5 ms·

I work 32 hours per week. Rather, I work 4 days a week. This means I have 50% more free time than I used to. I fill that free time with dates with my wife wh

I work 32 hours per week. Rather, I work 4 days a week. This means I have 50% more free time than I used to. I fill that free time with dates with my wife while my kids are at school, or hiking, or just goofing at home doing whatever I feel like. One day a week is MINE. I cannot understate just how much this has improved my mental health and quality of life. Not to mention, when holidays fall on certain days of the week, I get 4 day weekends which is like a mini vacation. 48 hours is not enough time to fully decompress and feel human again. I am never going back to 5 days a week, if I can help it. Still, these numbers all seem arbitrary. More flexible opt-in work arrangements would be nice. My wife is a nurse and she can work "per diem" which is just amazing. She opts-in and chooses her schedule. I think society as a whole would be a bit healthier if that flexibility was extended to more of the population.

skeeter2020 11mo ago
I don't think the push-back here is against a 4 day work week, but the idea that wages increase or stay the same as you reduce down to 4 days. I known several people who work 4 days for 80% equivalent. They seem like you who seek a more balanced, family & personal focused lifestyle. This is awesome and I agree with you that flexibility can be a huge competitive differentiator for companies that doesn't need to cost them a lot more money. It's kinda crazy that more don't seek out creative approaches like this.
- Tade0 11mo ago
  In my region, where the number of hours worked annually is 1800+ as per OECD, it's quite simply difficult. Employers expect full time availablity and would rather not have anyone fill that role than allow for this. My friend managed to do it by boiling that frog via taking Friday afternoons off. Everyone was happy with that arrangement, so he started taking entire Fridays off. Then he switched to Mondays. Meanwhile my SO got a hard "no" on any amount of reduction. She's looking for a part time job, but it's not something employers normally advertise.
  - euroderf 11mo ago
    > Employers expect full time availability For sticky-downward values of "full time".
- wakawaka28 11mo ago
  It would have to be less than 80% for 4 days due to insurance, administrative, and possibly office space costs. You also know as well that people seeking out these kinds of arrangements will be holding down two jobs instead of one, which cuts down on reliability for both employers. Of course I like the idea of having more options in the workplace but sometimes the down sides are too obvious to get worked up over it. Be thankful we can work five 8 hour days (or less). We could have the 9 to 9, 6 day a week culture that exists in some places.
  - euroderf 11mo ago
    It would have to be more than 80% for 4 days due to the elimination of the least-productive 20% of the work week.
    - wakawaka28 11mo ago
      Who's to say that the least productive part would be cut or not? It might be that those useless meetings persist, and the actual work goes down. Certainly spreading the work out so much increases friction when it comes to collaboration. You'll often find yourself waiting at least like 4 days to get questions answered.
      - euroderf 11mo ago
        By "least productive 20%" I also meant the time during the week when your oomph is gone. IIRC most experiments on shortened workweeks show that motivation and productivity in general go up because workers are less stressed, better rested, happier, etc., and output does not take a big hit. Of course it might be just an observation effect, but I think that is normally controlled for.
  - _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
    When AI people point to new jobs created like the industrial revolution, they are pointing to 9 to 9, 6 days a week of the 1880s industrial revolution era. The people of that era were told reducing to 5, 8 hour days was impossible, the economics wouldn't work, etc. We only arrived at our current number after the workers literally revolted, with much violence on both sides on the way to 'the perfect number' we have today that 'makes the most' sense and that totally can't be changed. My jobs could never spare for me to take time off, I was too valuable to the company. Yet they also survived and were able to replace me once I left. 'impossible' is mainly 'inconvenient' in company speak.
footy 11mo ago
Same. I work 4 days a week, and most weeks I work 32 hours (some weeks I am excited about what I am doing and end up working later than I intended to once or twice). The flexibility is amazing. I have time for personal projects (some of them coding related, but also music or home improvement or really anything I want), I have time to lift every day, I read more than almost anyone I know. Having that extra day off for Whatever I Want is invaluable, and there's nothing that anyone can offer me that would make me give this up.
itake 11mo ago
> 48 hours is not enough time to fully decompress and feel human again. When I’m in that situation, I’m not thinking that my weekends are too short, but that my job is too stressful. I either need to change jobs or find peace in my current job.
freefaler 11mo ago
The free market could do that without unions. Doing so increases the cost of labor in the product as % of the total price. You're super highly valued employee, your employer will be more than happy to buy your work in packages of 4 days instead of 5 if it suits him and you. Also if this is not suitable for one party of the deal (either employee or employer) both can go and freely trade/buy their labour. However, generally advocates propose a blanket "mandatory 35 hours week", which have many negtive consequences: - Why do you need to "enforce" that to other people who can't or wan't earn the same way and are more than happy to work overtime because they need to say earn more to pay medical bills or want to save to buy a house? Isn't that limiting the amount I as a person can sell my own work hours to the business? - How can the business compete on the local market when other companies aren't forced to do work with the same cost base for the labour component in the final product? - How can the business compete with the Mexican company across the border who can do it for even cheaper? Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. Societies are much wealthier now, but we shouldn't forget that starvation and poverty are the default state, not the other way around.
- Pet_Ant 11mo ago
  > Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. At first, you seem like a sensible person, but then you seem to be completely ignorant as to what "moral" means.
  - freefaler 11mo ago
    You can't feed poor people with "morals", you need a productive tax base and good redestribution system to do that. If you have a farm, you can't kill your chicken to feed the starving neighbour if your own chidren are starving. You need to keep the chicken alive because they will feed you and if they produce enough eggs you can help your neighbour too. When you overtax your companies you make them uncompetitive and you have less tax to redistribute. It's just simple mathematics, no morals are needed to understand that. No tax = no social safety nets. Tax comes from profit. Profit comes from margin. Margin is destroyed by higher costs. If you increase the cost, you need to close the border so all the companies can share the same cost of labor. You'll squeeze more from the companies and make more social payments but less capital for the companies to invest and hire more people. So you're just making the stuff companies produce more expensive for all. (because you need to close the border to remove outside competition) It's not rocket science. When societies got rich then they started having social nets, not before.
raw_anon_1111 11mo ago
Counterpoint: I do work 5 days a week 40 hours remotely. I wake up around 7 or 8. I never set my alarm clock. I hang out with my wife before finally getting up, I roll over, get ready for the day and walk to my home office. I can walk downstairs to work out during the middle of the day, swim almost all year (Florida), go for a jog of whatever. On a higher level, working remotely means we can do things like spending a full year flying around the country like we did until September 2023 or going forward spending a couple of months in Costa Rica, Panama during the winter while working. 4-5 days a week doesn’t impinge on my freedom like working in an office would. I “retired my wife” in 2020 when she was 46 8 years into our marriage so she could enjoy her hobbies and passion projects. I “decompress” between the minute I close my computer and not think about work until the next day and walk to the living room.

