
In Praise of the 5-Hour Workday and Other ‘Radical’ Ideas - grzm
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/opinion/five-hour-workday-experiment.html
======
nbrempel
I’m a really big fan of this movement towards shorter workweeks.

Personally, I enjoy working hard - usually more than 40 hours per week. But we
should distinguish between working for others and working for oneself. Working
for oneself can be education, passion work, or anything that energizes you.
Working for others is also necessary for most people but reducing the weekly
commitment gives people more freedom in their lives and makes them happier and
more productive.

For some, the extra time away from work gives them the freedom to spend more
time with their family or children, or spend more time on their hobbies. But
ultimately it makes these people better contributing members of society.

One belief I certainly don’t agree with is the idea that working less for
others makes you a lazy person or a less contributing member of society.
People need free time to care for themselves and others, vote and participate
in democracy, and do their laundry. We will be better off with less time
committed to working for others.

And of course I cant help but plug 30 Hour Jobs here since it’s very much
relevant: [https://30hourjobs.com](https://30hourjobs.com)

~~~
iamsb
Curious - if you are a knowledge worker and getting through your tasks in say
4 days, does your boss/company really care how you are spending remaining 1
day?

I often use company time to learn about new things that are related to my
work, but not necessarily immediate tasks. For example - While working on a
Java app, I will spend some time learning AWS or Kotlin. Not one person in the
companies I have worked for ever told me off for doing that, most in fact
encouraged it. My personal diary/notes suggests I spend between 25-30
hours/week doing actual tasks or attending meetings and remaining I spend
socializing at work to build relationships which will help get things done for
me or learning. This of course is average over a year, some weeks are more
work heavy (even stretching to more than 40 hours) and some less so.

I have come to prefer it instead of shorter work week, which means same amount
of work needs to be done in less number of sleep/break cycles, reducing the
quality I produce. When I worked for myself, I used to work only 3-4 days a
week and observed that in theory it sounds good, but my personal experience
was, I was spending far less time subconsciously and output was not inline
with my usual quality.

~~~
danielbarla
>... getting through your tasks in say 4 days...

In my experience, there is no such thing as "getting through your tasks", as
you are expected to pick up more tasks from a never ending bucket of tasks
[1]. Of course this varies from place to place, but is in general true. Your
peers and managers are more likely to notice you leaving early, or "not
working" on the Friday, than they are to notice you working your butt off on
the previous 4 days, to be honest.

[1] Edit: this is because of the nature of knowledge work, and the difficulty
in estimating duration of work, difficulty, and quality. If you finish early,
the powers that be are more likely to attribute it to bad powers of augury as
opposed to extra hard work. This might sound overly negative, but I have seen
this consistently throughout a few decades of experience (yet, I still work
hard... go figure).

~~~
iamsb
Interesting. Where I work, we have a well defined scope for a sprint. That
will get divided into tasks and then are assigned to team members. So I
usually know what is my pipeline for next 2 weeks and it is fairly finite.
Unless of course I am working on a more exploratory project where scope is not
well defined. Of course people falling sick, or getting stuck in their task
and needing help, and few other attributes can change that to some extent, but
not a lot. So in summary, even though there is an endless supply for tasks
that can be done, for the sprint, it is fairly finite.

Also I dont spend less time at work, I just use post lunch hour, and 30-60
mins throughout the day to do learning.

~~~
CaptainMarvel
Why are they happy for you to stop working before the working week is over?

------
PragmaticPulp
> Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope.

This is exactly why articles about 4-day workweeks, 5-hour workdays, and the
idea that productivity is inversely correlated to hours worked are so popular;
Many of us are buried under expectations of around-the-clock availability and
commitment to our jobs.

One of my employers made an official policy banning vacation statuses in Slack
because, in their words, it implied that people were off the hook from
responding to Slack messages. I was threatened with demotion for taking a
2-day _weekend_ backpacking vacation out of cell phone range once (not an on
call job). My management team just couldn't tolerate the idea that one of
their employees was out of their control.

At this point, I'd gladly take strict 8-hour workdays, 5 days a week. These
articles about 5-hour days or 32-hour workweeks feel like a pipedream.

~~~
overcast
I've had the luxury of a 36.5 hour work week, with no on call for about 18
years. It exists, but don't expect $300,000 salaries with it. You want to be
rich, or do you want to live a rich life?

~~~
jermaustin1
I'm a consultant, so this doesn't really match 1:1 with expectations of a
salaried employee.

My work phone goes into DnD from 5pm until 8am. I don't answer emails or phone
calls, and I don't make exceptions for free.

If I'm on call for a weekend, I bill 16 hours, regardless of if I worked,
because I cannot go anywhere if I'm needed at my laptop.

When I go on vacation, I leave my phone at home and take an sim-less android,
and buy a new sim/number when I reach my destination.

~~~
synt4x1k0
Is this reasonable for many other jobs?

If you were working as a painter, a carpenter, a landscaper etc. Would people
find it acceptable if you painted for an hour and charged for 15 hours? Just
because they needed you for one?

To be clear, I am not attempting to demonize you or anything, but to me, this
seems like a sort of entitlement that tech workers have that some other
workers just cannot experience.

How can other professionals obtain that level of freedom?

