Wednesday, November 19, 2025

Does More Hours Always Entail Greater Productivity?

Elon Musk has insisted, according to internet articles like this one [1], that working 100 hours in a week will get twice as much done as working 50 hours.  If this truly represents what Musk believes and is not merely espoused for a reason like media attention, he is wrong because it does not logically follow that double the hours results in double the output.  This is independent of concrete examples of relevant personal and empirical factors because it simply does not follow.  But it is entirely possible and likely that some people, many even, would become quite tired to the point that, whatever the line is for them as an individual and for that week (it could differ), they would eventually become distracted, exhausted, and unable to focus as totally.  Their work output would in such cases either plateau or yield very diminishing returns.

Hell, even doubling the amount of people at work within the same timeframe does not mean twice the work will be done because of variables like willingness, energy, competency, and able-bodiedness or disability that might differ between individuals.  And if Musk only says that working 100 instead of 50 hours each week, or any week, will double your productivity in order to galvanize workers into accepting exploitative directives from employers like him, he is still a fool.  He would then be insincerely promoting falsities to exert control over people who are themselves irrational, a compound error intended to lead others astray so he can benefit from their labor—labor that could destroy their wellbeing.

This practice would in many instances exclude a weekly Sabbath anyway, so any Biblically righteous person would have to be very careful to not work on each of the seven days in a week.  Either way, working so many hours across each day in a week (especially on a regular basis) or in a mere six days each week could easily damage someone's sleep, mental and physical health, relationships, and ability to handle miscellaneous trivialities or matters of non-professional practicality that are unfortunately necessary for a stable life.  There is almost no way that the typical person would not be so exhausted by working 100 hours in consecutive weeks, regardless of whether they have a day of true rest for every six days of work, that they would be able to accomplish twice as much as they could in 50 hours, yes.  There is also almost no way they could accomplish this without severe risk to their health.

But none of these logical facts are likely to bring Musk to reorient his worldview towards reality or to encourage workers to not sacrifice their minds and bodies for people like him.  He is not concerned with ultimate truth or in any way a philosophical genius, despite how some of his supporters might desperately believe otherwise.  If only Musk was as productive when it comes to seeking and holding to the truths of rationalism as he says he is or has been when it comes to professional work!  Then, he would be in a position to be among the most productive people in the way that is most foundational and which could then spur him on to rightly understand secondary, lesser aspects of reality like the corporate world.  May he one day do precisely that.


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