Send this to your boss
Amid mounting pressure on employers to offer varied work schedules, an author and four-day-work-week advocate has shared his thoughts on how your week should look.
Joe Sanok’s new book Thursday is the new Friday details how to make the switch – but most importantly, how to do it well without your work-life balance suffering.
Taking to Reddit in an “Ask me anything” (AMA) post, Sanok explained how his research has proven that “we’ve left the old industrialist way of thinking, we no longer see people as machines to be maximised.”
While Sanok’s book implies a rigid structure to four-day working weeks, with the additional day falling on a Friday, a Reddit user questioned: “Does it matter which 4 days? I would personally go for [Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday], but I think many would go for [Monday-Thursday].”
Sanok was keen to elaborate on the point, citing that the most important thing is to “start with an experiment that lasts at least 3 months.” He continued to say that the exact days chosen to work don’t necessarily matter in the broader sense, but obviously, this would differ between workplaces.
My guest appearance on People and Projects Podcast where I speak about: How to Work Less Hours and Get More Done, is now live.
Listen to it here: https://t.co/MOaq5SlrCd pic.twitter.com/HQv4kEQ2SG— Joe Sanok (@JoeSanok) February 28, 2022
On his website, Sanok claims people working five days “barely recover on the weekend” before jumping back in for that Monday morning slump. He added that it’s time to “optimise our brains to slow down and then do creative, innovative, and amazing work!
“I help you reimagine and reinvent your time to find balance and happiness.”
Of course, four day weeks are not all sunshine and daisies. Such challenges include initially implementing the schedule, with “hourly workers, manufacturing, and people genuinely slowing down if they have time off.”
Sanok added: “Some people might just go get another job, so the value of slowing down and allowing the brain to reset would then be lost.”
Another issue is people working four days but then working extra on their three days off as their employer “doesn’t get someone that comes back rested and more creative.” Instead, “understanding how when we slow down we do more productive and creative work needs to be part of the education.”
In the UK, more than 30 companies are trialling a four-day working week and a trial is due to start in Scotland next year. Wales is said to be considered trialing the initiative.
Related links:
- Boss gives staff pay raise and four day week to cover National Insurance hike
- Four day week with full pay to be trialled by Belfast City Council
- World’s largest ever four day week trial ‘overwhelming success’