~~~
jermaustin1
If I hired a painter and I told them they couldn't go home, go out to lunch,
or leave the premises for 16 hours, even if they only take 10 minutes to
paint, I'm paying them for that time.

If a company puts a demand on your time, they need to pay for that time no
matter what your profession. So when I'm on call on a weekend and I'm expected
to answer my phone and be immediately available and connected to the client,
I'm billing them for the fact that I cannot leave the confines of my internet.

~~~
tiew9Vii
Absolutely this.

I worked for one of the big tech vanity names held as a poster child in the
AU. They started to introduce mandatory on-call, which was non-negotiable. For
an extra $200 AUD (ex tax) a week, you had the privilege of sacrificing all
your personal time. Carrying a laptop, having constant phone-signal, not
drinking, and being completely available within 15-30 minutes of the first
ping was mandatory; otherwise, you could be facing disciplinary action.

Effectively it's a huge pay cut at less than minimum wage. For the loss of
personal hours, you'd get significantly more money taking any minimum wage
job. I don't go to work for free, I go to pay the bills.

Then the management blackmail starts, you get free food...a deli counter and
fridge of soft drinks which I never used anyway. Then you get the be a team
player, take it for the team emotional blackmail.

I'd happily do on-call on a best attempt if I'm available I'll answer the call
for free. Restrict my personal time/activities outside work, I want paying at
least minimum wage per hour after your company just IPO'd and worth several
billion.

~~~
sundvor
That narrowed it down quite nicely.. what a harrowing policy!

I find it a bit despicable in the AU when owners who are the only ones to
really benefit in case of success (never seen a stock option here) say we are
a startup and have to make sacrifices to make it (big) etc.

First sight of trouble and your job is gone; I struggle to see the upside for
anyone other than the owners.

------
nkozyra
Employers and managers seem incapable of understanding the cost these
conditions impart. I understand it: morale is hard to put a dollar amount next
to.

But most tech companies don't need everyone 24/7\. They just don't. They
should condition employees to value their free time, it will pay off in a lot
of ways.

Unless it's an absolute emergency I don't send emails past five. People are
conditioned to respond to them. Same with slack messages. There's this belief
that being available 24/7 is a positive attribute in employees and we really
need to squash that. It's unhealthy for everyone.

~~~
oarabbus_
I think it's absolutely fine for people to send slacks, emails, etc after 5pm.

Being _expected_ to, however, is a different story.

~~~
nkozyra
The reason I don't is because it tacitly sets an expectation for the
recipient(s) that they do the same.

~~~
prawn
I agree, though sometimes you are working at a particular time and need to get
things out of your queue. The onus is on each person to switch off non-
emergency notifications out of hours and preserve their personal time.

I also think it's crucial to never reply quickly to non-emergencies. Just
creates the expectation you're available and encourage more of the same.

That is, unless it's a situation/relationship you want to foster to establish
yourself in a team, outpace someone for promotion, etc.

~~~
nkozyra
I'm not saying you shouldn't work when you want to / have to. Just do your
best not to broadcast that you are, because that's how expectations get set
unrealistically across a company.

------
sloopy543
I don't have any of these concerns. I just don't answer emails or Slack
messages right way.

Nobody has fired me for it yet because I am there when it matters, I
consistently provide value, and I show up to all meetings scheduled in
advance.

Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll. You're the one
who decides if you need to be "always on," and guess what, you don't. The
world can learn learn to wait like 30 minutes or a few hours if you're really
far away from tech.

I routinely leave my place in the middle of the day to ride my bike, climb, or
whatever and I have suffered minimal repercussions.

It's all in your mind

~~~
MS90
> Just get a big ball o' FU money and let the good times roll.

I wish someone had told me it was that easy sooner!

~~~
sloopy543
If you're in software, it's easy. You just have to learn how to control your
spending and save the rest. Get comfortable living at about $30K per year

~~~
MS90
I do work in software, and I do save my money. However, unless I'm suddenly
given a massive raise it's going to take 5 or more years until I have what I
consider "FU money" saved up. I wouldn't really consider saving up money over
years and years as "just getting it"

~~~
PenguinCoder
Wow. A whole 5 years to get "FU Money" saved up. That's a blessing, and can
strongly be considered "just getting it". Short of an inheritance, or winning
the lottery, normally salaried or hourly workers will never have "FU money";
let alone in 5 short years.

~~~
sloopy543
Where does your money go? Do you regularly audit your finances and account for
it all?

I have a bigass spreadsheet I use to track every last dollar, and I ruthlessly
optimize everything.

Cell phone plan, down to $30/month. Health insurance, just $300/month. No tv.
No subscriptions. No commute. Even if I did, I own my car outright so no car
payment. No B.S. pre-packaged food. I cook pretty much everything at home.
Have done so for years. Minimal eating out, once a month or so at inexpensive
restaurants. No debt. Of any kind. So therefore no interest payments.

A few small "luxury" expenses here like a ski pass because you only live once.

All of this is completely within the realm of someone who makes $70k per year
or more, the bottom rung of software development.

You should be able to hit $100K in savings in five years if you are smart with
your money. Likely more if you really hustle and audit every dollar. Maybe a
little less if you're supporting kids, but you can optimize how you spend your
money on them too.

