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philmcp | 1 year ago

In some ways, the "5 day work week" is a deadline - things need to get done before Friday.

This "deadline" is a forcing function for output.

But do you know what's a better deadline?

The 4 day work week.

It may seem silly - but artificially making the workweek shorter, makes us work faster.

It's Parkinson's Law in action.

discuss

order

CamouflagedKiwi|1 year ago

By this argument, do you not then reduce it to a 3 day week, forcing them to work faster again? Then to 2 days?

tpoacher|1 year ago

Reminds me of the Dilbert quote:

> I have infinite capacity for more work, as long as you are happy with the quality of the work approaching zero.

noiv|1 year ago

I think actually it's not about faster, it's about more efficient. Looking at the rate of improvement here of recent decades, we should've had a 4 day work week long ago. It should even have allowed more people to not work at all and help to make their local community e.g. more human.

Instead the wealth accumulates in places unreachable for 99% of us.

lmm|1 year ago

Got to be worth a try. At some point you'd probably find there was a minimum amount of time to actually do the work in (that is, Parkinson's law would break down), but it's certainly past 3 days.

John23832|1 year ago

No. You can only reduce a timeline to the point where it cant be effectively reached. A timeline that is guaranteed to be missed is no longer a timeline. It's an arbitrary point in time with no real meaning in relation to the work at hand.

commandlinefan|1 year ago

"... unless, of course, somebody comes up with six minute abs, then you're in trouble, huh?"