
A 4-Day Workweek? A Test Run Shows a Surprising Result - danso
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/19/world/asia/four-day-workweek-new-zealand.html
======
merricksb
Discussed two days ago:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569391](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17569391)

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NeedMoreTea
The UK tried an experiment in 1974 with a 3 day work week, rigidly enforced,
for everyone.

At the start of 1974 there was a national miner's strike. In order to preserve
coal and power all commercial users were limited to 3 _specified_ days
electricity consumption in every 7. That lasted 2 or 3 months, and came right
after the oil crisis.

At home there were regular power cuts and houses were freezing places
illuminated by candle. This is when the UK became very interested in central
heating.

From the government's own figures, a 40% reduction in working hours caused
just a 4% drop in productivity.

I am surprised there haven't been studies to try and validate that experience
outside of of strikes and crises. The government's own study and the result
seems to have been silently forgotten.

~~~
Steve44
> From the government's own figures, a 40% reduction in working hours caused
> just a 4% drop in productivity.

and

> That lasted 2 or 3 months,

It's quite possible that people 'pulled together' to get through the crisis,
similar to how people managed in the war with the 'Dunkirk Spirit'. Just
because we seemingly did well through a three month crisis does not mean that
is a long term sustainable plan.

~~~
lostlogin
> Just because we seemingly did well through a three month crisis does not
> mean that is a long term sustainable plan.

It would be interesting to know more about the effects of that crisis.
Presumably many companies kept afloat by methods such as using accumulated
stock or putting things on back order and such like. If I was ordered to go
down to 3 days rather than 5, I’d be running long days if possible, or doing
all the things that took a lot of energy on those days. These things are
obviously unsustainable but how much did they come into it?

~~~
NeedMoreTea
Longer days were prohibited. Continuous users of electric had a 65% of usual
consumption limit imposed. :)

Broadcast TV shutdown at 1030pm, a 50mph speed limit was introduced as was a
low max temperature for offices (63F).

Hospitals, food shops and newspapers were exempt. Power cuts were often - but
because of the regulations you knew when they were due. My parents collected a
selection of camping lamps, a good supply of candles, and a single gas ring to
connect to the mains gas point by hose as we had an electric cooker.

I remember much sitting in candle light wearing coats and blankets in the
house.

This from a Conservative govt. The dispute and three day week ended when they
lost the election to Labour.

A little more here:
[http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.natio...](http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/releases/2005/nyo/politics.htm)

~~~
Steve44
> This from a Conservative govt. The dispute and three day week ended when
> they lost the election to Labour.

I don't want to get too embroiled in historical politics here but reading
[http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/6/...](http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/november/6/newsid_2538000/2538623.stm)
gives :-

> 1972: Pay and price freeze aims to curb inflation. The Conservative
> Government has frozen pay and prices in an attempt to halt spiralling
> inflation.

and

> Wages and prices had started to spiral out of control after the collapse of
> agreements between the previous Labour Government and the unions.

> The Conservative Government's moratorium on price and wage increases passed
> into law as the Counter-Inflation bill.

As tends to be the case one change of Government tries to fix an inherited
problem and that generates it's own set of problems.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
It only rated mention as being surprising rather than anything party
political. The details were so far removed from what we might expect from the
Conservatives. Well, any modern party really.

> moratorium on price and wage increases

Economically the seventies were rather a mess. A wage freeze would be
challenging with double digit inflation. I remember power cuts at other times
throughout the decade, I think up until the Thatcher govt came in to push back
the unions.

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jasonkester
I noticed a big boost in quality of life when I dropped down to 4 day weeks.

Working a full time job, I had gone from my usual "doctor visit every 10
years" to "doctor visit at least once a year", with an added flu or something
each year on top of that. So when kid #2 came along, I used the excuse to drop
down to 4 day weeks, and once the family was ticking away on all cylinders
again I started using that extra day for climbing, cycling, and other
"selfish" things. The idea being that this was "my day" and not just an extra
day to do errands.

Boy what a difference it made. I haven't had more than a case of the sniffles
since. I'm healthier, happier, and get to spend more time with the family.

I've since packed in the job entirely (to live off my business stuff full
time) but if I do ever take another full time job, I'll be sure to negotiate 4
(or even 3) day weeks in to the contract. It's just night and day.

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danieltillett
I wonder if anyone at the company had ever heard of the Hawthorn Effect [0].

0\.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect)

~~~
vmware505
You right, productivity boost can caused by knowing that your productivity is
tracked and surveyed...

However, here in New Zealand one of the most important is the work life
balance. Everything is about being happy and enjoy your life.

For this reason, it is quite common the 37 hours workweeks, flexible hours,
working from home at least one day a week and go for coffee or lunch when you
want...

super cool country actually ;)

~~~
some_account
Sweden is similar. A desk job at a big company in IT means a very relaxed
atmosphere with no problems leaving early or working from home. Nobody cares.

