The Five-Day Week Was an Industrial Solution: The Four-Day Week Is a Human One ⏰
The five-day workweek is a relic. Not in the romantic sense – like vinyl records or handwritten letters – but in the why-are-we-still-doing-this sense. 1926 called, and it wants its productivity playbook back. 🔥
By now, we’ve all seen the headlines and joined the lunchtime “did-you-knows.” We get why the five-day, nine-to-five (more like 8:45–5:50) exists: it’s a leftover from an era of assembly lines and punch cards, when productivity was measured in hours at a station and efficiency in units per shift. That world is gone. The tools have changed. The outputs have changed. Even the meaning of work has changed. And yet, we’re still structuring our lives around a calendar designed for factories.
The four-day workweek isn’t a fringe experiment anymore. It’s been tested, measured, and proven across industries and countries. The data is clear. The results are clear. The case is made. Sure, this applies most directly to office workers and screen-dwellers – but the underlying question of how we value time versus output is universal. The only thing left to do is give ourselves – and our organisations – permission to catch up.
The Conditions Are Perfect: We're Just Stalling
Advances in software, hardware, and now the rise of AI have taken over the tasks that used to bloat our days: typing, filing, sketching, printing, number-crunching – all the tedious, old-school stuff. Machines now do it better, faster, and without complaining.
We told ourselves these advancements would save us time. Instead, we just found more work to fill the gap and called it productivity. But here’s the – dare I say – radical shift: maybe we don’t have to fill the gap. The efficiency is real, people. We could actually take the win and use it to work less.
Then there’s the pandemic hangover. We saw what mattered when everything as we knew it stopped. We learned that productivity doesn’t require performative presence. That flexibility doesn’t mean chaos. That outcomes matter more than optics. To think I once got pulled aside for taking a ten-minute coffee break most days without telling anyone. OMG, what a rebel without a cause! James Dean, eat your heart out. And yet, after all that promising progress, we’ve drifted back toward the old normal – hour-tallying, calendar-filling, attendance-scorecard bingo-ing.
The cultural mood has shifted too. The glorification of the grind is so millennial circa 2014. Take a hike, Elon and Gary V. People want – and have – lives, not just careers filled with endless hoops and ladders. And the next wave of Gen Z workers are willing to walk away from jobs that don’t respect that. The graph of tolerance for archaic workplace expectations? It’s dropping fast – and maybe even exponentially.
Nowadays, the question isn’t whether the four-day week makes sense, or – God forbid – whether it’s even possible. It’s whether we’re brave enough, and loud enough, to make it standard. And we’d better get on with it. AI is coming, people are tired, and we’re fed up. We’ve changed a lot about how we work. Maybe it’s time we changed when we work.
What It Actually Takes: No, You Can't Just Cram Five Days Into Four
Let’s be clear: this isn’t about a four-day week full of 10 hour days. That’s just the basic-bitch approach. The four-day week requires rethinking how work happens, not just when.
The first step is easy. It starts with outcomes. Measure what gets delivered, not how many hours someone spends pretending to be busy. Deadlines don’t disappear. Standards don’t drop. But the obsession with seat time does.
Then there’s the calendar. Meetings should be treated like sacred gifts from above and executed with military precision. Unfortunately, they’ve been out of hand for years. Time to delete a few of the pointless ones. Better yet, turn up to the office once in a while and solve it while making a sub-par coffee in the kitchen. Most status updates could be emails. Most all-hands could just be recorded and watched when it actually suits individuals. Cut the filler, embrace asynchronous communication, and suddenly there’s room to think. Deep work becomes possible again. Huzzah! Was that so hard?
Then there’s the one organisations and managers don’t want to hear: it’s time to work more efficiently – and, most importantly, at a pace and on a schedule that fits the role. This is really how we can maintain productivity while shedding some hours. The higher-ups like to think their initiatives are sound, but the basics are still being overlooked.
The creatives, coders, thinkers, and strategists need long stretches of uninterrupted time to actually do what their titles suggest. Look up concepts like flow state and slow productivity. These people can’t conjure game-changing ideas between a string of 15-minute “catch-ups” and “quick chats”.
On the other end of the spectrum, the project managers, producers, and client-wranglers find themselves trapped in back-to-back video calls. Just stop it. They’ve got timelines to rejig, suppliers to lock in, new business to chase – and, if the stars align, maybe even a client to schmooze over a cocktail.
The point? Everyone’s rhythm is different. Honour that, and the whole system runs smoother.
And don’t just take my word for it. The stats are in. I won’t bore you with charts – we’ve all got Google (and ChatGPT) for that – but here’s the gist: the UK ran a major trial. Iceland tested it nationally. New Zealand piloted it across sectors. And drum roll, please – productivity stayed the same or improved. Retention went up. Well-being metrics spiked. People didn’t game the system; they thrived within it. Mic drop. Experiment over. Time to make a plan – and get on with it.
The Bigger Picture: This Needs Policy, Not Just Permission
While it's easy to point out all the quick organisational wins, the truth is this: individual companies can experiment. A few brave early adopters can lead. But if this is actually going to stick, it requires widespread adoption – by both people and businesses. And adoption requires policy.
Governments could start by supporting early adopters with incentives – much like electric vehicles became a competitive, viable option through strategic subsidies. Tax breaks for companies that implement shorter weeks. Grants for research into better working models. Recognition that "full-time employment" is an outdated concept that should focus on results, not arbitrary hour counts.
If we're serious about mental health, sustainable growth, and building a world that works for people – not just quarterly earnings – then the four-day week isn't a perk to shelve as a pipe dream. It's a revolutionary solution to many of society's problems. And those problems extend far beyond productivity metrics.
The obvious benefits get all the headlines: better work–life balance, improved mental health, higher productivity. People with more free time spend more. Travel, hospitality, education, recreation – these sectors thrive. But there are second-order effects that matter just as much.
More downtime means more space for ideas to percolate. Consider the overnight test: sleeping on a problem often makes the answer clearer the next day. Imagine what a whole extra day could do to clear the mind and reset after a week in the trenches.
A free weekday gives people time to participate in civic life – to volunteer, to learn, or to simply see daylight. Democracy works better when people aren't too exhausted to care. Happier, healthier citizens make for better decision-makers, colleagues, and parents.
There's a gender equity angle too. Less time in the office means more shared responsibility at home. It's one of the simplest, least-discussed levers for rebalancing unpaid labour. That is, along with longer paid paternity leave. Two weeks is archaic and insulting.
But perhaps the most profound benefit is meaning. When work doesn't own all your time, you remember there are other things worth building. Other identities worth inhabiting. Other ways to matter.
Every New Innovation Promised Us Time Back: Let's Finally Cash In
Every productivity breakthrough has promised to shake things up and ultimately give us time back. The printing press. Electricity. The internet. And every time, we took that efficiency and filled it with more work.
But maybe this time should be different. Maybe advancements in AI give us the efficiency we need to finally ask the question we’ve been avoiding: what if we just… stopped?
Not stopped working – stopped pretending that more hours equal more value. Stopped mistaking busyness for progress. Stopped acting like rest is something you earn or “accrue” instead of something you require.
We’ve established that the four-day week isn’t about cancelling Friday and doing less. It’s about doing what matters, doing it well, and then having the wisdom to close the laptop.
Maybe the real story of the twenty-first century won’t be how much we produced. Maybe it’ll be how we finally learned to put people first. If the industrial age gave us the weekend, maybe the digital age means Friday can finally be a perpetual duvet day.