It's Time for a Four-Day Workweek | Hacker News Reader

It's Time for a Four-Day Workweek

citylab.com

70 pointsgkuan57 comments

I did a year of a 4 day/9 hour schedule (our normal work week is 35 hours). I would do Monday-Thursday one week, followed by a Tuesday-Friday, to make alternate weekends 4 days long. For the last year, due to a head injury, I've worked 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, in 2.5 hour chunks. While my hours are shorter, I've found it really refreshing to have a 3 hour midday break. Lunch is never rushed, I have time to watch a tv show or run an errand or two, and I generally come back to work in the afternoon very refreshed. On top of that, it's easier to focus in - 2.5 hour blocks don't leave time for distractedness.

I liked the 4/10 schedule, but I don't think it fulfilled my hopes for it. My intention was to use my off days for my own projects, as I was starting to burn out and feel uninspired. What I found was that it was difficult to shift gears for just a day or two, especially after working long hours the previous several days. For the most part, the off days would just be when I would run errands. Instead of taking a half day to take the dogs to the vet, I would use my free day. So, it was nice enough, but hard to fully utilize well.

Of course, I think the real trick is finding a job that lets you have a good work life balance. My work year, if I were full time, is only ~1500 hours. That, more than anything, is what I'll be looking for in any future jobs.

My current schedule is 12 days on 13 hour shifts followed by two days off. Resident physicians get screwed and only recently were 'limited' to 80 hour work weeks. I would love even a five day work week.

I have noticed my moral has dropped immensely on this schedule. It is definitely hard to balance work with social life, exercise, and sleep.

Why are working hours in the medical industry so crazy? It doesn't seem to be in anyone's interest.

My brother in law just finished a residency and we asked him the same question. Apparently more mistakes are made in hand offs between doctors than from tired doctors.

I am too lazy to check since I'm on my phone but I believe in the UK between less fatigue and fewer handoff errors it's a wash except for surgeons where there's a clear loss, as in under the new system more patients die.

Tradition, hazing, survivorship bias, and the fact that the people who are in charge of the system are only starting to think of quality-control statistics as something that could apply to the practice of general medicine.

There have been hospitals that have cut resident hours to more reasonable schedules. They measured the number of errors, hoping to see a drop. Unfortunately, the number of errors stayed the same.

The problem is that shorter hours increases the number of patient handoffs between doctors. Most residents cap at 12 patients. So, as you're trying to get out the door to go home, eat some food and sleep, you have to brief the incoming doctor on 10-12 hours of care for 12 patients. Either you have to go fast and skip some stuff, or you'll be there forever.

So, what's really needed is a better tracking, monitoring and handoff system? I don't know anything about hospitals, so have no idea how they currently do things and if there even is a way to make a better system work (and if they would even budget for such a system), but just going by the comments here, it sounds to me that there is a big need for improvement.

I think it's probably more about protocol. One example is that some departments would hand off in alphabetical order by patient name. Seems logical, but if Ms. Abraham is doing just fine, but Mr. Zimmerman is in critical condition, well, you can see the flaw. They found that doing handoffs in order of severity helped decrease error rates.

The other issue is interruptions. Hospitals are busy places, and sometimes someone needs to get in and get some information from one of the doctors doing the handoff, causing a legitimate interruption. As we know, even a few seconds can derail your whole train of thought. It's definitely still an open problem.

The AMA artificially limits the number of doctors. Supply and demand.

Yeah but in all fairness that's only a couple years and is where most of your learning will occur.

Moreover, if the ama didn't limit the supply of physicians to boost salary, you could get better hours (post resident) at the cost of lower salary (still over 100k). Is that a trade you think most physicians want?

> Yeah but in all fairness that's only a couple years and is where most of your learning will occur.

Oh, well that makes sense then. People learn best when they're depressed and sleep-deprived, right?

No but in general you tend to get serious and learn a lot in difficult and pressing situations than other wise. It ends up being stressful, but good things come out of it. This is not a long term strategy, but works for a few weeks/months.

