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Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

theguardian.com

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Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#21

Post by mettamage »

If I'm going to believe anything, I'd need a longitudinal study of about 5 years.

I find 5 years to be a good hallmark to see whether something had an actual strong impact in my own life (e.g. regarding reading self-help books such as Search Inside Yourself [1] or Steve Pavlina's blog post on how to rock at university [2] -- sorry for being slightly off-topic but these two things changed my life).

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-Ach...

[2] https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-colleg...

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#22

Post by crispyambulance »

Trisell wrote: post #3
uxhacker wrote: post #2

I wonder if the productivity is maintained as we can only think for so many hours a day. If you look at famous writers such as Hemingway they only worked for a few hours a day. So the question is how does this translate to work that has a less cognitive load ? Has anybody done experiments with programing and hours worked ?

I know that I feel like I really have around 4-5 good hours in me of serious deep contemplative programming a day. After that I either check out or find myself doing menial tasks that require no brain power for the rest of the day. If I do have a huge deadline and have to double or triple that in a day I find myself mentally wiped and kind of useless for several days there after.

Yes, from your point of view you got "4 hours" of real, valuable and productive work in you in any given day.

But those nagging administrative tasks, status reports, talking to project management professionals in pro-forma meetings. THOSE are considered work and productivity for the people that set these up. There are job-roles for which meetings themselves are work-- while that might be a vision of hell for many of us, it is reality for layers of management and their minions.

My concern with this concept of 4-day workweeks is that it will precipitate even more tracking of productivity and even more meetings to gauge progress at the organizations that are trying to convince themselves to switch.

There's something to be said for having the slack to figure stuff out at work without being tracked constantly. A shorter work week is likely to increase "time scrutiny" for creative workers.

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#23

Post by znq »

wodenokoto wrote: post #13
znq wrote: post #4

At Mobile Jazz (7 years old now) and Bugfender (4-5 years old now) we always had the rule, that people could choose to work as much as they want and when they went. As long as the output and quality was there. Obviously to achieve high quality output you need to be there at certain times (overlap with other team members) and you need to do a certain amount of hours. The problems we had because of this are almost no-e…

How do employees know when good is good enough? When things get stressful and overwhelming at work, I look to my contractual hours per week and remind myself not to overdo it.

I think that where having a team comes in handy. When I used to be a freelancer I had exactly that problem. Being a perfectionist. But when working with a team, doing shared product testing and code reviews and other kind of evaluations gives over time a very clear measurement of what "the standard of good enough" is. And I guess that's different for each company. We definitely strive for excellent quality, but certainly not by sacrificing people or team happiness.

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#24

Post by jpfed »

Brigadirk wrote: post #8
snarf21 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plus your brain will crunch things in the background. How many time as a developer have you "solved" a problem you've been stuck on for hours or days while showering or traveling to work. Sometimes you can't see the forest for the trees.

I share your experience. But, I've recently read a book, The Mind is Flat by Nick Chater, a psychologist, wherein he argues that your brain does not crunch anything in the background, and only does what it focuses on. However, the situation you outlined still occurs because you can get stuck in a certain paradigm (e.g. "this name that I can't remember definitely starts with 's'"), which you effectively reset, in addi…

I call this the "attractor basin hypothesis" of problem solving- your mental state is in one attractor basin and you need to be in a different one; a break gives you another chance to enter the right one. If true, it may be possible to get the same benefit as taking a break and returning to the work by doing something that jolts you out of your current attractor basin. Maybe that just means asking the right question (c.f. oblique strategies).

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#25

Post by combatentropy »

This is not the first article about how people get the same amount of work done, even more, in four days instead of five. But another thing they have in common is that they never ask the question, what about three?

Or what about two? One? Surely at zero, productivity will not match the old standard of 40 hours a week. But it seems like the next logical question to me. If employees are just as productive at 32 hours as 40, at what point does productivity fall? Maybe 32 just happens to be that breaking point. Or it might turn out to be 25 or even 15. But let's at least ask the question.

I'm talking about averages, of course.

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#26

Post by karlokeeffe »

ryandvm wrote: post #17
wodenokoto wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do employees know when good is good enough? When things get stressful and overwhelming at work, I look to my contractual hours per week and remind myself not to overdo it.

This is actually the downside of these "you decide" plans and why I absolutely hate "unlimited PTO" policies. Whenever it's up to me I end up taking less vacation than if I just had an allotted amount. People shortchange themselves because they don't want to inconvenience their team. And as an added insult, the company gets out of paying you for unused vacation when you finally burn out.

When I worked a Geckoboard they had a great system where you had unlimited paid time off, but you had to take at least 25 days off each year.

This, combined with colleagues visibly taking advantage of the time off available, helped ensure a healthy approach to unlimited time off.

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#27

Post by verelo »

wgerard wrote: post #18
xfitm3 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your handbook says you track work daily in Asana and have two stand ups. Along with an expectation to immediately respond to pings and vacation pre-approval is required. How does that fit into “work when you want”?

I don't work there, but it seems pretty clear to me. Morning slack message (which isn't the same thing as a standup): "Hey, I'm going to do X,Y,Z today but I'm also going to run a few errands after lunch so I'll be MIA from 12-2 CET but available after until 6 CET". "Work when you want" doesn't have to mean "I have no idea when you'll be available today".

> "Work when you want" doesn't have to mean "I have no idea when you'll be available today".

People confuse the two all the time! Flexibility and reliability have to go hand in hand, if you cannot be reliable when left unsupervised, you need to expect I cannot leave you unsupervised. On the plus side, when people are given this explanation they often self manage into a good routine.

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#28

Post by [deleted] »

combatentropy wrote: post #25

This is not the first article about how people get the same amount of work done, even more, in four days instead of five. But another thing they have in common is that they never ask the question, what about three? Or what about two? One? Surely at zero, productivity will not match the old standard of 40 hours a week. But it seems like the next logical question to me. If employees are just as productive at 32 hours a…

[deleted]

Re: Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output

#29

Post by hun-nemethpeter »

combatentropy wrote: post #25

This is not the first article about how people get the same amount of work done, even more, in four days instead of five. But another thing they have in common is that they never ask the question, what about three? Or what about two? One? Surely at zero, productivity will not match the old standard of 40 hours a week. But it seems like the next logical question to me. If employees are just as productive at 32 hours a…

There is a topic on reddit now which can shed some light on this question.

How Many Productive Hours in a Work Day? Just 2 Hours, 23 Minutes... https://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/as3cyv/how_many_...

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