Four-Day Workweek Going Well Globally, Study Says | Hacker News Reader

Four-Day Workweek Going Well Globally, Study Says

forbes.com

40 pointsbilsbie10 comments

First, logically speaking, I'm all for working less. But...

I wonder if we should model it as a 4+1...where Friday is like a flex day if you need to catch up, etc.

One argument I see is that people don't do much on Fridays anyways. Everybody is in weekend mindset.

If we go to four day, well eventually wouldn't Thursday become the lazy, weekend mindset day? It wouldn't happen right away, since most businesses, peoples, and schools are M-F still. Wondering if eventually, as more jump on and settle in, we'd see a measurable downtrend in productivity, whatever that means.

Great in idea but would probably fail in practice. Management will cut the people working 4 days and view the people working 5 as superior.

I say this because this dynamic already plays out with people who work weekends.

I would accept being passed over for my next promotion in exchange for a four-day workweek. (Of course, my career doesn't have that much longer to run, so the damage to me would be minimal.)

> If we go to four day, well eventually wouldn't Thursday become the lazy, weekend mindset day?

Why would it necessarily be Monday through Thursday? Why not Monday-Tuesday, Wednesday off, Thursday-Friday, for example? So you're only ever working 2 days in a row, instead of 4.

Is it really a "weekend mindset", or is it more a 5th day in a row mindset?

When I did a schedule like this, I much preferred the mid weekday off versus the Friday.

So this is referenced in a way (tailored for 5d week) in CGP Grays video:

https://youtu.be/ALaTm6VzTBw

I actually did this for a couple months with permission from my boss. It went well, but at the end of it I was talking with my SO and they said that it was nice but they also rarely got to see me. They worked on Wednesday and I didn’t, and I worked on Saturday and they didn’t so we basically only saw each other on Sunday.

Just my 2c. If I was single I would almost certainly work Weekend Wednesday.

> Wondering if eventually, as more jump on and settle in, we'd see a measurable downtrend in productivity

The reality of digital automation is that productivity is bound to go up dramatically anyway, at least for the next 20-30 years. "Losing" a bit of human-based productivity would likely not be a net negative.

In the end, we weren't put on this planet to crank out widgets or print money. Work is a mean to an end (human welfare, peace, etc). If we can reach that end with less and less work, that's good news.

that depends on the job. I work tuesday to friday with friday usually being the most busy and stressfull day

Fridays generally are slow for very normal human reasons. Especially afternoons like this one.

We have an interesting setup where we do every other Friday off - the logic being that we combine 2 slow Friday afternoons into an entire day off. Everybody gets a 3 day weekend twice a month for longer breaks or road trips.

I’ve been pleasantly surprised by how it’s panned out in practice. Feels like a nice middle ground.

Why not 'Two day + One off + Two day + Two Weekly Off' ?

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