Should you really work for eight hours a day anymore?

We are already half way through the year when people start feeling the “work blues”.

We see people taking off days from work and some already thinking about using their annual leave just to relax. Lets be real, that’s what is going on in most of us. We are already in “holiday mood” if I may say.

Do you think that this attitude helps the productivity of the company you are working for? Well, it doesn’t. Cheers to Sweden who earlier than us all, acknwoledged the fact that there is a direct relation between working hours and employee’s health and life satisfaction.

These days, when technology makes its possible for workers to be accessible around the clock, work-life balance seems to be a difficult thing to achieve.

The stress from the never-ending workday can be strenuous on any relationship, not to mention one’s health and overall happiness.

The current eight-hour workday which we utilize here in Tanzania and all around the world is an outdated and ineffective approach to work. If you want to be as productive as possible, you need to let go of this relic and find a new approach.

The eight-hour workday was created during the industrial revolution as an effort to cut down on the number of hours of manual labour that workers were forced to endure on the factory floor.

This breakthrough was a more humane approach to work, 200 years ago, yet it possesses little relevance for us today. This antiquated approach to work isn’t helping us, it’s holding us back.

Imagine going back home after ten hours if you include the traffic. You are exhausted and there waits your family. Your children have hopes that mom and dad will now play with them. Even if you manage to get some family time, something would still be missing -- “your own time”.

Studies have shown that for most office workers “an hour of physical activity per day can offset sedentary office lifestyle. But if this is unmanageable, then at least some exercise each day can help reduce the risk of chronic diseases.”

With the current set-up of timings, arranging time for exercise, family and friends time and being equally productive at work is very difficult. You may even notice that the number of employees falling sick gradually increases with time, just due to poor work-life imbalances. Some companies in Sweden are moving to a six-hour working day in a bid to increase productivity and make people happier without reducing their salary.

As technology continues to blur the lines between work and life in many professions, companies of all sizes and types are increasingly emphasizing work-life balance as a means of attracting and retaining talent.

Toyota centres in Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city, made the switch 13 years ago, with the company reporting happier staff, a lower turnover rate, and an increase in profits in that time.

Internet sources reveal that Filimundus, an app developer based in the capital Stockholm, introduced the six-hour day last year. “The eight-hour work day is not as effective as one would think,” Linus Feldt, the company’s CEO told Fast Company.

“To stay focused on a specific work task for eight hours is a huge challenge. In order to cope, we mix in things and pauses to make the work day more endurable. At the same time, we are having it hard to manage our private life outside of work.”

He said the new work day would ensure people have enough energy to pursue their private lives when they leave work – something which can be difficult with eight-hour days.

“My impression now is that it is easier to focus more intensely on the work that needs to be done and you have the stamina to do it and still have the energy left when leaving the office,” Mr Feldt added.

The ideal work-to-break ratio was 52 minutes of work, followed by 17 minutes of rest.

People who maintained this schedule had a unique level of focus in their work. For roughly an hour at a time, they were 100 per cent dedicated to the task they needed to accomplish.

They didn’t check Facebook “real quick” or get distracted by emails. When they felt fatigue (again, after about an hour), they took short breaks, during which they completely separated themselves from their work. This helped them to dive back in refreshed for another productive hour of work.

People who have discovered this magic productivity ratio crush their competition because they tap into a fundamental need of the human mind: the brain naturally functions in spurts of high energy (roughly an hour) followed by spurts of low energy (15–20 minutes).

For most of us, this natural ebb and flow of energy leaves us wavering between focused periods of high energy followed by far less productive periods, when we tire and succumb to distractions.

This is true and I myself can testify to it, around evening hours at work, I feel that I am very exhausted and just think of bed when I do get home, but once I take a walk to home, refresh my mind by talking to others, that “exhausted aura” is gone.

Our brains are very smart engines than we think and we need to out-smart it by giving it breaks to receive the maximum output from it.

Experts suggest that with this six (6) hour shift; three (3) hour sessions on both side of a well-taken one (hour), lunch break is the best way to get the best out of the employees since they get more spare time to exercise, to be outdoors while it is still daylight, or to do work in their home, visit banks, spend time with family, friends and most importantly children.

Happy personal and social life, motivates the employees and translates into higher productivity. Some people are now aware of this and when choosing their next job, they usually compare overall work-life balance instead of just the salary.

Let’s face it, the employees are the whole and sole of any organization and such they deserve to be kept fit and fine.

The author is a pharmacist based in Dar es Salaam.