Going from 7-day to 6-day to 5-day work weeks has a lot of practical benefits, but this has rapidly decreasing marginal returns already.
My friend who has more experience working part-time described it like this:
5-day workweek = you barely get enough rest during the weekend
4-day workweek = now you feel fully rested after the weekend
3-day workweek = on the 4th day of the weekend you feel full of energy to work on your own projects
2-day workweek = it barely feels like work
I don’t have such varied experience, but the occasional 3-day weekends (when there is a state holiday on Monday or Friday) feel dramatically more refreshing than the usual ones.
If 40-hour workweek has the advantage that people have enough rest, perhaps a 4-day workweek would have further advantage at preventing burnout?
But ultimately this seems to me like a coordination problem. If most jobs work 5 days, if you want to work 4 days, you are weird. If most jobs worked 4 days, the company requiring 5 days would be weird. Weird ones pay a huge penalty for being weird.
Are you going to compete against that?
For some reason I do not feel like I am competing against people willing to work 6-day jobs. I ignore them. If they make more money than me, good for them, but I am not interested.
if you create a 3-day work week, don’t you get completely owned by any nations that don’t do this?
Soviet Union had 6-day workweeks, did the West get completely owned by them?
...in summary, it seems to me that this line of reasoning proves too much, it would disprove the 40-hour workweek, too.
My friend who has more experience working part-time described it like this:
5-day workweek = you barely get enough rest during the weekend
4-day workweek = now you feel fully rested after the weekend
3-day workweek = on the 4th day of the weekend you feel full of energy to work on your own projects
2-day workweek = it barely feels like work
I don’t have such varied experience, but the occasional 3-day weekends (when there is a state holiday on Monday or Friday) feel dramatically more refreshing than the usual ones.
If 40-hour workweek has the advantage that people have enough rest, perhaps a 4-day workweek would have further advantage at preventing burnout?
But ultimately this seems to me like a coordination problem. If most jobs work 5 days, if you want to work 4 days, you are weird. If most jobs worked 4 days, the company requiring 5 days would be weird. Weird ones pay a huge penalty for being weird.
For some reason I do not feel like I am competing against people willing to work 6-day jobs. I ignore them. If they make more money than me, good for them, but I am not interested.
Soviet Union had 6-day workweeks, did the West get completely owned by them?
...in summary, it seems to me that this line of reasoning proves too much, it would disprove the 40-hour workweek, too.