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Shorter: Redesign Your Work and Reclaim Your Time
Work less. Be more productive. Here's how.
The idea of success embraced by the global economy means being always-on, never missing an opportunity, and outworking your peers. But working ever-longer hours isn't sustainable for companies or individuals. Fatigue-induced mistakes, whether in the operating room or factory line or trading floor, costs companies billions, and overwork alienates and burns out valuable workers. Yet as destructive as it is, the logic of modern capitalism demands that we work longer hours, and forever push ourselves to work even more.
But what if there is another way? Shorter tells the story of entrepreneurs and leaders all over the world who find that by eliminating distractions, reducing inefficiencies, and carving out time for highly focused work and high-quality collaboration, they can make their businesses more productive, profitable, creative, and sustainable. Shorter days also empower workers and improve their work-life balance; improve company recruitment and retention; and make leaders more thoughtful and decisive. They show the way to a future of work that is more efficient, sustainable, and humane.
Using design thinking, a business and product development process pioneered in Silicon Valley, futurist and consultant Alex Pang creates a step-by-step guide for readers to redesign their workdays-from reimagining the workday to designing initial trials, shortening meetings, streamlining communication, measuring the results, and selling the idea to investors and clients. He tells the story of this emerging global movement, the companies that are leading, it, and how readers can join it.
The idea of success embraced by the global economy means being always-on, never missing an opportunity, and outworking your peers. But working ever-longer hours isn't sustainable for companies or individuals. Fatigue-induced mistakes, whether in the operating room or factory line or trading floor, costs companies billions, and overwork alienates and burns out valuable workers. Yet as destructive as it is, the logic of modern capitalism demands that we work longer hours, and forever push ourselves to work even more.
But what if there is another way? Shorter tells the story of entrepreneurs and leaders all over the world who find that by eliminating distractions, reducing inefficiencies, and carving out time for highly focused work and high-quality collaboration, they can make their businesses more productive, profitable, creative, and sustainable. Shorter days also empower workers and improve their work-life balance; improve company recruitment and retention; and make leaders more thoughtful and decisive. They show the way to a future of work that is more efficient, sustainable, and humane.
Using design thinking, a business and product development process pioneered in Silicon Valley, futurist and consultant Alex Pang creates a step-by-step guide for readers to redesign their workdays-from reimagining the workday to designing initial trials, shortening meetings, streamlining communication, measuring the results, and selling the idea to investors and clients. He tells the story of this emerging global movement, the companies that are leading, it, and how readers can join it.
320 pages, Hardcover
Published March 10, 2020
79 people are currently reading
1323 people want to read
About the author
Alex Soojung-Kim Pang
15 books181 followersI write about people, technology, and the worlds they make.
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Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews
April 19, 2020
As a CEO of and SMB that is being dealt a few blows by pandemics and prior to that had challenges with recruiting in a sub 4% unemployment world, I look at alternatives for working conditions and approach to be successful. While I don't necessarily agree with all the authors put forth here, and think there's a lot more research to be done on business and cost sustainability - particularly in the current environment - this is a book that will make you think. Does a 32 hour work week with focus get better results than a 50 hour week without? Can you lower the costs of turnover enough to cover the additional labor costs? Are there additional labor costs at all? These questions are all part and parcel of this book. I wish it was more substantive, but the case studies are interesting and the premise provocative.
October 25, 2021
This book is aimed very much at business owners, managers, etc. and is written with the aim to demostrate that a shorter working week has benefits not just for their staff but for their company and clients too. While I did find this quite interesting and found that things got a little tangled and repetitive as example after example was given and lots of different approaches mentioned but not always fully discussed, or discussed in any useful order. I also found that this seemed to be a fair few pages to cover the simple idea of working a shorter work, having a better life balance, and therefore happier more productive staff. I think a bit of rearranging and maybe concentrating on the hows and whys separately from the examples might have helped this somewhat and allowed readers to focus on what they wanted to get from it (in my case an understanding of why this would work).
April 10, 2022
DNFed it - 2 stars because I think this book could be helpful, but I was the wrong audience for it. I went into this thinking it would be like his book "Rest" which I absolutely adore, but this book felt like it was geared more towards people who own companies and employ others, whereas Rest was more individual. The information was great, but I ended up getting bored about 2/3rds of the way in because I wasn't the right person for the book.
