
Four-day week trial: study finds lower stress but no cut in output - uxhacker
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2019/feb/19/four-day-week-trial-study-finds-lower-stress-but-no-cut-in-output
======
znq
At Mobile Jazz (7 years old now) and Bugfender (4-5 years old now) we always
had the rule, that people could choose to work as much as they want and when
they went. As long as the output and quality was there. Obviously to achieve
high quality output you need to be there at certain times (overlap with other
team members) and you need to do a certain amount of hours. The problems we
had because of this are almost no-existent (specific people that then ended up
not staying very long in the company) and the advantages by far outweigh the
"loss of control". In the end myself as a business owner and managers have far
less stress by trusting people and empowering them to do great work.

With this framework, people will take breaks whenever they feel like. They go
doing sports, play with their kids, run errands. They even take whole days off
to go surfing or skiing. And I really don't mind. Because I do the same.

But then, if a server goes down late at night, people all the sudden show up
by themselves and fix problems. Also on a rainy Saturday or Sunday, people
will all the sudden be online and working.

Give people the opportunity to be in charge of their own work schedule, give
them the responsibility, make them feel that they're actually responsible and
they will shine.

We also just released our company handbook which goes in a lot of detail on
how we run a 20+ people remote business:

* [https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook](https://mobilejazz.com/company-handbook) (landing page, if you want to get email updates)

* [https://mobilejazz.com/docs/company-handbook/mobile-jazz-com...](https://mobilejazz.com/docs/company-handbook/mobile-jazz-company-handbook.pdf) (direct link to the PDF)

EDIT: Added some more details

~~~
wodenokoto
How do employees know when good is good enough? When things get stressful and
overwhelming at work, I look to my contractual hours per week and remind
myself not to overdo it.

~~~
ryandvm
This is actually the downside of these "you decide" plans and why I absolutely
hate "unlimited PTO" policies. Whenever it's up to me I end up taking less
vacation than if I just had an allotted amount. People shortchange themselves
because they don't want to inconvenience their team. And as an added insult,
the company gets out of paying you for unused vacation when you finally burn
out.

~~~
wutbrodo
I've just started my first job with unlimited PTO, and I've never understood
complaints like these. I can see how it isn't as amazing as a naive what's-on-
the-tin reading would imply, but it seems to me that you can just set your bar
at what a normal amount of vacation would be, plus a little bit if you feel
like, since they're marketing it as "unlimited PTO". Eg, decide that three
weeks is an appropriate, comparable amount, and then take three weeks off.

As I mentioned upthread, I've never had a job where I didn't work when and how
much I wanted, go into the office when I felt like it, etc etc. I'm subject to
the same pressures you describe, but it turns out they're really easy to
handle: keep a rough eye on how many hours you're working.

The other day they had a rare beer release I wanted to go to in the middle of
the day, on a Friday. I didn't have any meetings, so I "WFH" and worked 3-4
hours that day and spent the rest of the day drinking and getting dinner with
a couple funemployed friends, including checking my email and responding to
important ones for a few minutes every couple hours during the workday. I
could've (and have in the past) written off those four lost hours of work as
coming out of my effective productivity, but since this is a new job and I'm
trying to hit the ground running, I just made it up in dribbles of an hour or
two over the next week.

The dirty secret when people talk about being pressured at work is that 90% of
the time, your employers are relying on you to do the work of pressuring
yourself. If my employer wants me to work extra and go above and beyond, I
make sure that it's explicit and metaphorically "on the record". Pulling all-
nighters during crunch time or forgoing vacation for a long time should be
banked as something you can draw on, giving you cover for taking a longer
vacation or working shorter days after crunch time.

It's really up to you to set your work life balance, and the fears most people
have about the consequences of doing so are largely (but not entirely)
illusory.

The one major caveat here that I haven't ever had to face is if you're both at
an abusive company and highly replaceable (eg feel like you couldn't get a
similar quality job). In this case of effectively having a better job than
you'd otherwise get, the power dynamic is markedly shifted and employers can
get away with a lot. The only saving grace in this situation is if your more
in-demand coworkers have healthy attitudes about work/life balance, since it's
hard for management to crack down on individuals in a way that's perceived as
unfair.

