It often feels like there are only 3 productive hours in typical American white collar work day.
What if we just cut out the rest?
Edit: Some great responses. So responses must have also been said about the 5 day and 40 hour work weeks.
morning coffee, break, afternoon coffee, go home
It sounds great! The real trick would be finding any company willing to pay the same 40 hours of wages every week for 15 hours of work. There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
Not that I’m advocating for it, but… Working 3 jobs @ 15 hours a week each would mean you’d be a lot more resilient against layoffs and would be able to quit any of those jobs at the drop of a hat if things got shitty (knowing you’d only be losing 1/3 of your income, rather than 100% of it). It would represent a solid shift of power into the hands of the workers.
i’ve been down that road before. three part time jobs means no benefits and no employer-sponsored health coverage. it’s also extremely difficult to schedule multiple part time jobs so they don’t conflict with each other while still giving you something resembling ‘weekend’ off.
True, but the whole point of having a shorter work week would be to have more free time wouldn’t three jobs kind of defeat the whole purpose? That would just mean I wake up dreading three jobs instead of one…
And all the wasted time getting from one job to the next. Even if the travel is all virtual you still have to get setup/organised, put one thing down and pick another up.
And what happens if job 2 doesn’t start for like 2 hours after job 1 and job 3 doesn’t start until 3 hours after job 2? That’s now a 14 hour day where your either working or getting ready to work with just enough “down time” to not really get too much accomplished… AND you’re going to get taxed on each paycheck. That sounds awful
you get up at 12 and start to work at 1, take an hour for lunch and then at 2 you’re done.
What about my 15 minute breaks?
I think the problem would be getting everyone’s 3 hours to line up.
Yes. A whole lot more would need to be asynchronous.
You couldn’t organise anything. I honestly can’t see how h the status quo can be changed.
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The only problem that I would have with the 3-hour work day is that sometimes they’re generally is more work to do. Average is probably only about 3 hours but occasionally you need more.
Although quite a lot of time could be saved by not having meetings about meetings about when you’re going to have a meeting to book the meeting. But let’s be reasonable that’s not happening.
For many office workers, it would be about the same.
I would struggle get anything done. 3 hours is just not enough time. Sometimes it feels like 8 isn’t even enough.
5 would be decent i think. If you can’t get through a “part” of a task, however you define that in your field, that should either be broken up more there are other issues
Oh yeah it 100% is. I don’t mind though because I like being busy and of I don’t get all the work done no one faults me. Me days feel like they are 5mins long it’s great. I arrive at work get stuck in and then look at the clock and fuck its 5pm time to go home.
You’d get paid a lot less
Under Capitalism, sure.
Yeah under communism you wouldn’t get paid
Depends on the stage.
Why would you be on the clock? You work 3 hours and that pays enough money.
That’s why a lot of roles like this are salaried. My productivity can’t be measured by how fast I turn a crank.
Yeah at that point in the career, the comp is for being available during business hours and moving work in professional, reliable and competent manner. Nobody is checking unless somebody is complaining.
People could add tasks but there is no pay incentive so why bother. That’s just give out labour for free lol
Dont be a bootlicker. Get paid!
Ok. Let’s say we have 4 hour workdays, 4 day work weeks. Not just for white collar.
A business would require to hire 2 more people to cover a 24h continuous prosuction line (3 8h shifts to 5 4h shifts).
there would be more employment and higher productivity. More happiness I suspect.
I’d take it.
6 x 4 = 24
I’m not sure I could condense my work like that. If I have 3 hours of work I want at least 4 hours to do it in. And if you decide you can condense it, employers will simply double everyone’s workload, and we are not computers. Maybe 3 hours of work is all anyone can do in a day, and some of us can do it in 3:15 but most of us like to spread it over 8. Plus there are insights that only come in non-active time, again, we aren’t machines.
i think there’s a different “sweet spot” for everyone. i agree, doing 3h of productivity in 3h is hard enough, but i wouldn’t necessarily need to stretch it over 8h, i’d do fine with 5-6h. my last work hours tend to be the most unproductive ones anyway
Sadly we are so obsessed with squeezing “productivity” en masse out of the workforce. We rarely justify technology or process enhancements that result in fewer hours worked. We generally optimize how much we get out of each hour worked. I have always had an issue with this.
Take AI for example, we are seeing some tasks automated or accelerated by AI powered tools. However, I have not heard any employers state how their employees will be able to get their work done in fewer hours. I only ever hear how people will get more done during their work hours.
The system in this way is very much broken. In an ideal world, you’d get paid for the outcome and not the hours worked, but that is not a working relationship many outside of entrepreneurs and consultants have.
I think big part of that is that the person is available to deliver service at anytime during the 8 hour work day and you have to be good at it. That’s why management allows this. They ain’t giving up 5 houra of that so they have to hire another "overpriced cost center* to fill the slot lol
Overworking certain people ends up costing more if their error rates cuts in operations.
