Can a 4-Day Work Week Make Us More Productive?

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Have you ever considered the possibility that having a 4-day working week could make you more productive?

Burnout can affect us all, no matter if you’re self-employed or work for a company. Being constantly busy has become a default state for many of us, so it’s no surprise that more of us suffer from anxiety, depression, or even full-on breakdowns related to the pressures we experience at work. Perhaps implementing a 4-day week is the answer to the problem of the day-to-day grind that characterises the modern workplace.

You can read our post on how fatigue affects productivity for more on fatigue and burnout.

There’s evidence supporting the idea that a 4-day week is plausible and would not materially damage productivity. Indeed early indications suggest having a 4-day week could actually make us more productive and benefit our mental health.

In the rest of this article, we’ll investigate how a 4-day work week consisting of 32 hours can make us more productive. Later, we’ll look at how you can adapt your schedule to suit a 4-day working week. First, we must determine if a 4-day week is even possible.

Let’s get into it.

Is it Possible to Have a 4-Day Week?

You probably don’t need me to tell you that feeling unmotivated and stressed are common signs you may be suffering from burnout. Working a 4-day week could offer a viable solution.

A 6-month trial study conducted by the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, and Boston called 4 Day Week Global aimed to discover whether working a 4-day week was feasible. The study involved around 1000 employees, who were to receive their full salary for working 80% of their normal working week.

Companies who chose to participate in the study reported better mental health, increased levels of productivity, and happiness among those employees who worked only 4 days a week in the 6-month period the study ran for.   

The only condition for employees taking part in this study was that they all their effort into their work across a 4-day week, just as they would across a 5-day week. It proved a successful incentive.

You might well imagine that attempting to fit the same amount of work into a shorter week could prove overwhelming and stressful. For this study at least, the opposite turned out to be true.

The study indicated that:

• Fewer working hours meant people faced fewer distractions and had shaper focus.
• People are actually more likely to finish their work before the close of the working day because they are using their time more efficiently.
• There was a significant increase in productivity which may be due to people feeling less anxious and stressed because they have more time for themselves.
• Most companies reported an 8% increase in revenue during the trial.

Some of the companies that took part, such as Kickstarter, also reported that participating employees were more engaged during working hours, too.

After the trial, 65% of the companies involved decided to make the 4-day work week permanent. The other 35% have yet to return fully to the traditional 5-day working week.

It would seem, then that a 4-day working week is not only feasible and possible but may also be desirable, and even profitable for businesses.

Next, we’ll talk about how to adjust your schedule and develop a mindset that suits a 4-day week.

How to Adapt Your Schedule for a 4-Day Working Week

The notion that the more work you do, the more successful you’ll be is outdated, and is routed in a flawed perception of what success is. As studies like 4 Day Week Global show that you can work less and still be productive.

You will also promote better mental health and reduce work-related stress, and subsequent instances of burnout and depression.

Here’s how you could optimise your schedule if your company is considering adopting a 4-day week.

• Use tools like Todoist and Trello to help you automate some repeated tasks to save time. That way, you will have more time to spend on high-value tasks that matter most. Check out ‘How to Use Trello to Boost Productivity’ for more detail.
• Block out digital distractions to maximise your focus and get stuff done.
• Use reminders and scheduling to manage your inbox like a pro and start controlling your email, rather than letting it control you.
• Set yourself clear goals that align with company goals, and if you are a manager or team leader within a company, make sure your colleagues know what you expect from them, and that they know what to expect from you in turn.
• Use time blocking to help you focus, set aside time to dedicate to your most crucial tasks, and become more productive.

Thanks in no small part to the technology that now pervades our everyday lives, there are multiple ways you can boost your productivity and make the most of your time. This makes implementing a 4-day working week more feasible and easier to do than would have been the case in the past.

Self-employed workers and companies may still be afraid of adopting a four-day week for fear of appearing lazy if they or their employees finish their work in less time than the traditional working week allows. Recent studies suggest that there is no need to feel guilt over finishing early, though as it can simply mean that you and others are less stressed, and are therefore more able to focus and get things done without falling prey to a myriad of distractions. Indeed, this sharper focus may result in people becoming more productive.

Wrapping Up

We’ve seen that some studies support the idea that having a 4-day work week can make us more productive. We’ve addressed the question of whether implementing it is feasible and have explored ways you can adjust your schedule and adopt a mindset that would make shifting to this way of working easier.

Indeed, a 4-day work week might not suit all of us, or be a viable option for every company, but why not trail it if you think it may work for you or your business? You might be surprised by the results.

After all, no one had tried to implement a 5-day work week in Britain before Robert Owen did so in his factories and found that productivity significantly increased. Over time, the 5-day week became the accepted standard. There’s no reason why the same cannot be true of a 4-day work week.

So, try it out and see how you get on!