~~~
perl4ever
There are a lot of people who are programmers but aren't "software
developers", particularly not "full stack" buzzword enabled types. If you've
been programming for a decade or two, and haven't had that title, you're
likely not going to get that $70K that fresh grads will. Likely not even
hired, for "cultural fit".

Hope you don't fall off the treadmill, because if you do, you'll find out
there is no way back and no pity.

~~~
sloopy543
Oh I've had plenty of struggles myself. I've gone six months without work and
had to spend several years just building my skills to the point where others
would find them valuable.

On top of that, I was super stubborn about always working remotely, which I
got but only after rejecting one place after another. I would have kept
employment easily had I just been more willing to drive into an office every
day.

I happen to be young, but I work with plenty of people who are much older than
me and greyer too, so I don't really buy the ageism argument. The market is
hot and if you can deliver the goods, chances are you can get a job.

~~~
perl4ever
"if you can deliver the goods"

Demonstrating what you can do at a temporary job is a viable tactic, but it
takes luck to find the right one and sacrifices if it's paying half what
you're used to.

When you're just out of college, you can tell people in an interview that
you've been learning a language on your own, and you've done this and that,
and you're confident you can be useful. And they will hire you. That's how I
got my first post bachelor's job.

But ten or twenty years down the line, you can't do that. Any job with 5-10
requirements, they aren't interested in hearing how you have been studying it
at home, how you were working with something similar 6 months or 10 years ago.
You have to be using all of the things on a daily basis _now_. And confidence
you can learn any language equates to arrogance and "not a cultural fit".

You don't appreciate the difference between a college grad and someone a bit
older. The issue isn't that everyone who's older insists on a senior level
salary, when they don't know, say, Java or Python. The issue is that it's
assumed they can't even learn anything new, regardless of experience, if they
aren't doing it right now.

What I did personally was to find a job with _zero_ technical requirements
that happened to be ripe for automation, so I could do whatever I wanted in
any spare moment and learn whatever I thought might be useful. But in
retrospect, I think it was extreme luck that I found it, and that I was at my
best for the interview. Because 99% of similar jobs are just, file stuff,
answer phones, move boxes.

------
3u8Gf
My cofounder and I switched to working 4 hours of "productive" work per day
and it is pretty awesome. I use RescueTime to track what app is in front and
when it ticks over to 4 hours I generally call it quits unless I am in the
middle something I want to wrap up.

I really like this because it incentivizes productivity over hours in seat.
IE, right now this comment is being added to my "non productive" time and I am
making no progress on getting my workday done. (I have 15m left at the moment)

I am generally pretty focused, but sometimes that wanes and I find this keeps
me on task. On the best of days I start around 7am and call it quits by noon,
but occasionally that stretches into 2pm.

I do occasionally hop on a bit in the evening and we are all basically all on
call but our stack is pretty stable so that doesn't come up often.

Has been absolutely awesome, I don't think I could ever go back. I am far
happier, spend far more time outdoors and I honestly do not think my
productivity has dropped much at all. I think it is far too easy to just use
wall clock as a measure of working and fool ourselves that we are doing more
than 4 hours of real work in an 8 hour day.

Throwaway because I'm not sure my clients are ready to hear this.

~~~
sloopy543
Yup. I suspect this sort of thing is going on all over the place but most
people don't speak openly of it.

All work is value-based. Never forget that.

No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so why
would they care if you spent 20 solving it?

~~~
3u8Gf
> No clients care if you spent 80 hours a week not solving their problem, so
> why would they care if you spent 20 solving it?

This has not been my experience at all. It's a different subject entirely, but
it is very common for clients to be much happier to pay for 20 days at $550 a
day than 5 days at $2,200 a day, even if they got it two weeks earlier. People
are not rational.

~~~
sloopy543
Right right. They have other weird concepts like "market rates" and average
timeframe lodged in their heads.

It's complicated and pardon me if I have glossed over the details somewhat.

If you're smart, you get all of the work done in advance, then stage it over
the course the next few days, providing a steady trickle to create the
perception of steady progress and to have something to mention at the standup
meetings. I suspect a good percentage of experienced developers with good
customer management skills do something akin to this.

------
dclowd9901
The simple fact is this: My company is not getting 8 hours of me a day. They
just aren't. I'm not thinking about my job all day, I'm not working all day.
About 3-4 hours of my day is spent dicking around online, eating lunch, having
silly conversations on slack or texting my girlfriend.

I would bet that this is the norm, not just in my job, but most jobs where
it's not very simple to tell if someone's "working" or not (essentially all
non-labor jobs).

So they can either roll with it and just give me that time free, or I can sit
there and pretend to be working with just as much effect, only I'm less happy
because I have to sit in a chair for 3-4 hours a day just to warm it.

I don't have the mental capacity or the patience or the energy to sit and
think through difficult problems all day. I don't have any of that for
meetings, for decision making, for groom sessions or anything else that
requires that much extra attention. It's exhausting and pointless, as, even if
I'm there, I'm at a diminished capacity for productivity.

So, just agree that you're not going to get me to work those extra hours, give
me that time back, take it yourself, and let's all just be happy and die
someday.

------
SlackThrowAway
Throwaway here, some clients may not like it.

I am having basically a 3-4 hours workday and have had for a few years now.

As a freelancer doing most work remotely, I can easily set my schedule. I
charge clients per day, and so far I have never had a complaint about being
too slow or too unproductive. I seem to very often be more productive than
"full-time" employees.

A few years ago I was almost depressed because I thought I was very bad at
work ethics. Doing other things during the day, spending some days as little
as one or two hours on the client's project. Then I realized that the days
where I would force myself to work 8 or 9 hours on a project usually end up
with me staring at the screen and doing useless or even counter-productive
things for hours.

I then switched into accepting it. My quality of life improved, the quality of
my work seemed to not have changed or even improved a bit (I spend more time
improving myself actually, learning new things) and I managed to raise my
rates. So technically, I raised my yearly productivity by halving my workday.

Obviously, that's not the case for all jobs, but for software developers, I
think I am not alone in that case: I can be productive 3 or 4 hours per day.
After that, I can convincingly pretend to be productive but with very low
value and probably a toll on my productive time on the next day.

