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Three-day working week 'optimal for over-40s'

• 18 April 2016
 
• From the sectionBBC Business

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Workers aged over 40 perform at their best if they work three days a week, according to economic researchers.

Their research analysed the work habits and brain test results of about 3,000 men and 3,500 women aged over 40 in Australia.

Their calculations suggest a part-time job keeps the brain stimulated, while avoiding exhaustion and stress.

The researchers said this needed to be taken into consideration as many countries raise their retirement age.

Double-edged sword

Data for the study was drawn from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia survey, which is conducted by the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economics and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.

It looks at people's economic and subjective well-being, family structures, and employment.

Those taking part were asked to read words aloud, to recite lists of numbers backwards and to match letters and numbers under time pressure.

In general terms, those participants who worked about 25 hours a week tended to achieve the best scores.

"Work can be a double-edged sword, in that it can stimulate brain activity, but at the same time, long working hours and certain types of tasks can cause fatigue and stress which potentially damage cognitive functions," the report said.

Colin McKenzie, professor of economics at Keio University who took part in the research, said it would appear that working extremely long hours was more damaging than not working at all on brain function.

The figures suggest that the cognitive ability of those working about 60 hours a week can be lower than those who are not employed.

However, Geraint Johnes, professor of economics at Lancaster University Management School, said: "The research looks only at over-40s, and so cannot make the claim that over-40s are different from any other workers.

"What the authors find is that cognitive functioning improves up to the point at which workers work 25 hours a week and declines thereafter."

He added: "Actually, at first the decline is very marginal, and there is not much of an effect as working hours rise to 35 hours per week. Beyond 40 hours per week, the decline is much more rapid."

Why life is just one big confidence trick

Matthew Stadlen in The Telegraph


It was supposed to be an event targeted at young people and I’m not that young any more; it was meant to be a campaign designed to build confidence and I don’t see myself as the timid type; and anyway, I was there to interview World and Olympic Champion Jessica Ennis-Hill, not for an education in self-help. Yet I left Sky Studios the other day profoundly influenced by a single sentence.

Find something you love and then stick to it.

These words emerged from the mouth of Melvyn Bragg, the enduring broadcaster who has reached the very top of his profession. They amounted to Lord Bragg’s recipe for confidence. He was speaking on a panel put together by Sky Academy, a bursary scheme that supports emerging talent in the worlds of sport and the arts. His advice immediately lodged somewhere deep inside me, partly perhaps because Bragg is a luminary in my own field, partly perhaps because I’ve enjoyed meeting and interviewing him in the past. Its real impact, though, stems from its essential truth. If you love something, you’re more likely to be confident at it and therefore to succeed.

Despite my self-assurance, bred in me by my privileged schooling, my parents and a childhood environment in which I was surrounded by successful role-models, I do sometimes doubt my career trajectory. The life of the self-employed can provoke uncomfortable journeys into dark corners of the mind where confidence seems a distant relative. But Bragg reminded me that I do love what I do and that there is a very strong argument for sticking at it. There are echoes of a line from Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist in Bragg’s philosophy: “Remember that wherever your heart is, there you will find your treasure.”

Of course, Bragg’s winning cocktail must include a decent dose of natural ability if it’s to translate into success. Simply loving something isn’t enough, you have to have some talent or aptitude too. It's a maxim that England’s rugby players must now know only too well. They no doubt love what they do (much of the time) and they are talented; but not talented enough, it turns out.

There were plenty of confident noises emanating from in and around the England camp last week ahead of the do-or-die match against Australia. Ben Morgan, one of the 18-stone forwards, threatened to expose the Wallabies’ infamous insecurities in the scrum; Danny Cipriani, the talented back excluded from England’s tournament squad, claimed that not a single Australian would get into the England team. In the event, England crashed out of their own World Cup, the English pack was humiliated in retreat and it was hard to see how more than one or two Englishmen would make it into the Australian team.

