David Chisnall (*Now with 50% more sarcasm!*) on Nostr: I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge ...

I’ve seen a bunch of productivity studies that say productivity for knowledge workers peaks at around 20 hours a week, plateaus until about 40, and then declines, so someone working 30 hours a week will achieve as much as someone working 40 (the problem comes when someone decides to use the extra time off to work a second job, which then hits their productivity in both). Above around 60 hours a week, net productivity tends to be negative: you (or other people) spend longer fixing your mistakes than making forward progress.

But a couple of years ago I was chatting to a researcher who studied productivity in construction workers and I was initially surprised that it was similar. Bit it makes sense: construction work has a lot of classes of error that are *incredibly* expensive to fix. Pour concrete in the wrong place and that’s a few person-days of jackhammering to fix. Misread the plans and put power or plumbing into the wrong place and you may need to rip out some finishing or even structural bits to be able to fix it (or need to adjust the design to work around it). Working when not properly rested and relaxed in such an environment can easily flip you into net-negative productivity.