Although they often go by unnoticed, rest notes are a vital part of musical structure in the same way that rest is essential to our productivity and happiness.

If we forget the rests, the music doesn’t sound the same.

The same applies to us – we don’t sound the same if we forget to rest. We lack:

👍 Enthusiasm

💠 Clarity

🤗 Empathy

😑 Patience

🔋Energy

Shorter working weeks provide the time needed for family and friends, your hobby, personal admin, household maintenance, and simply resting.

If you’re curious about how to start the journey to reduced work time, please get in touch to explore how we at Work Time Reduction can support you and your business.

I’ve been thinking about two big similarities between the shift to remote working and the shift to shorter working weeks.

One similarity was the impact of the pandemic.

Covid didn’t make remote working possible for the huge volume of organizations and industries that moved remote en masse. We didn’t invent virtual meetings or asynchronous communication technologies in response to the pandemic, they were already at our disposal long before covid.

It made it permissible – the idea that you could run a global company from your kitchen table, or be just as productive if not more so when your workplace is your home, became acceptable to business and to society.

I believe the same to be true for the concept of a shorter working week. Decades of progress in the form of globalization, digitalization, the advent of the internet and email, and so much more, meant that we already had the productive capacity pre-pandemic to spend less time at work without impacting performance and results.

But the way in which the pandemic disrupted many deeply rooted preconceptions about work and the workweek opened the eyes of many leaders, managers and employees to the possibility that it didn’t have to be this way forever. It didn’t even need to stay this way right now.

Where once the 5-day week seemed like the only show in town and the 4-day week seemed like a pie in the sky fantasy, now for very many people the 5-day week looks like an outdated relic designed for the second industrial era and an economy built around manufacturing, and the 4-day week feels long overdue.

There’s one other big similarity between the move to remote working and the move to a shorter working week. For companies that moved from five days in person to a hybrid or remote model, they needed to flip a decades-old compulsion to value and reward presenteeism, and focus instead on measurement based on results and outcomes. The performative value placed on being the first person to come into the office or the last person to leave was ended, so sharpening actual metrics of performance became essential. The same is true with the shorter working week.

They needed to rely much more on asynchronous communications when people’s schedules became more flexible, and needed to become much more deliberate about how they structured the workweek between collaboration, administration, focused work and rest. The same is true with the shorter working week.

That’s why for many companies that have successfully moved to remote or hybrid working, in many ways this involved a more significant organizational change than moving to a shorter working week will likely present. They often see the four-day week not as a radical departure, but as a logical next step.

Today, more than half of the world’s companies offer some capacity for remote working. 1 in every 5 employees globally work fully from home. Work location has changed forever for millions. Who would have predicted that 10 years ago?

10 years from now, 4-day weeks will be the new normal and work time reduction will come as standard. How long we work for and the way in which we work will change forever for millions. #ItsAboutTime for leaders to get ahead of the curve.

Finding balance in our lives is a challenge few feel they have mastered. Juggling family, friends, work, caring responsibilities and hobbies needs more than a swanky app. What it really takes is courage. Courage to say no and courage to say “we can do this differently”. 

Remote work, despite its many benefits, has further perpetuated the “always on” culture when your workplace is your home. Flexible work is a catchphrase rather than a reality if we’re not in control of our own boundaries.  

The Harvard Business Review found that employees can spend up to 80% of their workdays communicating with colleagues in emails, meetings, and instant messaging apps on and off the clock.

But, what if?

Shorter working weeks have proven to increase balance in our lives and job satisfaction. 

The biggest skeptics when it comes to the #4DayWeek are some of the most ambitious people I know. They remain unconvinced that by reducing the working week, this won’t negatively impact their output and in turn their success. 

Research by Dr Juliet B. Schor on global four-day week pilots showed overwhelmingly positive results on work-life balance and productivity. “At the beginning of the trial, we asked them to rate their current work ability compared to their lifetime best as a measure of self-rated productivity, and that went up significantly. People felt at the end of the trial that they were more productive, they just were performing significantly better.

And then we asked, ‘Do you want to continue the trial?’ Some 97% said yes. We then asked how much they valued a four-day week by asking them how much more money they would require to work a five-day week at their next job. Some 42% said they’d require between 26% and 50% more pay,13% said they’d require more than 50% more pay, and 13% said no amount of money could make them go back to how things were before.”

Interestingly, it is also often ambitious, high achieving leaders who have the foresight to see that employees living balanced lives are more likely to stay with the company, be engaged with their work and in turn to achieve a high level of productivity. 

The difference between these two groups is courage. Courage to lead and not be afraid of failure, and also recognition that we can do anything, but we cannot do everything. 

Do less to get more

A shorter working week creates the time and space needed to prioritize things other than work and not feel guilty. Guilt is a feeling that has  become more and more prevalent in our lives, particularly for working parents. The struggle to work hard and achieve your career goals while also dedicating yourself to your family can be extremely difficult. 

After switching to a four-day workweek to address retention challenges in August 2021, 95% of the 250 employees at Boise-based non-profit Healthwise felt the policy positively impacted their work-life balance.

Some of the stories that we hear at Work Time Reduction about what reduced work time means for people are just incredibly powerful, whether that’s being able to do the school pickups, spending more time with elderly relatives, learning a new skill, or having time for a hobby. This is something that makes a truly transformative difference in people’s lives.