A candid look at the pros and cons of a 4-day workweek, plus real-world tips for pulling it off.
5-second summary
- A compressed workweek generally means working four days instead of five.
- This schedule may involve working fewer total hours each week or shifting your regular work hours to a four-day period, e.g., working four 10-hour days.
- Succeeding with this schedule requires close coordination with teammates, as well as personal and professional stakeholders.
What if three-day weekends were the default? That’s a “new normal” many of us would actually welcome!
Switching to a four-day work schedule, often referred to as a “compressed workweek,” is one way to do it. Four-day workweeks are still a hot topic as companies continue to contend with employee burnout. According to one survey, 59% of US companies are open to implementing a four-day workweek, and a number of international governments have pioneered compressed-workweek initiatives, with promising success.
But a compressed workweek isn’t a great fit for everyone. To succeed with this schedule, you’ll need to start with a little soul-searching, follow up with a persuasive proposal to your boss, and then work like you’ve never worked before – a combination of working smarter and working harder.
Is a compressed workweek right for you?
Working four 10-hour days each week, resulting in an extra day off, is the most common approach. (This is known as a “4×10 schedule.”) Determining whether it can work for you is partly about your job role, partly about who you are and your lifestyle.
For starters, how do you plan to use the additional day off? For my colleague Lisa, a member of the finance team at Atlassian, the answer was easy: “More time with my kids before they started kindergarten. But now that they’re in school, it’s a day for ‘life admin tasks’ so I can fully enjoy Saturday and Sunday.” Or maybe your goal is to create space for travel, a passion project, or that side-hustle you’ve been pondering. That’s a good sign. Without a strong sense of purpose, it may be hard to muster the stamina required for working 10-hour days week in, week out.
Your job role matters, too. Customer service and similar queue-based roles can be tricky (though not impossible) to re-shape around a compressed work schedule because service level agreements assume consistent staffing levels throughout the week. Similarly, a director or VP who touches practically every project in flight may find it difficult to shift to a four-day week without becoming a bottleneck for the entire organization.
Then there are your personal commitments and lifestyle outside of the office. Will you still be able to juggle childcare pick-ups and drop-offs? Commute home in time for family dinner (assuming you’re commuting at all)? Stay sane with fewer hours to recharge after those long days? You owe it to yourself to be brutally honest as you consider questions like these.
Pros and cons associated with a 4-day schedule
| Benefits | Disadvantages |
|---|---|
| An extra day off each week, with no reduction in pay. | Powering through longer workdays may not be as easy as you anticipate. |
| Less time spent commuting, especially if the longer days mean you’ll be commuting outside peak hours. | Potential difficulty managing childcare drop-offs and pick-ups if you commute. A potentially chaotic environment when kids are around if you work from home. |
| Using the extra time off for appointments and errands means you’ll be more focused and productive during your work hours. | You’ll need to coordinate closely with teammates to ensure work isn’t at a stand-still on the days you’re off. |
Some things to consider before making the pitch
If you plan on seriously pursuing a compressed workweek, it’s important to show that you’ve really thought through the following things:
- Which days you will work what your working hours will be
- Whether and how you can be reached on your off-day if there’s an emergency (also, what qualifies as an “emergency” in your mind)
- How you envision shuffling and sharing responsibilities with your teammates
- How this change can have a positive impact on the team
That last point is important. Will this arrangement boost your focus, energy, and/or creativity? Will you take fewer ad-hoc days off? Will teammates have the opportunity to learn a new skill by sharing a responsibility that is now exclusively yours? Your proposal will be better received if it’s not all about you.
Another colleague, Jenny, a product manager, proposed switching as an experiment, which helped ease her manager’s concerns. “We did it on a trial basis and it went really well, so I was allowed to continue with it permanently,” she says. “For me, it’s totally worth it.”
Whatever you propose, send it in writing so your manager has time to give it some real thought. Approaching them with a verbal proposal puts them on the spot and will probably result in a knee-jerk “no.”
Tips for succeeding with a compressed workweek
In practice, pulling off a compressed workweek means working smarter, and, yes, working harder – getting through those two additional hours is no joke. You’ll need the right combination of prioritization, time management, and pacing.
Start by setting goals for yourself on a monthly or quarterly basis using OKRs or a similar method. Then, ruthlessly prioritize your planned work with those goals in mind, and be mindful of how many unplanned requests you say yes to.
“I’ll stay off of Slack for periods of time while I’m working so I don’t get distracted by all the little shoulder-taps that come in,” Jenny tells me. Turns out, people usually find a solution on their own when she doesn’t respond immediately. (Bonus points for not being an “accidental diminisher.”) And when you say yes to a request, be clear about when you’ll deliver on it – this prevents the “just checking in…” pings.
Next, practice good calendar hygiene. You’ll probably need to move a meeting or two, so use this opportunity to stack your recurring meetings back-to-back as much as possible. This will open up space for long stretches of deep work. You may even want to block 90-120 minutes in the mornings or afternoons (depending on when you do your best thinking) so your deep work time isn’t fragmented by ad-hoc meetings.
Regardless of how you structure your daily schedule, be mindful of how much time you spend on casual chats, lunches, etc. You’re working the same number of hours as before, but that additional day off pulls your deadlines forward. “When I’m at work, I’m really just working,” says Lisa. “But I’m conscious of the social side of work and keeping up those relationships. It’s not like I’m so snowed under that I can’t even poke my head up for a chat or go for a coffee.”
Do poke your head up occasionally, though. Working non-stop for long stretches actually decreases your productivity in those last hours. Pace yourself. Take a short break every hour or two, and make sure it’s truly a rest – checking your email doesn’t help your brain recharge. But a walk around the block is fast and surprisingly restorative.
Reflect, review, and adapt
Every few months, set aside some time during your 1-on-1 meeting with your manager to discuss how the arrangement is going, especially at the outset. Listen with an open mind and try to mentally frame any issues they raise as challenges to overcome together, rather than indictments of your character or work ethic. If you’re the first person in your organization to try a compressed workweek, there are bound to be some growing pains.
Self-reflection is important, too. Ask yourself whether you’re delivering work that is as good or better than before. Is the longer weekend worth the longer hours during the week? Are your social and family lives holding up alright?
If a compressed workweek doesn’t turn out to be the schedule of your dreams, give yourself permission to honor that and go back to a standard workweek. Better to try, fail, and learn something than to never step out of your comfort zone.