If You Work More Than 4 Hours a Day, You’re Not Productive

Generally speaking, as an employee, the current trend is to work 8 hours a day. It works, but I don’t think it can be considered productive.

In fact, if we really want to optimize our working time, we can’t really work more than 4 hours a day, with a few exceptions sometimes maybe. I’ll explain why.

Productivity and Efficiency

Productivity means producing as much as possible using the resources at our disposal. It, therefore, takes into account both output and input.

Productivity increases when we produce more or better output using the same resources. But we can also increase it by using fewer resources for the same result, but in this case, it’s more about efficiency (we’ll talk about this later).

If we were to formalize productivity mathematically, the formula would be :

OUTPUT / INPUT = PRODUCTIVITY

Let’s take an example. You have 4 roughly equivalent tasks, which you complete in 8 hours. Your productivity is therefore 4/8 = 0.5, or 0.5 tasks per hour.

Efficiency, on the other hand, means using resources correctly to limit waste. It means doing the same thing using fewer resources.

Mathematically, its formula would be :

Expected resources use / actual resources used x 100% = EFFICIENCY

To take our example, we have 4 tasks to complete in 8 hours. If we do them in 8 hours, our efficiency is 100% — we’ve made the best possible use of the resources at our disposal. If we do them in 4 hours, our efficiency is 200%, because we needed to work 4 hours less. If, on the other hand, it takes us more than 8 hours, it means we need more resources for the same result.

Relationship between productivity and efficiency

Productivity means achieving more with the same amount of resources, while efficiency means achieving the same with fewer resources. Clearly, these two concepts are interdependent.

If productivity depends on input resources, it also depends on their efficient use. If there are fewer resources at constant efficiency, there will be less output, and therefore less productivity.

However, productivity seems to focus on quantity, while efficiency seems to focus on quality.

If I go back to our example and consider this, someone who is very productive will complete their 4 tasks in 4 hours instead of 8, and will then have 4 hours free to do 4 other tasks, for a total of 8 tasks. Someone who is very efficient will complete their 4 tasks in 8 hours, but their quality will be twice as good as expected. This doesn’t necessarily make sense if we’re talking about abstract tasks, but if we take the example of a blogger, for example, the productive person will do twice as much, and the efficient person will do twice as well (but half as little), with the same resources.

The aim is to find the ideal compromise between productivity and efficiency.

Why can’t we be productive for more than 4 hours a day?

Let me start by refuting the title of my article: you can be productive for more than 4 hours a day. But that’s not what I call real productivity, because the result isn’t quality. It should therefore have read “You can’t be optimally productive and efficient for more than 4 hours a day”. By optimal productivity and efficiency, I mean producing the best possible result in the shortest possible working time.

To achieve this, you need to be in the best possible working conditions, with no distractions and extreme concentration. You may be familiar with the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport. He talks about working in these optimal conditions. He mentions that beginners with this mode of working can only last a maximum of one hour and that more advanced people can go up to 4 hours.

This is not supported by scientific evidence, but experience shows that this is a reasonable limit. I myself find it hard to exceed 4 hours of Deep Work a day (I usually do 2 sessions of 2 hours, and I can’t see myself adding a 3rd session).

Also, it’s perfectly possible to do 4 hours of deep work, and hours more of work in “normal” conditions, but these extra hours won’t be the most productive and efficient hours possible. So resources (in this case, time) will be wasted, and no one likes wasting his time when our time on Earth is limited.

But is it even possible to only have a 4-hour workday?

It all depends on what you do. If you’re self-employed, or if your company doesn’t count your hours, it’s possible. But obviously, if your company requires you to work a minimum number of hours per day, it won’t be possible. And this raises a new problem: the current system favors a time objective over a result objective. Why impose hours? What’s important? The outcome or the employee’s presence?

This gives rise to a lot of absurdities, such as people who deliver twice as much but don’t get paid more because they’re paid by the hour, or conversely, people who tell themselves they don’t need to work hard because they’ll be paid the same regardless of the result, as long as they work their hours. That’s sad for the company because a waste of time translates into a waste of money…

You get it, I don’t like this system; I’ve been in situations where I don’t have to do anything, but I have to stay with the company to do my hours. If I have employees one day, I’ll try to put efficiency and productivity before working hours, because I know, myself, I can’t work optimally for 8 hours.

Final Note

It’s a pity that the classic pattern today is to work 1 third of your time every day, when you can achieve the same result in just a few hours, with the right working methods…

I’ve relied heavily on Cal Newport’s book “Deep Work” in this article, don’t get me wrong, but I have to admit he’s right on a lot of points. If there’s one personal development book you must read, it’s this one (this article is not sponsored 😜).

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