[dustedcodes]

Reduce the hours in the day.

Most people structure their days based on what they want to accomplish (goal driven), rather than how to spread out work evenly across a fixed number of hours (time driven). So if someone knows that they are expected to deliver task A + B in one day then they will do it. If they have a 4 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours and then happily clock off. If they have to do it in an 8 hour work day they'll do it in 4 hours and then waste time for the remaining 4 hours.

[thewebcount]

Given what I've seen during the pandemic, I'd think that part of the reason people feel overwhelmed is related to commutes. Getting an extra hour back in my day made me feel better. I'm not sure if working 5 days a week, but only 6.333... hours would have the same effect as working 8 hours a day for 4 days a week where you also have one less hour of commute time per day. On the 5th day, if you don't go into work, you don't just have 8 fewer hours of work, you also have 1 fewer hour of commuting.

[bumby]

How does this align with the near-ubiquitous feelings that people generally feel overwhelmed? I.e., they have more goals then they have time

[meisanother]

I feel like this should be the norm.

Also, when we consider capacity to focus instead of just time spent at work, I think normal rate is 2 focus bouts of 1.5h each per day. You can get to 3 if you train, but not much more. (I got this from Hubberman's lab podcast, not sure what's the underlying research)

So if you decrease work time to 5h, you give 2x bouts of focus + 1h break between bouts and have 1h left for marginal stuff/meeting.

Maybe going up to 6h would allow for the extended stuff (email, meeting, discussion, lunch) But I feel like 8h just create a world where you need to waste time in the end, just because of physiological concerns.