychologytoday.com]? My answer would be yes to both.
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Same here. Actually work from 9pm-11pm and then go to bed and ruminate and overthink these until 0200 :(
My son tells me this is the hallmark of ADD. Maybe so.
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I wouldn't go so far as to call them my peak hours, but I do usually get a nice bit of energy in the late evening. But I have no intention of spending that time working if I can help it. The reason I have a job is to support my life, so any job that doesn't leave me any energy to invest in myself is one I'd want to leave as soon as possible.
Not for me, but if it works for others... (Score:4)
I cannot work later than about 6pm... my brain just switches off. But if that time works for others, then why not? As long as the total time spent working is reasonable and people get their work done while maintaining a healthy work-life balance, flexibility is great.
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It's people going through their email (Score:5, Insightful)
The bigger problem here is that something that used to be part of your day job is now just one to two hours of free work for your employer you do every night before bed.
I used to wonder how it was that a country like America could work more hours than the Japanese and now I know. We need to do something about the cult of work. As we work longer hours and harder and become more productive it's depressing everybody's wages. Which leads to us having to work longer hours to make the same amount of money which in turn leaves the more productivity and more depressed wages. There's some reduction in productivity when you're overworked but it's not 100%. And the important thing is every bit of productivity you can squeeze out of your employees in excess of 40 hours means you get closer and closer to being able to hire one less employee.
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You must get different e-mails than I do. A lot of e-mails are throwaway, but a significant number require a lot of work before responding.
Re:It's people going through their email (Score:5, Interesting)
I write those hours down... Don't you?
I do a lot off hours at the moment... I'm inside my three months notice... I'll probably give my superiors the middle fingers a week earlier like this.
You know what helps my productivity most of all? Not giving a fuck and finally doing what is right without asking left and right if it's okay. No longer "Customer dearest would it be alright to take down your system for 15 minutes to patch this possibly bankruptcy level security issue? Pretty please?" No. "Yo. Your systems will be down for half an hour this evening. Deal with it."
Our environment hasn't been this well-groomed in years. All thanks to me and my middle-finger-attitude.
So far, not a single motherfucker died, quite contrary to what they had me believe would happen if they had to go without their system for more than 30 seconds.
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I write those hours down... Don't you?
No because my manager doesn't helicopter me, I don't get paid by the hour, and don't have short term memory issues. Yes it's 11am right now. No I'm not "on the clock", that's what the evening is for.
The opposite for me (Score:2)
For me, going through emails is something that doesn't require an extended period of uninterrupted concentration. In fact, it's 100 different emails, so interruptions hardly matter for that task. The perfect task to do while waiting for a meeting to start or for something to load / connect.
What I would choose to do after ordinary work hours are things that mean I need to not be interrupted for an hour or more.
But then, I'm wide awake at 8PM or 9PM. Maybe you aren't. That ties in to ...
> The bigger pro
Skewed Expectations (Score:2)
It also skews management's expectations on what are reasonable hours to work. That is, the number of hours to work. There are a minority of people with so little in life that work is their life. And it is shit like this that gets managers to shit on people who work to live instead of live to work.
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We need to do something about the cult of work
moderating the addiction to money would be a good start.
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I'm not sure about you, but I would never "do my emails" at night, before bed, when im not working ???
India calls (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: India calls (Score:5, Funny)
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Yes, absolutely. You should do the needful and give her all the opportunity to assist you in cleaning your computer of the virus.
Please to be giving her all information she request so she is better to assist you in your endeavor.
Already in bed. (Score:2)
I'm also hourly, so if they want over time, they can pay extra. I've never understood how being salaried is a benefit to you except for maybe being paid while sick for extended periods (surgery).
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. I've never understood how being salaried is a benefit to you
Two hour lunch, come to work at 10:00, leave at 4:00. It's a great system if you arrange it right.
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. I've never understood how being salaried is a benefit to you
Two hour lunch, come to work at 10:00, leave at 4:00. It's a great system if you arrange it right.
Bankers' hours?
I peaked early (Score:5, Interesting)
Not because I was bright eyed and bushy tailed, but because I had no meetings and no interruptions.
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A similar story with me, but someone I worked with then sometimes worked very late (from home) and the first indication I had was when something subsequently turned out to be very very broken. We were probably both trying to avoid interruptions, but if I made a mistake we had the rest of the day to notice and fix it.
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oh, this one was easy: time boxing! my employer paid for my skills during an allotted time, if they wanted to waste that time with a meeting carousel or any similar asinine "agile" ritual so a few irrelevant clowns could feel important then that was on them, but that's what they would get for their money that day.
they used to get the message. eventually. when stuff actually had to get done.
reading? (Score:5, Insightful)
So if you spend your entire day reading research in some area, you have not done squat because you weren't using MS's "productivity" tools.
Who the fuck is productive after lunch? (Score:5, Interesting)
Everybody has their own best / most productive / most attentive hours in the day, but I call BS on the one after lunch: what you do after lunch is digest food and fall asleep. I've never met anyone who's any good at anything after eating.
