I’m doing a lot of interviews lately for Big Time publicity. In a recent one, I was asked about the phenomenon of the “9-9-6” schedule. This is a work schedule from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week (M-F plus usually Saturday). This schedule was (as the story goes) used in some Chinese tech companies in the past, and was then outlawed there. But some AI/tech companies in the US picked it up as a way to try to move fast toward their universe-bending outcomes or whatever silliness they are saying.
I will start all this by noting that requiring people to be in an office 72 hours a week is generally not wise. You will not be able to hire people who have options and who want to spend full weekends with their family and friends. If Saturday is a work day, you will not be able to hire people who observe a Sabbath in any way on that day. There is often a massive point of diminishing returns with work hours.
I have also seen on time logs over the years from places where people are expected to stay late that there is often a lot of stuff on the log that is not work during these working hours. People sit in the cafeteria for a long time. Some of these places have gyms as a perk, and so people go there for a while (to say nothing of the foosball tables/ball pits/etc.). I am fully in favor of during-the-day recreation, but it does mean we’re not talking 12 hours of heads down work each day. Also, inevitably when everyone has to stay late, people drift in late. That 9 a.m. start is really going to be more like 9:30 or later. People will generally not be scheduling meetings to start at 9 a.m. As almost no medical/dental/DMV places are open outside 9-9 Mon-Sat, there is often an understanding that people will leave for random things. All this chips away at what is theoretically a 72-hour workweek.
But even if it was 72 working hours…would this allow for some space for a personal life? Mathematically the answer would be yes. There are 168 hours in a week. If you sleep 8 hours a night and work 72 hours you would theoretically have 40 hours for other things. Some of this would be spent getting ready and getting to/from work. But some time could be spent on other things. How I imagine this would most work for people is that they would get up at a reasonable hour — let’s say 6 a.m. If you lived close to work, you could then have the next 2.5 hours for other things. I imagine most people would exercise at work if there was a gym there and you were expected to be there for 12 hours. But maybe you do have 12 hours of meetings — you could run for 30 minutes in the morning, take a quick shower, and then maybe hang out with family members for the next 90 minutes or so. You might be able to meet friends for breakfast or coffee in the morning. You could theoretically use some of this time for a hobby if you were intentional about it. And then you could protect your one day off for various adventures and family time and rejuvenation.
There’s sometimes a mental block about using mornings, but even without extreme hours, mornings can be the flip side of having evenings available. If someone worked 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. you’d see that they had time in the evenings for other things — that wouldn’t be hard to imagine. With working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. it would just need to happen before 9 a.m. but it would be roughly the same concept. Is 9-9-6 a smart way to run a company? No. But if someone decided to do this for a while for whatever reason, there might be ways to make it more doable by being strategic about the other hours.
Just wanted to jump in to express that, having lived this life for 5 years of residency and fellowship, no, it is not possible to have “a life” with those kinds of hours. And yes, we are working at breakneck pace for the vast majority of time spent at work (none of this “foosball” or “wandering in at 9:30” you describe — seriously, what?). I mean, if I hadn’t also had a child, I suppose it might have been possible to occasionally go out for a few hours or occasionally exercise for more than 10 minutes in a day, but the reality is that one is usually so spent when one arrives home, there’s not really a lot of motivation to do so aside from warding off worsening social isolation and suicidality. Any and all social plans come at the expense of sleep.
I will also add that your assumptions regarding time spent sleeping are inaccurate. There is a decent portion of the population that actually needs more than 8h per night of *actual sleep* (not time in bed) on a regular basis to feel refreshed. I suppose some people are genetic short sleepers, but that is pretty rare and most people require more. Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.
It’s hard for me to see how much of the time spent not working or getting ready/traveling to/from work will be put toward exercise and socializing. There are always chores, life admin, and errands to take care of: mail and email that comes in, Dr visits, ordering/shopping for groceries, care work (either children or elderly), cooking, cleaning, laundry, maintenance/fixing and/or gardening/yardwork (assuming the person owns their own home–because the house to-do list is never-ending!). Even if some of this can be delegated/hired out (ex. maid service, lawn service, babysitter, etc.), that still adds the life admin cost of managing those things.
