4-days Work Week and its alternatives

Recently one saw this article on my mail box: Ignore Your Boss After Work: Belgium Now on a 4-Day Work Week. One would like to write some opinions on this. Note that one is quite influenced by writings from Basecamp author Jason Friend and David Heinemeier Hansson, as well as some other writings earlier in my life by other writers that one can't remember now.

Let's start by clearing some misconceptions. Someone used to argue against the four-day work week, mentioning fitting 40-hours into 4-days is more tiring than 5-days. The basis of the argument is wrong. By 4-days work week, it means to work 32-hours per week, not 40-hours per week. It means that, someone working for 32-hours per week could finish work (about) the same quality and quantity (or even better) than those working 40-hours per week.

This is true! If someone working 40-hours per week is burnt out, and given time to rest by working less, they could concentrate more whenever they came back from rest. This means they could focus more, rather than feeling tired and slacking during work. More focus means more attention, hence better work outcome.

Though, for those already working 40-hours per week and managed to stay fully focused during these times, it does means working less may or may not be useful. Full concentration means 32-hours can only achieve 4/5 of what is achieved in 40-hours (or at least almost full concentration, very little slacking). However, this is rare situation; and only the exceptional few can reach this stage. Most people slack off to do other things during work, and 32-hours intended to let them know, now they have less time, they could stop slacking during work and focus on work; then during the day they rest, they could do whatever they usually do when they slack.

Reason for a 4-days work week

Work-life balance (see this). When not working, put down your phones. Go and do something else! You had work enough, hence let's have some play, spend some time with your kids or wife, or friends, or take your dog for a walk perhaps; whatever activities that refreshes you. Ideally, set the free day for Wednesday. Hence, working isn't concurrent, which is tiring.

Another type of 4-days work week

This is Google's '20% time' policy. For a 5-days work week, you have one day free to work on whatever you want. Workers can work on whatever they like, and Google benefits from new inventions worked out during these times. Though, this isn't really a 4-days work week, as Google still requires workers to work that day. Additionally, to fulfill a real 4-days work week, workers can not work during that day; be it going for gardening, fishing, play some games, spending time with families and friends, or other stuffs. They could also choose to catch up with what they can't during work times, or they could learn new stuffs that they think could benefit their work; as long as they don't continue on usual work itself.

Other strategies

Working 4-days per week isn't the only solution: you could work for 5-days per week, but 6-hours per day. Given that an average person can concentrate for about 4-5 hours per day (according to this post, although the number varies between people to people widely), it doesn't make sense working 8-hours per week when they start losing concentration. Without concentration, quantity and quality of work produced decreases exponentially. Working 5- or 6-hours per day reduces the time of slacking, maximizing the amount of concentration the workers can give to their tasks at hand, and pursue other activities that refresh their sloppiness at other hours. These could be taking 2 hours off in the morning to visit the park, or 2 in the afternoon to exercise, or 1 extra hour during lunch to replenish their brain power from work (and 1 other hour somewhere else they prefer). Whatever works! 6-hours per day maximizes their concentration on work, producing quality work and optimizes for workers' happiness (and work-life balance).

What actually to eliminate

Ultimately, 40-hours per week isn't much affecting work-life balance. After all, they still have free time at night, and during the weekends to do whatever they want, right? The actual problem arises when workers are working more than 40-hours per week.

Lo and behold, do not get proud of working more than 40-hours a week. Those that are doing so now are putting their health and work-life balance at potential risk. 40-hours per week is the maximum you can work, after which your body starts burning out. It's worse when employers asks employees to work more than 40-hours per week, either stated clearly, cheated them, or via indirect means.

By cheating them, one means that, during the hiring process, the employees are told to work 40-hours per week, stated clearly in the hiring requirements. However, after the joined the company, things started changing, and 60-, 80-, or even 100-hours per week slowly faded in, and before long, the employees are stuck in the downward spiral. Even worse, employee lets employer works longer time so they don't have time to think about changing jobs, or reflecting how they got into this sickening environment in the first place. What employee wants is human machineries that have no emotion, ultimately executing what a usual machine can do (except that these requires human expertise and machine can't really be programmed to do such way, perhaps even stuffs that Machine Learning can't do) to work efficiently. But humans are... humans, they can't work efficiently, they can only work effectively. Effective means attention * how much time they can put in before their attention starts deteriorating.

In the chapter "Benefits Who?" of "It Doesn't have to be Crazy at Work", companies may even offer enticing benefits to workers, ranging from game rooms, luxury rooms, a sleeping room, Friday beer time, free breakfast, lunch, tea-time, and dinner, etc. The only thing they can't do is get out of the office. Whatever luxuries are there to keep them long in the office, and work the rest of the time there; if can, 24-7, since they have a sleeping room anyways; for efficiency. Seriously?

Workaholics

Workaholics can't stop working, with whatever laws to stop them from working. The first thing they finish work and got home, they may go and eat lunch, after which they continue working from home. Saturdays and Sundays are for remote work, not to do other stuffs. Burnt out? They don't care: because if they stop working, they have nothing else to do. In fact, they don't even know what else they can do if they don't work. Play with their kids? They're too boring. Go out with friends? It might be "time-wasting" (though it's not, unless you go out too much lol, like few hours every-day). And worse, this is not something law could stop from. Are you going to intrude others' personal life and check whether they are working non-stop? Not really, until the workaholics ended up in the hospital, then perhaps you might start to monitor them to prevent them from working themselves to death. If they never get too serious, but on the verge, a better alternative is establishing some communities to reform workaholics.

Conclusion

The 4-Days work week is a good start to solve for work-life balance. However, the ultimate problem lies in those that asks employees to work more than 40-hours a week. If you're working 40-hours per week on normal days and have more holidays (real holidays, away from your phone and disallow boss to call you, and away from your laptop or even access to internet to prevent yourself from working remotely), it should be fine. Even if not, a shorter work-day also leave more time for employees to rest. What is not acceptable is working more than 40-hours per week, for whatever reasons, at all cost. All reasonings do not stand; after all, how would you know if you never try implement a true 40-hour work week for 1 whole year before making the conclusion, either at least for one single whole department or for the whole company?

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(This article will be cross-post on HackerNoon in the future)