I’d still likely take the option, I just think it’s unnecessary. Productivity is ridiculously up since the 8 hour day was established, even since just two decades ago.

Tasks expand to take up the available time, even if usefulness doesn’t.

I suspect you’d see little loss in cutting down to 32/hr/week, and I suspect it would be more than made up for by the gains of giving people that extra day. So it may be a net positive.

I guess my main concern is that a lot of companies (not speaking about Japan here, just the US) might decide to use four days a week as a way to make people crunch four days thinking that having three days off would make up for that. And things wouldn’t really be any better.

I did 4x10 and I found it horrible. During the four days, I didn't get to do anything other than work and commute. And the stupid thing was that my output (and that of my coworkers as far as I could tell) was not really higher with 10 hours than with 8 hours. Three day weekends are nice though.

i've worked 10s before, and it's alternately amazing and terrible. at an office job, answering emails and going to meetings, 10hrs is completely beyond my tolerance level.

but if you've got a project, and you can just put your head down and work, then 10s are really nice.