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>I have an extra day for family and side projects - 1 day might not sound like much, but having that extra day off feels like my work/life balance is so much be

>I have an extra day for family and side projects - 1 day might not sound like much, but having that extra day off feels like my work/life balance is so much better! That's because you increase your free days by 50% by cutting your work days by 20%. It's not a symmetric exchange. I did the same over the summer (just by using my excess vacation days) and it was a revelation. Highly recommend, especially now that it's so hard to travel.

whichdan 6y ago
I've never thought of contextualizing 4-day work weeks that way; that's a great point.
ghaff 6y ago
I'm actually going to be working mostly 3 day weeks until mid-March (at which point I would otherwise lose my vacation). I kept holding onto it until there seemed like a good time to take it and that time never came.
kelnos 6y ago
I never thought about it that way. A few months into COVID, I started taking every other Friday off, and it's felt like a huge increase in free time. Using your metric, I've cut my work days by 10% but increased my free days by 25%, which definitely helps quantify the larger difference.
BeetleB 6y ago
Indeed. I realized some years ago that when trying to figure out how much my time is worth to scale everything with respect to the amount of discretionary free time I will have. If a new job will cut that free time by half then I expect double the pay. And then I realized there are second order effects. Double my pay actually means much more than double my savings per year as my costs are more or less fixed. So then I changed the formula to scale with respect to the amount I am saving versus the discretionary free time. Maybe a 30% raise would actually double my savings. And by discretionary free time I am subtracting time spent doing chores. I live very close to work and even getting a job that requires a 1 hour commute each way makes a huge difference in my discretionary free time and should be compensated accordingly. And then I took it one step further. I decided to take an Excel sheet and map out all the discretionary free time I think I will have for the rest of my life. And then I evaluated job offers based on which one will maximize that free time. So maybe cutting short free time right now is okay if it is more than compensated by having me retire a lot earlier. Of course then you may want to factor that free time while young is perhaps worth more than free time when your body is not that healthy. And of course you may not live long enough to retire and you do want to take that into account as well and not put all your joy off towards the end. It's a bit of a rabbit hole.
- craftinator 6y ago
  I think it's preference, do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, or bank that you'll live to an older age, and enjoy life when you're old.
  - hezag 6y ago
    I think a better question would be: "Do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, thus increasing your odds to live longer and better[1], or bet you'll live to an older age and, hopefully, enjoy life when you're old?" 1: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/how-research-shows-you-can-live-longer-if-you-retire-early.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/how-research-shows-you-can-l...
    - BeetleB 6y ago
      Or, you know, something in between. It's not an either or.
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    For me, I've found that no matter how much I've enjoyed life in the past, other than good memories, it does nothing for me in the present. I still enjoy life in the present but I do sacrifice a bit of it so I can also enjoy life when older. If you don't want to completely sacrifice today for tomorrow you simply adjust the age related weight in the Excel sheet :-)
  - Retric 6y ago
    I think it’s more complicated as a 40h/week could be around ~40% of your time during the working years of your life. Making sure working doesn’t make you unhappy for the rest of the week is a huge deal. Similarly, having more money hits serious diminishing returns. Watching a 500$ TV vs a 5,000$ TV doesn’t actually change much in the moment. Jump all the way to a 500,000$ home IMAX and watching a terrible movie still sucks.
- hnuser123456 6y ago
  Fantastic comment. I've spent some time on spreadsheets for task tracking, giving priorities, due dates, estimated completion time, and subjectively evaluating "payoff". A spreadsheet isn't the best UI for something that changes so often though, I'd like to write something better that works for me and maybe share it, or someone can share their preferred personal tracker with me.
zeroonetwothree 6y ago
You don’t spend 100% of your work days working so this is misleading.
- sodapopcan 6y ago
  True! Though on work days you do need to wind down and possibly commute. You also spend one less night possibly mentally preparing for the next work day. While not 100% of the working, work days certainly can feel overall very different in the downtime than days off.
- IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  That's true, but in terms of 'fully free' days it does apply. For example, I'd bet most people would be unwilling to smooth over their 40 hour workweek over the course of the full week of 7 days, working 5.7 hours a day. Of course that's nice in a way, but having no fully free days and perpetually working forever, is agonising. In that sense you can't just compare cutting a working day to simply having more discretionary time (which you have after workdays, too). Fully free days count a bit differently.
- studius 6y ago
  And you don't spend 100% of your days off not working. The worker interviewed in the article said, "Also being on call can be a challenge, but it's nothing that's not fixable." I understand that to mean that he's not truly working a 4-day week. He's working 4 days + on-call day(s) at times.
  - matchagaucho 6y ago
    We operate a five-nines service in a 4-day work week. That requires at least one person always being connected. But culturally, it also encourages a lot of automation, redundancy, and conservative DevOps decisions.

