13 ms·
4-day workweeks can boost happiness and productivity
- philmcp 5y agoIn years to come we will look down on the 5 day working week in the same way we currently do with 15hr factory shifts during the industrial revolution. It blows my mind that 99% of jobs are still 5 days / week, Monday to Friday - why is there basically no variation on this model? It annoys me so much that I recently launched https://4dayweek.io/ https://4dayweek.io/ (Software Jobs with a better work / life balance)
- paulcole 5y agoDo you just keep this on your clipboard to quickly shill your side project? I swear I’ve seen this word for word comment multiple times.
- philmcp 5y agoI admit I have posted it before, and will stop doing so - my bad
- nsonha 5y agoIt's fine, harms no one
- nuclearnice1 5y agoIt might even find them a 4 day job.
- nsonha 5y agoI've just realized they posted the article just so they could comment, a bit lame. Maybe just post their project and have links to that The Atlantic article or whatever inside the project itself.
- nuclearnice1 5y agoGood eye! It’s tough to get the Goldilocks level of self promotion and hustle. Too little and you aren’t aggressive enough. Too much and you’re slimy. HN is a picky bunch!
- throwaways885 5y agoThis is HN. Imo, shilling is fine if it's open, honest and relevant to the discussion. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Please%20don't%20use%20HN,find%20interesting%E2%80%94not%20for%20promotion https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html#:~:text=Ple....
- paulcole 5y agoHe posted the article so he could post his comment.
- zach_garwood 5y agoOh no, someone shilling a website? On the internet no less!? Have they no decency!
- jgilias 5y agoWhile I've also seen this comment before, it's very much on topic here.
- paulcole 5y agoHe posted the article just to leave the comment. Check out his history…
- jgilias 5y agoOk, unless he's also running a voting ring which would be directly against HN ToS, I don't see a problem with that either. I mean, the topic is obviously interesting enough to get the upvotes. If that means his side project gets more traction and eventually leads to more 4-day jobs being available, I'd consider that a win-win situation.
- paulcole 5y ago> Please don't use HN primarily for promotion. It's ok to post your own stuff occasionally, but the primary use of the site should be for curiosity.
- tolbish 5y agoI was going to criticize his posting frequency, but on the other hand...he's getting more done for the tech world than many of us ever will. Maybe we should be the ones submitting and talking about the 4 day work week more often.
- ThrowawayR2 5y agoIt's on topic here because the person who posted the comment is the same person who posted the article.
- cornstalks 5y agoIn Paul's defense, it does seem to be a pattern: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534517 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27534517 (3 days ago; exactly the same (well... I guess they added "absolutely")) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26468882 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26468882 (3 months ago; exactly the same) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114570 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26114570 (4 months ago; exactly the same (except for the last sentence)) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26015969 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26015969 (4 months ago; mostly the same) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25765787 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25765787 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25674756 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25674756 (both 5 months ago; both exactly the same as each other and only slightly modified from today's posting)
- philmcp 5y agoI admitted I have posted this before, and won't be doing so again - my bad
- helij 5y agoI for one don't mind it. I went 4 days/week in March and it changed my life for the better. I like my job but that one day off extra gives me so much flexibility. I can do all errands on Friday and then pick up the kid from school and have the whole Friday afternoon and weekend to spend with them. That means that during the week I finish work and can spend time however I want instead of doing chores... In my opinion this 'message' should actually be pushed more and people encouraged to try it. If that means shilling some website with 4d/week jobs...so be it.
- M5x7wI3CmbEem10 5y agoI appreciated it. Hadn't seen that website before and it led people to link similar websites!
- tailspin2019 5y agoYep I found this annoying too since I remembered reading it 3 days ago, causing me to double check if I was accidentally reading the same comment thread again. Whilst trying to be charitable to the poster (I guess there's no harm in pushing their side project) I would caution that carbon copying comments like this (to articles posted deliberately for the purpose of doing so) could come off as a bit insulting to the HN readership. On the other hand, perhaps they're onto something since these articles keep rising up to the front page!
- ibeckermayer 5y agoI don’t see what’s wrong with him posting his relevant side project as an advertising strategy. It’s clear what it is, and if youve seen it before you can just scroll past
- paulcole 5y agoHe’s posting the articles about 4-day workweeks as an excuse to post the same comment linking to his side project.
