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A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

nytimes.com

11–20 of 165 posts

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#11
While I could certainly get the same amount of work done in 4 stressful days I'm currently getting done in a leisurely 5, I'd rather have the latter.

I'd honestly probably rather work 6 even more leisurely days, it's not like I'm not just messing around on the computer anyway.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#12
post #6

If you’re working 20% less than your competitor, you will fall behind. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics one can do to reconcile that fact. And if true, then the market should resolve this.

What if, at a societal level, we just end up employing more people on fewer days? Wouldn’t that be a good thing?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lump_of_labour_fallacy

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#13
post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

How many hours do you normally complete on Tuesday through Friday? I have a hard time getting 8 billable hours in a day, let alone 10

Yeah it’s usually around 8. I primarily WFH which helps, although the office is only a 10 minute walk away.

Getting up just that bit earlier and being at the keyboard by 08:00 is the key.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#14
Also a lot of jobs have enough flex hours and vacation that it's close enough to 4 days/week anyway.

The downside of shorter workweeks is it may cause a loss of productivity at the endpoints of the week. For example, there is often a marked slowdown on the Thursdays and Mondays before and after 3-day weekends. So you are not just losing an extra day but more like 1.5 days due to slowdowns and loss of productivity.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#15
post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

I personally find my weekends a bit exhausting because of my 5 year old, and get to relax at just doing my professional job on Monday when he is back to school. I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me.

I’m sure my perspective will change after we are out of the needy kid stage, but even before my son was born, I liked working (I would spend Saturday mornings at work, obviously impossible now) and would carefully select jobs that I would like doing. In addition to, or besides, perhaps we could focus on creating and encouraging fulfilling jobs (to satisfy a wide variety of tastes) vs just cutting back days or hours worked?

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#16
post #3

Some time last year I stopped working Mondays. I’m a contractor and I know my boss well, so I just said that I didn’t want to work Mondays any more. The difference is remarkable. You go from spending three quarters of your days at work to just over half. The weekend is actually relaxing. You can do chores, relax, and really unwind before the work week starts again. We use Mondays to work on our side projects. You can…

I personally find my weekends a bit exhausting because of my 5 year old, and get to relax at just doing my professional job on Monday when he is back to school. I fear that 3 day weekends every week (since we shouldn’t leave day care workers and teachers out of this) would be the end of me. I’m sure my perspective will change after we are out of the needy kid stage, but even before my son was born, I liked working (I…

You said it. Sometimes I can’t wait for Monday to roll around. Sometimes I daydream of just checking into a random hotel or airbnb and hide for half a day.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#18
Besides the benefits or drawbacks of the 4-day workweek on its merits, it's worth remembering that behind the headlines such as "$COUNTRY tests $SOCIAL_CHANGE", it's usually some entity in $COUNTRY on a mission rather than an organization that's representative of the opinions of its population. Same thing has been happening with Scandinavian countries too – there's always a rotating cast of Sweden, Finland and Norway making such headlines. Usually, though, it's a smaller organization or a government agency that wouldn't have the power or influence to turn this pilot into transformative social change.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#19

If you’re working 20% less than your competitor, you will fall behind. There’s no amount of mental gymnastics one can do to reconcile that fact. And if true, then the market should resolve this.

In this age of rampant globalism, one really has to wonder who advocates for such things; remember that "competitor" doesn't just mean another company in the same country.

Re: A six-month program in Britain will assess the effects of a shorter workweek

#20

Also a lot of jobs have enough flex hours and vacation that it's close enough to 4 days/week anyway. The downside of shorter workweeks is it may cause a loss of productivity at the endpoints of the week. For example, there is often a marked slowdown on the Thursdays and Mondays before and after 3-day weekends. So you are not just losing an extra day but more like 1.5 days due to slowdowns and loss of productivity.

By this logic, we all have a 2.5 day weekend now. Which is probably true for many of us, at least from time to time.
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