~~~
rhizome
Come back in a year and tell us how this went.

------
dalbasal
_"... a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a
five-day week to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay.
Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in
the total amount of work done."_

The result/claim makes intuitive sense to me but..... The problem trying to
study this is that "productivity" of many/most white collar workers is
basically impossible to measure.

Some do. Customer support can be benchmarked (and prodctivity-pushed) But...
customers support jobs don't lend to this 4d workweek thing. The jobs that do
lend to it, don't lend to measurement.

This difficulty can lead to all sorts of wierdness. Tyler Cowen claimed that
office worker productivity has not been (measurably) increased by office
computerization. IE, going from secretaries, fax and typwriters to Google docs
hasn't produced any economic gains.

Strange claim. Difficult to measure. David Graeber (anarchist that reckons
most office work is pointless busy-work) quotes the same stat this white paper
quotes, people spend about 2/8 hrs working and the rest procrastinating on
social media.

Measurement is also not incidental here. Measurablity changes everything. Once
an employees job productivity is measurable, it can be optimized and already
has been.

It's a Shrodinger's product evangalist problem...

That said, I like the jist.Lets shorten the workweek. Science-wise... well...

~~~
maxxxxx
"a New Zealand financial services company, switched its 240 staff from a five-
day week to a four-day week last November and maintained their pay.
Productivity increased in the four days they worked so there was no drop in
the total amount of work done"

And soon some genius will come in and think "How about we worked a few hours
more? This would give us even more output" and soon we are back to normal.

~~~
mrath
This is so true. Over years I have realised that my productivity is pretty
much similar if I worked 7/8/9 hours. Over time the longer I work the less
productive I am. There was a nice quote I once read on HN - everyone have
fixed budget for quality thinking. working longer does not increase that.

~~~
kajmagnusmobile
You can refresh the fixed budget via a siesta power nap

------
nemesisj
We work a 4 Day, 32 hour week, and have done so since 2015. During that time,
our team grew from a small office of ~20 in Edinburgh to where we are today (3
offices in Edinburgh Scotland, Bozeman USA, and Beirut Lebanon) with about 80
people.

We have consistently been one of the fastest growing tech companies in
Scotland (and in the UK). When we implemented the 4 day policy, we didn’t
change our financial targets, or our team metrics. Instead, we explained it
was an experiment that we wanted to run, and we believed that by being more
efficient and more intentional about how we worked, we could still achieve our
goals.

Turned out that was true.

Our motivation was primarily work/life balance, but also the realisation that
most startups take 10-15 years to get to where they want to go, and we have a
long journey ahead of us! It’s a marathon, not a sprint. We still pay a 5 day
wage, and we actually “buy” all 5 days, because we wanted to make sure that
team members weren’t tempted to moonlight on the 5th day.

Overall I think it’s been a really great thing for our team, and perhaps most
importantly, I think we’ve proved that ambitious goals, hard work, and a
strong drive to succeed is not at odds with a 4 day week. Over the last few
years we’ve spent probably hundreds of hours talking with various
organisations and the media about the benefits of the 4 day week, and I’m
hopeful it’ll continue to catch on more and more.

~~~
williamdclt
1\. how did you start the experiment? Did you apply it to everybody from the
start or did you run it on a small sample?

2\. What do you mean "buy all 5 days" and "moonlight on the 5th day"? (not a
native speaker)

~~~
nemesisj
Good questions!

1\. We started by doing some research, actually - I spent some time finding
studies that supported my thesis that productivity would go up (thus making
sure our output would stay the same, more or less). Then I discussed with our
management team, who thought I was nuts, but was supportive. Then I presented
it to our board, who was also supportive. We applied it to everyone at the
start, but some teams took a bit longer to get it implemented, as one of our
criteria was he had to maintain 5 day coverage for our customers (ie, some
have Mondays off, some have Fridays, etc.). To this day we leave the coverage
patterns and rotations up to each team/department to decide.

2\. In our contracts, we are paying you for 40 hours of work, 5 days a week,
but we give you one of them back. Moonlighting meaning working for another
company "on the side".

