In an article published by the Sydney Morning Herald , Sweden will be moving towards implementing a 6 hour working day. The reasoning behind it seems to be that the upper limit of human concentration in a given day, without the need for stimulants such as caffeine to keep us awake and on the ball.

It seems like they might be onto something, those crazy Scandinavians. Working 6 hours in a day starts from a young age for most of us, stemming from our days at school. It doesn’t make sense that we have to adopt an 8-hour workday as soon as we come of working age.

The reason for the 8 hour working day stems from the Industrial age, where Industrial Pioneer Robert Owen opted for an 8-hour working day to coincide with “40 hours work, 40 hours sleep and 40 hours leisure”. This seems like a great idea in terms of operating heavy machinery, as the workers of old had to. While heavy machinery and manufacturing may still exist, nowadays we have computers to take care of huge chunks of our workload. The dawn of the technological age should carry with it a challenge to the way we work, particularly in working hours.

To be completely honest, we probably should have challenged the 8-hour working day closer to the turn of the century. Many people turn to an unhealthy lifestyle to be able to keep awake for their whole day. 8 hours can be a long time, especially if there aren’t any lulls in the workload.

Most of us suffer from 3:30itis. It’s that moment where we start thinking about what we will do after work, or what we will do on the weekend. It’s the point where we switch off to think about other things, and it’s part of human nature.

Imagine if, rather than fighting that feeling of distraction that comes with that part of the day, we could just go home and do all the things we were thinking about. It might sound crazy, but it may be better to be more productive for a shorter amount of time than to be distracted for those remaining 2 hours.

A little while ago I was recruiting for a sales manager role and came across a guy who had achieved outstanding results. He was very good at his job, and managed to maintain an incredibly consistent track record of closing 4 deals a week in a B2B Sales role. When I asked him about how he managed to achieve such a consistent result, his reply astounded me.

“I turn up late every day. I start at 11 and hit the ground running”. Needless to say, his attitude surprised me no end. Upon further enquiry it became clear that he was an avid surfer. Rather than starting the day with a coffee and bursting through the doors with high energy, he reasoned that he would spend his morning doing something he loved, and come into work as relaxed as he could be. Once he began talking to clients, they were put at ease by his relaxed manor, and hence this translated into more deals being closed.

Maybe these swedes are onto something. Only time will tell, as our economy starts shifting to automation, 6 hours in a working day may be the only way to go.