“Working eight to ten hours is a combination of luck and years of habit.”

On November 11, 1917, the Council of People’s Commissars of the RSFSR adopted a decree on the introduction of an eight-hour working day. Kommersant asked the newsmakers how many hours a day they work.

Evgeny Yamburg, Academician of the Russian Academy of Education, Honored Teacher of the Russian Federation:

– 20 hours, sometimes 15. I am a workaholic, rejoicing in my mission and the fact that a lot is achieved. I lead a huge holding, where different children study: both sick and healthy. I have 60 branches of clinical schools for sick children with terminal diagnoses, where they learn and defeat terrible diseases. All this takes time from morning to night.

And at night I write books, articles, scripts for performances for children. I get four hours of sleep, the rest of the time is work. Same on Saturday and Sunday. It is known that laziness is the mother of creativity, so I am too lazy to work 20 hours on weekends, only 15.

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Tinatin Kandelaki, Deputy General Director of Gazprom-Media Holding:

– I work 24/7, at 23:00-23:30 I have a lights out – while I sleep, the brain processes information, and at 7:00-7:30 I get up with ready-made solutions and new ideas. I love to work, and for me, like in Swahili, the phrases sound: “I’m counting the days until the weekend”, “I hate Mondays”, “I’d rather go on vacation”, “I’ll go drink coffee so that six in the evening comes faster”. I don’t go anywhere, except for work and a beautician, I go in for sports at home, almost without interruption from work.

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Evgeny Grebnev, General Director of the Moscow Processed Cheese Factory “Karat”:

“Work is a pleasure, and, as the French saying goes, “when you love, you don’t count.” But maybe eight or ten hours. Although often communication with colleagues is so addictive that you don’t notice how time flies. This is more about creative blocks, development of production and sales.

With the financial block and logistics, everything is more regulated. With regard to employees, we also comply with the principle of work and life balance. The schedule complies with labor legislation and the production calendar.

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Evgeny Pisarev, artistic director of the Pushkin Moscow Drama Theatre:

– The working day begins from the moment of awakening and ends late at night. Rehearsals and preparation for them take place everywhere, not only on the stage. The theater is a constant Brownian movement. Of course, there are labor standards – the trade union monitors this. The administrative part has a regular working day, there is a schedule of rehearsals, a schedule of performances. But the work of the creative part is not calculated in hours. In creativity, nothing would have happened if we had not devoted our whole lives to it.

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Evgeny Vodolazkin, writer:

– Now I write every day for 10-12 hours, as with age I began to recover in 4-5 hours. It’s amazing – I used to love to sleep a lot! At the same time, I continue to work as a researcher in the Department of Old Russian Literature of the Pushkin House and as a “reader” on the jury of the Yasnaya Polyana Literary Prize.

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Alexander Manenok, CEO of Ascona Group of Companies:

– I try to adhere to the rule: “Work not 24 hours, but with your head.” Of course, today we work more than eight hours – not only during official hours, but also on the go: checking reports at breakfast, going to Zoom on the road, etc.

I love my job and see nothing wrong with it. The main thing is not to become a fan, continue to pay attention to loved ones, sports, hobbies. When we develop business in the regions, colleagues who are sent, for example, to Novosibirsk, at first call us at five in the morning, because they already have nine. But you will definitely answer, because at such an early hour they will not just call.

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Nikolai Pryanishnikov, CEO of the network of fitness clubs World Class:

– 9-12 hours a day. Three thousand hours that, according to my calculations, businessmen, any responsible people approximately spend a year on work, I try to organize efficiently: less traffic jams, focus on discussing the important at meetings with a preliminary discussion of the agenda, clearly plan, work from anywhere with the help of modern technology, etc. But at the same time I try to ensure the interests of the family (I have six children), sports, and hobbies.

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Yuri Kanner, President of the Russian Jewish Congress:

– As much as needs. This is for hire eight hours of work, and for yourself – as it turns out. In Soviet times, I worked on a collective farm, where everyone knew about the spring, summer and autumn days, which then feed for a year. There was also a mobile week, that is, it was done in such a way that all collective farmers of all religions worked even on those days when it was impossible for them to work. My grandmother told my grandfather that you can’t milk a cow on Saturday, and he answered that she milks her all week, and he only has Saturday for his beloved cow.

I am currently learning English and Hebrew. It’s not work, but it’s not vacation either. In general, what is considered work. The old general asked the young adjutant: is sex work or pleasure? He replied that pleasure – if sex were work, then you would instruct us to perform it.

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Oleg Kachalov, General Director of Monocrystal JSC:

— From 10 to 12 hours. And on Saturdays. And I don’t work on Sunday. These hours are enough for me to solve almost all current issues. The rest of the time I spend on other things, including personal ones. I’ve been doing this for ten years now. Having become the director of the plant, he did not force anyone to fit his schedule. Some employees work in the same mode, others work according to a different schedule.

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Gleb Arkhangelsky, General Director of TM-invest LLC, expert in the field of time management:

– I do not spare time for work and do not seek to artificially limit it. Ten hours is my norm. The background creative work, when you wake up in the middle of the night or stop for a walk to write down thoughts for a new book, is not particularly amenable to accounting.

At the same time, eight hours of business training and eight hours of office work are very different energy costs. I try not to skimp on sleep, strictly adhere to the prescribed eight hours and be sure to spend one day a week of a full Internet Shabbat – without gadgets, the Internet, or a phone.

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Victoria Krieger screenwriter, director:

– Working eight to ten hours is a combination of luck and a long-term habit, developed while still studying at GITIS, when we started at 9 in the morning and finished well if at 22. And on tours we work for 14 hours. Now I put on a maximum of two performances at the same time, and before there were three or four. And every day I teach acting and rehearse with students at GITIS, at the College of the Academy of Russian Theater and at the Igor Matvienko Music Academy.

Group “Direct speech”