5 ms·
I wish we’d all go to four day work weeks. Over My whole life, 5 out of 7 full days of work always felt so daunting and almost dehumanizing. But 4/7 is mental
by bilsbie 8mo ago
I wish we’d all go to four day work weeks.
Over My whole life, 5 out of 7 full days of work always felt so daunting and almost dehumanizing.
But 4/7 is mentally close to half and just feels way different qualitatively. If you have a job you mostly like, 4 days a week feels really sustainable.
- phantom784 8mo agoI've been working 4/10 schedule (4 days, but 10 hours/day, so I still work 40 hours). It's a HUGE perk, and is the biggest thing keeping me at my current job.
- starkparker 8mo agoHappiest and most productive I've ever been was working 4/10 with a start time at 2 p.m. No morning sluggishness walking into work after lunch, zero-traffic commute, off Fridays so I'd still have a social life far, far away from morning people. Dated a nurse who also worked night shifts and just went on weekday lunch dates or closed down bars.
- jawns 8mo agoCare to share how you snagged that?
- phantom784 8mo agoFirst time around, luck mostly. Happened to get hired by a company that switched to this schedule. I eventually left for higher pay (but gave up my Fridays). Eventually got laid off, and a friend who was still there managed to get me a spot back on her team. By that time, they'd embraced remote work during Covid and decided to keep it permanently. Granted, I could probably be making way more if I were to leave - I took a pay cut when I went back the second time. But at this point in my career, I value the 4/10 and lower stress job (no on-call rotation) more.
- asdff 8mo agoHonestly I think the dirty secret is most peoples work output, especially in white collar work, is not linear. I'm willing to bet if you are even able to quantify your output (I don't believe most people can do that unless they are merely a fungible cog in some production process), you'd get the same exact amount of work done in a year working 4 10s or 4 8s or 4 5s I'd even bet. Think of the classic case of the deadline and what it actually means. Case A, you didn't procrastinate. You took plenty of time to think on the problem, work on a solution at an unhurried pace, put it aside, come back to it, and solve it before it is due. And then, it is done. Case B, you did procrastinate. You have no time at all to think all day, you immediately do and iterate. Four hours later you've sprinted and delivered. And then, it is done, same as it would have been if you didn't procrastinate, maybe 10 fold reduction in time. And that is worst case examples. Typical case is probably somewhere between these A and B, but the point is non linear time to output.
- therealdrag0 8mo agoYou just discovered Amazon and startup work culture, work at a frantic pace! But why work frantically for 4 days instead of 5?
- deleted 8mo ago[deleted]
- nuancebydefault 8mo agoI work 4 days a week (started because of a medical condition) and I think more people should do that. I even think that in those 4 days i get as much done as most others in 5 days because I can focus better, and sometimes when I feel like working in the non-work day I work a few hours for fun and interest.
- manmal 8mo agoI‘m a big fan of the four day workweek idea, but let’s not kid ourselves. 5 days are 5 days. I work 10h days usually and I just wouldn’t be able to fit all that work into 4 days.
- teamonkey 8mo agoThat’s because you actually work 6 days a week.
- manmal 8mo agoYeah but what's the argument?
- Henchman21 8mo agoPerhaps you should split the load with another human?
- manmal 8mo agoThat's out of my control.
- array_key_first 8mo agoI don't think human production is linear. There's definitely an optimal point, and it probably varies from person to person. I think, actually, past that point your productivity declines rapidly. I would not be surprised at all if working 70 hours a week yields more productivity than 80, which yields more than 100.