One Day of Work a Week Is Most 'Effective' Dose For Mental Health, Study Says (bloomberg.com) 126
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Bloomberg: Just one day of work per week is the most "effective dose" to give the mental health benefits of paid employment, research suggests. A study indicated that the risk of mental health problems reduces by 30% when people move from unemployment or stay-at-home parenting into paid work of eight hours or less per week. But researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Salford found no evidence that working any more than eight hours provided further boosts to well-being. The researchers used data from a panel survey to examine how changes in working hours were linked to mental health and life satisfaction in more than 70,000 UK residents between 2009 and 2018. They controlled for characteristics including age, children, longstanding illness and household income. The study suggests that to get the mental well-being benefits of paid work, the most "effective dose" is only around one day a week -- as anything more makes little difference. The research has been published in the journal Social Science & Medicine.
One day work week? Good Idea! At 1000 bucks a day (Score:2)
We can hire 7 times more people that way.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
ok, 2000... Happy?
When Republicans lie, they don't fact check.. (Score:1)
I voted for Bernie. I think it's probably true that 1 day of work a week has positive mental health benefits for the unemployed. When I was unemployed, I volunteered 2 days a week. It made all the dif, I got a great job through that network.
But do I think nobody should work more than 1 day a week, as a Bernie supporter? No. I think you're simplistic and avoiding the point of this article, since you asked. Did you even bother to read beyond the summary, lol?
Lol.
Re:When Republicans lie, they don't fact check.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
The people at unemployment usually frown on volunteering while collecting unemployment benefits. If you can find a job to volunteer at, according to their thinking, you can find a paying job and stop collecting unemployment. Just sayin'
Your volunteer work is none of their business. They just want to know that you're making a good-faith effort to find paid employment while you're drawing benefits.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1)
What?
Re:Bernie Sanders Supporters (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm sure your comment was meant for people like me. I do believe basic income, or some viable variant, will eventually have to happen as automation takes over. I'm not smart enough to know what the solution will/should be. I don't believe this is a problem for today or tomorrow, but I know that eventually(barring big changes) there will be more people than available work. This study indicates that for optimal mental health, one answer is to have more people work fewer hours. You put in your one day a week like everyone else. Either the employer pays a livable wage to all employees, some form of a basic income provides for them, or people are going to live on the streets.
Re: (Score:3)
There are already more people than available work under our current system (where the people with the money won't spend it to clean up the mess they made getting it, but will spend it to lobby against having to spend it) but that number of people is miniscule next to the number of people who are working on the broken window principle.
Re: (Score:2)
Mental health and money are two separate factors. As long as people still need to work full-time to make a livable income, this means little.
I'm sure your comment was meant for people like me. I do believe basic income, or some viable variant, will eventually have to happen as automation takes over. I'm not smart enough to know what the solution will/should be. I don't believe this is a problem for today or tomorrow, but I know that eventually(barring big changes) there will be more people than available work. This study indicates that for optimal mental health, one answer is to have more people work fewer hours. You put in your one day a week like everyone else. Either the employer pays a livable wage to all employees, some form of a basic income provides for them, or people are going to live on the streets.
UBI doesn't make any sense when people are currently working 40+ hours per week and unemployment (at least in the USA) is at an all time low.
There is an even simpler solution that could double the amount of jobs available tomorrow: restrict the number of hours a person can work.
40 hours per week was set as the standard years ago in a completely different environment and is arbitrary and makes no sense.
Dropping it to 20 hours per week would double the number of jobs available but with unemployment under 10%
Re: (Score:2)
Dropping it to 20 hours per week would double the number of jobs available but with unemployment under 10% we obviously wouldn't want to do that.
The actual rate is at least double what you think it is [qz.com] and might actually be dramatically higher [shadowstats.com] (though in actuality is probably not that much higher [seekingalpha.com] — but still significantly over even the government's most pessimistic numbers, and almost certainly over 10%.)