Stuart Lancaster's England appeared to suffer a crisis of confidence during their World Cup games Photo: REUTERS

So much for English confidence. But then again, maybe they were faking it. I was in the stands to watch their disintegration, part physical, part mental, in the final excruciating minutes against Wales the week before. Could every England player really have been that sure of themselves after such a bruising defeat, facing an Australian team fresh from winning the southern hemisphere’s coveted Rugby Championship? Perhaps. Or maybe self-doubt had crept in but they decided to subscribe to the Davina McCall blueprint for confidence.

The former Big Brother host, was, together with Ennis-Hill, Mumsnet founder Justine Roberts and YouTube personality Alfie Deyes, on the same panel as Bragg. McCall is not an obvious candidate for self-doubt, but speaking with impressive candidness, she talked about her own teenage issues with a chronic lack of confidence. Her remedy was to act as if she really were confident. Fake it, she advised. If you’re not confident, teach yourself to project confidence instead and eventually you might end up believing it.

Fake it to make it: Davina McCall admits to suffering from low confidence as a teenager Photo: Andrew Crowley

Mahatma Gandhi seemed to be saying something similar when he reflected, “Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”

Roger Uttley, a former England rugby coach, offered advice to the incumbent, Stuart Lancaster, via an interview with The Telegraph between the Wales and Australia games. “You have got to get over things quickly,” he said. “Stuart has to look the part in terms of his body language. It is tough to do that but important. Players feed off it.” Lancaster did put on a brave face, but he had already admitted to being “absolutely devastated” following the loss to Wales. Hardly the sort of message to be sending down from on high. The scoreline worsened against Australia and this time Lancaster was “absolutely gutted.”

Just how critical confidence is in sport had already been spelt out in an ITV interview given by Warren Gatland ahead of his side’s thrilling victory over the English. England have more money, more fans, more players – yet still Wales won. “When are you at your best?” Gatland was asked. “When I'm under a bit of pressure. It's always been my biggest challenge often with the Welsh players to keep building on that confidence and that self-belief that they are good enough to compete with the best teams in the world and they're good enough to go out there and win.”

Gatland was then asked what was the one quality he had as a player that has never left him. “Self-belief,” came the reply. Together with greater skill and fitness, what Wales demonstrated in those final frantic minutes was a core belief that they could still win a game that seemed lost at half-time. The players aped the confidence of their coach.

In the eye of the storm: Wales coach Warren Gatland Photo: AFP

During the recent Ashes summer, Sky Sports ran a series of programmes profiling some of cricket’s greatest stars of the past. Listening to Glenn McGrath speak about his record-breaking career, it was immediately obvious how pivotal self-belief was to his success. Just like the Welsh rugby team, confidence was welded onto ability, in his case onto his metronomic accuracy with the ball.

“The biggest battle I ever had when I was bowling out in the middle was with myself,’ he said. “And if I won that battle the rest was pretty easy. It's about having a bit of mongrel in you. You've got to be aggressive.” His two main strengths, he said, were that accuracy and a little bit of bounce. Then he added: “And just self-belief.” Interviewed for the same profile, McGrath’s former new ball partner, Jason Gillespie, reflected: “I don't think anyone came close to believing in their own ability as much as Glenn McGrath.”

Confidence is essential in politics too. It’s something that David Cameron projects so effectively that it is rarely, if ever, questioned in profiles of the Prime Minister. Despite his pledge to end “Punch and Judy politics" when he became leader, he has often been forthright and confrontational at the despatch box and exudes an air of watertight self-confidence that borders on a sense of entitlement. To what extent this is contrived, we don’t know, but much of it may have its roots in an elite public school education at Eton.

Wherever Cameron’s confidence comes from, it now stands in stark contrast to the hesitancy of Jeremy Corbyn. Maybe the Labour leader’s indecisiveness in interviews can be spun as the supreme confidence of a man with a mandate from his party’s grass roots not to play by the long established rules of Westminster politics. Up goes the cry: 'It’s the new politics!' But, if he continues to dither, he will continue to be cast by others as un-Prime Ministerial and as an uncertain figurehead.

