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.