whichdan 6y ago

I've never thought of contextualizing 4-day work weeks that way; that's a great point.

ghaff 6y ago

I'm actually going to be working mostly 3 day weeks until mid-March (at which point I would otherwise lose my vacation). I kept holding onto it until there seemed like a good time to take it and that time never came.

kelnos 6y ago

I never thought about it that way. A few months into COVID, I started taking every other Friday off, and it's felt like a huge increase in free time. Using your metric, I've cut my work days by 10% but increased my free days by 25%, which definitely helps quantify the larger difference.

BeetleB 6y ago

Indeed. I realized some years ago that when trying to figure out how much my time is worth to scale everything with respect to the amount of discretionary free time I will have. If a new job will cut that free time by half then I expect double the pay. And then I realized there are second order effects. Double my pay actually means much more than double my savings per year as my costs are more or less fixed. So then I changed the formula to scale with respect to the amount I am saving versus the discretionary free time. Maybe a 30% raise would actually double my savings. And by discretionary free time I am subtracting time spent doing chores. I live very close to work and even getting a job that requires a 1 hour commute each way makes a huge difference in my discretionary free time and should be compensated accordingly. And then I took it one step further. I decided to take an Excel sheet and map out all the discretionary free time I think I will have for the rest of my life. And then I evaluated job offers based on which one will maximize that free time. So maybe cutting short free time right now is okay if it is more than compensated by having me retire a lot earlier. Of course then you may want to factor that free time while young is perhaps worth more than free time when your body is not that healthy. And of course you may not live long enough to retire and you do want to take that into account as well and not put all your joy off towards the end. It's a bit of a rabbit hole.

craftinator 6y ago
I think it's preference, do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, or bank that you'll live to an older age, and enjoy life when you're old.
- hezag 6y ago
  I think a better question would be: "Do you want to enjoy your life while you're young, thus increasing your odds to live longer and better[1], or bet you'll live to an older age and, hopefully, enjoy life when you're old?" 1: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/how-research-shows-you-can-live-longer-if-you-retire-early.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/27/how-research-shows-you-can-l...
  - BeetleB 6y ago
    Or, you know, something in between. It's not an either or.
- BeetleB 6y ago
  For me, I've found that no matter how much I've enjoyed life in the past, other than good memories, it does nothing for me in the present. I still enjoy life in the present but I do sacrifice a bit of it so I can also enjoy life when older. If you don't want to completely sacrifice today for tomorrow you simply adjust the age related weight in the Excel sheet :-)
- Retric 6y ago
  I think it’s more complicated as a 40h/week could be around ~40% of your time during the working years of your life. Making sure working doesn’t make you unhappy for the rest of the week is a huge deal. Similarly, having more money hits serious diminishing returns. Watching a 500$ TV vs a 5,000$ TV doesn’t actually change much in the moment. Jump all the way to a 500,000$ home IMAX and watching a terrible movie still sucks.
hnuser123456 6y ago
Fantastic comment. I've spent some time on spreadsheets for task tracking, giving priorities, due dates, estimated completion time, and subjectively evaluating "payoff". A spreadsheet isn't the best UI for something that changes so often though, I'd like to write something better that works for me and maybe share it, or someone can share their preferred personal tracker with me.

zeroonetwothree 6y ago

You don’t spend 100% of your work days working so this is misleading.

sodapopcan 6y ago
True! Though on work days you do need to wind down and possibly commute. You also spend one less night possibly mentally preparing for the next work day. While not 100% of the working, work days certainly can feel overall very different in the downtime than days off.
IkmoIkmo 6y ago
That's true, but in terms of 'fully free' days it does apply. For example, I'd bet most people would be unwilling to smooth over their 40 hour workweek over the course of the full week of 7 days, working 5.7 hours a day. Of course that's nice in a way, but having no fully free days and perpetually working forever, is agonising. In that sense you can't just compare cutting a working day to simply having more discretionary time (which you have after workdays, too). Fully free days count a bit differently.
studius 6y ago
And you don't spend 100% of your days off not working. The worker interviewed in the article said, "Also being on call can be a challenge, but it's nothing that's not fixable." I understand that to mean that he's not truly working a 4-day week. He's working 4 days + on-call day(s) at times.
- matchagaucho 6y ago
  We operate a five-nines service in a 4-day work week. That requires at least one person always being connected. But culturally, it also encourages a lot of automation, redundancy, and conservative DevOps decisions.