- billytetrud 5y agoWhat's wrong with giving people relevant information when relevant things come up? Things aren't always about you buddy
- ekianjo 5y agoWhy stop at 4 days a week? Why not 3? 2?
- aiisjustanif 5y agoLike all good things, we have to iterate.
- philmcp 5y agoYe I'm with you. I personally would like to see all jobs offered as as a fractional % (with some lower limit e.g. 3 days for 60%) - this is quite common in Switzerland for example. A 4 day week is a much easier "sell" in the short term though
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- addicted 5y ago4 days gives an immediate benefit that is not as relevant for fewer days. It gives you a regular weekday off. That means you have a day off to go to the bank, go to the doctors, call customer service for a bunch of companies that may not otherwise be open on the weekend, etc. Further, the weekends carry an expectation of doing something. Such an expectation would not exist for the weekday off. If we do move to a mass 4 day workweek, this obviously implies that the 3rd day off should not be the same for everybody, so basically it shouldn’t be implemented by just making Friday another day off like Saturday and Sunday. It would be much better if that 3rd day is divided for all employees between Mon-Fri.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- 6gvONxR4sf7o 5y ago3 days of weekend is 50% more than 2, for just 20% less work. The trade off is more extreme as the amount of work (or of weekend) approaches zero. Ideally, we’d have flexibility around the denominator, allowing something like 4 on/2 off as a step towards 4 on/3 off. The maybe 4 on/4 off instead of all the way to 3 on/4 off. Changing the 7 day week is probably infeasible though… but I see equally crazy schedules from friends with shift work.
- jokoon 5y agoIn france, the legal norm is the 35 hours work week. I wish there would be ways to reduce work time to reduce unemployment and "share" labor, but my guess is that it's more difficult for employers to organize under such model. The problem isn't only overwork, but it's also the labor distribution and competition among job candidates. The more work is done by one person, the less labor is left to create jobs. Honestly I've left this rat race of job competition a long time ago, it's depressing. I live in a country where welfare benefits allows me to eat and have a home. Money is not a problem. I'm not a merchandise.
- chii 5y ago> I live in a country where welfare benefits allows me to eat and have a home. that just means you're living off taxation of the wealthier. It's not sustainable if everybody did this - at least not under today's technological capability.
- jokoon 5y ago> It's not sustainable if everybody did this Well there always are certain jobs that are necessary to exist, but there is a large quantity of them that has very low value and nothing would be lost if they did not exist. People don't eat money.
- bluefirebrand 5y agoPeople only become wealthy by capitalizing on the skills and labour of those less wealthy so I don't see any problem with taxing some of that and using it to help the less wealthy, instead of allowing them to evade paying anything with loopholes and hiding their money offshore.
- pjerem 5y agoTo be fair, 35 hours in qualified jobs is really rare and this limit is only working for jobs that are paid hourly (when your employer counts the number of hours you work to determine your pay). The vast majority of those jobs are paid monthly and, even if legal maximums exists, they rarely matter since, by definition, in monthly paid jobs, hours are not counted. But nevertheless, we probably are amongst the countries where you work the less (and it never had a negative impact on economy).
- marvin 5y agoI've worked 4 days a week (for 20% less pay) for years now. It's without a question the biggest positive change in standard of living and life quality I could buy with this money. Will never regularly 5 days a week again unless I have no other options, or unless the pay is so good it's ridiculous. I'd work 5-day weeks if the pay was so well that I, say, could save up five years of expenses in one year. Unfortunately, my local tax system strongly disincentivizes this by effectively having a 62% marginal tax rate. So, in summary, I will most likely never have a 5 days a week routine again. It's just that good. In fact, due to the marginal tax situation, it's more likely I'll downscale to something closer to 50% if I can get away with it career-wise.
- baron816 5y ago> my local tax system strongly disincentivizes this by effectively having a 62% marginal tax rate So high tax rates can be an incentive to work less...
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- hnra 5y agoYou just have to make enough money so you can escape it. All tax systems are regressive if you are rich enough.
- missedthecue 5y agoBut even then, taking home 65 cents on the dollar vs 38 cents on the dollar (or euro) are very different things.
- wolfram74 5y agoActually, since it's discouraging him from working 20% over a 5 year block instead of 80%, this is an incentive to work /more/ :p
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- qwerty456127 5y agoI've heard some people in the Netherlands work 4 days a week but 9 hours a day. Would you consider this OK? I doubt one can be mentally productive working 9 hours unless their job is very simple or unless they have an a sleeping break. I work 7 hours but already feel stupid and demotivated during the final 2-3 hours. I would love to have a holiday every Wednesday though. Never working more than 2-3 days in a row would rid me of the feeling of living in the office.
