3 ms·

I wonder if it would possible to find a balance of doing shorter days / working fewer days, and offsetting that by being more productive in the hours that you d

I wonder if it would possible to find a balance of doing shorter days / working fewer days, and offsetting that by being more productive in the hours that you do work. There have definitely been experiments along those lines with successful results. I can't immediately find the original source, but I remember reading a few years ago about a business that switched to working 9-3 Monday-Friday, with resulting benefits to both productivity and morale. One advantage that was emphasized in the interview was that people were no longer distracted by non-work concerns like who would pick the kids up after school or needing to book medical appointments in the middle of the working day. With shorter working days and everyone being around during the same hours, collaboration and maintaining focus were also easier.

papito 5y ago
Microsoft tried the 4-day work week, for example: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...
- Silhouette 5y ago
  I'm not so surprised that they got such good results in Japan, where traditionally the business culture has been extremely demanding compared to most places. It would be interesting to know whether they did ever try similar experiments in other parts of the world with more "normal" working hours, and if so, whether they managed to repeat the successful result.
  - papito 5y ago
    The Japanese work ethic of working yourself to the bone is puzzling to me. A culture driven by deep traditions, they need to stop once in a while and re-evaluate some. Not all traditions are worth keeping, like working all day every day, or using fax machines - another tradition that is refusing to die in Japan.
tonyedgecombe 5y ago
Shorter days makes much more sense to me than shorter weeks. Wherever I've worked those last two hours of the day are always a waste.
- Silhouette 5y ago
  I agree. If I'm working on something particularly interesting, I can code for much longer for a day or even a few days and still be making useful progress. However, for routine grunt work over the long term, I don't think I ever sustained much more than 6 hours of productive work per day when I was programming full-time. Past that, I would start to either slow right down or make mistakes that ended up taking more time to fix later. I did find that as I started taking on other responsibilities as well as the technical stuff I could make use of the extra time for that without affecting my programming much, but I suspect if I ever move to full-time on the business side the lack of variety will be a factor again.

papito 5y ago

Microsoft tried the 4-day work week, for example: https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-says-4-day-workweek-boosted-workers-productivity-by-40 https://www.npr.org/2019/11/04/776163853/microsoft-japan-say...

Silhouette 5y ago
I'm not so surprised that they got such good results in Japan, where traditionally the business culture has been extremely demanding compared to most places. It would be interesting to know whether they did ever try similar experiments in other parts of the world with more "normal" working hours, and if so, whether they managed to repeat the successful result.
- papito 5y ago
  The Japanese work ethic of working yourself to the bone is puzzling to me. A culture driven by deep traditions, they need to stop once in a while and re-evaluate some. Not all traditions are worth keeping, like working all day every day, or using fax machines - another tradition that is refusing to die in Japan.

tonyedgecombe 5y ago

Shorter days makes much more sense to me than shorter weeks. Wherever I've worked those last two hours of the day are always a waste.

Silhouette 5y ago
I agree. If I'm working on something particularly interesting, I can code for much longer for a day or even a few days and still be making useful progress. However, for routine grunt work over the long term, I don't think I ever sustained much more than 6 hours of productive work per day when I was programming full-time. Past that, I would start to either slow right down or make mistakes that ended up taking more time to fix later. I did find that as I started taking on other responsibilities as well as the technical stuff I could make use of the extra time for that without affecting my programming much, but I suspect if I ever move to full-time on the business side the lack of variety will be a factor again.