~~~
fergie
For sure- There is already a massive tech culture of working say 20-30 hours a
week. Particularly in management and consulting. Its just that its kind of
taboo to acknowledge it.

------
mig4ng
I worked this schedule while I was studying, 5-hours a day 5 days a week
(part-time) and to be honest my productivity was around 85/90% compared to
working 8-hours a day 5 days a week.

I would have the stand-up as 10/15 minutes after arriving, and then I would
most of the times enter flow and work for 1h30 to 2h, make a break and work
for more 1h to 1h30, sometimes longer if I got distracted with time. On those
flow blocks I would only pause in intervals of 2-3 minutes for filling the
water bottle or going to bathroom. Between those flow blocks I usually had a
longer break to talk with my colleagues (work related or not), sometimes play
a bit foosball or board/card games and eat.

It was great, except when we had bigger meetings/workshops and other time
consuming events. When those occured I had troubles getting into flow. In
those days I managed to do it I would often get distracted with time and work
5h30 to 6h unintentionally.

It worked really well, I think the lunch break has a large context switching
cost, making it hard to have productive 8h. Making it feel like either the
morning or the afternoon short on time.

I would also love to try 8-9h (getting more hours after the context switch of
lunch) a day 4 days a week. Getting 3 days to focus on you (your hobbies,
chores, friends, family, whatever) and 4 days to focus on work might be a
great alternative as well. I might suggest and negotiate it in the near
future.

~~~
habnds
I had a similar schedule studying. It works really well to focus productivity
in the morning. In particular I found that It was very difficult to focus
after lunch for a few hours. I stopped fighting this and embraced that it was
a good time to exercise, socialize or get random stuff done that didn't
involve focus.

If necessary I could work for a few more hours between 4 and 10.

------
tr3ndyBEAR
In 1966, anthropologist Marshall Sahlins, in the famous "Man the Hunter"
symposium coined the term "the original affluent" society which he ascribed to
the hunter-gatherer peoples. His argument largely rested on studies conducted
on the !Kung people of Southern Africa which found that the !Kung only needed
to work about 15-20 hours a week to meet their daily needs. When compared to
the 40 hour workweeks that (some) industrial nations enjoy (and have fought to
achieve), they do indeed seem affluent

However, a mistake in this analysis was quickly pointed out. That 15-20 hours
figure only represented the time necessary to gather food. It ignored the time
necessary to gather firewood, take care of children, prepare food, etc.

So Sahlins went back to his analysis and took those factors into account. When
taking those factors into account, the !Kung (and most San peoples that have
maintained their traditional foraging societies) worked 40 hours to meet all
their basic needs. However, when looking at the time spent by Western peoples
outside of formal work doing informal work (laundry, cooking, etc), their
workweek shot up to 80 hours.

In the end, the San (and likely most foraging societies) worked half as much
as us, enjoyed great health [1], and even had better food security [2]
(contrary to common assumptions about foraging societies).

The questions this opens up, in my view, are: 1) If our society is so much
more efficient now than societies were before civilization, why is it that we
have to work so much harder to meet our basic needs? 2) If it's not the
majority benefiting from this increased efficiency, who is? 3) Is our
industrial society more efficient after all?

[1]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30511505)
[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3917328/)

edit: 15-20 hours a week not a day

~~~
JamesBarney
1) You can 100% meet your basic needs(in the !Kung sense) working 15-20
hrs/week.

I imagine most Kung live with their family, don't have healthcare, no climate
control, walk everywhere. Clothing, food and a place to live is not that
expensive. A part time service job would give you about ~$700/month, which is
more than enough to meet these basic needs. You could rent a room for as
little as $200, live on $35/week on food, and easily be clothed $20/month.

2) We benefit by having more stuff, not working less.

3) It is definitely more efficient. You couldn't support anywhere near the
world's population based on !Kung style hunting/gathering.

~~~
ClumsyPilot
You are missing the forest for the trees, they were not surviving, they were
living.

Do those $35 a week get you a healthy meal? Or will you eventually develop
malnutrition? I live in a mid-sized city in UK, and back in my student days I
rented a room for ~$300. It had rats, mould, and a leaking roof.

Those people raised a family while working 20 hrs/week. Are you going to feed
and house your kids with that part-time service job?

Maybe you can, but that's not the point. After 4,000 of progress, the
difference should be so vast, that the two experiences are totally
incomparable.

Since those barbaric days productivity went up over 10,000%, I should be able
to survive working 2 hours a year!