As for me, my peak hours is super-early morning, for one simple reason: nobody else is there at the office to make noise, distract me or pull me into pointless meetings.
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For me, the sleepiness after lunch usually comes a couple hours later, around 3pm. Right after lunch, I've usually got a bit of a sugar spike. When that crashes, then the productivity wears off.
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Why do you have a sugar spike after eating lunch? Are you Willy Wonka?
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Lots of foods have sugar in them -- fruit, juice, salad dressings, a cookie, coke. The amount of sugar in a typical American meal is pretty high.
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Probably just Cartman.
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Well, what they actually measured was "keyboard events", whatever that means, but I doubt it means productivity.
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As far as what time of day to work, I prefer nocturnal schedules. I got my professional start when I was 17 (1979) and from then through college (when I was home) I gave preferential treatment to those clients who let me work during their off-business hours. Friends' parents tried to compete by claiming they'd work during the daytime when
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Everybody has their own best / most productive / most attentive hours in the day, but I call BS on the one after lunch: what you do after lunch is digest food and fall asleep. I've never met anyone who's any good at anything after eating.
I believe our Latin American south of the US boarder have a tradition where they take a nice nap after lunch time. Me thinks they know something the rest of us should learn.
5:00 am (Score:3)
Previous studies have shown that productivity depends on long, uninterrupted work periods and the article summary suggests that also accounts for the recent increase in late-night productivity.
Here is a trick: Go to bed at 9:00 and start work at 5:00 am in the morning. For me, that gives me a long and uninterrupted interval for work until my meetings start around noon.
Also, if you like to go jogging in the mornings, that's a perfect time to avoid traffic, then start work at 6:00 instead.
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Bleah, no thanks. No way in heck a night owl such as myself could do that.
9PM bedtime would be impossible. I can do 11PM, but that's because I need to be up by 6:15AM for work. Preferred bedtime is between 1-2AM, and getting up between 9-10AM.
We are forced an unnatural work hours (Score:5, Insightful)
The 9-5 Bankers hours, is a mostly unnatural phenomenon for humans.
Traditional non-mechanized farming had farmers doing their work early in the morning, to around mid-morning, then they take time off, then go back to the fields in the afternoon - evening.
Hunters do the most of their hunting, near dawn and dusk.
The traditional bankers hours, were there to help service the people during their down times, which also included shops and schools.
As the economies of the world moved away from a Farming and Hunting Gathering life style. the Bankers hours still remained common, while the reason for its existence is now antiquated. As we have shoved nearly all the economy in the 9-5 time, so shopping and banking is no longer convenient times, and said stores need to be open longer hours and more days a week.
During Dawn and Dusk is when humans are at their peak.
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Stores used to be open late, and then they cut back to sanitize during COVID, and have yet to return to their normal hours. Banks used to be open on weekends and now due to the "labor shortage" are cutting out those hours. Pharmacies, too, are cutting back there hours due to the same "labor shortage".
This factor alone IMO is reason for the 9pm work hour.
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Those are basically just temporary issues. Where business mostly had failed to organize their business to be resilient to the unknown.
Having a Career in IT, and an MBA. MBA classes do not cover risk management as part of their core classes. I did happen to take a class in Crisis Management as an elective, which is only helpful teachings after the fact. However when taking my MBA classes I got into arguments with the professors over JIT Inventory, HR Staffing (with a large reliance on more affordable part
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My bank closes at 3:00pm M,T,Th; 1:00pm on W; and 5:00pm on F.
Perhaps your bank has other branches, not just the one in the supermarket?
Amazing (Score:2)
We're still learning so much about the 8 hour shift. Such as it runs counter to thousands of years of evolution and human society. We already knew that it is a fairly recent invention, relatively speaking. It's easy to manage and organize, but not the pattern that human beings naturally slip into.
If I was a hunter gather on the Savanna. Well I'd be dead, I have poor eyesight and no survival skills. But if I were a competent specimen hunting on the Savanna, I would probably not work a solid shift from sun up
productivity peaks (Score:2)
knowledge workers key count == peak productivity... i guess web browsing is mostly mouse clicks
just before lunch: to find a place to eat lunch
just after lunch: to find a place to go drink after "work"
Agree (Score:2)
Looking back, I'd say this is accurate. By 3 in the afternoon, I need some time away to reset. Then I pop back to my PC between 8-9 to close my timesheet for the day. I usually do take a peek at my email and bang through the easy ones.
I delay delivery for those emails, so I don't wake up the folks that have notifications turned on.
9/9/6 (Score:1)
The CEOs will have you all working a minimum 9/9/6**, like in China, very soon, if they get their way. And you'll be mostly defending it and accusing those opposing it of being commie workshy slackers. Lick that boot!
** 9am to 9pm six days a week (minimum), probably more like 7am start.
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I'm happy to do it. Of course, I expect to be paid for it. I don't work for free.
need an union (Score:2)
need an union
Is this new? (Score:2)
I don't think this is anything new. I know many 'knowledge workers' that have followed this pattern for years. In the late evening all of your other responsibilities are done for the day and you can now focus for a bit.