- philmcp 5y agoYe 9 hour days are pretty brutal - my optimal would be a 7 hour day, even for a slight reduction in salary
- qwerty456127 5y agoAFAIK the optimal is known to be 5 hours. I can't recall the sources but I believe this is backed with some recent neuroscience or empirical productivity experiments.
- meowzero 5y agoI had a company that allowed half day Fridays if we worked 9 hours a day M-Thu. I only chose to do that once. Staying in the office twiddling your thumbs for an extra hour felt more excruciating for me. I would prefer we adapt a flex schedule type of work. If you’re done for the day you should be able to leave instead of acting like you’re busy.
- notapenny 5y agoI'm from the Netherlands and its an option that's quite common for companies that have 36 hour work weeks; 1) take Friday afternoon off (or Wednesday if you're children are off from school) 2) have a full day off once every other week, 3) have an extra day off every week but work 9 hours the other four. Personally 9 hours per day wouldn't work, after a solid day of programming I tend to loose focus too much after about 7 hours, but some of the alternatives work fine.
- gdubs 5y ago
- kache_ 5y agoWhat is work exactly? Is studying on my spare time (often during work hours) work? It's focused and productive, but it's to no advantage of my employer. Humans will always naturally do the bare minimum for others, while maximizing benefit for themselves.
- pestaa 5y agoHow is you getting more competent not advantageous to your employer? Perhaps if the subject is completely irrelevant, but even then, I think it's nice to stay sharp and be ready to pick up new skills as our jobs evolve.
- jordanmorgan10 5y agoWe switched to this at Buffer over a year ago. It’s been great, and I can’t imagine going back.
- markus_zhang 5y agoI still think getting some jobs you really want to do boosts way more happiness and productivity. Problem is few gets to do what they want, and many people change what they "want" every few years :S
- zajio1am 5y agoNot really sure why 4-day workweek is as popular compared to alternatives. If i could choose between 4-day 7.5h workweek and 5 day 6h workweek, i would definitely chosen the later. I wonder how many computer programmers can really work for 8 hours in a day.
- bluefirebrand 5y agoI'd choose the 4x7.5 schedule over 5x6 any day. Having entire days off is so much more freedom than having two extra hours in the evening. Three day weekend every weekend means me and my girlfriend could go on little escapes more frequently. Yeah, as a programmer I often don't program 8 hours a day and when I do it is wildly exhausting. I still absolutely work for 8 hours a day, most days.
- nsonha 5y agoI would choose 4 days. You said it yourself, actual hours are less but more days mean more extra hours you need to commit, not to mention commute and lunch and other hassles
- Tarsul 5y agoI'm with you. But we're probably in the minority. I notice that my after-work hours are vastly improved if I work 1-2hours less than my usual 8 hours just because those last hours are the most draining, somehow, mentally. So cutting those would improve 5/7 days instead of the 1/7 day improvement with another free day. But anyway, I think in the modern office environment both options should be available. It's available where I live (Germany) but I think most bosses don't really like people exercising these options (I'm waiting for my next promotion before I do it ;)).
- toast0 5y agoFrom experience, it's not too hard to not work Wednesdays (like some others, I had to burn a lot of PTO because corporate changed the accrual cap), but managing work hours is harder. It's easy to slip and then you're working (or in the office anyway) 8 hour days and paid for 6 hour days.
- hiq 5y ago
- Proven 5y agoA 3-day workweek can even better, especially if you get paid as if you work 5 days a week. But either or 4-way workweek at full pay will be a problem, so now we just need higher taxes, minimum corporate tax globally, and some MMT to go with that and we'll enter nirvana! Ridiculous socialist fake news and psyops.
- VoodooJuJu 5y agoIt's so funny to see work conversations framed around time rather than something tangible, measurable. A cabinetmaker who spends fifty fewer days per year building cabinets isn't more productive (and maybe not even happier). Fifty days spent not building cabinets could mean he produces 6 fewer cabinets per year. Imagine the absurdity of a salary man advising a cabinetmaker to work one day less per week, "You'll make more cabinets!". And this is why the types of jobs that are the subject of these conversations are those that provide abstract, non-measurable, questionable value: >Buffer, a company that makes social-media management tools... The company that manufactured your shirt understands real value, real output, real productivity. That's why their workers are at it 12-16 hours a day, 7 days a week (as unhappy as they may be, but cheap labor is cheap, what can you do).