skeeter2020 11mo ago

I don't think the push-back here is against a 4 day work week, but the idea that wages increase or stay the same as you reduce down to 4 days. I known several people who work 4 days for 80% equivalent. They seem like you who seek a more balanced, family & personal focused lifestyle. This is awesome and I agree with you that flexibility can be a huge competitive differentiator for companies that doesn't need to cost them a lot more money. It's kinda crazy that more don't seek out creative approaches like this.

Tade0 11mo ago
In my region, where the number of hours worked annually is 1800+ as per OECD, it's quite simply difficult. Employers expect full time availablity and would rather not have anyone fill that role than allow for this. My friend managed to do it by boiling that frog via taking Friday afternoons off. Everyone was happy with that arrangement, so he started taking entire Fridays off. Then he switched to Mondays. Meanwhile my SO got a hard "no" on any amount of reduction. She's looking for a part time job, but it's not something employers normally advertise.
- euroderf 11mo ago
  > Employers expect full time availability For sticky-downward values of "full time".
wakawaka28 11mo ago
It would have to be less than 80% for 4 days due to insurance, administrative, and possibly office space costs. You also know as well that people seeking out these kinds of arrangements will be holding down two jobs instead of one, which cuts down on reliability for both employers. Of course I like the idea of having more options in the workplace but sometimes the down sides are too obvious to get worked up over it. Be thankful we can work five 8 hour days (or less). We could have the 9 to 9, 6 day a week culture that exists in some places.
- euroderf 11mo ago
  It would have to be more than 80% for 4 days due to the elimination of the least-productive 20% of the work week.
  - wakawaka28 11mo ago
    Who's to say that the least productive part would be cut or not? It might be that those useless meetings persist, and the actual work goes down. Certainly spreading the work out so much increases friction when it comes to collaboration. You'll often find yourself waiting at least like 4 days to get questions answered.
    - euroderf 11mo ago
      By "least productive 20%" I also meant the time during the week when your oomph is gone. IIRC most experiments on shortened workweeks show that motivation and productivity in general go up because workers are less stressed, better rested, happier, etc., and output does not take a big hit. Of course it might be just an observation effect, but I think that is normally controlled for.
- _DeadFred_ 11mo ago
  When AI people point to new jobs created like the industrial revolution, they are pointing to 9 to 9, 6 days a week of the 1880s industrial revolution era. The people of that era were told reducing to 5, 8 hour days was impossible, the economics wouldn't work, etc. We only arrived at our current number after the workers literally revolted, with much violence on both sides on the way to 'the perfect number' we have today that 'makes the most' sense and that totally can't be changed. My jobs could never spare for me to take time off, I was too valuable to the company. Yet they also survived and were able to replace me once I left. 'impossible' is mainly 'inconvenient' in company speak.

