Work to live, not live to work

US captures the duration of the working day the average American at 8.8 hours of Bureau of Labor Statistics. Recent studies of "Yandex" lead the size of an average working day in Russia - 9.8 hours. In Moscow, the average working day lasts 10.5 hours! But how effective is wasted time?

Before we get to the bottom, take a look at history and see how the 8-hour day began to dominate over the other labor standards.

During the Industrial Revolution of the late XVIII - early XIX centuries, educator and philosopher Robert Owen brought the principle that the care of hired workers is beneficial to the employer. Prior to adults and children worked in the production of the same, for 14-16 hours a day. Starting with the child labor restrictions, Owen gradually began to promote the idea of ​​an 8-hour working day, which at the It has not received wide distribution, although the experiments conducted it certainly proved its advantages ideas.

His famous slogan was:

Eight hours - work. Eight hours - rest. Eight hours - sleep.

8/8/8 Rule became the standard when in 1914 Henry Ford introduced the eight-hour day at the Ford Motors plant. Despite the fact that even at that time it was very bold and risky step, the results were impressive. Reducing the number of working hours and double the cost, Ford has managed to grow profits doubled. It has become a model for other companies, which will soon also introduced an 8-hour working day as standard.

There is no scientifically sound explanation for why we are working 8 hours a day. It's just a standard, which was adopted a century ago to improve the efficiency of industrial production.

Work smarter, not longer

It has become the unit of measurement of labor productivity, because it is an indicator, which is very easy to measure. We are constantly trying to work as many hours a day, because at the end of the day it creates we feel that we have achieved something important. But time - a meaningless metric for measuring productivity.

In today's economy, which increasingly can be described as creativeNo matter how many hours we work every day. It only matters what we have achieved during this time.

A variety of studies conducted by companies, universities and industry associations, say the following: on average you do not make a 10-hour working day more than 8 hours.

To do less, to achieve greater

Author of the article a lot of experimenting with various ways of increasing the daily productivity. Eventually he formed the following list of tips and tricks:

1. Write down the three most important tasks. Before leaving the office make a list three tasks for tomorrow, which have the greatest impact on what you're working on. If you already have such a list, select the task that delayed the longest. And put them on the top.
2. Work 90-minute intervals, and then take a break. Instead of viewing your work day as a continuous length of time, break it into 4-5 intervals (one task from your list of important things to do for every 90 minutes). During the breaks do warm-up, jogging, or socialize with colleagues - all that can be for some time to turn off your brain from working.
3. Give yourself less time. Remember Parkinson's Law, which works for all that you do: "Work fills the time allotted to it."
4. Joints similar tasks. You respond to emails? Call? Publish tweets? Do similar activity together sequentially. multitasking - the devil that makes your brain to rush back and forth from one task to another.
5. Ask for help. Use your strengths, but do not try to overcome all their weaknesses. If you get stuck in something, take 5 seconds to ask a colleague, a neighbor or a friend who might know the answer. At the same time you bleed the networking skills that can save you from stress and save time.

Try the methods and, most likely, in the end, you will feel much more productive and happy office samurai.