Will 4-Day Weeks Solve Burnout? | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

00:00:00.000 | All right, so anyways, we got good questions.

00:00:02.760 | Before we get into the questions, though,

00:00:04.440 | like I often like to do to start these episodes,

00:00:06.560 | I like to kick things off with what I call a deep dive

00:00:09.840 | where I take a query that's been on my mind for a long time

00:00:12.640 | and spend some time with it.

00:00:14.700 | So the topic of the deep dive

00:00:17.400 | that I'm going to get into today

00:00:20.400 | is will four-day weeks solve burnout?

00:00:25.400 | Now, one of the motivations was,

00:00:29.520 | there's been a lot of articles about it.

00:00:31.040 | This is an article that's on the screen now

00:00:33.680 | for people who are watching.

00:00:34.560 | It's actually from February,

00:00:36.360 | but it's one of many articles like this

00:00:38.000 | that I've come across recently

00:00:39.680 | that are talking about the increased popularity

00:00:44.000 | for the last year or two

00:00:45.740 | in the idea of knowledge workers in particular

00:00:47.920 | doing four-day workweeks,

00:00:50.480 | so typically Monday through Thursday

00:00:52.440 | instead of Monday through Friday.

00:00:55.160 | Now, it's not an idea that is brand new.

00:00:58.120 | In "Deep Work," which I published back in 2016,

00:01:01.680 | I talked about the four-day workweek experiments

00:01:05.040 | at Basecamp.

00:01:07.320 | They then were and continue to do today.

00:01:10.520 | A part of the year is four-day workweeks of the summer,

00:01:13.240 | and I got into some of those details in that book.

00:01:15.640 | Alex Peng had a well-timed book out called "Shorter"

00:01:20.640 | that was all about this concept that came out,

00:01:23.620 | and this is where I say well-timed, March of 2020.

00:01:27.680 | So that book was right there for people

00:01:30.320 | during the pandemic-induced remote work

00:01:32.240 | where we began rethinking how we might structure our efforts.

00:01:35.520 | That book was well-timed to be there.

00:01:37.000 | So this idea has been around.

00:01:39.720 | Last year or two, though, it's gotten a lot more attention.

00:01:42.560 | The pandemic pushed it to the forefront.

00:01:44.340 | So if we look at this particular sample article

00:01:46.520 | I have on the screen, this is from "Wired" from February

00:01:49.880 | written by Caitlin Harrigan,

00:01:52.300 | we see it talks about this concept.

00:01:56.000 | It notes that several trials or trials have been launched

00:01:59.600 | in several countries in the past few months.

00:02:02.840 | So this is something that has been happening

00:02:05.040 | over the last year or two is countries,

00:02:06.800 | government funding studies from countries

00:02:08.580 | are looking into this, where they'll take a bunch of companies

00:02:11.200 | and temporarily move them to four-day weeks

00:02:14.440 | and then interview the employees afterwards

00:02:17.360 | about was this better, was this not?

00:02:18.520 | So there's a lot of these investigations

00:02:19.760 | going on typically in Europe.

00:02:20.920 | Iceland was one of the first countries to do this.

00:02:22.760 | They actually had results back.

00:02:24.440 | Spoiler alert, people like the four-day work week there.

00:02:27.320 | In this particular "Wired" article,

00:02:29.440 | they went and talked to 15 workers at six tech companies

00:02:32.540 | that had already adopted a shortened work week

00:02:36.120 | and found that employees generally approved.

00:02:39.620 | So that's the actual quote I have up here,

00:02:42.360 | but some saw it as a mixed blessing.

00:02:46.640 | All right, so here's the question.

00:02:50.220 | Is this highly visible intervention

00:02:53.400 | a good solution to the burnout

00:02:55.400 | that knowledge workers increasingly feel?

00:02:58.500 | My argument has been no.

00:03:02.860 | I do not think shifting to the four-day work week

00:03:08.920 | is going to be a long-term or sustainable solution

00:03:12.240 | to a lot of the actual valid concerns

00:03:15.260 | that people have about work, its role in their life,

00:03:18.240 | and the stress and burnout that it is creating.

00:03:20.760 | I think by contrast,

00:03:23.040 | the issue might be the notion of a work week in general,

00:03:26.540 | not its length.

00:03:28.460 | So let's go back and think about

00:03:30.480 | where the concept of a standardized work week came from.

00:03:33.240 | In the US, it comes from the Fair Labor Standards Practice.

00:03:37.120 | In 1938, this is the Prussian-era legislation.