footy 11mo ago

Same. I work 4 days a week, and most weeks I work 32 hours (some weeks I am excited about what I am doing and end up working later than I intended to once or twice). The flexibility is amazing. I have time for personal projects (some of them coding related, but also music or home improvement or really anything I want), I have time to lift every day, I read more than almost anyone I know. Having that extra day off for Whatever I Want is invaluable, and there's nothing that anyone can offer me that would make me give this up.

itake 11mo ago

> 48 hours is not enough time to fully decompress and feel human again. When I’m in that situation, I’m not thinking that my weekends are too short, but that my job is too stressful. I either need to change jobs or find peace in my current job.

freefaler 11mo ago

The free market could do that without unions. Doing so increases the cost of labor in the product as % of the total price. You're super highly valued employee, your employer will be more than happy to buy your work in packages of 4 days instead of 5 if it suits him and you. Also if this is not suitable for one party of the deal (either employee or employer) both can go and freely trade/buy their labour. However, generally advocates propose a blanket "mandatory 35 hours week", which have many negtive consequences: - Why do you need to "enforce" that to other people who can't or wan't earn the same way and are more than happy to work overtime because they need to say earn more to pay medical bills or want to save to buy a house? Isn't that limiting the amount I as a person can sell my own work hours to the business? - How can the business compete on the local market when other companies aren't forced to do work with the same cost base for the labour component in the final product? - How can the business compete with the Mexican company across the border who can do it for even cheaper? Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. In tribes in the olden days, when a person got sick/too old, many tribes just left him to die, because they couldn't afford to feed him. Societies are much wealthier now, but we shouldn't forget that starvation and poverty are the default state, not the other way around.

Pet_Ant 11mo ago
> Free markets are very brutal and at the first glance are bad for humans, but their efficiency gives the tax base for redistribution. Also they're inherently moral, because if you can do something for your fellow citizens and swap your labor for their money and back, then you shouldn't expect to be entitled to their surplus earning redistributed via the welfare system. At first, you seem like a sensible person, but then you seem to be completely ignorant as to what "moral" means.
- freefaler 11mo ago
  You can't feed poor people with "morals", you need a productive tax base and good redestribution system to do that. If you have a farm, you can't kill your chicken to feed the starving neighbour if your own chidren are starving. You need to keep the chicken alive because they will feed you and if they produce enough eggs you can help your neighbour too. When you overtax your companies you make them uncompetitive and you have less tax to redistribute. It's just simple mathematics, no morals are needed to understand that. No tax = no social safety nets. Tax comes from profit. Profit comes from margin. Margin is destroyed by higher costs. If you increase the cost, you need to close the border so all the companies can share the same cost of labor. You'll squeeze more from the companies and make more social payments but less capital for the companies to invest and hire more people. So you're just making the stuff companies produce more expensive for all. (because you need to close the border to remove outside competition) It's not rocket science. When societies got rich then they started having social nets, not before.

raw_anon_1111 11mo ago

Counterpoint: I do work 5 days a week 40 hours remotely. I wake up around 7 or 8. I never set my alarm clock. I hang out with my wife before finally getting up, I roll over, get ready for the day and walk to my home office. I can walk downstairs to work out during the middle of the day, swim almost all year (Florida), go for a jog of whatever. On a higher level, working remotely means we can do things like spending a full year flying around the country like we did until September 2023 or going forward spending a couple of months in Costa Rica, Panama during the winter while working. 4-5 days a week doesn’t impinge on my freedom like working in an office would. I “retired my wife” in 2020 when she was 46 8 years into our marriage so she could enjoy her hobbies and passion projects. I “decompress” between the minute I close my computer and not think about work until the next day and walk to the living room.