We don’t do our best work just before lunch, and it’s not much better afterwards

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Stagnating productivity might be blamed either on distracting hunger pangs or post-prandial doziness

is the reason wages have flatlined since 2008, leaving our pay packets £14,000 lighter than if they’d kept growing. British economists and policymakers worry about this a lot.

We are always on alert for signs of low productivity. For me, warning signs start flashing immediately after lunch. My mind slows, creativity dims and the inbox fills up. I thought this was a personal weakness. Or maybe just my soul dying slowly after another trip to Pret.reassures me that “postprandial somnolence” is real. A study in India investigated how the test scores of 4,600 students were swayed by their satiation. A lot is the answer.

This is problematic because, well, we do need to eat. Being “hangry” and needing a break brings its own troubles. Nobel prize-winning psychologist Daniel Kahneman, who died last month, helped popularisehe’d edited, showing that judges were not neutral decision-making machines of legal theory. The probability of them granting parole dropped towards zero just before lunch, before jumping back up immediately after.

Kahneman concluded that hungry judges paid less attention to detail and stuck with the “safe” option of denying parole. So being hungry isn’t great for productivity, either. What to make of this? Rather than training AI to take our jobs, why not get it to do something useful: cover the lunch shift.

 

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