May 3, 2021
Tercer libro que leo de Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, en esta oportunidad el autor comparte los hallazgos de su investigación de pasar a una jornada laboral de 4 días por semana, los beneficios, desafíos, y formas de encontrar el balance, así como medir los resultados, contribuir a la mejora significativa de resultados en la gestión del tiempo, manejo de proyectos críticos, y principalmente la creatividad, claridad mental, y reducción del síndrome de burnout así como aumentar la retención en las empresas.
Con esta práctica tanto el empleado / colaborador y el empleador pueden beneficiarse encontrando el balance entre vida laboral y personal.
Muchas frases interesantes que quisiera recordar:
“The four-day week also helps small companies and startups compete with large companies with bigger checkbooks. When hiring at Normally, “Our competitors are Google, Facebook, Apple, and we cannot always compete with them on financial benefits ─ you know, we don’t have stock to give away,” Chris Downs says.”
“One problem is that relatively few decent jobs have a lot of flexibility. According to a 2015 Timewise study, only 6 percent of advertised roles in the United Kingdom that paid over e20,000 offered a flexible work option; for jobs paying over e100,000, the number fell to 2 percent. In most companies flexibility is an exception, not an option.
But companies may create formal part-time or flexible work tracks, only to find that people don’t use them. For example 90 percent of big American law firms have such programs, but only 4 percent of eligible lawyers take advantage of them.
Why aren't they more popular? Even in forward-thinking offices, workers who take advantage of flexible work options risk what sociologists call the “flexibility stigma.” Flexible workers risk being branded as less ambitious and unreliable during crunch times, or are seen as creating extra work for others.”
“The rise of Silicon Valley in the 1980s brought with it a new model of work and success that glamorized long hours, made workaholics into heroes, and turned overwork into a badge of honor. As a result, we now live in a fast*moving, unstable world in which overwork is a source of riches for some and a necessity for survival for the rest.
But this way of working is costly for individuals, for companies, and for economies. The human cost of overwork and burnout ─ in lost earning potential, happiness, and creativity ─ is huge.
Overworked people suffer from higher rates of chronic disease and depression. Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer argued recently that the health costs of badly designed workplaces make work as significant a health hazard as smoking.”
Compañias que optaron por reducir las jornada de 48 horas a la semana para 10 horas 4 días por semana.
“Bong-Jin Kim, the CEO of mobile app developer Woowa Brothers.” - Japanese.
“Wieden+Kennedy Advertising agency started a policy in 2016 to cap working time at 40 hrs per week.”
Work-life balance.
“Some leaders also want to make work less exploitative and more balanced.”
CREATIVITY.
“Having time off away from your desk, being exposed to new ideas or experiences, or simply letting ideas incubate in the subconscious can be important for stimulating and sustaining creativity. companies can either treat creativity like a raw material, extracting it from employees and casting them aside when they’re exhausted, or they can treat it like a sustainable resource, developing strategies that allow creative people to refresh and develop new ideas.”
“Free Fridays encourage people to develop an instinct for good problems and to explore new areas that deserve further attention ─ skills that benefit both themselves and their employers.
“Free Fridays help companies work more thoughtfully and sustainably.”
“The philosophy most companies follow when tracking and measuring four-day workweek trials can be summed up as “Measure what matters, using familiar tools.” You need to know that projects and products are being delivered, customers aren’t being alienated, and people are figuring out how to do their jobs in fewer days.”
“At software company Wildbit, Natalie Nagele says, “the most important KPI was, how’s everybody personally feeling? Because one of my biggest concerns was the added pressure on an incredible team of people who truly care about their customers and the work that we do.” At flocc, “as long as our clients and team are happy and we make our deadlines, we can be confident in what we’re doing,” Emely West says.”
Restrict Meeting to Specific Periods of the Day - most often the afternoon.
“Another very popular practice is to confine meetings to specific parts of the day, most often the afternoon. At IIH Nordic, “one of the rules is that a meeting is only after lunch,” Henrik Stenmann tells me, to keep the rest of the days clear for focused work. And “if I get a meeting invitation without an agenda,” he adds, “I have the ability to reject it.”
“When people are more mindful about how they spend their hours and where they need to focus their attention, their sense of control over their time increases. Getting into the mental state that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” also distorts one’s sense of time> whe you’re more absorbed in a problem, time passes more slowly.``
Conclusión
“Kura Antonello, Kester Black founder Anna Ross said, “We work four days a week because, after a three-day weekend, anything is possible.””