Microsoft, the Data Company. (Score:2)
I now receive a weekly report telling me exactly how I spend my time, after using Microsoft products.
The report lists when I'm busy. How many meetings I have. At what time. Hours I'm likely productive vs. non-productive. My "leadership" also receives these reports.
I'm lucky that for my position, these metrics are considered mostly useless, as we are too busy and too short staffed to nit-pick.
I suspect people have been doing this for a long time. Are these statistics new, or did Microsoft just get som
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Are these statistics new, or did Microsoft just get some new data and the marketing department is laying the groundwork for this helpful spying?
Attempts at quantifying productivity are not at all new, though in the past they've been confined to work processes that generally very repetitive. Bolting doors on cars moving down an assembly line. Reviewing invoices for accuracy. Selling milkshake mixers. Generally the output of the work is easy to measure as is the time spent working.
Where those have typically failed is when the output is less easy to quantify. Aggregating the number of meetings or hours spent in meetings isn't useful in that context
that is when I set the bird to hit the y key on my (Score:3)
that is when I set the bird to hit the y key on my workstation
I don't do this anymore (Score:2)
I moved from one campus within a major university system to another a few years back specifically to get away from the extra-work expectation.I used to get to the office an hour early, stay late for an hour, and do an hour of work at home.
It took about a year to deprogram that and today, I get to work ~15 minutes early (because I hate being late to anything), I try to leave by 5pm (but sometimes I'm caught up in something until 5:15pm) and I NEVER check my email when not working.
Text message? That's cool. G
"Off Hours" maintenance windows (Score:2)
Normally, the scheduled "Off Hours" maintenance windows for production IT changes start around 9 PM, because that's when the powers that be believe that fewer people are using the application.
In reality, other IT organizations are using that same maintenance window as well, so often deployments and changes fail because the network team failed to coordinate their changes with the server and code deployment teams or an outside vendor.
End result? You end up with a spike of 9 PM traffic on Teams for overworked
More cons than advantages (Score:2)
I used to do a split day in order to get an undisturbed coding-in-the-zone time in the evenings, outside of meeting hours. I would do 10 to 4 core hours , and then 8pm to 10pm of focused coding. In the end, it did not work in my favour for the following reasons:
- Doing work in split chunks throughout the day makes you feel like you never leave work.
- Following on the above, the lack of a single block of rest makes you feel like you don't get enough mental break from work between work days.
- I'm a very late
It's a Superpower for Lucid Dreamers! (Score:2)
I'm an R&D engineer who gets to do lots of fundamental analysis. I'm also a Lucid Dreamer, where I can set up a scenario in my mind as I'm falling asleep, then "walk into it" as a dream. When I have a tough problem, I'll revisit it just before going to bed. Amazingly often (say, 20% of the time), I'll wake with either significant real progress, or strong clues of what to investigate next.
This doesn't work every night, perhaps 2x per week, as it seems I need some "empty head" sleep as well.
I started d
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Re: It's a Superpower for Lucid Dreamers! (Score:2)
12:00am to about 2:30am (Score:2)
I prefer working then. (Score:2)
So I've been a freelance developer working at home for longer than the pandemic. And I regularly go out and exercise.
Because I'm on the east coast and the people I'm working for are in California, I find that exercising and running errands in the morning (before noon ET, nine PT) works out extremely well. Hardly anyone out there, I can get the things I want to get done easily before noon. If I then take a break to have dinner, an eight-hour day wrapping up around nine or so works out just right.
So it's not
This is just me, but... (Score:1)
I work from home doing software development. I'm constantly getting email and MS Teams messages in the morning from coworkers timestamped after 7pm. I have no issues with my fellow employees working what hours are best for them (I'm nearly retired and my kids are grown but several of them have little ones). I am waiting for the day, however, when management decides we all need to be available at all hours. On that day I'll sit down with my manager and IT director and explain to them that my working hours ar
That's to be expected (Score:2)
True for me (Score:1)
"Workday" (Score:2)
I don't know about hours of the day. I feel like I'm at my peak once it starts getting dark, but in strict practice, I've probably had a few beers by then.
But let's talk about something else: the concept of the "workday," specifically the eight-hour workday. You sit there. You try to get things done. But in my experience, the human attention span is only good for about six hours of actual, productive work. The other two hours I'd call "performative work." You're told eight hours is what you're expected to d
Procrastinators (Score:2)
Haven't read through all of the posts, but my own speculation would be that a large number of folks put of work to the last minute and are having late evening "productivity events".
And, I agree with others who mentioned reading email. It was typically one of the last things I did with my work day.
There's a big world out there (Score:2)
That is, it's a big world out there.
Coworkers are the problem (Score:2)
Reading the comments, it seems people get productive off-hours because they are not interrupted. That suggests coworkers are the problem.
Or perhaps the employers being unable to create good working conditions for employees providing support to others.
The real headline (Score:2)
If I allowed it (Score:1)