If we assume the best in people, we can radically redesign our democracy and welfare states.
Rutger BregmanRead
Since long workdays lead to more errors, shorter workdays could reduce accidents. Overtime is deadly. Tired surgeons have been found to be more prone to slip'ups, and soldiers who get too little shuteye are more prone to miss targets.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Shorter workdays can improve performance and safety by reducing fatigue.
The quote emphasizes the negative impact of long work hours on productivity and safety, particularly in high-stakes professions such as surgery and military operations. It suggests that reducing work hours can mitigate errors and accidents caused by fatigue, therefore promoting a healthier work-life balance that ultimately benefits both individuals and their professions.
Themes
WorkFatigueSafetyEfficiencyProductivity
In practice
Example use cases
During a team meeting discussing work-life balance, the quote can highlight the importance of reducing work hours.
More from Rutger Bregman
All quotes →My hope is that the corona crisis will help bring us into a new age of cooperation and solidarity and a realization that we're in this together.
Rutger BregmanRead
This is what a crisis does: It makes you question the status quo. That doesn't mean that after a crisis we move into some kind of utopia. But it is an opportunity for political change.
Rutger BregmanRead
While it won't solve all the world's ills - and ideas such as a rent cap and more social housing are necessary in places where housing is scarce - a basic income would work like venture capital for the people.
Rutger BregmanRead
Believing in the good of humanity is a revolutionary act - it means that we don't need all those managers and CEO's, kings and generals. That we can trust people to govern themselves and make their own decisions.
Rutger BregmanRead
We so often tend to think our democracies are ruled by procedures and laws, but they are also governed by implicit rules and assumptions and one of them is the ability to feel shame - that you can be shamed.
Rutger BregmanRead
Similar quotes
After years of denial and deception, the Philip Morris company has admitted that cigarette smoking causes lung cancer and other diseases. This formal acknowledgment comes far too late but still we must all welcome it. It can be the beginning of clearing the air.
William J. ClintonRead
Don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognize as food. Don't eat anything with more than five ingredients, or ingredients you can't pronounce.
Michael PollanRead
What people need to know is that asthma isn't a minor 'wheeze-disease.' It kills over five thousand people in America every year, and I could've been one of them.
Jackie Joyner-KerseeRead
Yoga cultivates the ways of maintaining a balanced attitude in day-to-day life and endows skill in the performance of one's actions.
B.K.S. IyengarRead
No war on the face of the Earth is more destructive than the AIDS pandemic.
Colin PowellRead
Because of the increasing rates of obesity, unhealthy eating habits and physical inactivity, we may see the first generation that will be less healthy and have a shorter life expectancy than their parents.
Richard CarmonaRead