21 Huh?

It’s a nicely written piece, but I felt it too “fluffy” to be of much use — two pages to tell me to only check email twice a day? — and the more practical tips are either common sense or have been talked about to death on blogs like lifehacker and 43folders.

In the end, it seems you’ve traded a frantic Friday for a frantic Thursday and admit that the shortened work week requires that you work faster to get through your to-do list. This doesn’t seem like such a good trade-off. A string of three day weekends is worth less if I’m frantic Monday through Thursday.

@Al: “So why are so many employers still skeptical about allowing telecommuting to happen on a more regular basis? One word – CONTROL.”

No, it’s about taxes. Whether you or your employer controls how and when you work effects your and their tax status (different IRS rules come into play).

posted at 09:54 pm on May 9, 2006 by Charles H

22 An alternative approach

My clients, are overly demanding, reactionary, short-sighted [fill in expletive here]. Just like every client in the world. They’re expecting me to be on call 24 hours a day, and more than once they’ve acted on that fact. I’ve tried working the 4-day week and it just wasn’t practical.

However, I did rejig my working week in a similar fashion: the 4-hour day.

All projects I take on now, and existing projects where I can, are planned out based on a 4-hour day. Proposed timescales have doubled as a result, but by focusing and structuring my working days into half the time have had the same effects as described in the article: better use of time, more focused and more effective production.

As a result, I have effectively created an extra 4 hours per day to cover all those other tasks like e-mail, phone calls, meetings, blogs, etc. (and extra run-off time for projects if I really need them), and because my work is now so much more effective I’m hitting deadlines with less stress, or even completing proejcts way ahead of schedule.

So be it a 4-day week or a 4-hour day, I would have to agree that restructuring your work time to ensure you only get done what needs to be done, with no time for distractions, ultimately makes life so much simpler.

posted at 10:09 pm on May 9, 2006 by Ross Clutterbuck

23 Untitled

Your article reminded me of the Pareto Principle that we’ve been trying to implement in our workplace. Limiting work hours to force yourself to focus on that magic 20% is an interesting proposition, and I’m glad to hear that it works for you.

On our end, we are required to log our daily activities and track how much time we spend on each; by doing so we can clearly see how we’re wasti- I mean, spending our time at work managing our teams, and self-evaluate our time allocation.

Kudos for a great article, and it’s great to see we’re not alone.

posted at 01:18 am on May 10, 2006 by Jego Ragragio

24 IM vs Email

I seriously hate IM, never use it unless absolutely forced to, and never understood what people like about it. Regardless of who I’m talking to, my natural instinct is always “I gotta escape”, like someone in the ‘Cube’ movie. I much prefer email, less distracting and you can control the flow.

posted at 06:20 am on May 10, 2006 by Ricky Cox

25 Everyone should work 4 day weeks (or less)

As someone who working was working a 5-day week six months ago (now working 4 days), I agree that more ideas come when working less.

In my work (nothing to do with the web), I am extremely efficient, but my philosophy is – what can’t be done today can be done tomorrow.

In some of that spare time I have got for myself, I taught myself html, css and customising CMSs as can be seen at cccwebzine.com. It’s really basic, but my partner and I can share on the web the thing we most love to do, which is mountain biking.

Nice article to come home to!

posted at 10:18 am on May 10, 2006 by Marisa Bertoia

26 Untitled

I’d like to take the view that a 4-day week is not about getting work done in less time, it’s about having an extra day off. Whenever I have a Friday or a Monday off, I find the extra day allows me to do whatever I want, and makes me feel so much better. Typically, I spend each weekend doing the same routine (shopping, housework etc) leaving not enough free time to travel, relax, or do something different.

Now a point worth making here is that after 5 days of work I feel I can work no more. How many times have other people felt that they are in work day after day, and sometimes simply too tired to concentrate fully? Without flexi-time, I cannot take these tired days off, unless I use up my holidays. I feel sure that an extra day at the weekend would make me MORE PRODUCTIVE as I would be less tired, not feeling tied to the office, able to focus on daily work tasks better, and so on. Plus I might do exciting things on my extra day that would make me a more interesting person at work.

It is only society that dictates we must work 5 days long. Some people regularly work 6! For instance, dentists, who may take an afternoon off during the week, but fill in by working Saturday morning.

I personally long for an end to starting work at 9 o’clock every morning, but that’s another debate…

posted at 11:00 am on May 10, 2006 by Chris Hester

27 What a way to earn a living...

This reminded me of the time that I had an interview with a well respected agency in London who, when asked about the working hours, commented that they only work nine to five and hardly ever work to six.

The reason for that was simple; if your good at your job then you can do what needs to be done in the time that is given to you.

I quite liked their philosophy, it made a nice change from some of the other agencies that I’ve been to who believe in long working hours supplemented by late night games of table football.

posted at 11:22 am on May 10, 2006 by Tony Goff

28 Untitled

nice article..

d’you think it’d go down well if I attach a copy to every CV I send out(?)

:-)

posted at 01:20 pm on May 10, 2006 by matt northam

29 home/work users+email - 4 day week/CONTROL

This is just the discussion I have recently been having myself. I was also considering doing what Kyle Matthews’ (comment #1) has done and creating a new user on my computer for my work time. But I realised that as a passionate web designer i just can’t stop working: if i’m surfing at my leisure and see a wonderful/clever site I will look at the source code and likely bookmark the page. I need those same bookmarks work or play. Friends email me for help coding during my work day… etc.

And Ryan’s suggestion to only check email twice a day I have also considered. But so often i am reliant on someone responding to my email asap – so its only fair i check my email regularly incase someone needs my response with the same urgency. Letting the obviously personal emails go unopened is necessary, but likewise, come the evening or the weekend, I am just learning to have the self restraint to ignore my new unread mail in my work inbox.

With regards to 4 day weeks – I am utterly convinced, having recently done some freelance work for a big corporation where I went into their offices to work. The lack of concentration and motivation to work on Friday was palpable. Email became practically unusable due to the huge volume of internal ‘spam’ jokes and silly links flying around. And invariably, an excuse would have been found to order in the drinks trolley promptly at 5pm. As a freelancer working 1/2 days a week short on time and deadlines to meet, it was a nightmare!

I must add, that this big corp did allow flexi-time, but because it was optional, it only fuels feelings of the people who were in the half empty office, that its not a ‘proper’ work day. The reason the 4 day week is not going to become standard in corporate culture, is a matter of control…. And not just about pay and taxes… There’s a fear that if we are given too much time to ourselves, we might start to take our life and our ‘hobbies’ more seriously – and what would happen if we all ran off and became the professional gardeners/artists/mountain climbers that we’ve always dreamed of being?

posted at 02:42 pm on May 10, 2006 by Emily Heath

30 We've got to start somewhere

Thanks for the post, Ryan. You’re on to something here. And while some might argue you’re not giving enough tips and tricks to make it happen, I think they’re missing the point. True, a lot of companies will reject this idea out of hand. But I don’t accept that we have to accept the status quo just because its the status quo. Why shouldn’t weekends be three days long? Who determined the length of the work week? Let’s keep pushing to do the things that are important to us the way we think they should be done. Life lived to the lowest common denominator is not a good starting point. Just because it’s always been this way is no reason to keep it. And so on.

posted at 03:21 pm on May 10, 2006 by Dave Traynor

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