Once You Try a Three-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
More like "once you try an 8-hour workday, it's hard to go back."
That was decades ago. Now aim for 6!
Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
71–80 of 123 posts
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure I'd say the QoL for the ultra-rich has been improved that much. They have a lot more money, but end up spending it mostly on updated versions of the same stuff rich people have always spent money on. There is a serious diminishing returns on how much money can improve your Quality of Life. It can even become a burden as a level of extreme wealth can start to become its own obligation.
> I'm not sure I'd say the QoL for the ultra-rich has been improved that much. It has. What you’re missing is that everybody on this forum is part of the top one percent: it all depends on the scale. On a global scale, if you live in the west, most likely you’re in the top 1%.
> What you’re missing is that everybody on this forum is part of the top one percent
Hardly. People here have a higher-than-one-percent chance of being in the top 1%, but it's a long way from "everyone here".
> On a global scale, if you live in the west, most likely you’re in the top 1%.
Obviously wrong. The global population is 8 billion; the US plus the EU is about 700 million.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
This sort of snarky response fails to consider the actual benefits - for both the employer and the employee. Often by the end of the week, people in complex positions are well past the point of diminishing returns - pushing them harder may work in the short-term, but it's a recipe for burnout. It's better to have someone operating closer to their peek performance for longer - even if you sacrifice a day overall.
As I've been working for myself, this is exactly what I've noticed. The exhaustion and stress of pushing myself "another day" for "just another feature" is absolutely not worth the burnout that comes immediately after.
Oh no man - that's just regular exhaustion.
Burnout's more insidious and pernicious than that - and it takes far more than a few days of rest to get over it.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not progress. Every organization has "load bearing" employees that do the brunt of the real work, and everyone else just creates a cloud of confusion about what they actually do and why it's important. Most people are doing fake work. But unfortunately "fake work" jobs are the only way to fight back about the ever-optimizing, ever-extracting process of the free market. My job is needed because fuck you, I'm not…
It's all well and good to pretend that this is the case, but it isn't. Most jobs involve some obvious measure of progress. Especially under the umbrella of "service." Women disproportionately choose these jobs: nurses, servers, etc. Women are more educated, hell the last time I went to the doctor there was a resident, a nurse, and a doctor, all three where women. There could be some jobs where it's hard to measure pr…
As someone who has done fake work knowingly, what do you say to me? That I was actually providing real progress, just that it was difficult to measure, and I am fooling myself? No, it was fake work, and I've seen many peers do the same over the years.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#75I had a 4-10s shift when I worked for a local college during the summers.
Mon-thurs sucked about 20% more.
Fridays were 1,000% better.
It was a good trade and I miss it.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#76Parts of US Department of Defense and their contractors do what they refer to as Compressed Work Schedule (CWS) wherein employees work 9-hour days and get every other Friday off. Some people opt to split their off day and make every Friday a half-day so that they can be on the links or at the riverside bar and grill by lunchtime. While in college I worked 10 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday. Saturd…
IMO: I have never worked in a job where I would have been like "heck yeah, four day work week lets do it". Part of that is, there's kinda two distinct and separate camps, and sometimes its unclear which camp people are in and what we're fighting for. Is it "I work ~40 hours in four days" or "I work ~32 hours in four days"? And my take is, I don't like either of these solutions. I've never worked in a role where I fee…
"reducing net hours worked by 20% isn't going to have market success."
The forty hour week also wouldn't "have market success" (i.e. allow many individual firms to move to it unilaterally). But it happened because organized workers compelled a few employers to adopt it through labor stoppages. This in turn created political momentum for the standard forty hour week in the legal form of collective bargaining agreements and/or working hour legislation.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#77Once You Try a Three-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
This sort of snarky response fails to consider the actual benefits - for both the employer and the employee. Often by the end of the week, people in complex positions are well past the point of diminishing returns - pushing them harder may work in the short-term, but it's a recipe for burnout. It's better to have someone operating closer to their peek performance for longer - even if you sacrifice a day overall.
2 days off for the weekend just isn't enough to fully recuperate once you're in the burnout zone.
I think if I were to be fired I would like to take 2-3 months off to build up before I started looking for a new job, but that's only possible due to having some savings I could tap into.
Back of the napkin calculations say I would need about $4,000/month liquid cash to not be in danger. Add another 1 month barrier in and I would need $16,000 on hand to take 3 months off assuming that I got another equally paying job almost immediately.
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#78One of the aspects that has never been discussed in those studies is the competitor's offset, which wouldn't adopt the 4-day work week. Local companies in Germany have a very defensive business due to the nature of the market (not so internationalized, highly consolidated, a lot of small businesses that no big corporation would try to enter, and low competition in mid-sized businesses due to bureaucracy). For local S…
Friend of mine worked for BMW in Germany. The 35 hour work week was strictly enforced. It's the law, it's the system, so of course that is what they are going to do.
Yes. Those are the specific conventions that the betriebsrat (Workers Concil) decides, but this varies from company to company and state.
My point is, considering this specific arrangement of 7 hours a day/workday (35h), what would be the offset comparing this same company with 28h/week (4D) with another company not in that arrangement in scenarios where throughput per hour matters?
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#79> 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. I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to four-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
I mean, that's definitely going away if all other employers also move to five-day workweeks, so it seems like you shouldn't factor that in as one of the benefits of this schedule.
1920 probably
Re: Once You Try a Four-Day Workweek, It's Hard to Go Back
#80Earlier 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.
“Self-determined busy” otherwise known as a sustainable level of busy, if we’re steel manning. AKA on a PIP if you are an Amazon manager.