Instead, a gradual increase of minimum wage and a gradual decrease in allowed hours per week would allow unemployment to remain low
while automation takes over until eventually everyone gets down to the 8 hours/week this article talks about.
The federal minimum wage hasn't kept up with inflation in what, thirty years or something? It's way, way behind right now. A gradual increase in wages isn't going to cut the mustard. The middle class will continue to vanish under a plan like t
Re: (Score:2)
To be realistic... If/when automation really takes over the majority of the jobs, there wouldn't be a lot of difference between higher minimum wage with lower hours and UBI. Either way, the money effectively comes from the same place.
Re: (Score:2)
And it's getting worse. Now with more Agile.
For some reason this reminded me of the advert on Futurama: "Bachelor Chow: Now with FLAVOR!"
With all the productivity gains (Score:1)
With all the productivity gains we've had for the last 150 years this should be the norm by now... where did all our productivity gains go???
Re: With all the productivity gains (Score:1)
shareholder pockets
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
With all the productivity gains we've had for the last 150 years this should be the norm by now... where did all our productivity gains go???
The productivity gains went into damn near everyone owning a personal automobile. They went into the ability to fly jet aircraft across oceans and be around the world in under a day. They went into having a worldwide internet on which you typed your thoughtless blabble. They went into the ability to access a staggering amount of information instantly from a device that fits into your pocket. They went into the LED lighting that provides instant lighting to a whole room for a mere handful of watts. They
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
That's like asking where all the computing power gains have "gone." You know, under Moore's law, computer power doubled every 18 months or so, for at least a couple of decades. By now, computers must be so fast we should have to use them only a few seconds a day!
Well of course, we can now do things with computers that we never dreamed of in the 1980s, like GPS navigation and video streaming, not to mention Pokemon Go.
The same thing happened to all that extra productivity...companies can now do things they n
Life must have really sucked for our ancestors (Score:2)
Re: (Score:1, Insightful)
"They had to work at least six days a week from sun up to sun down just to keep themselves and their families housed and fed" - This is a 'captive capitalism' situation. In reality, farmers did not work all daytime hours, 6 days a week.
False. They worked hard though, but it took the greed of their fellow man to put them in a labor trap and make it so they had to exploit their health and very lives just to hope to feed and clothe family members, survive, and continue.
This is externalized capitalism, what it
Re: (Score:3)
nice theories there, armchair boy.
You know nothing about farming. As it happens, I have lots of relatives going back several generations who were farmers.
So I'll tell you how actual farmers work.
They get up at crack of dawn and working until sunset, with half hour for lunch. Monday through Saturday. Sunday is church and only the necessary chores, so we could say two hours of work or similar.
Everything you heard and are spewing here is bullshit. It's a very hard life
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So it's unpleasant to hear what farmers actually do instead of getting nonsense from person with conceptions that nevertheless reinforces misconceptions and memes.
Re: (Score:3)
There are some historic cultures that worked something like 20h per week and everything was covered. With the amount of efficiency gained in manufacturing in the last few 1000 years, one wonders how we could go so wrong. It seems most people today have negative productivity to offset the massive productivity of the few that actually create the things we need.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Life must have really sucked for our ancestors (Score:5, Informative)
Nearly every hunter-gatherer culture both today and in the past worked less than 20 hours a week. It was agriculture which brought long work days.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:1)
And then you don't hunt for a couple for days.
hunter-gatherers typically work an average of 3-5 hours per day [rewild.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is on your side. Do your own research.
Re: (Score:3)
Nobody on my great great grandadies plantation would have been so lazy as to work 6 day weeks, we have 7 days in a week and 24 hours in a day and your whole goddamn afterlife to sleep Pray on your own goddamn plantation, mine is for workin.
Letting the Insane Run the Asylum (Score:1)
Seriously, this has got to be one of the silliest "studies" I have ever come across.
People are happiest when they're the most laziest!
