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Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

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Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#111

Post by AlwaysRock »

2sk21 wrote: post #48

What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

I require what I call a, "clean up" day once every few weeks. I wish I had one every week. It's a day when I can sit on my computer or around my apartment and do all those little things that pile up.

Re-potting the plants? Never urgent enough to be top of mind but will become an issue later. Those 15 opened and unread tabs? Let me at em. Painting that spot on the wall? A tad too inconvenient for a normal Tuesday but perfect for the clean up day.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#112

Post by lev99 »

ken wrote: post #52
lolive wrote: post #9

The consequences would be terrible! We would have to wait 18 months between each iteration of Iphone instead of 12. Amazon would deliver at day+2. Uber Eats would answer: "No slave available. Sorry, you will have to cook". Simply unacceptable !!! Now go back to work 5 days a week!

Are you claiming a 4-day work week would result in less productivity? The article makes a good case for the opposite. How do you explain the "paradoxical magic" in the final third of the article where, in every historical case of shortening work hours, "management was surprised to discover that output actually increased — and that expensive mistakes and accidents decreased"? Or the recent example of the Boston firm t…

If someone is overworked their productivity decreases. If you start cutting hours their productivity will increase up to a point, when they become underworked.

What's the right amount of worked? You cannot keep cutting hours and expect productivity to go up indefinitely.

In addition, the right number of hours probably has some variability among the population. I'm very much against a one sized fits all amount work environment.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#113

Post by metabagel »

schrodinger wrote: post #46
a-saleh wrote: post #39

I did this when negotiating salary at my last job. I discussed this with my wife, and we agreed, that having +20% salary wouldn't improve our lives much. Working 20% less probably would. So far it seems that it worked out :-) The extra day helps for us to actually get somewhere during the weekend, and I really appreciate both having more family-time with my wife and daughter, as well as posibility to get somewhere on…

It’s plus 25%, not 20, since you’d make 5/4 the pay.

They are correctly using the upper salary and hours as a reference point in both cases. Perhaps the language could be clearer, but it doesn’t make sense to use different reference points for comparison.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#114

Post by lolive »

prolikewh0a wrote: post #84
adrianN wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you considered what would happen if we added meth to the drinking water? People wouldn't sleep and could work twice as long!

I wouldn't doubt this idea has come up at least once in some shareholder meeting.

Didn't they use meth during WW2 on the russian front?

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#115

Post by metabagel »

Fjolsvith wrote: post #80
village-idiot wrote: post #55

One of the great surprises in the 20th century is that per worker productivity has risen massively, but we still work an unnecessary 40 hours a week. Realistically 15-18 hours would probably be enough to maintain early to mid 20th century output, and 30 hours would actually increase output a bit. In my opinion we as a society are addicted to work.

Some work doesn't happen any faster despite worker productivity. The 40 hour work week isn't determined by the output, but rather by the income the worker receives. People are free to work 15-18 hours a week, but they don't.

In most cases, the employer establishes the hours worked. Working fewer hours would have to be negotiated with the employer.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#116

Post by combatentropy »

If you work less, you'll be less stressed! Although this article superficially looks like it's full of facts, it's a bit thin on anything beyond what can be guessed through common sense.

The interesting questions are: what length of work-week best balances everything? "Every weekend should be a 7-day weekend, because studies show that workers will be less stressed." What length of week would be good for workers, good for the economy, etc., etc.?

One thing that I've realized, having become an adult, is that just because your job makes you work 40 hours, doesn't mean you only work 40 hours. There are many other things in your life that you have to do that are also work: running errands, parenting, cleaning, cooking, etc.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#117

Post by nickjj »

danilocesar wrote: post #91
Fri31Aug wrote: post #67

Those are all advantages for workers. What are the advantages for businesses?

It's interesting that people are not considering the business point of view... I read some people mentioning about working 10-hours a day and work from Monday to Thursday. If I was a business owner I wouldn't allow that. I would rather offer 5~6 hours work per day than allow him to work more for 4 days. In my field of work (engineering) as a regular worker, I see people working 8 hours but they are not 8 hours produc…

It really depends on the profession I think. Sometimes you're forced to work really long hours just based on your business.

For example a dentist might choose to work 3-4 days a week, but be open to seeing patients from 9am to 8pm to compensate for people unable to go during normal business hours due to their own work schedules.

Then again I think that business is a lot different than software development. Technically we could sit there and work on 1 thing for 12 hours, where as a dentist is hopping between patients and has a bunch of small breaks through out the day in between patients. It might not be "goof off time" breaks, but it's something that breaks up the day.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#118

Post by jartelt »

strictnein wrote: post #99
dionidium wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. You can keep people in their seats for 10 hours, I guess, but you're not going to consistently get 10 hours of productivity. If we want to give people an extra day off -- and I think we should! -- then we should just do it. You can't really make up the time somewhere else.

> My strong impression is that this is a waste of time. Have you done it or worked with people who have? Worked really well for the people who I knew who did it. Highly productive and the two 4 day weekends a month seemed great. My point wasn't that this was better than an additional day off and less work. My point is that this should be acceptable today, and I'm surprised there isn't more buy in for flexible schedul…

I worked somewhere that did 9 hour days with every other Friday off. It basically made Fridays unproductive because half the company was off every Friday and it seemed like you always ended up needing to talk to someone who was off that Friday in order to make progress.

I certainly liked the Fridays off. But, I'd say the 9 hours part was not optimal. Salaried employees typically already put in that much time so it didn't affect them. Hourly employees didn't seem to be that much more productive. They were just there longer and probably took slightly longer lunches...

I feel like just instilling a hard working culture and giving the whole company every other Friday off would have been better for productivity.

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#119

Post by samstave »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #111
2sk21 wrote: post #48

What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

I require what I call a, "clean up" day once every few weeks. I wish I had one every week. It's a day when I can sit on my computer or around my apartment and do all those little things that pile up. Re-potting the plants? Never urgent enough to be top of mind but will become an issue later. Those 15 opened and unread tabs? Let me at em. Painting that spot on the wall? A tad too inconvenient for a normal Tuesday but…

This is the type of task that can be positively gamified.

Give yourself a reward for accomplishing these, if you have a roomate/SO, try to compete in a light way, on doing certain things, such as race to see who can do similarly sized tasks first/best/best-outcome etc

Re: Every Weekend Should Be a 3-Day Weekend (2015)

#120

Post by cheez »

windexh8er wrote: post #79
2sk21 wrote: post #48

What I really need is a weekly study day: Spend a whole day just studying and reading something (which may be completely unrelated to my work). Some of my most productive ideas have come from such study.

This. While I will often block off two or three hour chunks early in the week for deep dive I often relent on releasing that time to yet another meeting. Having switched employers a few times in the last 5 years I find myself taking more and more time off between. It's amazing how much you can clean off your plate of learning, catching up and self improvement in that amount of time. Ultimately I feel as though it's p…

Because most employers can get 9/10x5
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