Con esta práctica tanto el empleado / colaborador y el empleador pueden beneficiarse encontrando el balance entre vida laboral y personal.
Muchas frases interesantes que quisiera recordar:
“The four-day week also helps small companies and startups compete with large companies with bigger checkbooks. When hiring at Normally, “Our competitors are Google, Facebook, Apple, and we cannot always compete with them on financial benefits ─ you know, we don’t have stock to give away,” Chris Downs says.”
“One problem is that relatively few decent jobs have a lot of flexibility. According to a 2015 Timewise study, only 6 percent of advertised roles in the United Kingdom that paid over e20,000 offered a flexible work option; for jobs paying over e100,000, the number fell to 2 percent. In most companies flexibility is an exception, not an option.
But companies may create formal part-time or flexible work tracks, only to find that people don’t use them. For example 90 percent of big American law firms have such programs, but only 4 percent of eligible lawyers take advantage of them.
Why aren't they more popular? Even in forward-thinking offices, workers who take advantage of flexible work options risk what sociologists call the “flexibility stigma.” Flexible workers risk being branded as less ambitious and unreliable during crunch times, or are seen as creating extra work for others.”
“The rise of Silicon Valley in the 1980s brought with it a new model of work and success that glamorized long hours, made workaholics into heroes, and turned overwork into a badge of honor. As a result, we now live in a fast*moving, unstable world in which overwork is a source of riches for some and a necessity for survival for the rest.
But this way of working is costly for individuals, for companies, and for economies. The human cost of overwork and burnout ─ in lost earning potential, happiness, and creativity ─ is huge.
Overworked people suffer from higher rates of chronic disease and depression. Stanford business professor Jeffrey Pfeffer argued recently that the health costs of badly designed workplaces make work as significant a health hazard as smoking.”
Compañias que optaron por reducir las jornada de 48 horas a la semana para 10 horas 4 días por semana.
“Bong-Jin Kim, the CEO of mobile app developer Woowa Brothers.” - Japanese.
“Wieden+Kennedy Advertising agency started a policy in 2016 to cap working time at 40 hrs per week.”
Work-life balance.
“Some leaders also want to make work less exploitative and more balanced.”
CREATIVITY.
“Having time off away from your desk, being exposed to new ideas or experiences, or simply letting ideas incubate in the subconscious can be important for stimulating and sustaining creativity. companies can either treat creativity like a raw material, extracting it from employees and casting them aside when they’re exhausted, or they can treat it like a sustainable resource, developing strategies that allow creative people to refresh and develop new ideas.”
“Free Fridays encourage people to develop an instinct for good problems and to explore new areas that deserve further attention ─ skills that benefit both themselves and their employers.
“Free Fridays help companies work more thoughtfully and sustainably.”
“The philosophy most companies follow when tracking and measuring four-day workweek trials can be summed up as “Measure what matters, using familiar tools.” You need to know that projects and products are being delivered, customers aren’t being alienated, and people are figuring out how to do their jobs in fewer days.”
“At software company Wildbit, Natalie Nagele says, “the most important KPI was, how’s everybody personally feeling? Because one of my biggest concerns was the added pressure on an incredible team of people who truly care about their customers and the work that we do.” At flocc, “as long as our clients and team are happy and we make our deadlines, we can be confident in what we’re doing,” Emely West says.”
Restrict Meeting to Specific Periods of the Day - most often the afternoon.
“Another very popular practice is to confine meetings to specific parts of the day, most often the afternoon. At IIH Nordic, “one of the rules is that a meeting is only after lunch,” Henrik Stenmann tells me, to keep the rest of the days clear for focused work. And “if I get a meeting invitation without an agenda,” he adds, “I have the ability to reject it.”
“When people are more mindful about how they spend their hours and where they need to focus their attention, their sense of control over their time increases. Getting into the mental state that psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow” also distorts one’s sense of time> whe you’re more absorbed in a problem, time passes more slowly.``
Conclusión
“Kura Antonello, Kester Black founder Anna Ross said, “We work four days a week because, after a three-day weekend, anything is possible.””
May 24, 2020
Regurgitated the same talking points endlessly. Very theoretical concept based on your employer being open to the premise.