~~~
jlawson
I think you're not really appreciating what a tribal lifestyle is actually
like.

Live in a rural area.

No education except what you can do yourself. No travel. No books. No movies.
No music except what you can make yourself. No shoes.

No food that didn't grow within a few miles of you. You will eat the same 12
things your whole life. No spices, no seasoning, probably no salt either. No
cooking oil.

No refrigerator or freezer.

Healthcare is whatever you can assemble at home. Dental problem? Sharp rock.
Cancer? Goodbye. Infection? Goodbye. Same for your kids. Be sure to have
extras to replace the ones who die.

Wash your clothes by hand, if at all.

No shampoo. No soap.

No bed. You sleep on skins.

No AC, ever. No thermostat. No heat but fire and body heat.

No birth control.

No retirement - work until death.

No police. Someone threatening you? I hope your family can back you up. You
will be called upon to do violence. There will be no morality in it, only
advantage.

\---

You could easily - easily! - work 15 hours a week and live at this consumption
level (in fact, far beyond). And, eating better than a !Kung would be
extremely simple on $5 per day.

~~~
tr3ndyBEAR
This shows a really deep misunderstanding of tribal lifestyles.

> Live in a rural area.

The only reason this might be true is because colonizers killed off or
enslaved all the people who lived in places you can grow food. That's why the
only places the San maintain their ways of life are mountains and deserts. But
originally they lived in all sorts of ecosystems

> No education except what you can do yourself.

They have education... they educate themselves and even if not they can still
send their kids to western schools. Also, why wouldn't they be able to get
books?

> No travel

A foraging society travels every day. Native americans traveled great
distances between seasons. During winter and fall many peoples lived in large
urban centers (cities). Some of these cities were larger than European cities.
People got around and you got to experience much more cultural diversity than
the average industrial citizen does today

> No music except what you can make yourself

indigenous music... exists. And its often a central part of their culture.
Music used to be more plentiful than it is today. In large part because they
had so much more leisure time

> No shoes.

I don't know where you got this one from

> No food that didn't grow within a few miles of you

Like I said earlier, indigenous peoples absolutely did interact with other
peoples and trade has always been a thing even before agriculture. Many
peoples had large portions of their calories coming from trading

> You will eat the same 12 things your whole life. No spices, no seasoning,
> probably no salt either. No cooking oil.

Indigenous peoples had a much more varied diet than modern western people do.
They knew hundreds of plants, fish, birds, reptiles, and even bugs. Part of
the reason they enjoy better food security than their industrial counterparts
is because of how varied their diet is. If their hunt is unsuccessful, if the
sweet potato harvest was small this season, if their staple foods burned down,
etc then they had a ton of backup foods and things we consider delicacies
today. From acorn flour to lizards to even ants. And they also used spices
extensively in tropical areas because it keeps food better preserved and safer

> Healthcare is whatever you can assemble at home. Dental problem? Sharp rock.
> Cancer? Goodbye. Infection? Goodbye. Same for your kids. Be sure to have
> extras to replace the ones who die.

I don't know where to start with this one. For one, hunter gatherers enjoyed
much better dental health than their agricultural counterparts [1]. They also
had many medicines and techniques for oral health that modern science is still
learning from. For example the miswaks (a chewing stick) that's still widely
used in Muslim parts of the world was found to be more effective than brushing
your teeth [2] and has been recommended by the WHO.

> No shampoo. No soap.

No need! Your skins microbiome is essential to your health. Studies have found
it to be really lacking diversity in Western populations compared to non-
western populations. Two studies that censused populations of hunter gatherers
both found zero cases of any level of acne [3]. One of 1200 Kitavans, and one
of 115 Ache over 843 days. Both peoples across the globe from each other yet
no instances of acne. This seems to be true for many of the skin diseases we
face

Also it's not true that they had no soap. Indigenous peoples know which plants
have saponins and other anti-microbial properties and use them as needed

> No bed. You sleep on skins.

lol

> No AC, ever. No thermostat. No heat but fire and body heat.

Precisely why hunter-gatherers are the ultimate eco-friendly society lol. But
seriously tho, they constructed their shelters in ways that make a natural
sort of AC system (the way that termites build their mounds and the way that
modern western architects are trying to replicate). They have many other
solutions to cold as well. Not to mention the human body adapts in a lot of
ways to different climates (have you ever seen a Russian swim in a sub-zero
lake?).

> No retirement - work until death.

Like I said, they work much less. In most societies the elders are well
respected and play other important roles. As multiple studies have found, the
biggest predictor of how long you'll live is your social network/community.
Being able to grow old in a community of people you're extremely close with is
something I wish our society still allowed us to do

> No police. Someone threatening you? I hope your family can back you up. You
> will be called upon to do violence. There will be no morality in it, only
> advantage.

This is a western bias of how, not only human nature, but nature itself works.
Cooperation is a powerful force that is constant throughout nature. It is
selected for in everything from slime molds to ants to naked mole rats. Darwin
wasn't even a Darwinist. He recognized the importance that cooperation plays
in evolution. The idea that competition is the driving force in evolution is
one that runs deep in our evolutionary biology because for most of it's
history, evolutionary biology in America was done by white Southern
landowners. It wasn't until a Northerner got in that theories of group
selection and kin selection started to be looked at. Now even game theory
recognizes the importance of cooperation for survival

> You could easily - easily! - work 15 hours a week and live at this
> consumption level (in fact, far beyond). And, eating better than a !Kung
> would be extremely simple on $5 per day.

Good luck affording 100% organic, wild caught, no pesticides, etc food. Did
you know that since 1914, the mineral content of our vegetables has decreased
by over 90% [4]?

[1] [https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/02/24/1726888...](https://www.npr.org/sections/health-
shots/2013/02/24/172688806/ancient-chompers-were-healthier-than-ours) [2]
[https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000163500429398](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/000163500429398)
[3]
[https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle...](https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamadermatology/fullarticle/479093)
[4]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6163803/)