- gdubs 5y agoPeople are not machines. This is the argument presented when the 40 hour workweek was proposed. Instead, productivity went up! Because people had fewer injuries and illness. (1: Robert Gordon’s “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” is pretty much required reading for anyone who wants to know more about productivity.)
- VoodooJuJu 5y ago>productivity went up Whose? Mine? Yours? Everyone's? Not all jobs are equal, not all people. It takes me one day (about eight hours, plus or minus one - I'm no machine after all) to build a widget. Some weeks I'll take a few days off. The weeks I work two days, I only produce two widgets. The weeks I work three days, I only produce three widgets. I'm not more productive those two-day weeks. Point is, it's important to think of jobs in terms of what was done rather than how many hours were spent doing it. In this way, why 35? Why not 30? Why not 25? If you can do your job in just 5, then do that. Do your job however long you need to do it. I need a day to make a widget, and I like to make five widgets per week, so I work five. Again, this is why the conversation only ever surrounds people who sell their time rather than something more real; people who don't own what they do, but whose time is owned by their employer. The cabinetmaker laughs when this conversation pops up.
- koch 5y agoI'm trying to keep track of which companies have a 4 day week here: https://thelistofcompanies.com https://thelistofcompanies.com If I missed any that you know of let me know or make a pull request!
- toomuchtodo 5y agoHave you spoken with the folks at https://www.4dayweek.com/ https://www.4dayweek.com/? There might be a collaboration and scaling opportunity there.
- mlang23 5y agoI submit that doing a job that you like is already enough to make you happy and productive. Trying to boost both with a day less of work is pretty obviously just trying to cure a symptom. I always liked to go to work, even after 22 years of doing basically the same job. I even missed going to work during the pandemic. Just a thought...
- helij 5y agoI like my job. I like it even more when WFH and even more when doing 4 days of it.
- mlang23 5y agoI would step in and do the work you are not doing on the 5th day. We will see how employers deal with this. "I want to work from home, and I want to work less", lets see if this works out for you people...
- helij 5y agoWhy not on 6th and 7th as well? Or after hours? Where will you stop? Look, it works for me. I work Mon-Thu and work from home. My employer deals with it just fine. They have a happy employee and pay a day less a week as well. It's all about communication and organisation at the end. I see a lot of jobs that could be optimised to be done in less than 9-5 five days a week.
- hesdeadjim 5y agoHere in the states, maybe with that extra day people have they could rally for the rest of the working class to get fair pay and benefits. As I’ve watched my non-software friends (with degrees!) struggle, I’ve grown increasingly disgusted by how much money there is in the software industry. The majority of workers will never have money for a house and/or real retirement, while my only reason for not buying a second house is that I don’t feel like vacationing in the same spot all the time. I fully expect to get downvoted to hell by all the financially comfortable libertarians that lurk here.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- carapace 5y agoI don't think it goes far enough. We should be aiming for a 24-hour work week. Whether it's four ninety-minute shifts (six hours) per day, four days per week, or one intense all-nighter, that should be enough.
- jlokier 5y agoHmm. My experience off all nighters are typically a work day, all nighter, then the next work day. That's more like 30 hours.
- zeroonetwothree 5y agoMy position (like many in tech) doesn’t track my hours. I often don’t work one day a week so I can get some chores done or simply do something fun instead. Hasn’t affected my career at all, I’m making high six figures now.
- perfectstorm 5y agoWhenever I take a random weekday off I realize how quick I can run errands on that day. Going to Costco on a weekday? Much shorter lines. Going to USPS? No lines at all. Getting an oil change done? Barely any wait. I wish more companies adapted this 4-day workweek.
- dahfizz 5y agoThat's the issue though, isn't it? If everyone got 3 days off a week instead of just you, those benefits disappear.
- ambrose2 5y agoThe benefits wouldn’t disappear, people’s errand running would be spread throughout the week rather then crammed into the weekend. I would rather have a weekday free to run errands with much fewer lines than the weekend even if the lines are slightly worse in this scenario than weekdays are today.
