Best work schedule and why?

[vampiresoap]

So I almost always just let the colonist do anything they like...what's the harm in that? ;P

[giannikampa]

Agree. Only night owls gets forced day sleep in my games

[quilzas]

I had one colony where I had lots and lots of brawls. Eventually I staggered the sleep schedules. The handful of pawns everyone got into fights with had to go to bed early, while everyone else stayed up late and slept in. The off-set schedules of the two groups cut down on the fighting quite well.

[Modo44]

If you don't set a joy/work schedule of some sort, pawns will take breaks whenever, which may not be optimal to keep their mood stable. If you don't match the day/night shift joy activities, certain pawns won't socialize much. Pawns that have no "work" scheduled will sleep off their injuries until they are fully healed, which is inefficient in case of light wounds.

[NinjaDiscoJew]

Usually have 3 hours of work, to force pawns to work, with an hour of joy in the middle of the day to boost mood.

[KillTyrant]

I usually use the night shift to train up the back-up pawns. I also usually have the night hand side filled with haulers and cleaners. Typically I have about 6-8 hours of sleep (depends on quality of beds) followed by 2 hours of joy, 13 hours of work than 1 hour of joy. Depending on the quality of your rec room and items you may need to make the initial joy time 3 to 4 hours to make sure they arent joy-deprived doing jobs they dont like. However, if you have a crafter that has a passion for it, and you have them crafting all the time, you can get away with 1 or 0 joy hours as they will get joy from doing their work. This is a high level of micromanagement though and if they somehow complete their work orders or the power goes out and they cant work. You may have an unhappy pawn. 

[O Negative]

I keep pawns that don't get along on different sleep schedules, as it tends to reduce conflict within the colony.

As for work, I almost always schedule them at least 6 hours of steady work time starting 2-3 hours after they wake up. Gives them a bit of time to wake up and take care of their needs. This also ensures that a decent amount of work gets done in the colony without any distractions/delays. I'm not a fan of the "one hour work break" in the middle, because once the work period begins again they have to sort of "commute" back to whatever they were working on. This reduces efficiency drastically, and I avoid it when I can. Controlling when pawns take care of their needs in this way is an underutilized tool, I feel like.

Anyways, I hope that helps!

[vampiresoap]

I keep pawns that don't get along on different sleep schedules, as it tends to reduce conflict within the colony.

As for work, I almost always schedule them at least 6 hours of steady work time starting 2-3 hours after they wake up. Gives them a bit of time to wake up and take care of their needs. This also ensures that a decent amount of work gets done in the colony without any distractions/delays. I'm not a fan of the "one hour work break" in the middle, because once the work period begins again they have to sort of "commute" back to whatever they were working on. This reduces efficiency drastically, and I avoid it when I can. Controlling when pawns take care of their needs in this way is an underutilized tool, I feel like.

Anyways, I hope that helps!

Oh thanks guys, that makes a lot of sense!!

[SURU]

Good thing after sleep is give them joy time for mood boost, and like N Negative wrote - no one hour work breaks. Force sleep 10PM and force joy 6AM for m e.

[Listen1]

When my colony is big enough, I usually use schedules to make my workers in the same task working on different schedules. Like cooking, depending on the colony I have 4 cooks, two work during the day, two during the night.

I also have a night janitor that keeps the whole base clean. It's a night owl incapable of skilled labor. It's really handy. (I also use a area to avoid him entering sleeping pawns rooms.)

[zztong]

I've used three shifts to keep the Research Bench busy 24x7.
I've used a night shift to surge through the production of things like food or stone blocks.
I've put an entire colony on the night shift to avoid desert heat during the day.

I like KillTyrant's idea of using the night shift to train backup pawns.

[Limdood]

I use a more strict schedule:
7 sleep, 1 any, 1 joy, 5 work, 2 joy, 6 work, 1 joy, 1 any

The bonus is that they get a lot of work done and mood is consistently high - as long as there are joy sources near work locations (horseshoe pins and tables w/chairs).  The "any" on each side of sleep means that they can catch up on missed sleep, or start working early.

The downside is that a large threat in the middle of the sleep schedule, or otherwise interfering with sleep requires a couple days to get the moods back on track, or a schedule adjustment, which is a pain, since there are no schedule "presets" you can quickly use.

[cultist]

The default settings work pretty well for most games. You only really need to adjust for night owls. But if you want to maximize efficiency, you'll probably want to fiddle with the sleep schedule, as very high quality beds means pawns will be rested much faster. If they are rested during their sleep schedule they will prefer joy activities, which can really slow down work in the early hours of the day, especially field work like mining, growing, hunting etc.

[Edixo]

Two hours joy every morning and evening. Rest of the day is work.

I make non-nightowls work night shift if I have too many crafters/researchers for working daytime.

Round the clock researching is pretty neat.

[Patrykq]

I haven't been playing long, so I may just suck for now, but I keep the default schedule with addition of few hours joy. If I don't add those, let's just say that my colonists aren't very happy.