A small but impassioned group of psychologists and business academics have begun to make a plea for changing the daily working routine — away from the ethics of the nerds and geeks of Silicon Valley and toward common industrial sense. "Bring back the 40 hour working week" is the way that one summarizes it.

In an emotionally charged article on AlterNet, Sara Robinson claims, "The single, easiest, fastest thing your company can do to boost its output and profits — starting right now, today — is to get everybody off the 55-hour a week treadmill and back onto a 40-hour (working week) footing."

She has also got academic backing. professor Teresa Amabile, the Edsel Bryant Ford professor of business administration at Harvard Business School and a director of research there, also compares modern working life to a treadmill and says that good managers must do more to take their workers off it to release their energy and innovation.