Hit The Brakes

by Christopher DeWolf, 2005

Presented by
Onur Tukel 300971281
Wang Hao 300809547
Main idea and main supporting points
In his article, Hit The Brakes (2005), Christopher
DeWolf, strongly advocates that people should stop
working so hard and putting in long hours in their jobs
and start sparing more time to themselves by cutting
down their weekly work hours.

He supports his idea by

 Discussing Tempo Giusto
 Defining the Slow Movement
 Givingexamples of what you can achieve with the extra time
you carved out
Do we agree?
Absolutely!
Being chained to the desk at work is not the way of being successful and
happy in life, it deteriorates your overall life quality; working long hours is
counter-productive, unnecessarily time consuming and most importantly bad for
the health.
Why counter productive?

 Productivity falls drastically after working long hours

 Your result output takes a steep fall after you work 50 hours a week. Furthermore, after
55 hours, you practically don’t produce anything. (Sullivan, 2015)
 Interesting fact: “Working over 21 hours continuously is equivalent to being legally
drunk” (Robinson, 2005)

 Causes sleep deprivation, which leads to fall in productivity and focus

 When you don’t get enough sleep, your brain can’t function as it should

 In the long run, results in high employee turnover.

 Because the employees are not satisfied and not happy about their job, they tend to
leave the position. And since finding and training new employees are always hard, it
reduces the productivity of the company.
Why unnecessarily time consuming?

 Work smart, not hard

 Why write 100 lines of code if you can get the job done in 10 lines

 Leaves you little or no time to socialize

 You will not have time to go to concerts or just hang out with your friends

 Prevents you from chasing your dreams

 How many hobbies have we postponed because we had too much work to do? Like
sailing, painting, writing etc.
Why bad for the health?

 Increases risk of heart attack

 The Whitehall II study shows that people who work longer than 8 hours a day has 1.67
higher chance of having a heart attack. (Virtanen, Marianna; Singh-Manoux, Archana,
2009)

 Causes brain damage

 Working more than 40 hours a week deteriorates your short term memory and reduces
your cognitive performance. (Kivimäki, 2011)

 Makes you neglect working out and eating healthy, resulting in deterioration in
health.
 Working out and eating healthy requires time, a thing which you don’t have if you are
always at work.
What does all this mean?

 If you want to live a good life you might want to consider reducing hours
spent at work since it reduces the productivity, takes up too much of your
personal time and fundamentally degrades your health.

 Just imagine what you were postponing all this time because you just did not
have time and how happy it would make you actualizing those dreams.
References
 Sullivan, B. (2015, Jan 26). Memo to work martyrs: Long hours make you less
productive. Retrieved from https://www.cnbc.com/2015/01/26/working-more-
than-50-hours-makes-you-less-productive.html
 Robinson, E (2005). Why Crunch Modes Doesn't Work: Six Lessons. Retrieved from
http://www.igda.org/?page=crunchsixlessons
 Virtanen, Marianna; Singh-Manoux, Archana (2009). Long Working Hours and
Cognitive Function: The Whitehall II Study. American Journal of Epidemiology
169(5), 596–605. Retrieved from
https://academic.oup.com/aje/article/169/5/596/143020
 Kivimaki, M (2011). Using Additional Information on Working Hours to Predict
Coronary Heart Disease: A Cohort Study. Retrieved from
http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/746913/using-additional-information-
working-hours-predict-coronary-heart-disease-
cohort?volume=154&issue=7&page=457