United Auto Workers strike for a 4-day week
The United Auto Workers has gone on strike against all three of the big automakers, and one of their demands is a 4-day week. Regardless of whether it
A 4-day week chatbot
I've been experimenting a lot with ChatGPT recently, and among other things have been playing around with ways of making use of my vast array of research notes,
“Rethink Your Employee Value Proposition” and the 4-day week
In the January 2023 Harvard Business Review, Amy Edmonson and Mark Mortensen make the case for thinking more holistically and long-term about compensation and retaining talent. It’s a
The Right to be Lazy
There's a new edition of the late 19th-century classic The Right to Be Lazy, by socialist Paul Lafargue, and critic Lily Meyer writes about it in The Atlantic. Lafargue
Benjamin Franklin on the 4-hour day
From Benjamin Franklin, "On Luxury, Idleness, and Industry," in The Life of Benjamin Franklin (Auburn: Derby and Miller, 1852), p. 292: “It has been computed by some political
Compressed weeks, employee morale, and work-life balance: Evidence from Sharjah, UAE
In January 2022, the United Arab Emirates officially adopted a 4.5-day week for its public sector and schools. (I wrote about the change here.) Private-sector companies were not
Retirement and the 4 day week
Part of the logic of the 4-day week is that it can help people avoid burnout, and make jobs for which they’re highly trained and emotionally invested more
Korean article about the 4-day week
For those who speak (or just understand) Korean, this new piece on TBS is worth watching:
Juliet Schor on the 4-day week: Companies “took this opportunity to totally rethink how they were doing things”
Juliet Schor talked to Michelle Peng in Time Magazine about the 4-day week trials, and the results she and her team at Boston College are seeing. Of course
Forbes on the global burnout epidemic
Edward Siegel writes in Forbes about a set of surveys that reveal the extent of burnout in workplaces worldwide: New surveys underscore an essential reality about today’s workplace