I reckon it’s precisely the average employee’s laziness - the reluctance to engage in physical or mental activity - that lends credibility to the argument for the six-hour working day. This isn’t a lazy argument, but a lazy man’s argument. And I am that lazy man.

So to make the argument for the six-hour workday, I’ll use myself as a prototype. After all, I’m a rather typical employee: hard working at the start of the day, incredibly lazy towards the end. I’ll therefore play the part of homo economicus What's this? What's this? - the economic actor.

Three years ago, I was a lonely post boy. At the beginning of my shift, I hauled vast sacks of mail up four flights of stairs. For the next few hours, I sifted through thousands of letters and sorted them into piles. After lunch, I printed labels for couriers and used a franking machine to categorise the letters into first and second class. By the seventh hour, I was losing the will to live, so I double-checked random items that probably didn’t need double-checking and triple-checked items that definitely didn’t need triple-checking.

My final (eighth) hour was what I referred to as ‘me-time’. I was too tired to maintain high or even medium levels of productivity, so I just dossed around. I tend to keep this information from future employers.

Explainer Marginal analysis A way to measure the additional benefits of an activity compared to the additional costs of the same activity. Companies use this to help them maximize their profits.

Economists could measure my levels of productivity using what they call marginal analysis. At the start of the day - when I was a productive, but still lonely post boy - the marginal benefit of my employment was high. As the day rolled on, I grew tired and lazy: I sent out fewer parcels, triple-checked unnecessary items, embraced ‘me-time’, which saw my marginal benefit decrease, as my utility fell. The marginal cost at the beginning of the day was low, but increased as the day went on, as I’m apparently not just a lazy worker but an exponentially lazy worker. Again, this is not how I describe myself to potential employers.