November 18, 2023
Ever since I witnessed many people can be replaced easily at work despite of their long year and long hour work service to the company, I changed my attitudes toward time and treat overwork not as a sign of dedication but as an indication of inefficiency. this change in attitude indeed help me to improve my focus and prioritization skill that resulted in delivering work&result in fast speed. Almost everyday, I leave office earlier than everyone yet still deliver extensive amount of work with astounding result (well fact check me in linkedin ;))
Now, after reading this book, I am inspired to join simplicity team in my current company to try to bring this idea to life, and to follow its design thinking structure :
1. Frame - reflecting on the problem that really need to solve and the ways to solve it
2. Inspire - better and deeper understanding the users needs
3. Ideate - brainstorming session about the idea and make the list of specifications (including tools required)
4. Prototype - to understand which pieces of complexity that really need to pay attention to and which one we sont
5. Test - to put the prototype before user temporarily and to review later
6. Share - sharing on best practice as well as celebrating the failure
#FreePalestine
Now, after reading this book, I am inspired to join simplicity team in my current company to try to bring this idea to life, and to follow its design thinking structure :
1. Frame - reflecting on the problem that really need to solve and the ways to solve it
2. Inspire - better and deeper understanding the users needs
3. Ideate - brainstorming session about the idea and make the list of specifications (including tools required)
4. Prototype - to understand which pieces of complexity that really need to pay attention to and which one we sont
5. Test - to put the prototype before user temporarily and to review later
6. Share - sharing on best practice as well as celebrating the failure
#FreePalestine
June 25, 2021
Upptalning og yfirlit yfir það hvernig ýmis fyrirtæki hafa notað hönnunarhugsun við styttingu vinnuvikunnar til að koma í veg fyrir kulnun, halda betur í starfsfólk, bæta jafnvægi milli vinnu og einkalífs ásamt sjálfbærni fyrirtækja og sköpunargleði.
Ágætar framtíðarpælingar um hvernig hægt er að deila betur ábatanum af vinnuframlagi, framleiðni og sjálfvirkni og hvernig það getur haft jákvæð áhrif á orkusparnað og umhverfið, hjálpað við að bregðast við misskiptingu auðs í samfélaginu, misskiptingu eftir landssvæðum og áhrifum af hækkandi lífaldri á vinnumarkaði.
Góðir kaflar inni á milli um þróun byltinga í sögulegu samhengi útfrá heimspekilegu sjónarhorni og bókin hefur að geyma áhugaverða hugmyndafræði en ekki skemmtileg lesning og íslenska þýðingin mætti vera betri, stundum eins og léleg google-translate þýðing
Ágætar framtíðarpælingar um hvernig hægt er að deila betur ábatanum af vinnuframlagi, framleiðni og sjálfvirkni og hvernig það getur haft jákvæð áhrif á orkusparnað og umhverfið, hjálpað við að bregðast við misskiptingu auðs í samfélaginu, misskiptingu eftir landssvæðum og áhrifum af hækkandi lífaldri á vinnumarkaði.
Góðir kaflar inni á milli um þróun byltinga í sögulegu samhengi útfrá heimspekilegu sjónarhorni og bókin hefur að geyma áhugaverða hugmyndafræði en ekki skemmtileg lesning og íslenska þýðingin mætti vera betri, stundum eins og léleg google-translate þýðing
September 25, 2021
'Shorter' is a book about the concept, and value, of redesigning the work week, to create more time away from work, in order to be more a more efficient and effective worker.
It helps by breaking down various case studies of organisations and individuals, who have implemented different techniques of shorter more focused working hours, and how, as a result, they have grown into more efficient and effective organisations. The concept is broken down into either a 4-day work week, or 6 hour work days; implementing either is revolutionary in relation to our current working systems.
As someone who has been implementing the 4-day work week since 2016, it's a nice affirming read. I speak from personal experience when I say that, shorter more focused working hours/weeks does indeed allow for a more efficient and well rounded life overall. 'Work' and 'leisure'.
It helps by breaking down various case studies of organisations and individuals, who have implemented different techniques of shorter more focused working hours, and how, as a result, they have grown into more efficient and effective organisations. The concept is broken down into either a 4-day work week, or 6 hour work days; implementing either is revolutionary in relation to our current working systems.
As someone who has been implementing the 4-day work week since 2016, it's a nice affirming read. I speak from personal experience when I say that, shorter more focused working hours/weeks does indeed allow for a more efficient and well rounded life overall. 'Work' and 'leisure'.
