What do you think about only working however long it takes you to do the tasks you need to do, rather than always doing a 9-5 day (or equivalent)?

20 comments

1. I’m expecting that for my future career, I fully expect to work 60+ hours every week and another 20+ hours of ongoing learning.

2. Depends on the job, I’ve definitely worked places where I have to work slow or fill the time to have something to do for the full shift. It’d be a lot easier to just work efficiently and leave when I’m done. But people may take advantage of that and skip steps or not do as good a job to get home faster so if it’s unsupervised work I could see it getting out of hand really quickly.

3. This is what I’m doing now, and I frankly couldn’t have it any other way ever again.

4. I guess there are pros and cons. The main con for me would be if my workload increases and now it takes longer than 8 hours to complete tasks. The pro would be if I’m efficient and organized I could be done in less than 8 hours. Currently I’m paid hourly and I like the fact that I know when I’m done every day and don’t take work home with me.

5. Most jobs I’ve worked NEVER run out of tasks. You have to be able to find a stopping point and put work down for the next day, but I’ve never worked a job where I can just go “all done!” Lol

6. I’m a highly educated and certified professional in a field that is hard-to-fill, so recruitment and retention is a priority for many employers. They need me more than I need them.

   I’m 15 years into my career.
   I rarely work 8-4 (my scheduled work day). I write my own daily schedule, work from home, and manage my professional duties per my licensure requirements. Early on in my career I made a point never to bring work home after the end of my shift. There is always going to be high workloads waiting for me, and it can wait while I rejuvenate at the end of my day. That said, occasionally there are Fuller days that require me to work extremely efficiently. But I have earned the right in my field and my skill level to make my day what I need it to be, and I am good at what I do which means it is rarely left over.

   My career is a means of supporting the life that I created to enjoy, I was not created to work my career.

7. I would never run out of tasks just due to the nature of my work so it wouldn’t be great for me.

8. Hahaha wanna try a PhD?

9. I’ve done it many times while working as a consultant or on contract work. It’s fine, but doesn’t work for every kind of position and can be really misleading and problematic if you are using unpaid time to wait between assignments arriving and can’t truly use that time for non-work commitments. My current job requires regular hours because I am “engaged to wait” to remain available for clients during those hours even if I have finished my other projects. I tend to use that time for documentation and planning. I’m fine with that and am well compensated for both my active work and my planning/documentation/engaged to wait time.

10. It depends on the money. Let’s say 8 hours of work earns me $160. If I work less hours I still want to make the $160 a day. If I’d have to take a pay cut down to only $60 from the 3 hours I worked then no.

11. That’s what I currently do lol

    Sometimes we wouldn’t get the work done in one day in my 9-5 but that’s what you prioritise.

    There have been weeks at a time where there was nothing for me to do beyond a few emails and once that was done, I didn’t do more.

12. I think it could be great! I know that for me personally, I am much more productive when I have shorter work days. I feel like I can get a lot done in 4-5 hours and then enjoy the rest of my day.

13. As a teacher, I don’t love this idea since we tend to work beyond our designated hours in my country. I would welcome being told I HAD to limit my work to 9-5!

14. I’m salary, so this is already my life. I start the work day whenever I need to and end whenever I need to. Doesn’t matter how many hours I work as long as my work gets done. Most days, I work less than eight hours. I get paid the same regardless.

    I was hourly earlier in my career and hated it. I constantly had to either sit around doing nothing or ask for more to do to fill up my day. Sometimes, my manager would tell me I could just go home early if I wanted to, but that meant I wouldn’t get paid a full eight hours.

15. That’s how I work, as a freelancer with a chronic illness. It’s much healthier and more manageable for me.

16. I don’t have any oversight at my work, it’s all task and outcome driven. I’m a NP and my quota is writing 11 notes a day. I come in to see patients and then can leave to chart from home. On average, I do much less than the 40 hours a week I get paid for. If I had to estimate, I would say I barely have ever worked 30 hours in a week. My facility has some of the best metrics across the board that I am directly responsible for. I think if we shifted to this mindset, people would be much more efficient and productivity would improve and burnout would decrease. But I also think it really depends on the setting and type of work. I used to work as a nursing supervisor, and that job doesn’t make sense to be task driven because there is always something to do.

17. Because then with my kinda integrity I’d have to work outside the 8hrs in a day to complete everything most of the time and im not ready for that.

18. My current job that I absolutely love could easily be done like this. My work is not time sensitive unless a rare emergency happens

19. I work in mental health care for youth and it would not feel right for me. Time that is not going directly into clients contact, reporting, thinking about how to move forward, is spent on learning more. I take my job and responsibility seriously and feel the need to know the ins and outs and keep on developing my both my skills, insight, and knowledge.

    That being said, I’m flexible in when I work my hours.

20. The employer will generally find more tasks for you to do if they see employees done early.