When I started my career, I went into a very famous IT firm here in India. Being from a non-CS background they put us through a grueling training schedule. Which together with the course work, assignments, project work, tests, interviews and exams put us on a 20 hour schedule for around 3-4 months- Failure means getting fired, and in this country where getting jobs is quite difficult for a fresher that was not even an option. We stayed in the campus hostel, pretty much training and occasional recreation is what we did.

Guess what even after 7-8 years later, the biggest edge I hold over my peers is that training. Basically because we went through every thing there is about out there. At the end, we might have gained what one would gain after 2-3 years of working in a few months. Needless to say that set a new bench mark for us, knowing we had absorbed the difficult and come out strong- You change into a different person.

You don't learn facts well. But you learn how to cope with extreme stress. Apparently the medical field values that. Some life-or-death surgeries are many hours long, so it makes some sense that this would be the case.

What percent of doctors do you think have do deal with hour long life-or-death surgeries? .5%? 5%?

Most at some point in their training.

The general-practice doctors I know all have stories about them. They're not uncommon. Also, doctors have on-call rotations. People get shot, stabbed, in car accidents, etc at all hours. So odds are that even if you avoid the planned long surgeries, you'll still have a low-sleep surgery at some point.

I think it's almost criminal what doctors and residents are subjected to.

"some have speculated that the Jews adopted this after their exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C."

Citation needed. The Torah would clearly put the 7 day week as one of the earliest doctrines, far before the Babylonian exile.

Fully agreed that citation is needed here, but I thought the Torah was first written down during the exiles (though, to be sure, based on oral tradition that was much older); the given "some have speculated" would be more or less consistent with that.

Unless you believe that the Torah was handed down intact on Mount Sinai, it was written between 600 and 400 BCE. Anything before that is, er, hearsay.

At my job we've been doing 4x10 schedule and it works pretty well for the most part, but there are downsides. A 3 day weekend is great, but less great if your spouse/family is not around that extra day. Also, the extra day tends to get filled up with chores or other stuff. It becomes everyone else's "catch all" kind of day.

I have noticed that 10 hour days tend to grind on a team and it can make a bad situation potentially worse than it actually is as people get stressed out or tired during a compressd time period.

I think a better solution doesn't lie in rearranging the 40 hour week. I think it lies in a 20 hour week. Work two days, "rest" 5 days. Work becomes the exception, not the rule.

We absolutely right now have enough productivity at our fingertips that the average person could work 20 hour weeks and probably get about the same amount of stuff done, just with less time spent "working" while on twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. throughout the day. There would be less time spent emailing and frankly, I'm not sure people would notice the difference in output, but they'd probably notice the difference in their life.

For most people, the problem is pay and it's not because there isn't enough money to make this work, it's because people attach salaries to the notion of the 40 hour week and how things traditionally are run. For many businesses, a 20 hour week would be plenty if people accepted this reality and worked around it.

The fact is, all the gains in productivity from automation and technology for the most part have gone to the bottom line profits, not to the employees pocketbooks.

If we are going to start negotiating for better work life balance and working conditions, don't just shuffle hours around, eliminate the nonessential busy work that fills the day and work towards a dramatic improvement, not just an incremental change.

Yeah, 4x10 sounds awful -- in fact, working 10 hour days in general sounds awful. I doubt that advocates of a shorter work week have "work the same number of hours, but in a different configuration."

The problem is that even without enough work to go around, people in the U.S. believe that we should be working at minimum 40 hours a week. I think it's going to be really difficult to get people to change that. I can imagine a lot of people staying late or working at home on the weekends to "catch up" with a shortened week.

Maybe it would be easier to start a "9-3" campaign than a "Monday-Thursday" campaign.

I recently moved from a Mon-Fri 9-5 to Tue-Fri 9-5; I've definitely noticed an improvement in my morale, and possibly an improvement in my productivity, though that's harder to measure. I don't necessarily think replacing the day missed with more work each day is a brilliant solution though, as productivity tends to drop off dramatically over the day anyway. If we want to work less, it might be best to actually work less.

Weeks were originally based around market day: you'd work your fields for 6 days then go into town on the 7th to trade, socialise, etc. Basing weeks around a day of rest was a Jewish innovation.