- missedthecue 5y agoBut someone's still working full hours at Costco or the post office or the barber or the gas station still. If those places closed for an extra day so that everyone gets a 3 day weekend, the benefits you outlined disappear. All the upper middle class white collar professionals are the main beneficiaries.
- lolinder 5y agoOnly if everyone takes the same third day off. There's no reason why that should be the case.
- dstick 5y agoOnly if it’s the same third day for everyone :)
- anticristi 5y agoThought experiment: Would you rather work 4 days a week, so you have one to run errands; or work 5 days and have someone run errands for you. Let's assume the net income would stay the same.
- decebalus1 5y agoI don't believe it's gonna happen until some Big Co follows through to set an example. And they won't because they're going to get slaughtered by Wall Street. The whole point here is to extract value from workers. Even if you make stuff super efficient using technology, which was always advertised as something which creates leisure time for society, what actually happens is extra time for extracting value from workers to feed capital. I (strongly) don't believe we will have mainstream 4 day workweeks in our lifetime. It is just not compatible with our economic system. Doesn't matter what 'studies say'. 'Studies also say' open offices are bad for engineers and yet here we are..
- seanalltogether 5y agoMy biggest worry is the effects of "4 days for me, but not for thee". A lot of workers in many industries can't afford to only work 4 days, and what kind of social divisions will standards like this create?
- rusty__ 5y agoI don't really see how this can work in any kind of project/sprint based working environment. I work in a position where our clients contract us to complete a parcel of work over a period of several months with a hard deadline at the end (maybe a 1-2 week extension, but the end release date is well known early on). It is expected that in the last 1-2 months we're not just working 40hrs/5 days but probably 60,70, even 80hrs a week and likely 6 day weeks (the last project was 7 day weeks and I worked 71 days in a row without a day off). I'm not proud of this in the slightest and indeed will be refusing to do this again. But - my situation isn't unique or even uncommon in many tech jobs that involve delivering projects to a (small) pool of paying clients. Our profit margins are also slim - there is no way my company is going to hire another person who can share jobs with me and have say 2-3 of us on the same 2-3 different projects in parallel to cover the lack of cover 20% of the time. We need to be really zoomed in on the problems to solve and tasks to do - not being there 20% of the time couldn't possibly work. The dream of a 4 day week is for many, many workers just that - a dream.
- garden_hermit 5y agoI think the idea is that a 4-day workweek would come along with a broader cultural shift. Imagine a world where Saturday was a workday, it shouldn't be hard as this was the case for many only a few generations ago. We could say that it is expected that you will not only work 48hrs/6 days a week, but probably 70, 80, 90 hours likely 7 days a week! Fortunately, a cultural shift occurred along the way, and the work week is now commonly accepted to be 5 days. Expectations of clients, managers, and employees are based around this standard. So why can't the standard change again? Why couldn't a broad cultural shift occur in which expectations are better managed towards the productivity of a 4-day work week?
- rusty__ 5y agoDo you think there would be a perception that I (a client) paying 100% rate for a project where people only 80% switched on will lead to a feeling that I'm only getting 80% "quality" or 80% of what it could be. (I work in a creative industry).
- m3kw9 5y agoI suspect once everyone is having a 4 day work week they’d get used to that, complain, and then want more. The problem isn’t a 5 day work week, but the world is pretty much designed for that in mind. Once a 4 day is normal, the world will again design around that to make it inadequate again.
- billytetrud 5y agoAnd what's wrong with that? But seems like a 4 day work week is a no brainer. Basically no loss of work productivity and a lot more free time. It's more than an extra 8 hours, you'd get more energy for the whole rest of that day and be able to do much more with that day. It would bump your free time that day from like 3 hours to 11 hours - that's pretty huge.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- m3kw9 5y agoIn the remote work era, I would propose 4 hour work days 6 days a week. More focused days and more time each day. it works when your travel overhead is removed.
- m3kw9 5y agoImagine start working at 8am and your day ends at noon. How about start at 6am and end at 10am?
- loftyal 5y agoWouldn't 52 holiday days make more sense than 4 day workweeks? Would give flexibility for people who prefer either 5 day or 4 workweeks. Allows people to actually have real time off. Personally I'd rather 2.5 months off the year to go travel/really focus on a side project, than 4 day work weeks.
- jader201 5y agoThis would be much tougher for companies to manage at scale, e.g. project and capacity planning, etc. Agreed it would be great for individuals, but having a more predictable schedule would be less disruptive.