00:03:40.400 | It established 40 hours as a standard work week

00:03:43.100 | for many industries.

00:03:44.060 | In other words, if you wanted to have an employee

00:03:46.000 | work longer than 40 hours,

00:03:47.440 | they would have to be paid overtime.

00:03:50.480 | This very much largely concerned

00:03:53.000 | manufacturing and industrial jobs,

00:03:55.160 | jobs where there was an hourly component to the work,

00:03:58.640 | jobs where the biggest knob you had to turn

00:04:02.520 | in terms of impacting the difficulty of the work

00:04:05.180 | was how many hours people were actually working.

00:04:09.840 | This was the context for something

00:04:11.340 | like a standardized work week made sense.

00:04:15.200 | Knowledge workers have been relatively exempt

00:04:19.380 | from that law because it is a different type of situation.

00:04:22.440 | Knowledge work is way more autonomous.

00:04:24.480 | The number of hours you are working or expected to work

00:04:28.200 | don't necessarily mean a lot

00:04:29.540 | in a lot of knowledge work jobs.

00:04:30.720 | It's very outcomes-based.

00:04:33.000 | You're given work, you're expected to accomplish the work.

00:04:36.080 | The work week is at best a loose framework

00:04:40.200 | for roughly speaking,

00:04:42.480 | when you might be expected to be available for meetings,

00:04:45.920 | when we might expect a response to emails,

00:04:48.840 | and when we might not.

00:04:49.740 | So, okay, we don't work on the weekends,

00:04:52.440 | then we can't schedule a meeting on the weekend.

00:04:54.740 | We don't schedule meetings at 8 p.m. typically

00:04:56.560 | because we have this rough work week, but that's about it.

00:04:59.320 | There's no notion of, wait a second,

00:05:01.160 | I'm only supposed to work 32 hours

00:05:03.320 | and I'm just at the assembly line

00:05:06.180 | turning the crank until those 32 hours are up.

00:05:08.420 | So in knowledge work, the work week is, again,

00:05:10.280 | just a loose framework for setting certain expectations,

00:05:13.360 | not the core defining factor of the efforts

00:05:16.680 | that you actually are going to execute.

00:05:20.820 | All right, so what should we do?

00:05:23.800 | If knowledge workers feel burnt out,

00:05:27.500 | what type of things are gonna make a difference?

00:05:31.200 | One of my big arguments is that more transparent

00:05:34.720 | and humane systems for work assignment,

00:05:38.000 | execution, and review is what is critical.

00:05:41.280 | Moving past the haphazardness

00:05:44.520 | with which we just toss work around

00:05:47.120 | in the knowledge work environment today,

00:05:48.440 | where anyone at any time can just say,

00:05:49.960 | hey, take a look at this, can you do this?

00:05:52.000 | Do this meeting, take care of this problem.

00:05:53.540 | What are your thoughts on this?

00:05:54.420 | Just with an email or a conversation in the hallway

00:05:57.200 | or a Slack message, work can be dropped on anyone's plate

00:05:59.640 | by anyone at any time without anyone tracking

00:06:01.840 | how much are you doing?

00:06:02.920 | Does it make sense for you to do more?

00:06:04.320 | Does it make sense what it is that you're working on?

00:06:06.600 | When are you gonna work on this?

00:06:07.640 | What do you need to actually get this done?

00:06:09.320 | We don't have any of those conversations.

00:06:11.260 | We plug people into the cybernetic hive mind

00:06:14.360 | of Slack and email and Zoom and say, get after it.

00:06:19.260 | And we end up with these completely overloaded task lists

00:06:22.800 | and ambiguity and stress, and I could care less

00:06:25.520 | if you tell me that my work week

00:06:26.800 | is supposed to end on Thursday or not.

00:06:28.280 | I have all this stuff, I have to get it done.

00:06:30.200 | So we need more humane and transparent systems.

00:06:32.440 | Here's how we keep track of what you're working on.

00:06:35.560 | We can see it.

00:06:36.920 | Here's how much we think you should have on your plate

00:06:38.820 | at any one time.

00:06:39.660 | You have too much, you get nothing more.

00:06:42.560 | Here is how we think you should actually execute the work.

00:06:46.160 | Well, this is what the mornings are for.

00:06:47.600 | These days are all just concentration.

00:06:49.200 | Meetings can only happen at these places.

00:06:50.760 | Transparency, so we can see the system

00:06:53.000 | and see the workloads.