~~~
jlawson
Wait so you think neolithic tribal people didn't live in rural areas? As in,
you think they lived in cities?

I feel I need to cover the first point because it's so bonkers there's not
much point going into the rest, which seem equally insane and/or reflexively
contrarian.

I think you're picking nits and playing word games and pretending disagreement
when there is none (i.e. only music you make yourself is what indigenous music
is, when I say no travel I obviously mean in the modern sense; not in that you
literally can't walk some distance, etc).

But in the end you're attacking all this because you're dedicated to a view of
tribal life as pure and uncorrupted by modernity. This links to a secular-
religious far left concept that human life is naturally free, full, rich,
clean, and equal, and all bad things are caused by society. You can't even
accept that there are bad aspects to it - it's the natural nirvana that's been
lost. And you're dedicated to believing that heaven is possible because it
fills a hole in your soul. You'd do better beliving in a religious heaven
instead of a prehistoric one - both are nonsense but the religious version at
least doesn't demand so many absurd beliefs about physical facts. In the end
people like you do a lot of harm because you actually resist and attempt to
reverse the advances that save people from their dismal, short lives without
modern civilization. God forbid our society is ever taken over by a faction
who believe that our society is the root of all evil.

------
40acres
I work about 5 hours a day and love it. I've left work multiple days at 2-3pm
and that's okay because on those days I'm usually in the office at 7-8. Scrum
allows my teammates to know what I'm up to and as long as work isn't being
pushed and communication is robust everything is fine. To be honest I couldn't
really program for more than 6 hours a day anyway. It's mentally draining and
I can't sit that long.

~~~
marcusverus
How did you land this gig? Did you negotiate a 25 hour work week, or was it a
part-time job from the get-go?

------
flukus
I've had a 5 hour working day for my entire career. It's the 8 hour sitting
day I've never been able to break free from.

------
mikorym
Another (psuedoscientific) argument [1] in favour of 30 hour weeks:

30 = (7 _24) /4_(5/7)

On each day, you should have half the day for "resting porposes". Of the
remaining half, you should work only half of that. Finally, you should only
apply this to 5 days with the other two reserved for "full day resting and
recreational purposes". Of course it could be calculated differently to give 3
or 4 day weeks.

[1] I actually did this calculation absent-mindedly through my search box
hotkey while reading _nbrempel_ 's comment about 30 hour jobs and LOL'd when
my independent approach actually came out to 30.

~~~
mikorym
Sorry but I keep forgetting about the damned asterisk:

(7 * 24)/4 * (5/7)

------
mytailorisrich
> _Sick of round-the-clock work emails and Slack messages? Here’s some hope._

I leave my laptop in office and don't even want to think about work the
instant I walk past the door.

~~~
greggman2
I take mine home so if I want to work from home the next day I can

~~~
mytailorisrich
Yeah that's always the dilemma at the end of the day...

------
eagsalazar2
This premise doesn't jibe with _products_ that are "always on". Support
5hrs/day? I hope "great support" isn't part of your value prop. Devs can't
even be reached because they log out of slack, etc at 1pm and over the
weekend? I hope "uptime" (riiight) isn't part of your value prop. As a
consultant we do lots of new product development for clients where uptime and
support are a big deal, especially during rollouts/launches where we're
encountering a flood of new issues (UX and technical), going totally dark
after 1pm weekdays isn't a remote possibility.

Having said that, we _very rarely_ actually work more than 35hr/week or on
weekends. But we do put my personal phone number in our SOW for CRITICAL
issues (haven't been called yet). So yeah maintaining a sane work culture is
critical but telling everyone to completely unplug at 1pm is nuts IMO.

This article isn't outlining every details obviously and maybe the example
company really doesn't care about uptime or quick support (desktop app for
enterprise??). And maybe they are glossing over the fact that every week there
actually is someone on call but most people unplug at 1pm. If so, that sounds
pretty reasonable!

~~~
aaomidi
You could hire another shift of support engineers for those times...

