A
study issued in the Melbourne Institute Worker Paper claims that people who are
older than 40 performed best at work when they worked three days per week. So,
does this mean that older workers could work less efficiently?
According
to the Australian study, researchers tried to analyze the cognitive abilities
of older workers. As a result, the participants in the study, 3,500 women and
3,000 men, took part in the testing.
The
researchers focused on the participant’s abilities such as abstract reasoning,
memory, and executive reasoning. In addition, researchers measured their
cognitive performance in order to conclude how effective they were at work.
The
participants had improved when they worked 25 hours per week. However, their
performance greatly reduced when they started working for 55 hours per week.
(1)
Causes for Reduced Performance
What
made the participants lose their touch was fatigue and stress. According to one
of the lead authors of the study, professor Colin McKenzie, the level of
intellectual stimulation depends on the working hours.
Even
though work can stimulate the brain activity, it can also cause fatigue and
stress. Therefore, it can have a drastic impact on the cognitive functions.
How Working Hours Affect the Brain
Working
hours play a huge role in maintaining the cognitive functions, especially in
elderly adults. Moreover, working more than 30 hours every week can have a
negative impact on the brain health of middle-aged men.
As
Prof. McKenzie claims, working 40 hours per week is effective for maintaining
normal cognitive functioning. However, it doesn’t maximize the positive effects
of work. Furthermore, the results may vary in other countries.
After
all, it is difficult to control every factor that may contribute to the results
of the study.
The Solution
Does
the type of work you do matters? Is it more important to be a full time or a
part-time job? What if the job is more intellectually demanding?
According
to Prof. McKenzie, it is difficult to tell. It is hard to identify the common
effects of the type of work you do and how it can affect the cognitive
functions. So, people may choose jobs based on their cognitive abilities.
Also,
it is not clear yet why working more than 30 hours is not good for the brain.
As Prof. McKenzie claims, we know that working a lot can cause fatigue and
stress, but it is also important to maximize the positive effects of our work.
Therefore,
depending on how many holidays people can take every year, it is difficult to
control all the contributing factors. But, it seems that working full time
until the age of 67 is not as beneficial as the government believes.
The
government aims to make the idea of working for 40 hours per week until the age
of 67 by 2026 or 2028.
Final Thoughts
It
is important that you pick the job you want and it makes you happy. This way,
you will be able to prevent stress and fatigue. However, it is known that older
people can’t work the same way as they did 20 years ago.
Therefore,
it is unnatural to force them to work until the age of 67, as the government
claims. Nevertheless, more research is still necessary to confirm these claims.
What we can do so far, is to work something that makes us happy.
Source : gottadotherightthing.com