Margaret Thatcher came across as even more self-assured than Cameron (and she was a state-educated grocer’s daughter). No one could claim that confidence is a male preserve. But it is, perhaps, worth asking whether gender sometimes plays a role. If you haven’t heard of impostor syndrome, it’s a phenomenon thought to be particularly prevalent among high-achieving women. It is, essentially, a conviction that success, however merited, is actually undeserved.

There is also that feeling of guilt so common, we’re told, among new mothers. In my interview with Ennis-Hill, she explained how anxious she’d been ahead of this summer’s World Championships in Beijing. When training wasn’t going so well, she imagined how she’d feel if she didn’t perform as she hoped. “I would have been away from my son for two weeks and I would have been absolutely devastated because I would be so mad with myself for being away. As a mum as well you feel guilty about everything, so it’s definitely the hardest thing I’ve ever, ever done,” she told me. How many men would have questioned themselves in this way?

Ennis-Hill spoke openly about one of the more challenging consequences of childbirth. “Your confidence does [take a] knock,” she said. “I was thinking, 'Oh gosh, I’ve got to train now as well and fit all this in. You’re up through the night and that has an impact on how you feel about everything and whether you can do it, and your self-belief. Everything’s a million times worse when you’re tired.” In a changing world, men also travel emotional postnatal journeys and undoubtedly suffer from sleep deprivation too. But they certainly aren’t forced to battle through changes to body shape.

And then there’s the question of why there are so many more prominent male comedians. Earlier this year, I asked Jason Manford for his explanation in an interview for the Radio Times. “Audiences on a Friday, Saturday night are a bit rowdy and I always think stand-up is a bit like flirting,” he said. “So when a bloke comes out and he does his thing, he’s making people laugh, this is what you do when you’re flirting one on one.

“So it’s harder for females sometimes to come on and be on the forefront because that’s not what we’re used to in our societal rules. It’s a bloke who’s on the forefront and generally the woman’s passive. For a female to be aggressive is not what we’re used to. So I think female comics generally have to work harder because of an audience’s preconceptions.”

Handling rejection, Manford believed, is another factor. “Blokes are more used to rejection. Generally it’s a bloke who asks a girl out. I’m stereotyping but that’s what we do. And I’ve noticed it on the circuit. A girl will come off stage, she’s had a bad gig, and she’ll go, ‘I must have said something wrong.’

“A guy will come offstage and he’ll go, ‘Maybe the sound was off’ or, ‘It was definitely the audience’. He’ll find an external reason for his failure."

Whether or not there’s something in Manford’s analysis, we still live in a society where – last time I checked anyway – the onus is more frequently on the man to chat up a woman. That involves confidence. Peacocking isn’t a ritual confined to the animal kingdom.

There’s no doubt that confidence is an attractive quality in both men and women. It can transform appearances and draw in admirers who would otherwise walk on by. It can also be, as we’ve seen, a pivotal ingredient in successful careers. But overconfidence not only becomes unappealing, it can mutate into arrogance, pride and, ultimately, a fall.

The ancient Greeks knew about nemesis following hubris thousands of years ago and I’ve always thought Piers Morgan’s Twitter profile is brilliantly clever. He is one of the most confident men on social media, but he’s carved an indemnity clause into his online presence with a simple, biographical bon mot: “One day you’re the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.”

Do nasty guys finish first?

Michael Jeh in Cricinfo

 

Surliness wouldn't change the scoreline for Clarke, would it?  © Getty Images

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I wonder which Michael Clarke we'll see at The Oval. If he's been reading any of the press from both sides of the world, he might be confused as to which persona to adopt as Australia try hard to avoid a 4-0 scoreline that won't really do justice to their fighting spirit and to his excellent leadership under duress.

Wayne Smith, writing in the Australian, was eloquent and informed in his analysis of Clarke's captaincy. Most good judges of cricket have applauded his attacking instincts in the field, clever bowling changes and innovative field placements. At the end of the day, though, two relatively evenly matched teams have contrived to produce a scoreline that reads 3-0, despite Clarke's captaincy, not because of it. The difference has been that when Australia have played poorly, they have done so badly enough to virtually surrender a game in a session. England's poor patches have been limited by some effective damage control to the extent where they haven't allowed the slide to become terminal. They have shown a bit more resolve in not allowing a mini-collapse or wayward bowling to spiral to the point where the game is irretrievable from that point on. 

