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Comment by _0w8t | Hacker News Reader

In Norway there are also suggestions to shorten the working time to 6 hours. But why not to give an extra day-of instend? Petsonally i strongly prefer the latter as with 6 working hours one still spends substantial time to get to/from work.

In Moscow where some people spends over 4 hours just to get to work companies started to offer 10 hours of work time in return to extra day off.

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Because the point isn't to give people more free time; it's to let people go home when they run out of mental energy and wouldn't be doing anything useful for the rest of their workday anyway.

Even if you were only working one day a week, you wouldn't be able to do 8 hours of contiguous useful information-work.

With 30 hours per week I would really prefer to work for 10 hours 3 days. This way after each work day I will have a day off. This way I can recharge myself sufficiently to have productive 10 hours.

As for productivity then I noticed when debugging hard bugs times really fly.

Imagine you worked only two days a week, but 18 hours a day. Assume you're young and flexible enough to survive that, and you have a cot in the office. Would you want to do that? How much dread would you feel the day before your shift started?

I think the point of the linked article is that the same reason that makes you recoil at that, and the same reasons that would make these coming hell-days so dread-inducing- those same reasons apply to an 8-hour day, just to a lesser degree.

It's not about extending the weekend as much as possible, it's about shortening the part of each workday that you're "working", and reducing the mental burden of each individual workday.

There won't be a universally appealing solution. I have had this discussion with colleagues and most agree a 4x10 week is preferable to the 5x8 work week.

For employees, sure. For productivity? Very very doubtful.

No, I mean for productivity as well. 10 hour days (for many) aren't all that taxing.

18 hours does not work. But 10-11 is ok, as long as it is not 5 days per week. The trick is to have a long pause in the middle, like 1 hour for lunch and small walk (perhaps to a nice restaurant nearby).

This is how it works in Moscow. A person comes to work at 9, has a long lunch/pause from 2 to 3 and then leave at 8. As an added bonus late in the evening traffic jams are reduced and the underground is no longer overcrowded so it is faster to get home.

Not for me, there is no way I can produce anything for 11 hours at a time, no matter how rested I am.

But this is not 11 hours at a time. It is 5-6 hours of work, long pause for 1 or 1.5 hours and then work for another 5 hours.

I know some doctors who have work schedules very similar to what you describe. Working around 10 days a month, but for really long shifts, around 16-18 hours (for example 15 to 8 is typical in rural health clinics, so that there is someone to cover emergencies while the doctors with the "standard" 8 to 15 schedule are not working).

Not everyone likes that schedule, but some really prefer it and actively choose it over more "standard" schedules. Especially those who have small children. They have around 20 days a month to be with their children as long as needed, and only have to worry about whom to leave them with during the other 10 days. Couples where both are doctors, and both have this time table, have the kids problem fully solved by just picking different days to work.

> companies started to offer 10 hours of work time in return to extra day off.

That would equate to 18 hour days. Give yourself 2 hours of time spread across the morning and evening to wash, dress, eat etc. you'd be looking at 4 hours sleep a night for 4 nights and no relaxation time. That seems unsustainable.

14hr days.

"4 hours just to get to work" means it takes 4 hours to get to work, not it takes 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours back.

If the parent commenter meant it takes 2 hours to get to work and 2 hours to get back that would have been better said like that, or "4 hours total commute time per day", or similar.

I meant above 4 hours in total on average spend to get to and back from work.

Here in Norway most salaried workers have flexitime and many people take Fridays off to get a long weekend and reduce the amount of time spent commuting.

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