~~~
ken
What does "give you one of them back" mean, if it doesn't mean I can do what I
want with that time?

~~~
Aeolun
They pay you for _not_ working during that day. Without any requirement to be
in the office to _not_ work.

To be honest, it seems a bit disingenuous to me. A day off should be a day
off. What I do with that time is nobodies business.

~~~
sobani
It is the business' business if you work hours 33-40 anyway. The whole point
of the 32 hour workweek is the idea that those extra 8 hours decreases your
productivity in the first 32.

Yes, it's still possible you'll work on a side gig / for someone else in the
weekend, but that's much less likely than if you have business hours available
for that.

~~~
Aeolun
I’d argue that outside of the time I’m being paid for, the business has zero
influence over what I do with my life.

If I can spend my whole Monday night playing WoW, coming in completely
destroyed the next morning, why couldn’t I do some personal work during the
day on a Thursday and come in refreshed and happy on Friday.

------
combatentropy
This is not the first article about how people get the same amount of work
done, even more, in four days instead of five. But another thing they have in
common is that they never ask the question, what about three?

Or what about two? One? Surely at zero, productivity will not match the old
standard of 40 hours a week. But it seems like the next logical question to
me. If employees are just as productive at 32 hours as 40, at what point does
productivity fall? Maybe 32 just happens to be that breaking point. Or it
might turn out to be 25 or even 15. But let's at least ask the question.

I'm talking about averages, of course.

~~~
data4science
Actually, Tim Ferris wrote a book called "The 4-Hour Workweek" with the goal
of more people achieving the title. It is more oriented at breaking free of
normal work habits than a scientific study of optimal productivity though.

~~~
rootusrootus
Something tells me Tim Ferris works a lot more than 4 hours a week himself.

~~~
jpttsn
His podcasts had him on for about six hours weekly iirc.

------
mettamage
If I'm going to believe anything, I'd need a longitudinal study of about 5
years.

I find 5 years to be a good hallmark to see whether something had an actual
strong impact in my own life (e.g. regarding reading self-help books such as
Search Inside Yourself [1] or Steve Pavlina's blog post on how to rock at
university [2] -- sorry for being slightly off-topic but these two things
changed my life).

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-
Ach...](https://www.amazon.com/Search-Inside-Yourself-Unexpected-
Achieving/dp/0062116932)

[2] [https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-
colleg...](https://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/10-tips-for-college-
students/)

~~~
WhompingWindows
Where did Steve Pavlina go to school? Not sure if some of those triaging
strategies would have worked at U Chicago...

~~~
mettamage
It definitely worked wonders for me (VU University Amsterdam), definitely
during my psychology bachelor.

I experienced the following conditions.

> In every student’s schedule, some classes are critical while others are
> almost trivial.

True, the most funny ones were social psychology and e-business, common sense
almost helped you to pass the course.

> For some classes attendance was necessary, but for others it didn’t make
> much difference.

True for me as well, reading the book within 30 minutes would save 75 minutes
of time since the class would take 105 minutes.

> I could simply get the notes from another student if needed, or I could
> learn the material from the textbook.

We had a notes Facebook group and there was a Dutch startup dedicated to
summaries.

> If it wasn’t necessary for me to attend a particular class (based on my
> goals for that class)

Having a good goal is tantamount if your goal is to learn everything possible,
then triaging becomes almost impossible. If your goal is to just get by with
the lowest grade possible, then triaging is a must.

> If I felt an assignment was lame, pointless, or unnecessarily tedious, and
> if it wouldn’t have too negative an impact on my grade, I would actually
> decline to do it.

I did this with my thesis, for example (again psychology). I _could_ check for
normality and do all the right statistical things, but it would only get me 5%
extra points. So I assumed normality and everything else needed for multiple
linear regression, tested nothing and reported the results.

> Maybe I’d estimate it would take me 20 hours to do an A job but only 10
> hours to do a B job.

Heh, I did this so many times. I had side jobs, a girlfriend, friends and
other activities that I could spend my time on.