The Times' Alan Lee took a different tack in his post-match analysis after the fourth Test. His view was that Clarke (and by association, Australia) needed to cultivate more mongrel and stop being such a "nice guy". The basic tenet of his piece was that Clarke was smiling too much and was not putting on enough of the Mr Nasty act. Clarke's apparent cheerfulness, perceived by many as a sign of dignity and good grace, was now being written up as possibly a reason why those Tests were compromised. Lee cited Ian Chappell's truculence and Allan Border's grumpiness as prime examples of Australian captains who were successful because they were curmudgeonly.

In my opinion this sort of simplistic analysis misses a few obvious truths that have everything to do with cricketing ability and very little to do with boorishness. The winning and losing of Test matches (any sporting contest for that matter) is primarily down to the superior ability of one team/individual in comparison to their opponents. Occasionally luck, weather, key injuries and umpiring decisions can change that destiny, but in the main it's usually down to who has the better cattle on the day. In this Ashes series, England started as deserved favourites and despite Australia's admirable tenacity (at times), the results have echoed that slight edge in the quality of the cricketers. No amount of cussing and frowning would necessarily have changed that.

Even the Chappell brothers, Rod Marsh and Dennis Lillee, renowned for being gristly opponents, couldn't do much when their teams were regularly overwhelmed by the West Indies of the late 1970s and early 1980s, including in World Series Cricket. That period was described by many as the emergence of the Ugly Australian (in a cricketing sense) as the history books portrayed them (although I was too young myself to tell if that tag was warranted or not), but that counted for very little when those fearsome West Indian fast bowlers were at their throats or when Viv Richards, Clive Lloyd, Gordon Greenidge et al were collaring formidable bowling attacks spearheaded by the Lillee Thomson and Pascoe. I can't see how being any nastier could have won them any more games. More runs and wickets might have helped, and that's what it boils down to.

Likewise Border. His prolific run-scoring feats, much of them accomplished with his back to the wall, was a function of his immense mental strength and no little amount of pure skill. Some of those brave innings against the likes of Michael Holding, Joel Garner and Malcolm Marshall were because he was supremely talented as a batsman, not because of the so-called Captain Grumpy tablets. Being grumpy didn't do much to change Australia's success in the early years of his captaincy. It was only in 1989, when Mark Taylor, Geoff Marsh, Steve Waugh and Terry Alderman all clicked together that he won back the Ashes. He was probably just as cantankerous in 1986-87 and fat lot of good that did him when Fat Gatt's tourists took Australia to the cleaners on the back of Chris Broad's purple patch.

I've been watching bits of the Caribbean Premier League recently and Kieron Pollard's ridiculous on-field antics are a prime case in point. In two recent matches, he has deliberately instigated aggro with two of his West Indian team-mates (Lendl Simmons and Marlon Samuels) to the point where it is clear that his infractions with other players over the years cannot be written off as temporary moments of poor manners. Yet, in both those CPL games, he was comprehensively clean-bowled for nought. So much for the theory that aggressive behaviour drives superior performance. All the trash-talking and sledging that he initiated could not change the fact that on those two occasions, despite being Captain Obnoxious, his team lost both games, and his sum contribution was zero from three balls. His team did not benefit from that style of captaincy but they might have appreciated some runs and wickets instead.

If you look back to the deliveries that Clarke received in the first innings at Trent Bridge and the second innings in Durham, it wouldn't have mattered if he was the grumpiest bloke on the planet or not - those balls were almost unplayable. Well, actually, they were unplayable. Stuart Broad's mojo moments in Durhamwere out of Clarke's control. An impersonation of Chappelli or AB at their curmudgeonly best could not have altered that. Great bowling, some indifferent shots, and one team playing better than the other - that's what decides Test matches, not some rubbish theories about standing at first slip and smiling too much. It's an insult to these guys, hardened professional cricketers who are giving 100% at all times, to suggest that it's as easy as turning on the "nasty tap" and winning becomes a whole lot easier.