September 19, 2021
Good message but could be more concise. I found it highly repetitive and organized in a strange way (following the steps of a design process). In the end, most people and companies that have benefited from a shorter work week have been more focused during work, have implemented good processes that help them and their teams, and have had more time for themselves and their families. Why confuse the reader by providing fragments of conversations in a circular way? By the time you read one testimony (e.g. from a CEO) the next paragraph talks about something else. Wouldn't it be more interesting to do a full profile on each company/business at a time (one per chapter perhaps)?
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 4, 2022
Not a lot of new material, yet full of concrete and vivid examples of companies making the shift to shorter working hours.
Basic premise: Long hours are not natural or inevitable and overwork is a global problem. Not to mention gender inequity as working mothers often earn less over their careers for lack of flexibility.
A shorter workweek is the modern “one weird trick” to solve the culture of overwork, gender inequity, and high costs of burnout and shortened careers. Constraints breed innovation to experiment with new ways of working using technology and automation.
Picked up at local library sight unseen, unrecommended.
Basic premise: Long hours are not natural or inevitable and overwork is a global problem. Not to mention gender inequity as working mothers often earn less over their careers for lack of flexibility.
A shorter workweek is the modern “one weird trick” to solve the culture of overwork, gender inequity, and high costs of burnout and shortened careers. Constraints breed innovation to experiment with new ways of working using technology and automation.
Picked up at local library sight unseen, unrecommended.
Read
December 23, 2020I only read a bit of this before taking it back. It's a good concept, but I've read about it before, and I think the approach of this one just didn't suit me. The author was perhaps a bit too clinical, and also repetitive, and explaining one point too much. Anyway, I wasn't motivated to read it, so just took it back in the end. I'm sure it's got good and useful information in it, especially, perhaps, for company leaders.
December 2, 2021
This is a very specific book. If you are someone in the position of making a decision about whether your organization will go down to a four day work week, this is the book for you. Honestly, I was expecting a broader discussion of different ways of reducing time at work while still being productive. I decided to stop the book about halfway through, since it was really aimed at a different audience.
November 11, 2021
This book had some good points to consider and try as I am trying to shift to working only 4 days a week. I didn’t get a whole lot only because my business is really small right now (me and one other), so I read a lot of case studies that weren’t as applicable for my needs. But it was still interesting and helpful.
February 8, 2021
Finished reading the "Shorter" book by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang @askpang. Very detailed and structured study of companies who turned to the four-day working week. I really liked it! I wish there were more companies studied from North America.
May 30, 2022
I think it is an important book and I think that we should we all need moving our workweeks to be only 32 hours. This book shows you the why and the how. It was hard to finish though and I found it redundant at times. Would have preferred more cases studies.
May 31, 2025
Call me a crazy liberal but yes shorter workweek or hour commitment sounds like an extraordinary idea. When did the grind become cool. Companies should try to offer flexible schedules that fit employees’ lives
May 31, 2020
Good examples and how different types of organizations have made it work.
August 30, 2020
Paradigm shift in the way companies and people work in current and future.
Work less but 100 percent productive.Apply design thinking to implement it. With this approach anything is possible.
Work less but 100 percent productive.Apply design thinking to implement it. With this approach anything is possible.
October 24, 2020
No está mal, pero es uno de esos libros que podría ser de 100 páginas pero...
He dejado mis comentarios en español aquí https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4QQM...
He dejado mis comentarios en español aquí https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4QQM...
April 13, 2021
There is some valuable information on structural efficiency in this book but I'm a healthcare provider and so the information on shortening a workweek is not very useful for me personally.
November 21, 2021
Great ideas, written in an easily digestible style. Funnily enough, the book could have been shorter though
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
February 26, 2023
Ironically enough, the book itself could also be much shorter, and still convey all the ideas the author intended.
June 29, 2023
Heard him speak sharing really interesting case studies, but found the book dry and academic and fell after the first chapter
January 4, 2024
Listened to it. It was long, wished it was shorter. (Tehehe). It felt a bit repetitive but there was clearly a lot of research done
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
July 6, 2025
Me lo regaló mi jefe y me dijo: “lo lees para la semana que viene o laburás cinco días por semana en vez de cuatro”. No sé si tiene la potestad para cambiar así el contrato, pero por las dudas leí.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 25 reviews