It's actually a bit annoying if you care about some project though. If you do,
you get quite frustrated by the people who don't care (the majority) and you
have to work with them.

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lordnacho
I found this quite enlightened:

> He said the results of Perpetual Guardian’s trial showed that when hiring
> staff, supervisors should negotiate tasks to be performed, rather than
> basing contracts on hours new employees spent in the office.

> “Otherwise you’re saying, ‘I’m too lazy to figure out what I want from you,
> so I’m just going to pay you for showing up,’” Mr. Barnes said.

> “A contract should be about an agreed level of productivity,” he added. “If
> you deliver that in less time, why should I cut your pay?”

The times I've seen managers worry about time spent it's tended to be someone
non-technical. They can't really tell whether the goods have been delivered,
so their best proxy is whether the staff are in their seats. Now of course you
can sit in your seat and not deliver...

~~~
wiz21c
>>> supervisors should negotiate tasks to be performed, rather than basing
contracts on hours

Ok, then a part of my salary should be proportional to the quality of the
ideas I bring to the table when I work (which is just as hard to estimate than
it is for "tasks to be performed" if you look at our kind of creative
industry)

~~~
lordnacho
Ultimately in software the quality of your work is dependent on the opinions
of others. If your boss thinks you never come up with anything useful, he too
will decide not to pay you for your hours.

And that's also why some people get paid a lot more than others in this
industry. It's impossible to put in more than 168 hours a week, but
undoubtedly there are people who make more than 4x the average full time
salary.

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vesak
No, not a surprising result. A perfectly expected result.

Working 40 hours a week is too much. "Working" 50 hours a week is absurd.
Occasional crunches are ok of course, but as a constant minimum, those are
just idiotic numbers, and people who support this sort of work ethic should be
deeply ashamed and possibly fired.

~~~
pdonis
_> Working 40 hours a week is too much. "Working" 50 hours a week is absurd.
Occasional crunches are ok of course, but as a constant minimum, those are
just idiotic numbers, and people who support this sort of work ethic should be
deeply ashamed and possibly fired._

Really? What makes 40 hours the magic number? What number of hours a week
isn't too much? 30? 20? 10? 1? A few minutes?

How many hours of work is required depends on the job. To say that anyone who
supports working 40 hours a week "should be deeply ashamed and possibly fired"
is way, way, way too strong a statement. How the heck do you know what is
required by every single job?

~~~
mayniac
The average work week in the 1920s was about 50 hours. The 40 hour work week
was only standardised in the 30s, mainly as a response to huge increases in
productivity.

We've had decade upon decade of substantial increases in productivity since
then. Why hasn't our weekly working hours since the 30s ever been reduced?

~~~
lostlogin
> The average work week in the 1920s was about 50 hours.

Apply that to a household and the average family didn’t have 2 parents working
100 hours in paid labour. The typical breakdown was likely a male in paid
labour and a female mostly doing household chores. There was about 60 hours
per week of household chores in 1900, and that was down to just under 8-15 by
the 1980s [1, 2].

The number of hours that are spent at work would appear to have declined for
males and females, through when unpaid work is factored in, a household
consisting of a male and a female shows a much less dramatic decline. This
brings us to a household work week total back at somewhere around 100 hours.
Sort of what you said, but sort of not.

[1] Table 7. [https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-
history/](https://eh.net/encyclopedia/hours-of-work-in-u-s-history/)

[2] [https://ourworldindata.org/working-
hours](https://ourworldindata.org/working-hours)

------
ojosilva
I wonder what the effects would be of having 4-day weeks widely implemented in
society. It may just not scale.

My theory is that all perceived advantages will disappear once we all expect
3-day weekends, ie increased weekend travel lenght/ frequency or intensified
efforts at our hobbies could end up draining more of our energy.

For instance a 3-day "work weekend" could make starting and running a separate
company or working a 2nd job much more doable. A 4 to 3 proportion in days can
easily fit a 32h + 32h double workweek in one. Once that becomes the norm,
retribution economics may reflect that, in a way that one-jobers would lose
buying power due to an inflated 2-job workers economy.

I feel productivity and work-life balance could be a zero-sum game.

~~~
lucideer
You're describing a smaller minority than you think.

Currently, there's 168 hours in the week in which one could almost
theoretically work. Plenty of people do double-job but in reality they tend to
be more low-income jobs where people are struggling to get by and need the 2nd
to make ends meet. In reality, the majority don't overexert to make more money
if their current income is sufficient; only an exceptional minority will do
this.