Cricketers are made different. Andre Nel looked like he might have been born snarling at the midwife, and that's the way he played his cricket too. His behaviour rarely changed, even when Ricky Ponting was giving him a touch-upat the SCG in 2006. He went for 6.5 runs per over in the second innings but never changed his abrasive manner. If it was as easy as just getting angrier or nastier to get wickets, why wasn't he a world-beater?

I'm mates with Gladstone Small and you couldn't meet a nicer bloke if you walked to the ends of the earth. Both Small and Nel averaged about 33 with the ball in Test cricket (Small's batting average was six runs higher) and you couldn't think of two blokes with similar records who could be any more different in terms of bile and invective hurled at batsmen. So what does that prove about the connection between success and savage intent?

The funny thing about even those players who swear (literally) by their tactic of being deliberately obnoxious as a strategy is that if you ask them if they have ever been put off by someone acting aggressively towards them, they laugh it off disdainfully. It's as if they truly believe that only their sledging, only their body language and only their dark moods, have the power to put others off their game. They don't admit to being affected by such things themselves. Talk about living in fool's paradise. Try sledging Jacques Kallis and see if that works - the guy bats as if he is hypnotised.

You can't manufacture nastiness where it doesn't exist. Clarke's just not one of those personality types. Simply getting him to stop smiling ruefully and keeping life in perspective ain't gonna change a thing. When this team gets a bit more experience and has a bit of luck, he might win a game or two. I sincerely doubt if, as Mr Lee puts it, "he stopped smiling and developed some nastiness" whether that would make the slightest difference. Until he has a winning team at his disposal, his options are limited, so he may as well show some grace under fire without fear of being labelled soft by any of his more hard-bitten predecessors. As Lee concedes, "He has led his vanquished men with dignity and inventiveness." That's not something to be ashamed of.

After school tutors priced out the grasp of middle class parents

Middle class parents who want to prepare their children for school entrance tests face being priced out of the market by the super-wealthy who are willing to do "almost anything" to secure the best tutors.

Wealthy families from overseas are offering the best-qualified British tutors up to £80,000 a year as well as housing in order to coach them for the Common Entrance exam and guide them through GCSEs and A-levels.

Competition for the services of the best tutors has seen one family offer a prospective tutor an internship at an exclusive art gallery in Mayfair. The family wish their children, age 7 and 10, to gain places at Eton, Harrow or St Pauls.

So-called 'super-tutors' with track records of getting children into the best schools are able to command ever-increasing salaries from parents from Russia, Eastern Europe and Asia. Many foreign tycoons settle in London in part because of the reputation of Britain's independent schools.

As a result, middle-class parents face being priced out the market by those for whom cost is "not an issue", according to tutoring firms.

The cost for an average tutor has doubled in four years to around £40 an hour, but those who can guarantee results can charge many times more. 

The Common Entrance exam is at the age of 13 for pupils applying to many leading independent schools. It is routinely taught at prep schools but not in the state sector. Growing competition for places means some schools now demand a result of 70 per cent in every paper.

"There’s been a demographic shift," said Nevil Chiles, who founded Kensington & Chelsea Tutors a decade a go.

"A lot of money has come in from Eastern Europe and Russia. These parents are prepared to do almost anything to get the best, and the cost is not really an issue for them.”

“We get people who have heard of tutors from their friends. They’ll phone us and say: ‘I know this person works for you, we want that person and we’re prepared to pay for that’.”

Salaries of more than £50,000 a year are now commonplace for tutors working in Britain, rising to £80,000 for a top-class tutor willing to work abroad, according to Woody St John Webster, co-founder of tuition agency Bright Young Things. They can expect to receive housing and food on top of their salaries.

Asked whether middle-class families who want their children to have extra help risk being priced out of the market, he said: "Yes. That’s partly because the best teachers are so in demand their price keeps on going up and up and up."

He said the best tutors cost this much "for good reason".

“These are very important people in their lives so you’ve got to get it right and if they [the parents] get it right, the up-side is enormous.

