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by logicallee 3745 days ago
We are discussing the suggestion that people work 3 hours. (Indeed the title of the article is literally "Work for only 3 hours a day, but everyday".)

Your quote does cover 3 hours of work very clearly:

"At about 10:30 he left for his Princeton office, walking when the weather was nice; otherwise, a station wagon from the university would pick him up. He worked until 1:00". That is almost exactly 3 hours. Your quote clearly describes about three hours of work per day, from 10:30 AM to 1:30 PM. The only problem? Your quote continues "then returned home for a 1:30 lunch, a nap, and a cup of tea. The rest of the afternoon was spent at home, continuing his work, seeing visitors, and dealing with the correspondence that his secretary had sorted earlier in the day. Supper was at 6:30, followed by more work and more letters."

Literally "the rest of the afternoon was spent at home continuing his work...dealing with correspondnece..." and after a 6:30 pm supper "more work and more letters."

I will thank you for not cutting your quote off at the word "he worked until 1:00", which is the kind of example I was asking for (describing a 3-hour workday). The only issue is that an additional 5-10 hours of work follow. It's no example at all. In fact, taken as a whole it's pretty much the lifestyle I was describing, working from morning until late into the night.

If you do know of any scientist who worked for 3 hours a day I'd love to hear it.

1 comments

It's really difficult to compare work in different fields though. "Work" for a theoretician can be an unrelated activity where they're thinking about concepts (perhaps lazily); does work include inspiration time?

I can't remember who it was concerning but I recall an anecdote about a scientist who would appear to be asleep - they would then suddenly "wake" and write something down or try a calculation; are you working if you're lying in bed and your brain is subconsciously processing a conceptualisation of a hypothesis?