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Star Wharton Professor Adam Grant: Work Should Finish at 3 p.m.
There’s lots of evidence that a huge percentage of most work days are wasted. One recent study found that almost half of employees could do their jobs in five hours or less. It’s the latest of many similar studies.
Then there are the handful of companies (and whole towns in Sweden) that have cut their workweeks significantly with no fall in productivity. Or you could look at the psychology research that shows our brains simply don’t have more than four good hours of work a day in them.
But if you accept the reality that most of us could probably get the same amount done in much less time, that raises an interesting question. How should we distribute these fewer, more concentrated hours? Should we work one day less? Start later? Take siestas?
Why you should leave work at 3 p.m. every day
On LinkedIn, star Wharton professor and best-selling author Adam Grant offered a thought-provoking answer to this question (hat tip to Quartz). In response to an Atlantic article detailing how the school day ends two hours before the end of the workday, creating a frantic scramble among parents to find childcare to fill those hours, Grant commented:
It’s crazy that the school day ends two hours before the work day. But…
