9-5 Is Out. Try the 1-6 Instead

I live in a region where winter days are very short. I go to work and it&#x27;s dark, I leave work and it&#x27;s dark. I don&#x27;t understand why we have decided to go sit in buildings during daylight hours.<p>Even with a 40-hour week, I would love if the work day was shifted to allow one to get sunlight for a few hours each day.

This is predicated on the idea that you&#x27;re only really productive in the afternoon, and that the morning is just wasted time.<p>I&#x27;m most productive in the mornings, and my productivity only takes a dive in the afternoon because that&#x27;s when all my meetings are.<p>Turns out, anecdotes about an individual&#x27;s workflow aren&#x27;t broadly generalizable!

This all sounds good unless you work a &quot;shift&quot; style schedule. Every single person I know works what is considered first shift (approximately 6&#x2F;7&#x2F;8&#x2F;9am to 2&#x2F;3&#x2F;4&#x2F;5pm). Some of them have tried second and third shifts, but they always go back to first shift because &quot;second&#x2F;third shift don&#x27;t work for me&quot; they say.<p>Now for me I work better at night&#x2F;early morning. Because of this I have worked third shift (midnight to 8am) for over 30 years and it works perfectly for me. If I want to be up while first shift is working I can. Or if I want to sleep during first shift and be awake for second shift I can do that too. It is nice to get off of work and do my errands and such without much traffic or that many people in stores. I get my errands done faster which gives me more free time.<p>Third shift has the advantage that most of the population is asleep when I am working. So when I drive into work at night the roads are mostly empty and when I leave work in the morning the morning rush traffic is moving in the opposite direction that I am.<p>Another advantage of third shift is I only spend 20 minutes driving to work and 20 minutes driving home from work each day. All the first shift people I know spend at least double that in traffic each day because dang near everyone works first shift.

Sounds like #NoKids rather than #SpainBrain.<p>I&#x27;m sure it sounds like I&#x27;m being pithy, but you fall into line when your kids get home at 4 and you want to spend time with them before they go to bed at 8.<p>Maybe his point stands in some sense, but once you add kids into the mix it quickly becomes &quot;9-5&quot; again or &quot;burning the candle at both ends.&quot;

Article should be titled “Try being a wealthy business owner to work less.” Most people don’t have the luxury of choosing their hours and only working 4 hours a day, remotely from a cafe or hotel. It’s not as if everyone is getting up and going to work for 8 hours because they want to...

It&#x27;s absolutely great.<p>Unless you start having kids. Or work in an area where you need to meet customers face to face. Or both.<p>Just like working from Bali, working from a van, working from a plane, etc.<p>If you&#x27;re a SINK or a DINK, go for it, 100%.

Working efficiently at your peak working time makes sense. Assuming everyone else shares that same peak working time does not. You either need to set up an organizations where all collaboration can happen via async mechanisms (possible, but difficult)... or you need to have some times where people&#x27;s work overlaps enough to have discussions and meetings.<p>I&#x27;ve worked in remote jobs where, in general, people worked whenever they wanted, and we&#x27;d get on phone calls at agreed upon times if needed. I&#x27;ve also worked in jobs where we set aside a 2 hour window each day for everyone to be there, not caring if that window was the beginning, middle, or end of your day. Both of those scenarios felt more productive than &quot;9-5&quot;.

God Forbes&#x27; website is awful

Yes! A thousand times yes!<p>I&#x27;d also be okay starting at a 1-9 if people are against the idea of working less hours per day.<p>Now this would only work if everything adapted. Schools, shops, banks, would all need to shift their hours.<p>Finally we could enjoy daylight. Imagine spending time outside in the sun with your kids and wife during the day!! Everyday!<p>Imagine not being too tired after your hard day of work to spend quality time with your family, hangout with friends, so household chores, work on that hobby project of yours, exercise!<p>I don&#x27;t think its feasible without a King or dictator forcing this change though. I hope we did, the idea of working on the hours that the sun is out is old, everyone works indoors now.<p>Also, its difficult to gage the health and mental health impact of how little less sunshine we now consume compared to days past when we were outside a lot more during daylight times.

I work the over way (west side of the Atlantic, most clients in Europe). So I get up, work until lunchtime, and then my 5 hours working day is other if I want.<p>Of course it’s not everyday I don’t work in the afternoon, but it’s nice that you can spend the afternoon with the kids if you want.<p>Ok, sometimes duty calls in the middle of my night (last Tuesday I was woke up at 3am for an emergency on a client server) but in the 3 years I’ve been living this side of the ocean, it happened 7 or 8 tiles max.

I&#x27;m a Spaniard and I could never do that.<p>In order to be able to work like that you need a very specific set of circumstances, probably first of all being self-employed.<p>Since I work by contract for a company, and they force me to put 8 hours a day, I can&#x27;t do that. However, it is true that I am the most productive in the afternoon. That is why I try to enter and leave work as early as possible, so that I can spend those sweet afternoon hours being productive.

These ideas are interesting but it seems to suggest that if you work less you don&#x27;t need as many breaks. Motivation for me comes in waves. When I&#x27;m inspired I can easily work 12-16 hours with just bathroom breaks. But, I can&#x27;t induce those experiences, they just come.<p>My fear of a 5 hour day would be that I&#x27;d be running at 80% for 5 hours instead of 80% for 8 hours.

I come in at around 11 45 every day and work until 7 with couple of 15 minute breaks for ping pong. No loss in productivity and extremely satisfied with commute(DC metro). But I make sure, I check my emails and respond at around 930 am, if some one needs me.

As many have said, there&#x27;s more to this than just one type or the other. It might be worth considering taking a more intentional look at organizing teams around similar circadian rhythms. Some of the most productive work I&#x27;ve done was with a team that really started gaining momentum in the afternoons and sometimes into the evenings. I think many who deviate far from the &quot;norm&quot; self-select into late-night service industry positions. There are a lot of misconceptions around &quot;early birds&quot; or &quot;late workers&quot; that could be explained by varying sleeping patterns.

I&#x27;m 1000% in favor of spending fewer hours at work, and making those hours that are spent at work count more. However, I&#x27;m guessing that the 1-6 was for the bosses, and not for the workers.

I have felt this way for a long time about work, but my schedule demands something close to an 8 hour day. So to stay fresh, I take walks, small breaks, and try and avoid social media, which makes my desk time immensely more productive, oftentimes moreso than if I were to sit and grind for the entire workday.

Nice idea but probably not written by someone who writes code or debugs for a living. Activities that imho benefit from long stretches of deep focus. Now perhaps you could work like that -- 16h sessions -- for three days then snowboard for the remainder of the week. That might work.

I&#x27;m most productive in the early morning and late evening. The mid-afternoon is my least productive time, perhaps because of lunch or because I live in a sunny area and I&#x27;d like to take advantage of the sunshine in the afternoon. I don&#x27;t mind working 8 hours in a day, but I&#x27;d rather do something like the inverse of this person&#x27;s schedule and work 7 to 11, both AM and PM.

Spending your day in a sales role can be very similar to this. After losing time in client meetings, you often have only 5 hours left in the day to get your things done (frequently less than half that amount).<p>I have certainly worked my fair share of &gt; 40 hour weeks, but it’s safe to say you are forced to learn a way to be very efficient when you don’t have all day available to work.

This might be a fitting work schedule for people with an inverted cortisol production profile. Perhaps have some tests done before wanting this. You could be in a stressed-out state.

Shortening the work day seems like a great idea. Making everyone work the same hours seems like a terrible one. Especially the proposed 1-6. What if you have kids?