Golly gee, I'd hazard to bet not having any cares in the world, eating healthy, and working out 4 times a week is a better way to improve ones mental health too!
It's a genius solution: trust funds for all! /Sarcasm
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I think what they're saying is kinda different than what you're inferring.
Folks who don't work at all are way more likely to have mental health issues- it's what I'm taking away from this.
I can confirm. I sold a business at 27 for enough money to live comfortably for a good long while. I travelled, stayed out late, and generally didn't worry about the future.
I was having panic attacks in less than a year, which I had never had before (I didn't even know what they were). I went to some dark, dark places.
Re: (Score:1)
This is one of the reasons I would like that retirement is handled a bit differently from what is common today.
Too many people just quit cold turkey and then hove problems filling their time with things to do.
I think it would be much healthier if people were to gradually decrease their working time, both for the workers and for the companies.
If you gradually reduce the amount you work you not only keep a fixed schedule despite having more time off, but you also keep the social interaction of a workplace whi
Re: (Score:2)
Just don't stare too long into the abyss. :)
--
.nosig
Re:Letting the Insane Run the Asylum (Score:5, Informative)
You not only completely missed the point, but actually seem to have inverted it.
Being "most laziest" has been studied before, and leads to a lot of mental health issues, primarily depression due to feeling unproductive. It's a big problem for social work, because many people who would otherwise be job-seeking instead find themselves too depressed to apply to jobs, go to interviews, or even show up for the first day of work. To escape the depression, they often turn to substance abuse, and their temporary unemployment quickly turns into a major catastrophe for their lives, and a significant burden on society.
This study shows that working a full day per week is enough to hold off those effects, but working more than that doesn't really have much impact on mental health. The impact is that part-time jobs may have a disproportionate positive impact on the effectivity of social services. That, in turn, gives credibility to some other ideas for social support, like offering tax incentives for employers who offer jobs of less than 10 hours per week with extremely low barriers to entry. The tax cost of such a plan would likely be offset by the reduction in social services needs.
Re: (Score:2)
You are wrong. Masses of people with nothing to do leads to extreme social unrest and extreme problems. Basically nobody can be lazy all the time and stay sane. Some people, but not a majority of them, can find enough things by themselves to stay reasonably occupied and get the benefits that others need "work" for.
For example, one of the massive potential problems with an UBI is that too many people could think the way you do and then find out that this does not work for them at all and find themselves unab
What job hires for one day a week? (Score:3)
Assuming someone is in a bad mental state and would benefit from this study by working one day a week instead of zero.
What sort of job would hire that schedule ?
Re: (Score:1)
Sunday driver?
Monday morning quarterback?
Girl Friday?
Re: (Score:2)
I've had a coworker that works 1 day a week, for several years. The answer is part-time jobs.
Re: (Score:2)
Hell, I could literally work one day a month only and it would be enough to feed me and cover a few essentials. This would be pretty much unthinkable in the pre-industrial era.
Still that's not really feasible as rent is a much larger expense but one day a week would mostly cover it too.
Re: (Score:2)
Assuming someone is in a bad mental state and would benefit from this study by working one day a week instead of zero.
What sort of job would hire that schedule ?
That's not the point. The researchers found that working one day a week was enough to maintain mental health, and that working additional days brought no increased benefit.
It is not a call to re-work our society so that we all work one day a week. There are other reasons besides mental health to work more than that.
Re: (Score:2)
Clergy work more hours than you think, [clergytaxnet.com]
Re: (Score:2)
If nothing else, why not useless labor? Fill a hole with golf balls, dig them up, repeat.
That doesn't work (Score:1)
Way I see it (drawing on some of my own experience digging myself out of a depression hole) that'd only get you part of the benefits and might be problematic getting motivated.
The structure of having to regularly show up for work helps. Some amount of physical labour helps. Being in the great outdoors helps. Feeling like you've accomplished something helps. Even better if it's of actual, preferrably tangible use to society. However small, it must be there. Otherwise the work is quick to feel demeaning. Deal
Re: What job hires for one day a week? (Score:3)
There is a government leadership role coming up in 2020...