~~~
stuff4ben
which costs more money. Getting more work out of fewer people thereby cutting
costs and increasing shareholder value is the capitalist thing to do. Not
saying it's right or wrong.

~~~
perl4ever
No, that's like saying cheating people or killing them is the capitalist thing
to do. Defending capitalism becomes indistinguishable from attacking it;
either way, the assertion is false. A market economy is a way of optimizing
welfare through profit-seeking, but it has no meaning or existence or
justification without constraints and boundary conditions. What constraints we
should have is a political question completely separate from whether we should
have private ownership of capital and free markets.

------
netcan
There are a couple of ways of looking at the question of workweeks.

One is this, which lends to individual pondering. Could I do as much in half
the the me? Would I still get paid as much? Etc.

Another is systemic. Could society radically cut hours? Would everyone still
get paid?

Both really come down to efficiencies, and negotiating who gets rhe returns on
these efficiencies.

Imagine, for example, that as omnipotent king you clean up patent law such
that identical results are achieved with 1/10 as many lawyers. Let's go ahead
and do something similar in contract law. I imagine a god-king could reduce
the required admin work by >50% in financial services.

We could also throw in world peace. That makes all military and adjacent
industry obsolete.

Other markets do this regularly, often via technology. We need far fewer
people that make far more food and clothes, for example.

Some of those efficiencies have gone into making more/better stuff. A little
has gone towards reduced work hours. Most of this "spare" capacity,though, has
gone into other things... often administrative/white-collar.

It's notable that healthy economies generally have >90% employment as a stable
rule. We, as a society, seem to fill out time with work... and in aggregate it
doesn't seem related to the amount of work that needs to be done.

------
anm89
I feel like there is this enormous fallacy baked into the attempt to make this
some kind of movement which is that all of these specific proposals for how to
do work need to be structural and enforced via laws or labor agreements.

I am a huge supporter of an individual business opting for a 5 hour workday
and if the reality is that this turns out to be the way to maximize
productivity (I hear this argument all the time) then they are going to do it
anyway.

But it's not like the US (or anywhere else) needs to enforce this across the
board in one big yes or no decision.

Like this doesn't need to be advocated for at all at some grand political
level or as a movement. If you want 5 hour workdays either convince your
company to give it to you or find another company that will.

It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better
snacks in the kitchen. It's an individual decision between you and your
employer, no one else needs to care.

I understand historically that it was important to have organized labor
fighting against unhealthy/ unsafe/ or broadly manipulative labor practices
but those days are long gone and there is no big ethical or human rights
issues here, just personal preferences.

~~~
perl4ever
"It's the logical equivalent of having a political movement to ask for better
snacks in the kitchen."

But _if_ that mattered, you _would_ need a political movement, because anyone
reasonable is not going to make snacks a dealbreaker for accepting a job
offer. Where's the mechanism for companies to compete? People imagine
competition exists much more broadly, but you only get to choose between jobs
as a package, and only when you have multiple offers in a brief window.

~~~
anm89
Your missing the point. There is no correct answer to the question. Some
people like brownies. Some people like chips. The idea that there is one
correct answer that needs to be enforced on everyone is not only silly but
inherently tyrannical.

Turns out people don't need to pay people to organize votes and collect
pensions for every decision in their lives. Sometimes you just need to knock
on your bosses door and tell them what snacks you want. People are capable of
dealing with problems without government

~~~
perl4ever
_You 're_ missing the point, which is that markets don't necessarily determine
what we get. It's not whether your preferences hold or mine hold, but that
neither of us have any influence, unless we are willing to walk away from an
offer. So political activity is needed in many cases you don't think that it
is.

I used to work for a company where not only was it futile to ask for perks,
but someone started a business selling candy and snacks out of their desk (in
competition with the vending machine in the basement) and was shut down by
management when they noticed. Same company wouldn't let me volunteer at the
Red Cross because their intellectual property agreement conflicted with my
employer's claim to own everything.

Nowadays, I'm working in the public sector, and my boss _cannot_ just hand out
perks, not even free coffee, because, you know, there are laws that say you
don't have the authority to do that with tax money - all events like a holiday
party or anything have to be financed by employee fundraisers and/or the
union.

------
lalos
What will stop people from working two jobs? I feel like this is the
'uberization' of work, salary will go down and people will have to work 2-3
jobs on multiple days. For example 3 days doing one job, another 3 days
another job and 1 day weekend or mornings at one job and afternoons at another
totaling 10 hours per day worked.

This has to be tightly regulated if not it will regress and only profit making
will be optimized.

~~~
sloopy543
Umm... nothing and that's the point. It's free market capitalism. People
should be free to do whatever they want with their time.

So long as the value they provide is greater than their cost, the deal is good
for both parties

Ideally people would only work 30 hours but get paid for the full week.

Hourly billing is bullshit anyway. The natural cadence of work doesn't map to
always being able to extract value from every single hour. Sometimes the value
is in being more or less available for that week.

It's astonishing how many developers can't grasp that concept and insist on
being super strict about hourly work

~~~
lalos
History says otherwise, unless you mean people should be free to abuse of
others lack of judgement when their survival is on the line. That's why they
started to cap working hours and protecting children from being part of the
workforce. Also, you don't have to go that far into history. Some uber drivers
I've talked to want to get out of that business but can't because they were
bamboozled into signing a car loan they can't pay without working for Uber and
they mention that when they signed it they had an expectation of earnings that
has been steadily going down.

No comment on your assumption that I'm a developer unless you meant it as a
standalone fact.

