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Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

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Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#101

Post by n4r9 »

015a wrote: post #91
n4r9 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's so much admin and meetings (and even just finding availability for meetings!) So I moved to a four day week just over a year ago. It's been crucial to get really strict about reducing the amount of time spent in meetings. It's not easy always being the awkward person that's often telling people to take tangential discussions offline, demanding agendas, or challenging whether a call is required. > Policies l…

> Or high performers who've recently become parents, or whose own parents are nearing end of life, or who have some other reason to want to spend more time with family. I don't feel this is a fair assessment of what I'm proposing. I haven't personally met a parent who would choose "8am to 6pm, Mon-Thu, strict, in an office" over "core hours of 11am to 2pm, Mon-Fri, more lenient, but put in 40 hours a week". I have me…

It sounds like you're assuming that 4-day weekers are necessarily trading in flexible hours and independence. The impression I had from your original post is that high performers do not like working fewer hours per week, all other things being equal. I didn't realise that you were talking about trade-offs.

I'm currently working reduced hours, coming in 4 days per week, with the same core hours on those days as everyone else, and the ability to shift hours into the evenings or weekends if needed. My boss is happy for me to take an hour or two extra at lunch to deal with house or family stuff. Sometimes I work a shorter day to go to the gym before dinner, then work slightly longer the following day. It's because I'm high-performing, valuable, and trusted that I was able to negotiate such a position.

Another thing worth mentioning is UK government childcare provisions. Parents get 15-30 hours of free childcare per week (depending on age). That's up to 3 days per week free at a nursery or childminder of your choice. Reducing fromm 5 to 4 days in childcare actually halves your outgoings. Given that nursery places can cost in excess of £100 per day, this is often not a bad deal even if you take a pay cut.

I do love my job, and once the kid is at school I'll assess whether I want to return to 5 days. I agree that you can get more done in 5 days, although I think in reality it's not a huge difference since I'm less incentivised to be strict about things that waste time.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#102

Post by nxobject »

pmg101 wrote: post #69
stavros wrote: post #49

I work four eight-hour days (with a concomitant 20% pay cut), and I'm never going back. I did try a five-day year, after six or so years of a four-day week, but that just made me cement my decision to not work five days. A two-day weekend is too short, a five-day workweek is too long. 4/3 is the perfect split.

This is true in my opinion. But if you worked the fifth day and invested all your fifth-day earnings, you could retire/become financially independent a decade earlier. I'm not sure it's so clear cut which of these is the better option.

I agree that there are upsides and downsides to both. What tipped 4 days in my favor was having one free day to schedule annoying errands in that would have otherwise Swiss cheesed my schedule or taken up my evenings between work days - seeing the doctor/psychiatrist/vet, getting your oil changed, reviewing my monthly spending, etc.

There is a genuine trade off for me: I don’t make as much money, and concretely I’ve noticed that travel far less than my friends do, and unlike my friends I don’t own a car that I have to make long-term payments on. But I do get more focused work in during weekdays because of that, and time to explore my city during weekends, which scratches my traveling itch.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#103

Post by JackSlateur »

nntwozz wrote: post #23

Aldous Huxley imagined in the '20s we would automate most things and work less in the future. Today we work more than ever together with increased automation, and women work as well instad of being home to take care of the household. On paper it looks like progress, but I'm not so sure about the quality of life.

The main point here lies in the definition of "work". I do not think we work a lot, these days. If anything and from what I see on IT, work is really scarse.

What has increased a lot is the time spent "on duty" (on the office or whatever).

This is not work per-se. But this is time retrieved from your life. This is not progress.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#104

Post by JackSlateur »

tmn wrote: post #57
listenallyall wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Few people want to sit idle and just do nothing. We have, in fact, automated almost everything. Dishwashers, laundry machines, Amazon delivering to your door. People have a natural instinct to fill in the gaps and so they take on more activities, responsibilities, and work.

Agree. In my observation people have a natural tendency to float towards a self determined 'busy'. Which is generally not that busy. As in there is a plenty of time to watch shows, indulge in frivolous pet household projects, go to wine tastings, etc. Note that some of these indulgences are what leads to the self determined 'busy'. But the point is they are discretionary.

Yes

Pascal, in his "Pensées" book, wrote about this: humans keep getting busy, because otherwise they would understand how pointless their existence and suffering and reality is.

And so, in order to avoid the inner void that lurk behind everyone's mind, we run, we act, we play and we do thing, because even the useless is better than the nothing.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#105

Post by sotix »

Everywhere I’ve been interviewing at recently has told me upfront that they expect a 50-60 hour workweek with a few outright stating they work half the day on Sunday. I’d love a four-day workweek, but right now I’m just hoping for a five-day, 40-hour workweek to start.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#106

Post by consteval »

015a wrote: post #98
foogazi wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I've never worked in a role where I feel like working 32 hours a week would deliver meaningfully similar results to working 40 hours. But why the 40 hours at all ? Why not 48 and be more productive ?

