Why you should go home early today

SCIENCE has spoken. It’s best for all involved if you pack up right now, head home and watch Netflix. Here’s what to tell the boss.

Office Space’s Peter Gibbons didn’t work overtime, and neither should you.

THINK the unemployed are letting their brains atrophy?

Well you might be in for a shock. A new study has found that working overtime can hamper your brain’s function more than not working at all.

Research by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research has found that workers who put in more than 60 hours a week are cognitively impaired by their extreme workloads.

The optimum number of hours to work in order to keep the synapses firing, the researchers found, was 25 hours.

Up to this point, the effect of work on the brain was positive, sparking it to life. But it’s all downhill from there.

So if you’re working more than three days a week, you may want to start going home early on a regular basis — and tell your boss it will be worth it thanks to the increased productivity you’ll be able to achieve.

Researchers Colin McKenzie, an economics professor at Keio University in Japan, told Fairfax Media he was surprised by how clear-cut the results were, and said Australians were working far too many hours.

Working too hard could make you dumber than the slackers in Kevin Smith’s 1994 cult film Clerks.

“For cognitive functioning, working far too much is worse than not working at all,” Professor McKenzie told Fairfax Media.

“In the beginning work stimulates the brain cells. The stress associated with work physically and psychologically kicks in at some point and that affects the gains you get from working.”

As a nation, we are known for our strong work ethic and long hours, with official figures showing that about 8.2 million Australians work fulltime and 3.8 million work part-time.

The Melbourne Institute study examined 6500 Australian workers aged 40 and over, testing them on their working memory, linguistic skills, concentration and information processing speed, and cross-referencing the results with data on their working hours.

For every hour worked beyond the optimum 25, there was a steady decline in cognitive function.

Men and women showed the same results in the study.

The study authors noted that their results may impact on the “use it or lose it” theory, which posits that older people suffer a mental decline after retirement if they do not keep their brains active.

“These results suggest that people in old age could maintain their cognitive ability by working in a part-time job that requires them to work around 20—30 hours per week,” the study said.