I did a year of a 4 day/9 hour schedule (our normal work week is 35 hours). I would do Monday-Thursday one week, followed by a Tuesday-Friday, to make alternate weekends 4 days long. For the last year, due to a head injury, I've worked 5 hours a day, 5 days a week, in 2.5 hour chunks. While my hours are shorter, I've found it really refreshing to have a 3 hour midday break. Lunch is never rushed, I have time to watch a tv show or run an errand or two, and I generally come back to work in the afternoon very refreshed. On top of that, it's easier to focus in - 2.5 hour blocks don't leave time for distractedness.<p>I liked the 4/10 schedule, but I don't think it fulfilled my hopes for it. My intention was to use my off days for my own projects, as I was starting to burn out and feel uninspired. What I found was that it was difficult to shift gears for just a day or two, especially after working long hours the previous several days. For the most part, the off days would just be when I would run errands. Instead of taking a half day to take the dogs to the vet, I would use my free day. So, it was nice enough, but hard to fully utilize well.<p>Of course, I think the real trick is finding a job that lets you have a good work life balance. My work year, if I were full time, is only ~1500 hours. That, more than anything, is what I'll be looking for in any future jobs.
My current schedule is 12 days on 13 hour shifts followed by two days off. Resident physicians get screwed and only recently were 'limited' to 80 hour work weeks. I would <i>love</i> even a five day work week.<p>I have noticed my moral has dropped immensely on this schedule. It is definitely hard to balance work with social life, exercise, and sleep.
"some have speculated that the Jews adopted this after their exile in Babylon in the sixth century B.C."<p>Citation needed. The Torah would clearly put the 7 day week as one of the earliest doctrines, far before the Babylonian exile.
At my job we've been doing 4x10 schedule and it works pretty well for the most part, but there are downsides. A 3 day weekend is great, but less great if your spouse/family is not around that extra day. Also, the extra day tends to get filled up with chores or other stuff. It becomes everyone else's "catch all" kind of day.<p>I have noticed that 10 hour days tend to grind on a team and it can make a bad situation potentially worse than it actually is as people get stressed out or tired during a compressd time period.<p>I think a better solution doesn't lie in rearranging the 40 hour week. I think it lies in a 20 hour week. Work two days, "rest" 5 days. Work becomes the exception, not the rule.<p>We absolutely right now have enough productivity at our fingertips that the average person could work 20 hour weeks and probably get about the same amount of stuff done, just with less time spent "working" while on twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc. throughout the day. There would be less time spent emailing and frankly, I'm not sure people would notice the difference in output, but they'd probably notice the difference in their life.<p>For most people, the problem is pay and it's not because there isn't enough money to make this work, it's because people attach salaries to the notion of the 40 hour week and how things traditionally are run. For many businesses, a 20 hour week would be plenty if people accepted this reality and worked around it.<p>The fact is, all the gains in productivity from automation and technology for the most part have gone to the bottom line profits, not to the employees pocketbooks.<p>If we are going to start negotiating for better work life balance and working conditions, don't just shuffle hours around, eliminate the nonessential busy work that fills the day and work towards a dramatic improvement, not just an incremental change.
I recently moved from a Mon-Fri 9-5 to Tue-Fri 9-5; I've definitely noticed an improvement in my morale, and possibly an improvement in my productivity, though that's harder to measure. I don't necessarily think replacing the day missed with more work each day is a brilliant solution though, as productivity tends to drop off dramatically over the day anyway. If we want to work less, it might be best to actually <i>work less.</i>
Weeks were originally based around market day: you'd work your fields for 6 days then go into town on the 7th to trade, socialise, etc. Basing weeks around a day of rest was a Jewish innovation.<p>There are examples of places using 8 or 10 day weeks (e.g. the Roman Empire, revolutionary France, the USSR) but everyone keeps returning to a 7 day week.
I think the best 4 day work week would be a rolling day off and probably not coincide with co workers ( allows someone to be in every business day). First week you get Monday off, second week Tuesday off, etc. if you need a day that everyone needs to be in perhaps you exclude a day, perhaps Wednesdays, from the rolling off day.
I am team leader of a software development team and thanks to tolerance of my boss I have a 4-day work week for past 20 months (Monday - Thursday, 8 working hours per day on average). The rest of my team (and also rest of the company employees) is working 5 days.<p>Compared to 5 work days per week I feel my work is much more focused, better organized and prioritized. there is no space to spend 1 hour a day reading hacker news.<p>The team does not seem to suffer from the fact I am not there at Friday. they have the option to call me via phone if they get completely blocked in some issue (such a call occurs maybe once in two months).<p>I try proactively to avoid being the blocker any time by replacing email communication by issue tracking and shared intranet boards and documents as much as possible.
Let's say, as an experiment, we decide to work four days a week. Which day do we take off? Just a hunch but the top two candidates most likely are Monday and Friday.<p>Friday's claims:
1) "TGIF" now has some teeth.
2) Friendly gesture towards our Muslim countrymen. Hey, we took the rest of Saturday off to help get along with our Jewish friends.
3) We can still hate Mondays.<p>Monday's claims:
1) A lot of work for artists churning out anti-Tuesday work that oddly resembles the old anti-Monday work.<p>Aw, screw that - I have a better idea. 365 divided by 7 = 52.14whatever but 365 divided by 5 = 73. So if the 4 day workweek seems unworkable, let's instead eliminate Saturday and Sunday. MWahHahahahahahaha!!!!!!!!
We don't have two days of rest.<p>On Saturday we need to go shopping for the rest of the week in the morning, in the afternoon we must prepare the family for the night out, and in the evening we must take care of the family as they are out.<p>On Sunday we have to clean the house, doing all the cleaning tasks we couldn't do on the previous days, and watch the ball games with the relatives in the evening.
What if we just stopped caring about weeks and employers required 20 days of work per month?<p>If you wanted an extra long vacation, you could work 40 days in a row and take 20 days off.<p>This, in addition, to the 13-month, 28-day calendar would be interesting time innovations to me.<p>I also find 100-second minutes and 10-hour days intriguing. But we would have to redefine the second.
I thought this was an interesting comment buried down below: about Utah adopting a 4/10hr work schedule to cut operating costs during the recession.<p><a href="http://le.utah.gov/audit/10_10arpt.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://le.utah.gov/audit/10_10arpt.pdf</a>
The evidence here is pretty scant, and some of that is for good reason. Different jobs/tasks are more prone to benefit from reduced workweeks, others are not. Different individuals work at different paces.
<shameless plug for working at iRobot><p>It's not quite all the way to a 4-day workweek, but we've got something close at iRobot:<p>At iRobot we have "summer hours" during (surprise!) the summer. Fridays are half days as long as you get in your 40 hours by noon on Friday, which many people do. I love it!<p>Want to work here (Boston, MA or Pasadena, CA)? Check out our available jobs (we're hiring software engineers!!!) (<a href="http://www.irobot.com/us/Company/Careers.aspx" rel="nofollow">http://www.irobot.com/us/Company/Careers.aspx</a>) and then email me: csvec@irobot.com<p></shameless plug>