I’m also familiar with this school of thought, but I’m not sure it’s empirically validated?
In the case of Dominic Cummings, I believe you are referring to this post which describes running successful political campaigns. Those seem like they might be an outlier, in that they are an extremely time-bound competition where “do things faster than your opponent” is an obvious win? As Samuel noted, running a startup is also a case where a marginal month of delivery matters, since you likely have <1 year of runway to demonstrate to investors that you should continue being funded. The other examples you cite don’t seem to be of people optimizing for impact.
Lynette Bye put some empirical research into the post How Long Can People Reasonably Work?, but found the literature pretty disappointing. Her top-level conclusions included:
First, as you work more hours, each hour becomes less productive. If I had to guess based on the research, I’d say there are steeply diminishing marginal value around 40-50 hours per week, and negative returns (meaning less total output for the day per additional hour) somewhere between 50 and 70 hours.
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I’m fairly skeptical any of this research tells us how much to work (you can see more details below). I place more confidence on the anecdotal reports of productivepeople. It’s common for them to report three to five hours of deep work on a top priority each day, plus several hours more of lower energy or more “following curiosity”-type work (three more yet-to-be-released interviews also report in this range; one interview reports more). To be clear, I think they’re describing consistent, intense, “write a book chapter” levels of focus for those three to five hours.
The hyperproductive people I know seem to score well on (1) working on important things and (2) being very focused while working, but vary in how many hours of work they do per week (I’d estimate 30-50).
I am not a hyperproductive person, so I’m not sure you should take productivity advice from me, but “try to do at least one thing I think is actually important per week” seems to give me better results than “try to work really hard”, since the latter can lead to hyperfocused work on things that don’t really matter.
Curious if you know of any sources that were missed in Lynette’s post, or this response, though!
that is all v interesting and informative. I’d probably agree with your view that the correlation between working hours and output is not all that strong. But I do also think that hyperproductive people tend to work extremely hard. I’m mainly going off anecdotes and personal experience though.
“Working really hard carries such a significant risk of burnout that in expectation it’s bad” is completely consistent with “I can point to people I know of who are working really hard and really productive”.
Another example is Sam Bankman-Fried. Apparently he never drinks and never goes on holiday because he thinks it makes him less productive.
I agree that the people cited are not optimising for impact but successes in other realms do seem relevant to which habits are successful in impact-related domains.
I thought I would add my current view here is less in line with my original comment and more in line with the OP. I think something like ‘9-5 EA’ is probably the best approach for long-term impact. I’ve noticed that even if you’re working really hard, it is usually difficult to squeeze that much more impact out of your work. This might in part depend on the type of person you are. Maybe some people can squeeze heroic amounts of effort out of themselves for long periods, but the vast majority of people cannot. One caveat might be if you have to push to finish an important project by some key deadline. But this would be a short-term situation, not a long-term approach
Interesting and relevant article, which just came out; an excerpt:
“I think it’s important that people push themselves to achieve what they can but not push themselves beyond that point, to the point where they are just burning out,” he said. “I think that is something that we have to struggle with constantly, walking that line correctly.”
Still, Bankman-Fried has a higher threshold for burnout than most.
Ellison, the co-CEO of Alameda Research, said Bankman-Fried is able to work harder than most because he is truly motivated to give his crypto wealth away and make a positive impact on the world.
“I think if that’s really what you care about, I think you can sustain it,” she said. “I think you can do a lot more than a lot of people realize, and I think that’s what Sam is trying to do.”
But as FTX grows into a crypto empire, even some of the most devoted employees could reach their personal breaking points.
“I think about less than 50% of the 10 people I started with are there, and I think a lot of us knew that what we were doing was not sustainable,” Croghan said.
And newer recruits, who lack the same close bond and shared vision as early employees and the company’s founder, may not be as well-equipped to handle the long hours
I’m also familiar with this school of thought, but I’m not sure it’s empirically validated?
In the case of Dominic Cummings, I believe you are referring to this post which describes running successful political campaigns. Those seem like they might be an outlier, in that they are an extremely time-bound competition where “do things faster than your opponent” is an obvious win? As Samuel noted, running a startup is also a case where a marginal month of delivery matters, since you likely have <1 year of runway to demonstrate to investors that you should continue being funded. The other examples you cite don’t seem to be of people optimizing for impact.
Lynette Bye put some empirical research into the post How Long Can People Reasonably Work?, but found the literature pretty disappointing. Her top-level conclusions included:
The hyperproductive people I know seem to score well on (1) working on important things and (2) being very focused while working, but vary in how many hours of work they do per week (I’d estimate 30-50).
I am not a hyperproductive person, so I’m not sure you should take productivity advice from me, but “try to do at least one thing I think is actually important per week” seems to give me better results than “try to work really hard”, since the latter can lead to hyperfocused work on things that don’t really matter.
Curious if you know of any sources that were missed in Lynette’s post, or this response, though!
that is all v interesting and informative. I’d probably agree with your view that the correlation between working hours and output is not all that strong. But I do also think that hyperproductive people tend to work extremely hard. I’m mainly going off anecdotes and personal experience though.
I also have the impression that some of the most productive people I know (within the EA community specifically) work very long hours.
“Working really hard carries such a significant risk of burnout that in expectation it’s bad” is completely consistent with “I can point to people I know of who are working really hard and really productive”.
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Another example is Sam Bankman-Fried. Apparently he never drinks and never goes on holiday because he thinks it makes him less productive.
I agree that the people cited are not optimising for impact but successes in other realms do seem relevant to which habits are successful in impact-related domains.
in free solo, alex honnold said “Nobody achieves anything great by being happy and cozy”. Warrior mindset seems very common in super-high achievers.
I thought I would add my current view here is less in line with my original comment and more in line with the OP. I think something like ‘9-5 EA’ is probably the best approach for long-term impact. I’ve noticed that even if you’re working really hard, it is usually difficult to squeeze that much more impact out of your work. This might in part depend on the type of person you are. Maybe some people can squeeze heroic amounts of effort out of themselves for long periods, but the vast majority of people cannot. One caveat might be if you have to push to finish an important project by some key deadline. But this would be a short-term situation, not a long-term approach
Interesting and relevant article, which just came out; an excerpt:
This comment reads pretty differently two years later 😅