> I often thought in this Machiavellian fashion back then, and often to my
> surprise I found that my B-quality papers would come back with As anyway.

Oh yes, one time I even published a paper that I rushed through as a homework
exercise, because my synthesis of using psychology, neuroscience and game
studies for a game studies paper was apparently unparalleled for a master
student (the field simply doesn't have many people, so you easily shine).
Think about that, I rush a paper writing it in 20 hours and it gets published
and nominated for best paper award. Before those 20 hours, I knew nothing of
the topic.

Triaging was a lot harder for my computer science programs though, it simply
has less bullshit, contained more moving parts and has therefore been
intellectually tougher. In that sense, if you triage a lot, it is some
indication that your university program isn't of high quality, unfortunately
(there are quite a bit of exceptions).

------
StavrosK
I've been working four-day workweeks for the past 4 years or so, and love it.
I can't say I have the same output (nor would I want to, since I took a 20%
pay cut for it). I wouldn't trade it for anything, and I don't think I'll be
able to work 5-day weeks again. I tried it a few times and I found myself very
unhappy, 5 days were too long and the weekend too short. The 4/3 split is
ideal, four days isn't enough to get tired of work and a three-day weekend
feels like ages.

I can believe that there would be no cut in output if people said "okay we're
going to get the same amount of tasks done, just in four days instead of
five", so everyone would work 20% more each day. I don't know what side-
effects that might have, but I don't find it impossible. However, it seems
very unlikely to me that you'd work at the same rate for fewer days and still
get the same done. I also don't know why people who work fewer days would
increase their rate of work, but it's certainly plausible.

~~~
analognoise
That schedule is called a 4-10 - 4, 10 hour work days, and every Friday off.

9/80 is that you work 9 hours a day, and every other Friday is off.

They're both popular in defense and aerospace.

~~~
thecatspaw
So decreasing productivity even further, even though you could achieve the
same amount of finished work with 4 8h days. Why?

~~~
awinder
> popular in defense

------
tomjohnneill
I definitely want to believe this is a good measure of the impact of moving to
a four day week. However, I wonder if this is an example of
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect).

Maybe people are being more productive each day because they're aware that the
company is going to be measuring their productivity.

~~~
notahacker
There's also the "do work on the day off because it's a week day and people
still expect a quick reply" habit people in customer facing roles (which
sounds like quite a lot of Perpetual's staff) will be tied to. I took a four
day week for six month in a regular corporate sales job because it was the
most practical way of using my holiday entitlement without losing sales and
contact with customers in a tough market, and sure, it didn't really affect my
weekly productivity, but that's because I never made many important outbound
calls on a Friday and still dealt with all the customer email on my Blackberry
anyway, so all I was really missing out on were internal meetings...

------
TicklishTiger
The same might hold true for cutting down from 4 days to 3 days.

Everytime we humans try something new, we are excited and energized. Since the
average office worker is only productive 3 hours per day, there always is a
lot of room for increasing output for some time.

------
ergothus
I worked at a state govt job that allowed for 4 day weeks. Being govt, and
with my manager in particular, time was closely managed.

It worked, but it was HARD! The difference between an 8 hour day and a 10 hour
day is having to find a second wind, on demand, 4 days in a row.

Every time I would say I was going to drop, and then the three day weekend hit
and I had time to get personal stuff done, time to relax without feeling like
I had to prepare to start work again, and then I thought it was all worth it.
Then the cycle would repeat.

Now I'm in a tech job with far more flexibility. I think a similar schedule
would still be hard: some 10 hour days are easy, but to do it on demand,
repeatedly?

~~~
stephen_g
The article is about dropping the hours to ~32 a week, not working 10 hour
days to still do 40 hours in four days.

Switching to 10 hour days would be a terrible idea - that’s just asking for
burnout. Anyway, I find it really hard to believe more than a small percentage
of workers would be able to be actually productive for even two thirds of the
day when consistently working that long.

------
decebalus1
That's never going to happen. Regardless of what 'studies show'. If Jesus
comes down from heaven and tells everyone we need to work less, it will still
never happen. Was reading 'Bullshit jobs' by David Graeber and frankly I am
starting to believe the conspiracy theory that there is an inherent interest
of society to keep people busy as much as possible. Because if you give people
more free time, don't keep them on their toes and stressed, they may start
thinking about building guillotines.

