Math and mental fatigue [closed]

Solution 1:

I recently read an article on the 40 hour work week and I think it is somewhat related. The basic idea of it was that in the mid 20th century, they had a 40 hour work week and they had lots of research on it showing that it was optimal in many ways. That is, if you increased your work week from 40 hours to 60 hours, you wouldn't gain 50% extra productivity. You would gain 20-30% extra productivity. But, this is only over the short run.

Once you work 8 weeks of 60 hour work weeks, you end up breaking even. That is, over that period, you would have gotten the same amount of work done if you had just worked 40 hours every week. If you do 80 hour weeks, it only takes about 2 or 3 weeks for you to break even and start doing less than if you had just worked 40 hour weeks the whole time.

And, the article mentioned that with jobs that take a lot of mental work, e.g., doing complicated mathematics, in fact you had even less than 40 hours of productive work per week.

So, do some mathematics. When you get tired and fatigued mentally, go do something else for a while. Then, come back. Getting enough exercise and sleep, eating healthy, and having fun activities you do is important. That is part of the reason the 40 hour work week is good. Once you start doing too much work, you lose out on all those other important things that help you function normally.

Solution 2:

This question partially belongs to the sister SE site: productivity.SE

To fight the mental fatigue the following things will help:

• doing physical exercises, as they improve oxygen supply to the brain (e.g. walking, working out, etc)
• getting enough sleep
• keeping a healthy diet

Essentially of all the above is to condition the brain to be in the best working order.