People don't work as much as they say
The author&#x27;s analysis is so entirely subjective as to what constitutes &quot;work&quot; as to be meaningless.   I certainly believe that most creative workers cannot spend 8 hours a day being creatively productive, although even there the variation is enormous.   I used to observe a factor of 5 or more difference in productivity between the most productive and least productive of my engineering team, and a lot of that was due to the ability of some to stay focused and fully absorbed in creation for hour after hour, whereas the average engineer simply stopped producing much after a couple of hours.   Interestingly, a lot of this was attention span limited.   Take the person who was good for 2 hours of productive coding on a product, and give them two significantly separate areas of responsibility, and their productivity would close to double, as they could pull off a mid-day switch and be fully energized for a second shift at the creative keyboard.<p>But just because you&#x27;re not doing the highest value &#x2F; highest drain portion of your job constantly, doesn&#x27;t mean you&#x27;re not working.   Good managers know to balance workload and expectations.<p>And as others have noted, this varies enormously from one profession to the next.   The nurses in the hospital where I worked as CTO worked 12 hour shifts, and nobody in their right mind would make the argument that they weren&#x27;t working the entire time.   Most worked three 12 hours shifts per week, so they had a short work week, but the doctors they worked with routinely worked 12 hrs&#x2F;day, often 5 days per week, and then spent part of their 2 &quot;off&quot; days working as well.   My daughter-in-law, who teaches elementary school, has no &quot;own time&quot; between 8:00 AM and 4:00PM, other than a half hour break when her students are at lunch, and then works a couple of hours most evenings in addition.   It&#x27;s a rare week during the school year when she doesn&#x27;t have 45 hours per week in which she is completely &quot;owned&quot; be the job - which is to say, working.