Because 40 is sustainable, and the standard we've mostly all agreed to (with some fuzzy room in there for heavy versus light weeks/etc). This sounds like a reductive answer, because it is: Capitalism is social, zero sum, and reductive. There are people out there who will put in 50, 60, 70 hour weeks. If you do 40, they'll probably beat you, plain and simple. Fortunately, we've all mostly agreed that 40 is enough, so…

The problem is that typically the burden of work is much more than 40 hours, even if you only work 40 hours. Because those hours are calculated in the most ungenerous way possible.

Your lunch doesn't count. So that's now 9 hours at work. Your morning commute doesn't count. So that's now 10. And your evening commute doesn't count. Now up to 11. And those after-work meetings don't count, but you kind of need to attend them because of the implications. And so on.

While you may "work" 40 hours a week, you certainly contribute to work much more than 40 hours. For me, it's over 60, and from what I've seen that's fairly typical.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#107

Post by consteval »

listenallyall wrote: post #48
0xcafefood wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe all the gains went to the top? Quality of life for the ultra-high net worth set has never been better.

Few people want to sit idle and just do nothing. We have, in fact, automated almost everything. Dishwashers, laundry machines, Amazon delivering to your door. People have a natural instinct to fill in the gaps and so they take on more activities, responsibilities, and work.

The lie of our society is that the alternative to work is to "sit idle".

That's more time with your family, your friends, your loved ones. More time smiling, more time laughing, more time being creative. This is the "good" time - the part of life you actually care about. The parts of life you will remember when you're close to death. You won't remember meetings, or a commute, or even a project you did really good on at work.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#108

Post by consteval »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #4
laweijfmvo wrote: post #2

For workers, sure. We said the same thing about WFH, and well, employers disagreed as soon as they were able to.

Apparently for employers as well: "Employers saw benefits, too: 70% reported that recruiting workers was easier once they went to a four-day schedule—a boon in a country where many industries complain that intense competition for talent drives up costs. A dozen participants reported details of their financial performance, showing revenue and profit were stable overall."

A measure could up productivity by 1 bajillion percent, but if it grants employees more happiness, mobility, and control it's dead in the water.

The business world is not rationale by any means. The people in positions of control to make these decisions made it there because they LOVE being in control. They will often hurt themselves purely to maintain a delusion of strength. This self-destructive nature is an inherent flaw of humanity. Very few people have the ability to even recognize their own self-destruction, let alone fix it.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#109

Post by consteval »

tomohelix wrote: post #59
eweise wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see what fairness has to do with WFH. Its in the company's best interest to maximize employee productivity. If an employee has to travel three hours per day to sit on zoom meetings, they might not be motivated to perform as well as they would for a company that treats them better.

I guess by using the word "fair" I may have caused the discussion to focus on the wrong idea. It is about what is acceptable to both the employer and the employee. The employee would like the freedom to WFH but the employer consider it a benefit that come at their cost and thus do not want to grant it. As shown by other professions, the idea of WFH is entirely new and rarely if ever granted or expected to most profes…

Employers only consider it a benefit because workers like it. If we all banded together and just lie and say WFH sucks, we'd then get it. Because that's how these things work. Often the metric to optimize for is employee control, and therefore a field I like to call "misery management".

The objective world does not always, and in fact rarely, intersects with the world of business management. In reality, WFH is cheaper across the board. In time, space, money... every aspect you can think of.

But a mutually beneficial nature makes is undesirable from a business perspective, because they don't want the implications of that word - "mutual".

Employees advocate for themselves because they have to. If you are not selfish in that manner, you are ONLY hurting yourself. Employers have discovered the art of selfishness thousands of years ago. You must push, you must be entitled. And, remember, the only reason you have what you have is because a lot of workers before you were very entitled. So entitled they often got what they wanted via violence.

Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back

#110

Post by ElevenLathe »

odo1242 wrote: post #86
ElevenLathe wrote: post #39

I used to work 4x10 hour days, Sun-Wed, 2nd shift. It was OK, but I was ecstatic when I was finally able to move to a normal 9-5 Mon-Fri schedule. It's so much nicer to have society's expectations of when you are meant to be working to match when you are actually working.

What was it like, by the way, out of curiosity?

Working that schedule? It was great for some stuff (going out Fridays) but bad for others. For example I was taking night classes at the time and constantly had to beg for help with coverage because 7pm is not early enough release to make it to most night classes, which tend to begin then or a little earlier. I also didn't get to see my wife as much because she worked first shift, so only we had breakfast and an hour before bed on M-W.

It was definitely much better than 11p-7a Sat-Wed which I had worked immediately before that.

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