"If you want a top graduate, who’s very energetic, knows their subject backwards and can teach it very well, then you've got to pay. These people are treated like a top-class butler. "

He added that Bright Young Things has a range of tutor options for parents, depending on ability and experience.

One recent Bright Young Things advert asked for a tutor willing to travel between Greece, Switzerland and a yacht in the Mediterranean to teach a pair of three-year old twins. The job offers an annual salary of £40-50,000.

In another, a family from Moscow offered £40,000 a year, an apartment and travel ‘in very smart style’ to an Oxbridge graduate who could provide ‘intellectual stimulation’ to a six-year old boy.

“The work is not too taxing, it mostly involves playing with the boy and doing some basic English work,” the advert says.

Another advert for a family in England calls for an after-school tutor who can coach for the Common Entrance exam and ‘get involved in extra curricular activities such as music, sport and games’. It pays £50,000 a year, plus full board.

Parents spend £6bn a year on private tuition and more than a quarter of families are using tutors to boost their children’s education, according to the survey conducted by EdPlace, which provides educational resources for parents.

Are Footballers cleverer than PhD students? Think again

Ability is dictated by what we need to succeed. A chimp would fare better than me in a jungle – that doesn't make it smarter

• Dean Burnett
• guardian.co.uk, Friday 1 February 2013 17.12 GMT

'How can a test accurately measure something when there is no certainty as to what is being measured?' Photograph: Nick Potts/PA

A recent study has shown that footballers can perform better than PhD students on certain cognitive tasks. This is being interpreted in the mainstream media as evidence that footballers are smarter than PhD students. While this is something of a considerable extrapolation, it is a perfect example of how our views and ideas about what counts as "intelligence" are a lot more flexible than most would think.

Scientifically, there is no real consensus per se on what intelligence can be accurately defined as. IQ tests may seem like an obvious way to assess intelligence, but in psychology their use remains controversial. How can a test accurately measure something when there is no certainty as to what is being measured? When you've got demonstrating that intelligence is dependent on working memory capacity, or arguing whether it's supported by singular or multiple processes, you need to be reasonably intelligent to keep up with the varying theories about what that even means.

Intelligence is also strongly influenced by culture. What's considered smart in one culture could well be considered foolish in another. We are all guilty of this bias to some extent. In the UK, a detailed knowledge of science is considered intelligent by many, whereas a detailed knowledge of football usually isn't. But there's nothing to say someone's football knowledge isn't just as or more complex and diverse than someone's knowledge of science. But football is everywhere, you don't need a degree to know about it, children play it all the time – so an in-depth knowledge of it is, perhaps unfairly, not considered an achievement.

Of course, knowing a lot of detailed information about something is only part of intelligence. It's also important to consider how this information is used. This division is referred to by some as crystallised and fluid intelligence, or information you retain and your ability to use it, respectively. Think of it like a computer: you've got your hard drive (data storage) and your processor (data usage); you need both to create a truly useful device.

This is reflected in changes to the structure of the brain, as the brain adapts and dedicates more resources to this constantly occurring demand. Therefore, it shouldn't be surprising that professional footballers would be better at certain mental abilities than non-footballers.

Whatever you think of the sport, a professional football match is undoubtedly a challenging context to be in. With so many variables to consider in a constantly changing scenario, it would be hard enough to keep on top of without thousands of people screaming at you for various reasons. Footballers have to be able to do this if they wish to get to the top of their field, so of course they'd perform better in tests that assess rapid thinking, attention and any other ability that isn't so crucial for other disciplines.

Footballers are stereotyped as being a bit thick, based on their unrefined behaviour and lack of social/cultural awareness. But these things haven't exactly held them back, so why would they have learned otherwise? Our abilities and skills are largely dictated by what we need to do in order to succeed. A chimpanzee would be far better equipped than I to survive in the jungle and would undoubtedly perform better than me in tests that assessed this. Still, I wouldn't let one fill in my tax return.

Perhaps intelligence is the wrong term to use, perhaps it would be fairer to say footballers and PhD students have differing mental abilities. But which of these abilities is considered "intelligent" seems to be a lot more subjective than most people realise.