It was a big victory for organized labor when we adopted the 40-hour work week.

The standard 9-to-5 workday that many people have had ever since, though, that may have been a big loss for our brains and their potential to innovate.

From KERA in Dallas, this is Think. I'm Chris Boyd. The rhythms of modern office life were largely based on ideas about efficiency,

pioneered by people looking to get maximum performance at a factory workers. But while an assembly line conveyor belt

can be set to a consistent speed and go all day, our brains don't work that way. Many of us

experience intense bursts of focus and creative energy that we can harness to do amazing things,

although our biological rhythms might mean they happen well before or long after we are sitting at the office.

And in between, we need rest, or at the very least, we need different kinds of tasks to break up the day.

Me Too Steroni is a neuroscience researcher and ophthalmic surgeon who has looked into all this.

Her book is called HyperEfficient. Optimize your brain to

transform the way you work. Me Too, welcome to think. Thank you so much for having me. It's a pleasure to

join you. I want to start by talking about how we came to associate efficiency at work more with

quantity than quality of output. How did the Frederick Taylor system become a thing in the early 20th century?

Well, in the 19th century, we were discovering all sorts of things about energy.

We were able to measure it.

We discovered the laws of thermodynamics.

And then, you know, we had this concept of, well, energy is wasted.

It's lost if we are working inefficiently.

So, you know, the idea of inefficiency became very popular.

And then you're right, Frederick Wimslow Taylor, was America's or even the world's first efficiency expert.

He went round various shops and factories in the United States.

And he looked at how things were done in these factories.

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