> _one-jobers would lose buying power due to an inflated 2-job workers
> economy_

I find this conclusion odd, as I'm not sure what you feel is the issue here.
We currently have wealth inequality anyway: it's not ideal/desirable but it's
what we have. This wouldn't be a disimprovement (but won't happen anyway as I
really don't think being a 2-jobber is as desirable as you make out: there's
quite a lot of research to the contrary).

~~~
ojosilva
I think the desirability/need for a 2nd job increases as the number of job
work hours decrease.

Imagine you had a 2-day/wk job that pays half of what you make in a 40h/wk
job. Would you mind having a 2nd job that pays the other half?

Anyway, my point is that having more free hours will change how society
behaves and colaborate and how the underlying economics work, therefore
eliminating some of perceived advantages of a shorter work week.

~~~
lucideer
> _Imagine you had a 2-day /wk job that pays ["half of what you make in a
> 40h/wk job"]. Would you mind having a 2nd job that pays the other half?_

Where "half of what you make in a 40h/wk job" ~= (a) enough, OR (b) not
enough.

If the answer is (a), then yes, I would mind. I would stick to 2 days.

That answer is not only true for me, research has shown it to be true for the
majority of people for a US value of "enough" = $75,000/household (possibly
could be updated for inflation/cost of living but the point stands).

You might be in the minority who wouldn't mind—in fact I suspect a
disproportionate number of HNers may fall into that particular minority—but
it's not true for most of the population.

------
jbkkd
I wonder whether the productivity gains would continue if this experiment
would last a year or more.

I have a feeling that employee motivation went up because of the fact that
something changed - working 32 hours instead of 40, and only 4 days - rather
than the actual new reality which they were placed in.

We tend to enjoy changes all around, especially if they are for our own
benefit. And I do think a shorter work week is a step in the right direction.
But how long would it take for those employees to get used to the new reality
of a 4 day work week, and going back to old habits of working more slowly
during those days?

Ideally an experiment would be made with young adults who just started their
first job and will land straight into a day work week, and comparing those to
the same age group but with a 5 day work week.

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everdev
I think 37signals tried this about a decade ago. It's neither new or
surprising.

~~~
Someone1234
The state of Utah did it in a massive way, it was a huge success, saved some
money, improved employee morale, and productivity, so naturally they switched
back shortly after[0].

The biggest issue was that people didn't like government services closed on
Fridays. But instead of doing shifting or trying anything to mitigate that,
they simply gave up.

The depressing thing is that this pattern happens over and over, be it remote
work, work hours, work days, work dress, or a million other things. Society
just "pins" normality arbitrarily then keeps returning to that.

[0]
[https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102938...](https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102938615)

~~~
kijin
It is in fact massively inconvenient when government and/or financial services
are closed while other people are trying to get work done. After all, they are
the backbone that supports all other economic activity. A couple of hours of
discrepancy at the end of the day is tolerable (and sometimes even desirable),
but a whole day of downtime is too much.

We need to automate a lot more of the public and financial sectors than we
currently do. As long as a significant portion of work needs to be done face-
to-face, there will be pressure to synchronize everyone's working days and
hours.

~~~
manmal
As grandparent said, shifting would be enough to mitigate that. Some work
Mo/Tue/We/Thu, while others work Tue/We/Thu/Fr, others Mo/Tue/Thu/Fr... etc.

~~~
kijin
A government office is not a supermarket. The clerks at the front might be
interchangeable to some extent, but most of the people in the back office
aren't.

In order to utilize shifting in a typical government office, you will need to
train a lot of people to perform many different tasks involving many different
laws, and come up with new procedures to assign clear chains of
responsibility. Especially if the shifts are as complex as you describe. Utah
might have decided that it's not worth the hassle.

Besides, if you could simplify and streamline a task so much that any on-duty
employee can handle it, you might as well automate it all the way. In other
words, tasks that are well suited for shifting also tend to be well suited for
automation. The only exceptions are 24/7 jobs such as the police and emergency
services.

~~~
manmal
Your argument is reasonable and well thought out, but I don’t think this could
not be overcome. Eg people get sick every once in a while, and go on holidays,
and seminars etc., and offices have to deal with this one way or another. Look
at it this way - office workers are now available max 40h per week, out of 168
available hours per week, so how big a difference can 8 hours less make?
Dependents would eventually get used to this, just like they have to work
around the fact that offices are mostly closed on weekends.

I agree that shifts are often not possible.

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jostylr
It sounded like they cut out a lot of the BS from the job and these are
presumably jobs that are productive. I would be curious how this could
possibly play out in jobs that are mostly BS as described by David Graeber's
recent book.

I am most curious about the meeting reduction. Were the previously longer
meetings containing inefficient communications that were replaced with
efficient ones? long debates that no one had the desire for anymore? wandering
conversations that were curtailed? completely pointless stuff that simply
vanished? How did the meeting runners handle their diminished role?

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hinkley
Given the way software is run these days, I’ve been thinking that it might
make sense for developers to be working a split shift, so we have people in
the office seven hours a day, seven days a week. A 32 hour week of 4 7 hour
days and a 4 hour day. Your days should probably be contiguous and everyone
would probably have to work at least a half day on the weekend.

This would take a ton of process maturity, but I’ve seen that level of
maturity a couple of times. I think it could be done.

------
themodelplumber
This and the Nike article make me wonder about the possible emergence of
higher-standards news media like the NYT into even more of a science &
research-fostering-performing role. The possible benefits, the opportunities,
the risks. Journalistic standards are very closely related to what we expect
of science in many ways. Could "vetted media organization" be used in addition
to "professional peer" in formal publishing guidelines, because things already
seem to benefit from the additional filtering.

------
jhabdas
If you truly love what you do number of hours worked becomes inconsequential.

