The Naive Optimist, We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m: “We believe that smart folks can get five days of work done in four days. Simple as that.”
(Via. The Naive Optimist)
I applaud this mentality. We have such a skewed view of how to achieve success these days, especially in the U.S. I often think how disappointed our grandparents would be if they knew we traded the 40-hour work week they had to fight so hard to achieve for a couple of extra thousand dollars a year to spend on slightly bigger houses and cars.
More companies should really consider implementing the 4-day work week. I worked at a place that had this schedule once, and it was the biggest thing I missed when I left. And I talked recently with folks who are still there, and they won’t leave because they won’t give up their “day off” every week. Absolutely the best retention strategy ever invented. And productivity has been proven to go up, not down, in places where this has been instituted.
It’s easy to implement, too. Just stagger the days off. Have a lottery, or base it on seniority. Some people get Mondays, some Fridays, some Wednesdays. Some Thursdays. Save one day a week, such as Tuesday, as a day where everyone has to be in the office, so that you can always schedule all-hands meetings if necessary.
Believe me, even the people who get “stuck” with Thursday off will be grateful.
Teams will have no trouble finding time to meet when they have to. They will go to great lengths to make sure the work keeps getting done, because they won’t want to lose this awesome new thing you handed them.
Of course, before we can get people on the 4-day week, I guess we’d have to get most of them to stop working weekends, first. So sad.
If you don’t own a direct major stake in the company, if you’re not at least a part owner, you’re screwing yourself by working more than 40 hours a week anywhere, no matter how many promotions you get. Senior VPs might look like they have it made, but even the ones making several hundred thousand a year and up are still getting the shaft, because they have no real stake in the company’s future. Whatever they make is crap compared to what they should be making. There’s always a handful of people at the top taking the lion’s share of everything. And you can’t work your way into that group. You have to start your own thing to get that.
So why are you letting someone else take most of the value you generate? Save that for your personal passions, your family, your creativity, whatever you want. That’s yours, not theirs.
