The Four-Day Workweek

There's something not generally mentioned by those advocating a four-day workweek: tuning out the rest of the world on day five.

Lots of us webbies have either promoted the idea of a four-day workweek, or have sought after it, or both. Not a 4/10 workweek, but four days of normal working time and three days of non-working time. Carsonified was one of the first to promote the idea, and recently Ryan Carson wrote once again on the topic. 37signals joined in a little later. And of course, there's the four-hour workweek, which — let's be honest — turns out to be pretty ridiculous if you've read the book.

For about 6 months now I've been working a four-and-a-half day workweek. Monday through Thursday Suzanne homeschools our four sons. Then, most Fridays I take them for a half-day and teach them material that usually includes Spanish, music, sports, and creative activities. (We're currently building oatmeal box pinhole cameras for our creative activity. HTML 101 is up next.)

Here's what's challenging about the fifth day: Unlike holidays or weekends where you can rest knowing much of the working world and those in your social circle are also at rest, on Fridays nearly everyone you know continues to blog, tweet, discover, research, promote, and connect. Whatever you intended to fill your time with on that fifth day is, inevitably, at odds with feeling left behind and out of the loop.

I have no problem turning off Twitter on the weekends, for example. But I struggle to do the same on Fridays. Scanning the online activity of other four-day advocates suggests they may struggle, too. (Or they may simply chose not to disconnect.)

Is the inability to tune out enough to negate a four-day work week? No. Working only four days definitely has positive gains. Is the inability to tune out a bad thing? Not necessarily. I just think we're not being candid about it.

I needn't offer any advice for tuning out on day five. It's no different than tuning out and focusing during any other day, workday or not. Just be prepared to wrestle with this when adopting a four-day workweek.

That is all.