Re: (Score:2)
If the average person gets about 2 hours of really solid work done a day, that's about one day a week of actual work.
Re: (Score:1)
To be fair, people who spend their days anonymously commenting on slashdot are skewing that number way down.
Dogfooding? (Score:1)
I wonder how many days a week "researchers at the Universities of Cambridge and Salford" worked to produce this drivel.
Oh, right -- perpetual academics. Sounds about right.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh, right -- perpetual academics. Sounds about right.
Evidently you don't understand academics. It probably took about a half dozen grad students working 6-7 days a week to do the research, write the paper, cover the edits and rewrites and make the submissions.
The academic was hardly involved, he just marked up a paper, possibly with a purpose, possibly not. That's how academics "work", nothing perpetual about 'em.
Re:Dogfooding? (Score:5, Insightful)
You and the OP both have it wrong.
Working in academia is hard. You have to be very, very capable to land an academic position. Competition for grant funds is fierce. Many researchers spend a sizable part of their time writing grant proposals, only a small fraction of which get funded.
Yes, there are some academics who abuse and exploit their grad students. It's a problem and it deserves serious attention. That should not be a reason to dismiss all academics as exploiters of grad students. (I for one was not exploited, nor were my classmates.)
There is a notion that academia is separated from the "real world" but it really isn't true. The academic world faces budgets, deadlines, deliverables, proposals, evaluations, promotions, demotions ... in all the ways that matter, the academic world is just as "real" as any other.
Conservation of productivity (Score:2)
So if you decrease the workweek from the current 5 days/week to 1 day/week, you decrease the standard of living to 1/5th what it currently is. Because only 20% of the current amount of goods and services will be produced, resulting in only 20% being available for consumption = 20% the previous standard of living. (It won't be exactly
Re: (Score:2)
Except if people worked less hours... you could hire more people, reducing the unemployment.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
The conclusion of the study wasn't that we should move to a one-day work week.
All the study says is that the mental health benefits of working are attained via working one day a week and more work does not convey more mental health benefits.
Of course there are more things to concern oneself with than simply mental health when decided how much to work. Nobody is suggesting otherwise.
Corporate Response (Score:2)
This just in: To further improve productivity, corporations are now implementing 7 back-to-back one-day workweeks for employees.
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2)
There are plenty of people who do not need money to live. Usually because the costs of living are already covered.
Retired people, for one. People on medical disability, for another.
But if they don't need to work, why work? Because it turns out, people are social creatures. A life of retirement seems great, but after a couple of years of "being on vacation", it actually takes a real physical toll - a life of la
One day of work! (Score:2)
What they do for the other 4 days is a complete mystery - but it sure isn't "work".
Money, though (Score:2)
Where's the peak? (Score:2)
From zero to one day is the maximum benefit. Work more and the incremental benefits decrease. Other than actually being able to afford food and rent, of course. But at what point does the curve turn downwards? Where does additional work become detrimental to one's mental health? That's the point people should be shooting for.
I'm sure a lot of that has to do with how much you enjoy your job. And how much you enjoy your leisure activities. I enjoy what I do very much. And I'm self employed, so I can pick up
Wait 'til the bills come in (Score:2)
1 day of work doesn't earn much money. I'd imagine that at some point having such little salary would creep up in the form of "omg how will I pay these bills?"
Sure the glow of getting a job is nice, even if it's a small job. Yeah - I'm not a loser! I have a job! Somebody loves me, I'm productive! etc.
But give it a month or two and see if the new-job-glow is still there.
Stay At Home (Score:1)
So, the first day (Score:1)
So, the first day is therapy and I get paid.
The other days, I just get money.
If I could swing it, I'd work 5 part time jobs, one day a week each, and be the mental healthiest guy around!
There are probably some flaws in my reasoning, here.