00:06:54.840 | And humanity, which I mean, you are trying to align

00:06:59.080 | these systems to the way that the human brain

00:07:01.020 | actually functions.

00:07:01.860 | That's the reform we need.

00:07:03.220 | Ours is a knob that's relevant for the factory.

00:07:07.220 | Task assignment systems.

00:07:10.520 | That is the relevant knob for knowledge work.

00:07:14.320 | And there's all sorts of ideas here.

00:07:15.360 | Like poll systems is something I've advocated for.

00:07:18.320 | They do this in software, we could do this other places.

00:07:20.680 | Let me work on one thing at a time.

00:07:22.200 | When I'm done, I'll pull in a new thing.

00:07:24.120 | And you know what, my team or my boss or my supervisor

00:07:26.120 | can be involved in deciding on what that next thing

00:07:28.360 | should be, but I do one thing at a time.

00:07:30.520 | You cannot just throw things on my plate

00:07:32.080 | and have me organize it.

00:07:33.640 | I work on one thing at a time.

00:07:35.000 | We need a systemic collection mechanism

00:07:37.800 | for actually keeping track of all the things

00:07:39.240 | the company needs to do.

00:07:40.240 | Shouldn't it just be in my inbox?

00:07:41.480 | Shouldn't it just be on my task list?

00:07:43.520 | Protocols and processes that everyone agrees on,

00:07:46.080 | that's blessed by the head of the company,

00:07:49.120 | the head of your team.

00:07:49.940 | Protocols and processes for how regular

00:07:51.840 | ongoing work happens.

00:07:53.200 | This is the process we meet at these days.

00:07:56.880 | There's office hours you come into for short questions.

00:07:59.080 | Here's what email can and can't be used for.

00:08:01.280 | Again, just rock and rolling.

00:08:03.820 | Here's the tools, here's your handle,

00:08:05.580 | here's your address, go for it, doesn't work.

00:08:07.660 | Protocols and processes.

00:08:09.760 | In general, trading accountability

00:08:12.200 | for this accessibility that we've come to expect

00:08:17.400 | is what we would also wanna get out of this.

00:08:20.360 | So forget this, like let's just make everyone accessible

00:08:22.360 | and we'll sort of figure things out

00:08:24.400 | and make accountability be the new buzzword.

00:08:26.840 | We agreed what you're gonna do, did you do it?

00:08:28.400 | How well did you do it?

00:08:30.260 | What hours you did it, what days you did it, I don't care.

00:08:33.840 | That's not my business.

00:08:35.040 | That is something we could be moving towards.

00:08:36.520 | I think that's more natural for the type of work

00:08:38.400 | that we're doing in the knowledge sector.

00:08:40.880 | Let me throw out one more radical idea here.

00:08:43.320 | I don't think talking about the nature of the work week

00:08:46.440 | is that important, but I am kind of interested

00:08:49.160 | in talking about the nature of the work year.

00:08:52.480 | And I'm gonna get into this a little bit later in the show,

00:08:56.320 | but we assume that the ideal work year

00:09:01.940 | for a knowledge worker is you work all year,

00:09:04.940 | with the exception of maybe a vacation week

00:09:07.560 | here or vacation week there.

00:09:08.960 | I think we need way more variety there.

00:09:11.800 | I mean, imagine a world in which there were alternatives.

00:09:16.480 | My engagement with this company is six months a year.

00:09:19.640 | My engagement for this company is,

00:09:21.280 | it's eight months and four months off.

00:09:24.000 | My engagement is 11 months and I take one full month off.

00:09:28.040 | I mean, imagine if you had these different options

00:09:30.200 | and you had salaries adjusted and matching

00:09:33.240 | these different configurations,

00:09:34.400 | giving people way more flexibility

00:09:38.040 | in how they actually structure their lives.

00:09:41.220 | This could be a big thing.

00:09:44.160 | And I've asked this question before,

00:09:45.880 | and I think the answer is interesting.

00:09:48.040 | How many people today, if you said,

00:09:50.200 | would you be willing to take 10/12 of your current salary

00:09:53.760 | if you didn't have to work in the summer?

00:09:56.280 | A lot of people say, of course.

00:09:58.520 | I will go from whatever, 150,000 to 125,000,

00:10:03.880 | 130,000, however the math works out there.

00:10:05.960 | I guess it's 120,000 there.

00:10:08.200 | If I also don't have to work in July and August.

00:10:10.400 | Like that type of flexibility, we don't think about it,

00:10:13.080 | but it's another way to think about burnout,

00:10:14.880 | especially with jobs where when you're doing the work,

00:10:18.000 | it's incredibly intense.