There are examples of places using 8 or 10 day weeks (e.g. the Roman Empire, revolutionary France, the USSR) but everyone keeps returning to a 7 day week.

Yes, but we have technology available that wasn't in the days of Roman Empire, or even the USSR. Politicians keep telling us we have had growth, yet everyone seems to be working more and more just to make ends meets.

I would gladly move to 10 hour days for four days. Hell I'd do 12 hours for 3 days

Just as long as you don't try to do 40 hours in one day... (heck, why not... we have multi-tasking now....)

But really, I'll believe 4 day work weeks when I see them. They will always find something wasteful for people to do to eat up the hours even if we do become on the whole more efficient. Besides, all the insurance people and real estate people will still hang out chatting for 60+ hours and then tell everyone they work 60 hours a week. (My girlfriend is a realtor...that's how I know what they do. She doesn't understand why she can't just call to chat anytime while I'm at work because... I'm working! And no, I probably can't "work" 60 hours a week for an extended period of time. But given the choice, I'd prefer to have to work 60 hours a week rather than have to chat 60 hours a week.... so I say they deserve their money!)

I think the best 4 day work week would be a rolling day off and probably not coincide with co workers ( allows someone to be in every business day). First week you get Monday off, second week Tuesday off, etc. if you need a day that everyone needs to be in perhaps you exclude a day, perhaps Wednesdays, from the rolling off day.

Your coworker would get first work Tuesday off, second week Thursday off ( if excluding Wednesdays for all hands in day), etc...

This assumes you also always get Saturday and Sunday off.

I think I prefer 5 six hour days.

Provided you don't have to physically travel to a work location more days but shorter does seem to be more productive, for me at least.

I could work a few long days a week but I get a lot more done working a few hours a day instead. I'll often work 6 or even 7 days a week but those work days are only 1-4 hours long.

In particular 1-2 hours spent working on saturday or sunday usually results in a extremely disproportionate increase in overall productivity.

I agree. I prefer 6 days but shorter days - plus 2 week holidays where one switches off totally and sabbaticals once a decade or so. Its a recipe for creativity, not just grinding it out.

I am team leader of a software development team and thanks to tolerance of my boss I have a 4-day work week for past 20 months (Monday - Thursday, 8 working hours per day on average). The rest of my team (and also rest of the company employees) is working 5 days.

Compared to 5 work days per week I feel my work is much more focused, better organized and prioritized. there is no space to spend 1 hour a day reading hacker news.

The team does not seem to suffer from the fact I am not there at Friday. they have the option to call me via phone if they get completely blocked in some issue (such a call occurs maybe once in two months).

I try proactively to avoid being the blocker any time by replacing email communication by issue tracking and shared intranet boards and documents as much as possible.

Let's say, as an experiment, we decide to work four days a week. Which day do we take off? Just a hunch but the top two candidates most likely are Monday and Friday.

Friday's claims: 1) "TGIF" now has some teeth. 2) Friendly gesture towards our Muslim countrymen. Hey, we took the rest of Saturday off to help get along with our Jewish friends. 3) We can still hate Mondays.

Monday's claims: 1) A lot of work for artists churning out anti-Tuesday work that oddly resembles the old anti-Monday work.

Aw, screw that - I have a better idea. 365 divided by 7 = 52.14whatever but 365 divided by 5 = 73. So if the 4 day workweek seems unworkable, let's instead eliminate Saturday and Sunday. MWahHahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!

We don't have two days of rest.

On Saturday we need to go shopping for the rest of the week in the morning, in the afternoon we must prepare the family for the night out, and in the evening we must take care of the family as they are out.

On Sunday we have to clean the house, doing all the cleaning tasks we couldn't do on the previous days, and watch the ball games with the relatives in the evening.

This.

I struggle without kids to get myself organised. Trying to do a side project in my spare time (what spare time?). Its difficult.

What if we just stopped caring about weeks and employers required 20 days of work per month?

If you wanted an extra long vacation, you could work 40 days in a row and take 20 days off.

This, in addition, to the 13-month, 28-day calendar would be interesting time innovations to me.

I also find 100-second minutes and 10-hour days intriguing. But we would have to redefine the second.

