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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

#81

Post by wool_gather »

1337biz wrote: post #70
wgerard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really know what you're doing all day. If you can't even summarize what you were doing all day, that sounds like a bad thing. The evidence is your story about what you actually did. Here's a perfectly great update that didn't result in a quick win: "I spent all day debugging that null pointer issue like we discussed. I thought maybe it was because the API was sending nulls across, but I looked at the logs…

That's the thing - this works only when you have clearly task - solution based jobs. But when it is more creative and abstract this is not feasable.

You should still be able to recount what you did, past tense.

"This morning I sketched out three different possibilities for the new client check-in service. First draft of the spec is in progress, I expect to send it over to Jen and Andy tomorrow for their feedback."

"I made a dozen or so mockups for the new landing page. I have a couple more ideas I want to try out tomorrow, then I'll figure out what the best four or five are and show them to the team."

"Since we don't have any feature work pending right now, I've been experimenting on a branch with using $TOOL to do $THING better. It looks good because $X, although $Y might be a problem."

"We talked a while ago about doing $THING with the user's documents so they can $WHATEVER more easily, and I wasn't sure it was even possible. I've been looking into that today. It looks like there might be a way, so I'm continuing to investigate."

"We've wanted to replace $FRAMEWORK for a while now. I've identified the parts of it that we actually use, and I'm putting together a plan for what we can swap in and/or get rid of. It looks like, since we made $CHANGE last month, we can actually do most of it ourselves without much trouble."

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

#82

Post by awakeasleep »

decebalus1 wrote: post #73

That's never going to happen. Regardless of what 'studies show'. If Jesus comes down from heaven and tells everyone we need to work less, it will still never happen. Was reading 'Bullshit jobs' by David Graeber and frankly I am starting to believe the conspiracy theory that there is an inherent interest of society to keep people busy as much as possible. Because if you give people more free time, don't keep them on t…

I agree that Jesus stopping by and asking us wouldn't change this, but collective bargaining has already changed this in the past

It's not impossible! It requires people working together.

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

#83

Post by cybwraith »

ergothus wrote: post #50

I worked at a state govt job that allowed for 4 day weeks. Being govt, and with my manager in particular, time was closely managed. It worked, but it was HARD! The difference between an 8 hour day and a 10 hour day is having to find a second wind, on demand, 4 days in a row. Every time I would say I was going to drop, and then the three day weekend hit and I had time to get personal stuff done, time to relax without…

> “We’ve been treated like adults and I think as a result everyone is behaving like adults,” said Tammy Barker, a branch manager who was part of the trial that cut the working week from from 37.5 hours to 30

I imagine most of these studies that pop up, like this one, are referring to an overall total hours cut, not just cramming 5 days worth of 'work time' into 4.

4x 10s can definitely be hard, though there are so many coding jobs out there that 'require' unpaid overtime easily pushing that to more like 5x 10s or even more.

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

#84

Post by Nelkins »

decebalus1 wrote: post #73

That's never going to happen. Regardless of what 'studies show'. If Jesus comes down from heaven and tells everyone we need to work less, it will still never happen. Was reading 'Bullshit jobs' by David Graeber and frankly I am starting to believe the conspiracy theory that there is an inherent interest of society to keep people busy as much as possible. Because if you give people more free time, don't keep them on t…

Don't know that I agree that it's "never going to happen." Will everyone switch to the four day week? Probably not. But experiments like this normalize the idea of it. I negotiated a four day week and examples like these definitely helped me make the case to my boss.

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

#85

Post by wgerard »

1337biz wrote: post #70
wgerard wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should really know what you're doing all day. If you can't even summarize what you were doing all day, that sounds like a bad thing. The evidence is your story about what you actually did. Here's a perfectly great update that didn't result in a quick win: "I spent all day debugging that null pointer issue like we discussed. I thought maybe it was because the API was sending nulls across, but I looked at the logs…

That's the thing - this works only when you have clearly task - solution based jobs. But when it is more creative and abstract this is not feasable.

I'm really struggling to think of creative and abstract jobs that meet all of the following criteria:

1) Take place in a typical corporate setting--which is the context here, nobody's asking studio musicians to do stand-ups.

2) Have 0 artifacts of progress being made. Even brand design goes through iterations.

3) Are so abstract that it's impossible to distill your thought process into a small summary each day

If it's really impossible to summarize what you did all day, I'm going to question if you were actually doing anything at all.

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

#86

Post by wool_gather »

StavrosK wrote: post #46

I've been working four-day workweeks for the past 4 years or so, and love it. I can't say I have the same output (nor would I want to, since I took a 20% pay cut for it). I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I don't think I'll be able to work 5-day weeks again. I tried it a few times and I found myself very unhappy, 5 days were too long and the weekend too short. The 4/3 split is ideal, four days isn't enough to get…

The dirty open secret that seems to be implied whenever anyone writes about this is that no-one's actually working for those whole 40 hours, or even close. Basically, "work expands to fill the available time" (Parkinson's Law[0]). And there's only 30 or so hours' worth of actual expected work in a -- typical -- week. So, conclusion, drop the illusion and give people back the time that they'd otherwise be spending unproductively "on the clock".

[0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkinson%27s_law

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

#87

Post by antoinevg »

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…

Personally, my optimum is three 8-hour days a week.

I have also found they need to be consecutive.

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

#88

Post by wool_gather »

tomjohnneill wrote: post #65

I definitely want to believe this is a good measure of the impact of moving to a four day week. However, I wonder if this is an example of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect . Maybe people are being more productive each day because they're aware that the company is going to be measuring their productivity.

Good point. And/or a novelty effect. As another comment asked, a long-term study is probably required.

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

#89

Post by michaelt »

jlarocco wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if it's not codified in law, there is no consistency. One person's gloriously well managed Unlimited PTO policy (congrats!) is another person's peer pressured non-usage. "Unlimited PTO" is a marketing farce, no more, no less. If you want people to take 25 days a year off, give them 25 days of PTO and be on the hook for the liability if they leave. If you want to give them more time than that through a…

> The problem is, if it's not codified in law, there is no consistency. A poorly codified policy is an implementation problem, and will be a problem for both limited and unlimited PTO policies. > "Unlimited PTO" is a marketing farce, no more, no less. If you want people to take 25 days a year off, give them 25 days of PTO and be on the hook for the liability if they leave. If you want to give them more time than that…

  The entire point is that the
  employer doesn't care how many
  days off people take each year.
Of course they do. Just they call it "abusing the policy" or "not getting your work done" and don't tell you what the lines you shouldn't cross are.

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

#90

Post by [deleted] »

jlarocco wrote: post #75
toomuchtodo wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is, if it's not codified in law, there is no consistency. One person's gloriously well managed Unlimited PTO policy (congrats!) is another person's peer pressured non-usage. "Unlimited PTO" is a marketing farce, no more, no less. If you want people to take 25 days a year off, give them 25 days of PTO and be on the hook for the liability if they leave. If you want to give them more time than that through a…

> The problem is, if it's not codified in law, there is no consistency. A poorly codified policy is an implementation problem, and will be a problem for both limited and unlimited PTO policies. > "Unlimited PTO" is a marketing farce, no more, no less. If you want people to take 25 days a year off, give them 25 days of PTO and be on the hook for the liability if they leave. If you want to give them more time than that…

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