~~~
awakeasleep
I agree that Jesus stopping by and asking us wouldn't change this, but
_collective bargaining has already changed this in the past_

It's not impossible! It requires people working together.

------
tzs
I've been on a four day work week for quite a while, working Monday through
Thursday [1]. It definitely makes the off days better.

• If it has been a rough week at work, I can spend all day Friday relaxing,
and still have a full two weekend days for my interests and hobbies.

• I can do things on Friday, such as shopping, that most others have to do on
the weekend, thus avoiding the weekend crowds.

• With three days to work on personal projects, I can do a day of getting
things going and getting productive, a day of good in the zone work, and then
a day of picking a good stopping point and reaching that and setting things up
for resumption next week. With a conventional two day weekend, it's that in
the zone time that loses.

• Three days is long enough that by Monday I'm ready and want to get back to
my job.

I find the lower stress thing quite plausible based on the above. It's enough
time to do my stuff without it feeling rushed, meaning my relaxing things can
actually be relaxing. A two day weekend is more likely to result in the
classic stressing out over trying to relax.

I also find the no cut in work output plausible, because of the lower stress
thing. Stress should lower productivity. If your weekend is not lowering
stress as much as it could, you are going to be less productive than you could
be. If three days off lowers stress more, you productivity rate should be
higher back at work. But a three day weekend means a shorter work week. So we
have one effect trying to raise output and one trying to lower it. Given the
fuzziness of productivity measures, I'm not surprised by a finding of no
change in output.

[1] I started taking every other Friday as a vacation day, because I had so
much accumulated vacation that I had hit my employer's accumulation limit.
Later, when the big recession hit the company needed to reduce expenses to
avoid layoffs, and I offered to take a 5% pay cut in exchange for every other
Friday off, which when combined with the every other Friday vacation gave me a
four day week.

------
uxhacker
I wonder if the productivity is maintained as we can only think for so many
hours a day. If you look at famous writers such as Hemingway they only worked
for a few hours a day. So the question is how does this translate to work that
has a less cognitive load ? Has anybody done experiments with programing and
hours worked ?

~~~
snarf21
Plus your brain will crunch things in the background. How many time as a
developer have you "solved" a problem you've been stuck on for hours or days
while showering or traveling to work. Sometimes you can't see the forest for
the trees.

~~~
Brigadirk
I share your experience. But, I've recently read a book, The Mind is Flat by
Nick Chater, a psychologist, wherein he argues that your brain does not crunch
anything in the background, and only does what it focuses on.

However, the situation you outlined still occurs because you can get stuck in
a certain paradigm (e.g. "this name that I can't remember definitely starts
with 's'"), which you effectively reset, in addition to simply returning re-
energised. Still a good argument for breaks and less strenuous working hours.

~~~
jpfed
I call this the "attractor basin hypothesis" of problem solving- your mental
state is in one attractor basin and you need to be in a different one; a break
gives you another chance to enter the right one. If true, it may be possible
to get the same benefit as taking a break and returning to the work by doing
something that jolts you out of your current attractor basin. Maybe that just
means asking the right question (c.f. oblique strategies).

~~~
Brigadirk
Interesting idea. I'm currently learning German, which is rather similar to my
native Dutch. Yet I'm learning most of it through English, because that's
simply the language people tend to use for instruction material.

Every now and then when I'm doing English to German translation, I find myself
puzzled and then have to remind myself "think about the Dutch word" only to
then immediately understand/recall the German cognate. I'm sure someone
talking to me in Dutch could have the same effect, and more broadly speaking,
another 'attractor basin' may be activated by random chance, like the tired
cliche of someone in a movie figuring out the 'case' as a result of their
spouse or child mentioning something unrelated yet apparently analogous.

------
chapium
I have a feeling this would vary depending on the person. Someone with big
stressors outside of work may benefit from the shorter work week. Others may
outperform them on a normal week. Just speculation.

