How many hours is ideal to work to be productive and to balance work and personal life

How many hours per day and healthy week to work? Is the optimum four hours a day, as licensing is analyzed in several countries? Or is it okay to have 70 hours of work per week? A study conducted by time management experts in the United States showed that idealism is 38 hours a week. Thus the result of the analysis is revealed, but what is the explanation and how did they come to this conclusion? Here is the answer.

It has already been proven More working hours does not necessarily mean higher productivity. A study conducted by John Pinkaville, Stanford University in 2014 I found it An employee’s output drops dramatically after a 50-hour work week and falls off a cliff after 55 hours, so much so that a person who dedicates 70 hours doesn’t produce anything else with that extra 15 hours. What is more, Not taking at least one full day off per week leads to lower overall hourly output.

The Time management expert Laura Vanderkam I recently conducted a study to determine how the number of hours worked affects the amount of time a person thinks they have. How is that?

subordinate 900 people Included in the study, they worked an average of 8.3 hours a day. TheThe results showed that there was no difference in hour Between those who felt they had too much time and those who felt pressured over time. Those Who They felt they had less time working overall at 8.6 hours, while the people who felt they had more time worked only 1 hour, or 7.6 hours.

Bottom line: To avoid feeling like you don’t have time for anything, the ideal would be to work 7.6 hours a day. This equates to 38 hours of work per week.

Surveys conducted in the United States have shown that due to the current lifestyle, 48% of working adults feel impulsive over time and 52% feel a lot of pressure as a result of lack of time. This is probably why a four-hour work week is such an attractive dream, even if that’s not entirely possible for most people.

The 38-hour workweek is very similar to the number of hours worked in Denmark, which, according to surveys, is one of the countries where people say they feel happy. For the past eight years, this Scandinavian country has been ranked among the happiest countries in the world. world happiness report.

But this does not mean that Danish people do not work hard, but that they rarely extend their working hours to more than 37 hours per week, and those who work in offices usually finish their duties at 16 or 17, allowing them to Balance your work and personal life. Other Scandinavian countries, Norway, and Sweden provide similar indicators in terms of timescales and indicators of self-perceived happiness.

Dan Buettner, who presents himself as a happiness expert, review the data contributed by more than 20 million people around the world through Gallup-Sharecare Wellness Index He conducted extensive field research in the happiest countries in the world. “When it comes to your job, try to work part-time, 30-35 hours a week,” he advised.

But Buettner went further, and I recommend taking six weeks off a year Which he thinks is the optimum amount of happiness. If this was not possible, he said, all available vacation time should be used.

With the latter he referred to a survey conducted by the workplace glass door In 2017, it showed that 54% of Americans stopped taking half of their annual rest days, and two-thirds, 66%, reported working when they were on vacation, a figure higher than in 2014 compared to 61% of those consulted. Located.

In this way, Buettner’s conclusions point to an ideal weekly work of only 30 hours and a month and a half of vacation per year, which would not be practical for many people. Meanwhile, for time management expert Laura Vanderkam, the perfect combination of productivity, happiness and abundance of time, and to achieve a more realistic goal, is working just under 40 hours a week.

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