~~~
gboudrias
I don't know if you're being sarcastic but this is a very dangerous way of
looking at it. You absolutely can burnout and overexhaust yourself doing
something you love. People need to learn to take breaks and time off more than
the other way around imo.

~~~
ekianjo
working long hours does not mean you dont take regular breaks. its like
marathons, you dont run at full speed when you know you will run for a long
time.

~~~
augbog
I get what he is saying though. It's like how companies offer unlimited
vacation and all these cool perks to make you love working and love staying at
work.

"You haven't taken vacation? Nah I can take it whenever! It's not big deal! My
team needs me and I love my job!"

I believe he was referring to it can be dangerous to view your work as
something you love. Make sure to give space for your loved ones and your own
free time and be conscientious of that. Naturally, your company will do it's
best so that you do love your work, but understand there is more to life than
that.

------
otakucode
Surprising? To whom, exactly? The 40 hour work week was created and optimized
for a world in which the dominant work was repetitive physical labor. They
determined at that time that around 40 hours was optimal for average peoples
capacity for that type of work. That type of work has been greatly reduced,
and been replaced with mental work. Human beings have radically different
capacities for mental exertion compared to prolonged physical exertion.

Most businesses are run in a very 'cargo cult' manner, where the managers and
executives still read books written by manufacturing magnates and then turn
around and apply the same practices (or close facsimiles like tribespeople
crafting 'headphones' with coconut halves) to their own companies. There is
vanishingly little actual thought that goes into it, or consideration of the
constraints and principles. Manufacturers found it beneficial to makes as much
of their process routine and checklist-driven as possible, so modern companies
blindly try to do that too. They don't realize that with mental work (whether
something like software development, marketing, sales or art creation or much
else that now dominates) this is actively destructive. No one pays a company
to do simple checklist-driven routine thinking for them. When it comes to
mental work, customers want novel solutions to problems. They want something
that hasn't been done before. Every time. If you do manage to reduce your
product to the outcome of a checklist performed by disposable workers...
you've successfully destroyed the entire value of your product.

When a company is built, they hire workers. Workers are human. This places
restrictions on the company. They have to install bathroom facilities. They
have to offer breaks for lunch. These aren't just legal requirements, they're
necessary to get good performance out of human workers. Being annoyed with the
restrictions born in human nature and seeking to squeeze workers at those
points is counter-productive. And humans have limitations to their mental
capacity as well. These aren't rigidly defined and understood yet, and there
will certainly be further development of our understanding as we go on, but we
do know a good bit already. Extended periods of mental exertion are counter-
productive. Given the cost of poor performance in most mental work, it would
be wise to guard against this. Humans can not multitask mentally, as our
brains facilities for attention simply do not permit it. Mental work suffers
in environments where people are subjected to interruptions, and where they
are continuously concerned with preserving social status and similar factors.

Socially we have a long history with notions of endurance and vigorous
exertion being identified with virtue. That was very socially useful when
dealing with physical labor. It is, however, very destructive when dealing
with mental labor. Likewise, extroversion was very socially useful when
dealing with collaborative physical labor projects, while introversion is far
more useful when dealing with mental labor projects because significant
portions simply can not be collaborative. (A systems design might well be
collaboratively created, but once decomposed into manageable portions it
becomes counter-productive to pile many people on a single manageable portion.
They end up spending most of their time trying to synchronize everyones mental
model of the same thing.)

What would surprise me is if experiments like the one described in this
article actually resulted in any significant change to most companies. We
literally have over 1,000 studies establishing the productivity-destroying
nature of open floor plan offices, for instance, but they continue being used.
Different excuses are always proffered (reduced expense, some people wrongly
guess it would make them more productive in defiance of all research, etc) but
they never compensate for the costs. In reality most of it is done because
'everyone else is doing it' or 'this is how its been done before.' So,
research is great but implementing it is an entirely different story. Few are
courageous enough to defy social convention and stick their neck out trying
something new that is not intuitively obvious (from an intuition developed out
of a manufacturing-driven working world).