------
GordonS
I switched to a 4 day working week a couple of years ago, and took a 20% pay
cut in the process.

I'm certain that I don't actually produce any less than I did when working 5
days, and my stress levels are definitely lower. All in all, the company got a
pretty good deal, since I now have the same output, but get paid less!

~~~
toomuchtodo
You should ask for a raise based on the value you’re providing, and get your
comp back up to where it was before.

------
maxxxxx
When I worked in Germany we had a union mandated 35 hour week with no option
for overtime. One thing I noticed was that back then most people actually
worked most of their hours at the office and decisions were made rather
quickly and decisively. Now I work with no set time limit and I feel that a
lot of people are wasting time with going over the same thing multiple times,
hesitating in making decisions and calling huge meetings that achieve nothing.

I feel that part of it is that by working less people are fresher and think
clearer. Whenever I worked 50+ hours per week for longer time I was more in a
foggy state and couldn't think clearly.

Also, by limiting working hours management needs to be decisive and conscious
of wasting people's times with unnecessary stuff.

~~~
mtberatwork
I think a big difference between the American work mentality and the Euro work
mentality is that Americans often seem to relish the "I'm too busy for
everything" state of mind (as if it were a badge of honor). Unfortunately, it
will take huge macro-level behavioral changes to undo that kind of damage.

------
ipoopatwork
Is there a real paper linked to this study? All I can find is this rubbish [1]
which is a collection of info-graphics without any p-value.

[1]
[https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c3e9f3555b02cbca8b01...](https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5c3e9f3555b02cbca8b01aab/t/5c6639880d929730b229a363/1550203293110/Four-
Day+Week+White+Paper+February+2019+final.pdf)

------
FrankyHollywood
Seems a bit to good to be true... working 20% less, and still have 'increased
productivity'?

I myself work 4 days a week, which I really enjoy. However, sometimes with a
major bug I make extra hours, the work has to get done! You can do more in 6
days than in 4.

For that sake, how much further can you push it, can you increase productivity
20% by working 3 days instead of 4?

------
lazyjones
Obviously, even if the study is to believed, this won't work for all jobs (try
callcenters or POS ...).

Thorough studies would evaluate other models as well, like 6, 7 or 3-day
weeks.

As a former entrepreneur I can guarantee that my output would suffer greatly
in a 4 day week, since I'd rediscover hobbies and other distractions.

~~~
b_tterc_p
Why wouldn’t it work for call centers? Just pay them for 4 days of work and
hire More people.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Because work that call centre workers do can't be compressed. That means each
person is working 32 hours each week (no gain in productivity), but still
getting paid for 40. Whereas a computer programmer might still be able to
complete 40 hours-worth of work in 32 hours by increasing productivity.

~~~
b_tterc_p
I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hypothesize that while the quantity of work
wouldn’t change, the quality would increase. I presume to pay for 32 hours if
they work 32 hours.

~~~
rootusrootus
Then they will go work for someone else. If the quality of work goes up, then
the price should go up, too.

------
ribfeast
We should switch, not because it raises or maintains productivity, but because
it's the right thing to do. Framing the debate in terms of productivity plays
into the hands of those who would maintain the status quo. If laborers were
properly organized, we could dictate the 4-day or 3-day workweek,

~~~
combatentropy
> because it's the right thing to do

On what principle? I had always thought that a job and its pay arose strictly
from negotiation. But if you say one way is "right" and another isn't, that
implies some reason that transcends anyone's preference.

------
moeamaya
Of all industries, you would think software companies would use some of the
efficiency gains and insane profit margins to work less?

This is the logic we have at Monograph (hiring engineers btw) and we've had 4
day 32-hour work weeks for over three years now. One engineer on the team
likes to take Wednesdays off which we affectionately call the "mid-weekend".

If you have more interest HuffPo and Lynne from Key Values wrote a bit about
or working style: [https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-day-working-
week-o...](https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/four-day-working-week-
overwork-life-balance_us_5c360351e4b0f5aba7da3d5a)

[https://www.keyvalues.com/monograph](https://www.keyvalues.com/monograph)

------
gexla
How does the science on this compare to the science which got us the 40 hour
work week? There seems to be a lot of anecdotes in the article.

