Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World

by Rutger Bregman

Heath decided on a radical course of action. On January 1, 1974, he imposed a three-day workweek. Employers were not permitted to use more than three days’ electricity until energy reserves had recovered. Steel magnates predicted that industrial production would plunge 50%. Government ministers feared a catastrophe. When the five-day workweek was reinstated in March 1974, officials set about calculating the total extent of production losses. They had trouble believing their eyes: The grand total was 6%.34 What Ford, Kellogg, and Heath had all discovered is that productivity and long work hours do not go hand in hand. In the 1980s, Apple employees sported T-shirts that read, “Working 90 hours a week and loving it!” Later, productivity experts calculated that if they had worked half the hours then the world might have enjoyed the groundbreaking Macintosh computer a year earlier.

Culture of overwork martyrdom