HACKER Q&A
📣 cercatrova

What do you think of a 4 hour work day?


There is research / case studies showing that most people don't work a full 8 hours a day, that staying focused so long is next to impossible every single day, and that a shorter workday can increase productivity [0] [1]. With that in mind, what do you think of companies that offer such a work day? You could also do 5 hours a day for 4 days, but I think you'd gain more efficiency from an extra day rather than one extra hour a day, when after 4 hours can be tiring already.

[0] https://www.amazon.com/Five-Hour-Workday-Differently-Productivity-Happiness-ebook/dp/B01FGAFDBO

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Shorter-Work-Better-Smarter-Heres/dp/1541730712

  👤 jelliclesfarm Accepted Answer ✓
A 20 hour work week should become the norm.

We will soon have 10 billion by 2050. Everything is going to be automated. There isn’t going to be a lot of jobs around.

If we still survive 2050 and continue having a money/currency.employment based economy, we will have to drastically reduce work hours.

But that’s a BIG IF ..we’ll see what the future holds.

👤 abellerose
Depends on what profession in question but for programming I would rather do 5 hours per day for 4 days of the week. Three day weekends are healthier for me and I know from my mood being better when it occurs during the summer where I work.
👤 markus_zhang
Looks good but don't think will work for me. For a few reasons:

1 - I actually need to learn through work so I have to take as much work as possible. My biggest complain so far is that HQ took some of our work so there is not that much ownership left.

2 - If you count meetings as work, and taking rest 90% of the time during a meeting as work (10% of the time you are asking meaningful questions and getting feedbacks), then I'm actually working 8-10 hours per day and don't really feel huge strain.

In general I'm OK with others with shorter period of work, as long as I get more responsibility and tools to play with :D

👤 st1x7
I think that you need a 7-8 hour work day to extract the 4-5 fully productive hours. You can't just tell people to do the 4 good hours and skip the rest.
👤 eucryphia
Depends if you count meetings as 'work'.