I’m not saying that they will have NO time for exercise or socializing with family & friends…just that I don’t think it’s as straightforward as 40 hours minus getting ready and traveling to/from work.
Hmm, I think it depends a lot on what kind of job. (I know this is mostly hypothetical, also. :)) I think a 9-9 knowledge work job is very different from a 9-9 healthcare job, or construction work, or being a daycare worker. The only way I could really see this working would be a knowledge work job with a good deal of flexibility/ down time in the work day, very little prep time needed before work, and zero or very short commute.
I’m a nurse and for almost 10 years I worked the 7 am- 7:30 pm shift (inpatient hospital unit nurse). My “actual” schedule looked like this:
5:15 am alarm off
5:15-6:00 wake up, shower, get ready, put some makeup on, dry hair, get dressed
6:00-6:15 “gather stuff”/ make lunch/ grab breakfast to eat in car
6:15-6:45 drive to work
6:45-7:00 park in the far away lot my permit was for, walk in, get up to unit.
7:00 clock in, start work.
7:00 am-7:30 pm work. I was technically entitled to a 30 minute break in there, but we couldn’t really leave the unit as we still had our pager/ no one really covered our patients. So I just tried to eat my lunch in the break room, usually getting interrupted part way to tend to a patient. At some points in my shift I might have little bits of “downtime” if patients were all settled, but many days not. At any rate, there was no actual time in the day to like, do a hobby or anything- the best I could do was maybe browse the internet at one of the unit computers or something in between patient care.
somewhere between ~7:30 pm-8:15 pm: clock out. My actual clock out time was never exactly 7:30. Usually at LEAST 7:45, sometimes 8 or later by the time we handed off the patients to night shift.
8:00 pm-8:15- Hopefully out by now. Walk to car.
8:15- 8:45 drive home.
8:45 maybe sneak in and say hi to kids, if they’re still awake. Sometimes they’re still VERY awake and want more attention from me….
~9:00-9:30 either shower and/or collapse at the table and shovel some sort of food in my mouth…unpack lunch box
9:30 totally exhausted, maybe zone out and scroll my phone or talk to husband or watch a little TV…
10:15 aim to be in bed to get up and do it again tomorrow!!
Can you tell I’m glad I don’t work those hours any more??!? Hahaha. Kind of can’t believe I did that for so many years. Granted, in my case, I did not have to do this 6 days a week!!! It would be literally impossible to do it like that, IMO. Clearly, there’s not much extra time in there.
I will say, back when I was marathon training and crazy, I would sometimes stop right at the gym after work, arriving by hopefully 8:30-8:40 pm and would work out until 9:30, then go home and essentially straight to bed. I also remember sometimes getting up at 4:30 instead of 5:15 to try and squeeze in a workout before heading out…. But that really, really sucked and was extremely hard to do, especially with young kids at home too. Health care shift work is just so terribly exhausting. I used to feel like I’d been through the wringer after those intense 12-13 hour shifts!
I do appreciate your point though that there is usually at least a LITTLE time available. Even in my case, I could, in theory, listen to an audiobook during my commute, I guess, or maybe I could have sat and crocheted on the couch for a little bit after work or something. But time felt very very sparse for me then.
I know a lot of people who work 70+ hour weeks for seasons (including me). My impression is that they can do things that are very important to them while working these kind of hours (like seeing their kids or exercising) but mostly they don’t get enough sleep and survive on energy drinks. When they do have free time, they use it to rest or do things that need to get done- food, laundry, dishes, school forms, etc.
My husband and I will both likely be working 70 hour weeks this summer and I have already been preparing- stocking up on food, getting all dentist and Dr appointments done, car maintenance, etc.
@Jessica – yep, the life maintenance stuff is a lot harder – because those are the things that often do need to happen during 9-9.