I'm not sure I could gauge my productivity well from one day to the next.
There's too many variables. There's other people, luck, different issues,
strengths, weaknesses, shrimp gumbo, BBQ shrimp, shrimp soup...

I do know I give it my all during the week and I crash into the weekend. It's
invigorating and exhausting at the same time. Getting over a rough week seems
to take as long as getting over a bad hangover. Two days for sure, and
sometimes I need a third.

~~~
Voloskaya
What science got us the 40h work week? It seems to me we just went from making
people work as much as humanly possible to less and less (to 40 today in the
US) as workers got more power through unions.

I don't think science was much involved here.

~~~
naasking
40h was first most widely implemented by Henry Ford, because of equal
productivity with fewer mistakes than the 10-16 hour days that were then the
norm. So there is some empirical evidence that it's better than more hours,
and some empirical evidence that it's better than fewer hours in some cases,
and plenty showing no change with fewer hours. The fairest characterisation is
that there was considerable back and forth between legislation, unions and
capitalists seeking better workers.

~~~
barry-cotter
Please provide a citation to some scholarly or historical work to that effect.
The last time I looked into this any way seriously there was nothing
suggesting 40 hours was chosen for reasons of productivity. One of the
extremely few studies that was decent was of productivity on building sites
which found that total (not average) productivity increased up until 60 hour
weeks.

~~~
gexla
Thanks, this was my point.

I'm skeptical that this study is any better than whatever studies may have got
us here in the first place. 4 day work weeks seem as arbitrary as as what we
have now. If happiness and well-being is productive, then a 3 day work week
might even be better. Some might be more productive by never working at all.

> One of the extremely few studies that was decent was of productivity on
> building sites which found that total (not average) productivity increased
> up until 60 hour weeks.

Taylorism?

------
therealforsen
I wonder what the lowest limit on work-time is for productivity. That would be
interesting to know. Also, companies could only pay people for that many
hours.

------
camelNotation
It may be that they were simply paid less than optimal salaries before and
increasing their wages per hour actually improved their productivity,
incentivizing them to accomplish in 4 days what they previously accomplished
in 5. It would be interesting to do a parallel test with the same groups, have
a control group, have a 4 day group that keeps the same pay, and a 5 day group
with a 20% pay increase.

~~~
oarsinsync
It depends on the salary of the employee, and their personal goals.
Personally, I find a 20% decrease in working hours is worth a lot more than a
25% increase in pay. The hourly wage remains the same, but getting a full day
back per week is significantly more valuable than more money that I'm already
not spending

~~~
camelNotation
I agree. I wish there were more jobs like that, where you could work 3-4 days,
at the same rate per hour. Maybe if we solve for a lot of the additional per-
worker costs around healthcare and such we would be able to see that emerge in
the market.

------
robertwiblin
I took a proper look at this study and it didn't show what this article claims
it showed:
[https://docs.google.com/document/d/15q3hdJI2SxDBcOsn2Cqk8bMg...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/15q3hdJI2SxDBcOsn2Cqk8bMgLRDV-
mP3R5UOrhms5Bc/edit)

------
motohagiography
It really seems to depend on the company stage. If the answer to, "did you do
everything you could?" is, "well, we could have put %20 more time and effort
into it with no additional cash burn," I could see how that could be
interpreted as negligence from a fiduciary perspective.

On the other hand, %20 less office time could be an honest signal that you are
taking risks commensurate with the return level your investors are looking
for. If as a founder or leader, you are careful and incremental, I don't think
that's what investors put money into VC funds for. The number of stories I
read here and elsewhere about investors saying, "I don't want this money back,
I want a huge return or nothing, because I don't want to learn I put it behind
someone who wasn't committed enough to fail hard."

Investors aren't paying you and your team to work, they are paying for the
privilege of getting a piece of a massive outcome. You achieve the outcome
they want exposure to the best way you know how, and if imposing a risk
constraint like %20 less office time does it, great. In this view, you are not
their employee, you are their dealer.