------
neonate
[http://archive.is/QpjJc](http://archive.is/QpjJc)

------
siffland
It is interesting, but then you get into jobs where you cannot shorten the
work week, such as Police or TSA workers or other such things. There are tons
of thankless jobs that pretty much are built around having to work the 40(+)
hours, some just require travel, some are hard to get people to apply for
(honestly, when was the last time you thanked the TSA people at the airport
for making you take your shoes off and scan you, or the cable guy who had to
rerun the wire from the pole to your house in the dark at 8:30pm).

I would love to work only 5 hours a day, although i might get bored. I guess
it might work better with salaried employees.

------
perl4ever
I don't know, possibly I would rather work 10 hours four days a week. It's
hard to say, but some days I don't feel really focused and others I have all
sorts of ideas at 5 PM that I could stay and work on for hours more.

------
BlameKaneda
I work for about 8 hours every M-F. If there's something that I want to check
out or do (except for meeting up with friends after work), then it's easier on
the weekends.

For instance, there's a world music store that I've been dying to check out.
Since it's closed on Sundays, Saturday's the absolute best day for me to go.
If I had to I could go after work, but I'm typically pretty tired by that time
(not to mention the fact that it's in the opposite direction from my
apartment).

If I had an extra day off during the week then I could check it out sooner.

------
marmaduke
I work for 3.5h/day and the free time is worth the loss of pay.

~~~
sylk
How do you even do this? Is it all remote?

~~~
marmaduke
No I work in an office 9h to 12h30, officially at half time (with half pay).

I'm not particularly efficient after lunch anyway, so it's better to just go
home, in my case.

------
glenvdb
One of the best working periods of my life was when I was studying part time
and working full time.

I'd take one day a week to attend lectures/practicals, go to my day job the
rest of the week, and study at home nights and weekends.

I didn't have much free time, but that one day a week at university broke up
the work week and made me more productive in both activities.

Now that I've had a taste of it, I want to recreate it for the rest of my
working life.

------
kmlx
will 5hour workdays or 4day workweeks in the US be considered more productive
than china's 996? since China produces a lot more than the US right now, how
will this change once the US produces even less? will 996 be replaced by these
new models any time soon? and will this European/American tendency to work
less mean that other countries will simply leapfrog them in terms of
innovation and productivity?

------
jazzdev
The crux of the article seems to be:

 _To support this new approach, he has employees leave their phones in their
bags at the office and blocks access to social media on the company network.
[...] Perhaps most important, his employees now check work email only twice
each day._

It's not just the reducing the hours, but making those hours more productive.

------
andrei_says_
I reread Bertrand Russell’s In Praise of Idleness annually and maybe you
should, too.

[https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-
idleness/](https://harpers.org/archive/1932/10/in-praise-of-idleness/)

------
TheOperator
A 5 hour workday is okay if tempting but awful if commuting and the trend is
towards larger commutes due to property costs as a percentage of people's
total expenditures skyrocketing even beyond transportation costs.

The real money is less days at work per week... Not shorter workdays.

------
andy_ppp
I think this is fine for computer programmers but being a nurse or a policeman
or even a founder requires a lot more than 25h per week unfortunately. I can't
see a way to suddenly find nearly 40% more staff in these kinds of industries?

~~~
ClumsyPilot
I can't see a problem with it?

------
Robbani
I like short working hours. We should have more time to spend with family and
friends and more freedom.

Life is not like working also you need to enjoy every bit of it. We never get
back your life again.

------
Robbani
I like short working hours. We should have more time to spend with family and
friends and more freedom.

Life is not like working also you need to enjoy every bit of it. We never get
back our life again.

------
macawfish
I hope people can see that this is intimately related to the issue of
inequality. They are essentially the same issue. Wealth redistribution is
about allowing people the freedom to do locally valued work.

------
ltbarcly3
Why stop there? Lets get it down to a 15 minute workday. Sure, you'll spend
less time working, but you'll be so much more productive you'll actually get
more done.

------
Smithalicious
I wish we could have a 7 day, 5 hour work week. I guess some other people woud
rather see 4 days, 9 hours. I just wish there was more flexibility in general

------
aaaronic
I thought the title here read: "In praise of the 5-day Workweek and other
'radical' ideas" and I just assumed it was from the 1890s...

------
blackflame
I'd much rather work fewer days with longer hours. This seems like it would
introduce too much overhead in picking up where I left off each day

------
matonias
Thinking about this, if you work less but by doing that increasing the output
you do in 4 days, shouldnt you then be paid for 5 days?

------
madprops
If you consider a work day as a movie, and say you go there 4 days a week,
that's watching a 5 hour movie, 4 days in a row.

------
janandonly
I always chuckle when reading articles like this.

I have since I was 20 worked only three days a week(Some minor and one time
off exceptions excluded). When colleagues would give me questioning Looks I
would tell them that I was only available for the company three days a week.
thereby hinting I might have another job (which I didn’t).

From experience I can tell that the focus, relax-ness in life in general and
more time for family, friends and hobbies,is more then worth the lowered
income.

------
homerhomer
I'm convinced that this will happen one year before I retire.

------
mesozoic
Wow I've been ahead of the curve here!

------
buboard
The shortest work week is the remote one.

~~~
discordance
Only when it’s done right. It can be easy to fall into bad habits like mixing
work and non-work hours.

