WE ALREADY GET PAID FOR NOT WORKING:

Up until you wrote the book, you thought the more you worked the more productive you were?

Yes, there was a straight line going up. More hours equalled more productivity. This is an assumption - a mistake - that we've been making for a very long time. And now there's more than a century's worth of work that overwork in the long run is bad for people and organisations and also bad for productivity. It's something that can be sustained for periods of a few weeks but after that you start creating more problems than you solve. [...]

Historically there have been very different working cultures in the United States and Europe. We have longer holidays and shorter working weeks than the US and have been told that we're lagging behind in productivity. But are you saying that maybe Europe was right all along?

More often than Americans like to admit, Europe has been right. I think when you look at the statistics on the relationship between working hours and productivity in the developed world, one of the striking things you find is that it's not as clear and linear a relationship as you think. Countries like Mexico and South Korea have longer working weeks and longer working years than Scandinavia and France or even Germany, but they have lower productivity rates. As easy as it is for Americans to make fun of the European economic environment as one that is beset with stifling regulation, the idea that it's important to maintain better work-life balance turns out in the long run to have a lot going for it.

http://www.inc.com/melanie-curtin/in-an-8-hour-day-the-average-worker-is-productive-for-this-many-hours.html

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average American works 8.8 hours every day. Yet a study of nearly 2,000 full-time office workers revealed that most people aren't working for most of the time they're at work.

The most popular unproductive activities listed were:

Reading news websites - 1 hour 5 min

Checking social media - 44 min

Discussing non-work-related things with coworkers - 40 min

Searching for new jobs - 26 min

Taking smoke breaks - 23 min

Making calls to partners/ friends - 18 min

Making hot drinks - 17 min

Texting or instant messaging - 14 min

Eating snacks - 8 min

Making food in office - 7 min

This is particularly good news for freelancers and others who work from home. It's easy to feel like you're not "doing" enough when you don't have to go into an office. Yet this research suggests that if you're productive for just 3 hours a day, you're outputting the same amount as someone in the office for 8 hours.

And imagine if we truly embraced this information. Even if we didn't cut a workday down to 3 hours, what if we cut it to 6? What if the norm was a workday of 11am-5pm?

People would be better rested, more focused, and likely more productive.

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