This is highly dependent on jobs that don't require "coverage". Lots of jobs do not fit into that category but could still benefit from a reduced work week.

I thought this was an interesting comment buried down below: about Utah adopting a 4/10hr work schedule to cut operating costs during the recession.

http://le.utah.gov/audit/10_10arpt.pdf

The evidence here is pretty scant, and some of that is for good reason. Different jobs/tasks are more prone to benefit from reduced workweeks, others are not. Different individuals work at different paces.

Some tech companies here (in Argentina) are implementing implementing 9-2 or 3 on fridays. It's a nice touch.

It's not quite all the way to a 4-day workweek, but we've got something close at iRobot:

At iRobot we have "summer hours" during (surprise!) the summer. Fridays are half days as long as you get in your 40 hours by noon on Friday, which many people do. I love it!

Want to work here (Boston, MA or Pasadena, CA)? Check out our available jobs (we're hiring software engineers!!!) (http://www.irobot.com/us/Company/Careers.aspx) and then email me: csvec@irobot.com

</shameless plug>

That's not anything close to a four day week, that's a five day week with long hours on four out of five days.

Sounds like you're working 44 hours for 40 hours of pay? (For example: you could have all your hours done by Thursday night, but you still have to come in for a half day on Friday, correct?) If they're going to make you work 40 hours anyway, why the extra half day? Seems fine to me to set the required work time to 40 hours, but that should mean that you can leave once you've got 40 hours in.

"Fridays are half days as long as you get in your 40 hours by noon on Friday" means they're working 40 hours over 4.5 days, instead of 5.

Right, but what if I work 10 hours a day from Monday to Thursday? I've put in my 40 hours but still have to wait until Friday afternoon. In that case they'd probably get paid 44 hours, but it's also possible that they're only getting paid for the 40 hours - which is why I ask if the half day is really necessary.

That stinks if you have a long commute. Still having to commute that fifth day.

I am moving to Boston in the next few months. I'm originally from Boston but I've been living in Bolivia for the past few years. I'd love the chance to work with a company with these hours.

I've been freelancing with US clients for about 2 years now and my work schedule is always 4 days so I'm extremely used to it by now. :)

Hope we can connect in the future!

I can't wait to start filling out time sheets (or maybe you have the convenience of a punch card?) to make sure I "get my hours in".

Fuck off getting things done: we've got hours to complete!

One thing doesn't exclude the other. At one of the best places where I've worked at we had to fill out timesheets. It was actually used to make sure people worked a sane amount of time. If you piled up on extra hours you were told to go home and take a day or two off.

>Fridays are half days as long as you get in your 40 hours by noon on Friday

You keep track of hours? Aren't you salaried professionals? Who cares how long you work if you get your work done.

I do. If my work refuses to pay me more than for 40 hours, why should I work more? I already have enough work for 3 people.

Because you're not hourly. You're not paid to work for 40 hours, you're paid to fulfill certain obligations and be held accountable for them. That means sometimes you might have to work more than 40 hours, and sometimes you might work less.

This is not unique to software, you might have to wake up and fix something in the middle of the night the same way a doctor might have to take a call w/ a patient on a weekend when they're on-call. It's part of the job.

Sue if they want that sort of commitment, they can pay me for it. At the moment they are getting a good deal with the crappy salary I am getting.

It sounds like people are upset that 1. iRobot has time cards at all, and that 2. by giving us the option of a half-day Friday they are somehow taking advantage of employees.

1. Time cards: many companies have them. Not an excuse, just a fact. I don't like time cards, but I like my job at iRobot, so I'll put up with time cards. It's a low-overhead-slightly-annoying part of my week which is far outweighed by the parts of my job I love, which is most of them. If you really hate time cards that's fine - I understand and don't blame you - iRobot is not for you.

2. Half-day: The half-day is optional, so if you want to leave early on a Friday you work a bit more during the week and you're out early. Don't like it? Don't do it. I love it because I'm happy to trade a bit more work Monday - Thursday for an early trip to the beach on Friday. I work about 40 hours every week and consider the Friday "half-days" a good deal.

(Also, some people work from home on that Friday half-day, which solves the commute problem .)

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