I could see how it would be hard to persuade investors you were working in
their best interest with an attitude like that, but on the other hand, it
could be one that is necessary to enable the best possible outcome. It sounds
crazy, but the investors themselves are the correlation factor in their
portfolio, and the point of putting money into a diversified portfolio of
startups is to hedge that correlation, so the more opinionated the investor is
about your office culture or other aspects of the business, it's likely the
worse they are going to do.

No clear answer, but really interesting question.

------
arcaster
doing work != measurable output

Not to mention that the definition of what work, productivity or deliverables
is varies vastly from company to company or industry to industry.

Not working for an entire day per week or having sporadic / limited hours of
operation could also end up being a huge pain for a client or anyone not in
your company you may be working with.

I'm definitely a proponent of the sentiment of this article, however, I can
confirm that working with a remote team in another country where nobody seemed
to work more than 25hrs per week on their technical team was annoying as hell.
Not only did this make solving problems harder, they also had notably lower
productivity and output of meaningful contributions...

------
Areading314
This is a deeply flawed experiment. Of course the employees want a 4-day
workweek, which is why they will work extra hard during the trial. I doubt
this would be reproduced if employees were told the 4-day weeks were permanent
no matter the outcome.

------
b_tterc_p
Talk of lower work hours doesn’t always come with clear expectations around
pay. Ignoring the large fixed cost of providing healthcare, I bet companies
would be more willing to drop hours from a schedule if compensation also
dropped.

~~~
ThaJay
"Perpetual Guardian, a New Zealand financial services company, switched its
240 staff from a five-day week to a four-day week last November and maintained
their pay."

~~~
b_tterc_p
That’s nice for perpetual guardian but I don’t see it happening as a
mainstream movement without an incentive.

~~~
thirdsun
Sure, it will be a tough sell, but the incentive should be less stressed,
healthy, happy employees that deliver the same productive output as their 5
day week counterparts. It's a competetve advantage on the job market for
employers.

------
IshKebab
I suspect this may only be true for jobs that have a lot of "busy work", which
must be pretty common in a financial services company. There's no way I could
get the same amount done in 4 days as in 5.

------
DigiMortal
I could do my job in 2 of the 5 workdays

(I need a new job)

I spend time learning, reading, etc at work

------
iaintrobot
Well no flamin’ poo.

Why do we need study after study that tells that we’re living beings that
shouldn’t be consigned to a cage of guilt and shame.

This is stupid. We know what feels good or not, but our barbaric system
divorces our natural function from our consciousness - starting in childhood.

Worst part is that we see that we have power to shape the world, but nobody
believes that with same power comes the ability to create a comfortable
environment for everybody where they can operate without guilt or shame or
fear.

What a monstrous machine we’ve created for ourselves.

Love y’all. Peace out.

------
ThomPete
The hawthorne effect should be factored in here. I am a proponent of 4 day
weeks but depends on the situation industry etc.

------
CedarHill
Treehouse used to do 4/10s and from what I remember listening to Ryan Carson's
podcast with Jason Calacanis, it didn't work out for them. So I don't think
this should apply to every workplace. For more mature companies, it makes
sense. For startups, I don't think so.

~~~
moate
This isn't proposing 4/10s, it's 4/8s. Basically, you're probably just faffing
about for 8 hours a week anyway, so do it at home instead of at work.

------
ArtDev
Just make a mandatory 5 weeks a year. "Unlimited" PTO is a gimmick.

------
xiaodai
written by a journalist who only wants to work four-day week.

------
xiaodai
that's cos they are slacking off anyway...

------
sonnyblarney
This is great, but 8 weeks is far too short to measure such fickle things.

------
jchanimal
If you work more hours than you sleep, you are doing it wrong.

------
printer0
Business people should constantly be all over this, why do we have to wait
decades for them to come up with anything remotely useful.

All they do is invent more things for everyone to be miserable and for them to
get a larger piece of the pie.

Business degrees are shit, get your act together, looking at you Harvard, Yale
et. al.