00:10:19.520 | I mean, if I'm McKinsey or WilmerHale law firm,

00:10:24.520 | and like our whole model is bringing in

00:10:26.960 | incredibly smart people to work on these engagements

00:10:30.160 | that are incredibly demanding.

00:10:31.720 | We're trying to monetize their brains.

00:10:34.520 | You're probably gonna have a lot more sustainability

00:10:37.160 | if you had these different options.

00:10:38.440 | Yeah, here's someone who's gonna come work

00:10:39.400 | for eight months and then take four

00:10:41.480 | where they're not working,

00:10:43.280 | and recharging and doing other sorts of things.

00:10:45.160 | You're gonna probably keep that employee around

00:10:46.640 | for a lot longer than saying, look,

00:10:47.720 | we're doing a hundred hour weeks until your ears bleed.

00:10:50.120 | So I'll throw that out there too.

00:10:52.440 | All right, so I think those are the type of solutions

00:10:55.040 | that matter for knowledge work burnout.

00:10:56.300 | So why is there so much energy behind the four jobs

00:11:01.300 | for day work week?

00:11:02.340 | Let's go back to that Wired article,

00:11:03.800 | and I think we can see some clues.

00:11:06.620 | All right, so quoting an employee

00:11:11.180 | from one of the companies that this reporter talked to,

00:11:14.480 | said this strategy shows that the company really does care.

00:11:18.860 | The reporter goes on to say this arrangement

00:11:22.360 | is a boon for businesses because you curry goodwill

00:11:28.060 | without raising pay, without decreasing workload.

00:11:31.360 | So this is what I think is going on with this.

00:11:34.980 | It's signaling, right?

00:11:37.260 | Oh, we care about our employees.

00:11:39.460 | We're doing radical things.

00:11:40.420 | This sounds radical.

00:11:41.260 | We're dropping a whole day off the work week.

00:11:42.820 | Even if what it really means is you do the same amount

00:11:44.980 | of work, you just maybe aren't allowed

00:11:47.300 | to schedule meetings on one day,

00:11:48.700 | but you have to do more work on the other day,

00:11:50.520 | and they feel more packed.

00:11:51.500 | You end up in the same place, right?

00:11:52.980 | It doesn't really change much.

00:11:54.580 | Like, look, we have no systematic way

00:11:58.380 | of tracking what you're supposed to be working on,

00:12:00.140 | what's a reasonable workload.

00:12:01.340 | That's not gonna change.

00:12:02.280 | Your workload's not gonna change.

00:12:04.020 | We don't have a system where we can turn that down by 20%.

00:12:07.420 | So yeah, we'll tell you you get Fridays off.

00:12:09.580 | Same stuff gets done.

00:12:10.500 | We look like we are being progressive,

00:12:12.940 | and I think they've done a pretty good job of selling this.

00:12:17.300 | They give a lot of more reform-minded commentators

00:12:21.020 | or journalists, especially on Twitter,

00:12:22.980 | who are like, "This seems big.

00:12:24.180 | "I like the idea of making a big change."

00:12:25.940 | They feel like it's sticking it to the companies,

00:12:27.580 | and that feels good, but it's not really.

00:12:29.820 | The whole thing, I think, is a PR exercise.

00:12:31.780 | We need real solutions, and real solutions requires us

00:12:34.760 | to get to the very nature of how work actually happens

00:12:38.340 | in knowledge work.

00:12:39.180 | I don't care how many hours you tell me my work week is.

00:12:41.420 | I don't install tires on an assembly line.

00:12:46.000 | What I do is way more annoying and frustrating

00:12:47.860 | and vague and ambiguous.

00:12:48.760 | So you can keep your four-day work week,

00:12:50.820 | and let's talk about how you actually assign tasks,

00:12:54.060 | how much I should be working on,

00:12:55.100 | what are our protocols, what are our systems?

00:12:57.700 | So let's see.

00:13:00.980 | There you go.

00:13:01.820 | So we'll see.

00:13:02.640 | If you're interested, this is the type of thing I get into

00:13:08.380 | in my most recent book, "A World Without Email."

00:13:12.820 | So if you wanna deep dive on some of those issues,

00:13:15.380 | I'm pulling from a lot of those thoughts.

00:13:17.760 | (upbeat music)

00:13:22.040 | (upbeat music)

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Will 4-Day Weeks Solve Burnout? | Deep Questions With Cal Newport

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