I have worked as assortment of jobs over the years, and I think anything past 6-7 hours a day becomes overly draining. In my 20’s I did retail, and I was fine at 6 hours/ 25-30 hours a week. Got hours increased and found it hard to be decent at home. Paperwork is similar, but if I mixed in some on site / driving around I could stretch it a little. Only job I could work 40 fairly consistently was forklift in warehouse work. Sitting, consistent breaks, mental focus that was fairly diverse with downtime. Staying on a single task for 8 hours, day after day, is torture, especially if it involves mental or emotional stress.

I’m pulling this number out of my ass, but I estimate most office jobs are actually only productive for 5-6 hours a day. So I would say 30 hours, and give back 2 hours of people’s lives every day instead of having people be in the office (or be online in front of a work computer somewhere else) for 8 hours.

For me, it depends how those hours are grouped. I currently work five 8-hour days and hate it. I miss working three 12’s. I only work a few more hours per week doing 8’s than I did with 12’s, but I have two thirds more commute time, and never have a weekday off, so it feels like I work almost twice as much. And it’s a pain trying to schedule appointments for anything, since I work the same hours as doctors, banks, etc.

42. Not joking this time.

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In my humble opinion you should be entitled to a minimum of 75% of your day for personal use.

0! Every second you spend making someone else money is time not spent enriching your own life or building your own wealth. It wears on the soul. You can ignore this fact all they want, but that also takes some amount of energy. When you get to the point where you can be your own boss or charge your own rate for the service you provide, that’s when you will find the real number.

<40h

But considering my hobby is essentially also my job it feels a bit lile a 50 atm.

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I know a lot of people here are fans of the 4 day workweek idea, but personally I think a 5-day work week, with 1 week per month off is a better schedule. Having 9 uninterrupted days off is very stress reducing and allows for working on multiday personal projects or doing some limited traveling.

For that sort of schedule, five 8 hour days is a baseline, but even going up to 9 or 10 hours as needed feels a lot more doable. As long as that flexibility to stretch hours is factored into the salary of course. If that’s done I think it is better for both the employees and the business in terms of getting projects done and people staying motivated.

Making this sort of schedule more common would require more expectations put on managers to properly organize schedules, since businesses I see doing this rotate through who is off so that the business is open the whole month.

it totally depends on the person and their life

It always affects your life. Whether that effect is positive or negative depends more on the quality of the work than the quantity.

It is going to vary by profession and the person doing it.

With that said, all professions have a cap on how much you can do them and adversely affect you in different ways.

Manufacturing jobs are brutal on your joints.

Manual labor such as construction and auto mechanic are brutal on your entire body.

White collar jobs abuse you mentally and are harder to leave at work.

Now with all jobs you may be “on the clock” for 40 hours but you won’t spend all that time actually do your job function.

When I was in construction it was wild how much time was spent doing random shit that wasn’t “construction “.

Now that I am in IT it is equally amazing how much of my time is dedicated to not doing IT shit.

My sweet spot is fewer days and longer shifts. I currently do 4 10s and I had one job that was 3 12s one week and 4 12s the next. That was awesome.

Was working 32 for a bit. It was amazing. Now we got bumped to 36, not bad, but I do miss the extra time off.

I have worked 40 for most of my life which is tolderable but not ideal. A few years ago, it was 45-50. I really, really don’t ever want to be over 40 again.

I work a bit of a weird schedule

I do 12 hour shifts on a 2-2-3 rotation

So week 1 I work Monday, Tuesday, and Friday-Sunday

Then Week 2 I only work Wednesday and Thursday

Technically for payroll purposes I think technically that Sunday I work is part of week, but that’s a stupid way to think about it day-to-day

So basically one week I work 5 days, and the next week 2

Or if you’re a payroll bean counter, 4 and 3

So on average 3½ days a week, or basically a 4 day work week.

And I really like it despite the fact that I actually work slightly more hours than someone with a normal 40 hour work week.

I never have to work more than 3 days in a row without a 2 day break

I have days off during the week to squeeze appointments and such in

Sure I have to work every other weekend, but every other weekend is basically a free 3 day weekend.

And if you plan your vacations and such carefully you can get a whole week but only need to take 2 days off. That gets a little funny because our PTO is mostly based around 8 hour days since most people here have a normal workweek and they dont change it for those of us who work 12s, it mostly averages out, especially since we work less days overall, but it’s not exact and I’m usually left with a handful of hours left over that don’t add up to a full shift at the end of the year. A lot of it can carry over year-to-year though, so not a huge deal.