The law of logarithmic utility has also been applied to research funding[74]—and a simple rule of thumb is that a dollar is worth 1/X times as much if you are X times richer. So doubling someone’s income is worth the same amount no matter where they start.[75] Past the point of increasing returns to scale, the next dollar donated say at the $500k funding mark might have 10x as much impact as the dollar donated after the $5m mark.
Maybe a useful first approximation might be that with hours worked it’s similar, where past the point of increasing returns to scale, the next hour worked at the 10h/week mark might have 10x as much impact as the hour worked after the 100h/week mark (An hour might be worth 1/X times as much if you work X times more). More realistically, if you work 40h week vs. 80h week, the hours leading up to 80h/week are only ~half as valuable (but I definitely think the 1st hour of the day is often 10x more valuable then the 10th).
CS professor Cal Newport says that if you can do DeepWork TM for 4h / day, you’re hitting the mental speed limit, the amount of concentration your brain is actually able to give. Poincaré could only work 4 hours a day.
This suggests that’d it be better to work 5h/d for 7d/week rather than 7h for 5 days and all else equal, hiring more researchers at lower pay rather than more at higher pay.
Ideally, you’d do admin / research management in the afternoons. But then sometimes I feel like long days are also sometimes useful in research because it takes a some time to ‘upload’ the current research project into your mind in the morning and you need to reboot it the next day. I remember someone very productive saying and I can confirm from personal experience that you can ‘reset’, a little bit, the buildup of adenosine with 1.5h naps (1 full sleep cycle), after working the morning and then continue working ‘another morning’ in the afternoon.
It’s important to keep in mind that you always want to prevent burnout by keeping work efficiency high (= Total work time / Time in office. The section Work All the Time You Work in Eat That Frog says that you don’t want to be spending your intended-work-time not-working such that you have to spend your intended-leisure-time working.
But yes this is all different in winner-takes-all-markets.
CS professor Cal Newport says that if you can do DeepWork TM for 4h / day, you’re hitting the mental speed limit
and:
the next hour worked at the 10h/week mark might have 10x as much impact as the hour worked after the 100h/week mark
Thanks Hauke that’s helpful. Yes, the above would be mainly because you run out of steam at 100h/week. I want to clarify that I assume this effect doesn’t exist. I’m not talking about working 20% less and then relaxing. The 20% of time lost would also go into work, but that work has no benefit for career capital or impact.
Yes—I think running out of steam does some of the work here, but assuming that you prioritize the most productive tasks first, my sense is this should still hold.
It seems to depend on your job. E.g. in academia there’s a practically endless stream of high priority research to do since each field is way too big for one person solve. Doing more work generates more ideas, which generate more work.
Another framing on this: As an academic, if I magically worked more productive hours this month, I could just do the high-priority research I otherwise would’ve done next week/month/year, so I wouldn’t do lower-priority work.
The law of logarithmic utility has also been applied to research funding[74]—and a simple rule of thumb is that a dollar is worth 1/X times as much if you are X times richer. So doubling someone’s income is worth the same amount no matter where they start.[75] Past the point of increasing returns to scale, the next dollar donated say at the $500k funding mark might have 10x as much impact as the dollar donated after the $5m mark.
Maybe a useful first approximation might be that with hours worked it’s similar, where past the point of increasing returns to scale, the next hour worked at the 10h/week mark might have 10x as much impact as the hour worked after the 100h/week mark (An hour might be worth 1/X times as much if you work X times more). More realistically, if you work 40h week vs. 80h week, the hours leading up to 80h/week are only ~half as valuable (but I definitely think the 1st hour of the day is often 10x more valuable then the 10th).
CS professor Cal Newport says that if you can do DeepWork TM for 4h / day, you’re hitting the mental speed limit, the amount of concentration your brain is actually able to give. Poincaré could only work 4 hours a day.
This suggests that’d it be better to work 5h/d for 7d/week rather than 7h for 5 days and all else equal, hiring more researchers at lower pay rather than more at higher pay.
Ideally, you’d do admin / research management in the afternoons. But then sometimes I feel like long days are also sometimes useful in research because it takes a some time to ‘upload’ the current research project into your mind in the morning and you need to reboot it the next day. I remember someone very productive saying and I can confirm from personal experience that you can ‘reset’, a little bit, the buildup of adenosine with 1.5h naps (1 full sleep cycle), after working the morning and then continue working ‘another morning’ in the afternoon.
It’s important to keep in mind that you always want to prevent burnout by keeping work efficiency high (= Total work time / Time in office. The section Work All the Time You Work in Eat That Frog says that you don’t want to be spending your intended-work-time not-working such that you have to spend your intended-leisure-time working.
But yes this is all different in winner-takes-all-markets.
and:
Thanks Hauke that’s helpful. Yes, the above would be mainly because you run out of steam at 100h/week. I want to clarify that I assume this effect doesn’t exist. I’m not talking about working 20% less and then relaxing. The 20% of time lost would also go into work, but that work has no benefit for career capital or impact.
Yes—I think running out of steam does some of the work here, but assuming that you prioritize the most productive tasks first, my sense is this should still hold.
It seems to depend on your job. E.g. in academia there’s a practically endless stream of high priority research to do since each field is way too big for one person solve. Doing more work generates more ideas, which generate more work.
Another framing on this: As an academic, if I magically worked more productive hours this month, I could just do the high-priority research I otherwise would’ve done next week/month/year, so I wouldn’t do lower-priority work.