To many of you, the World Economic Forum may seem like a snoozefest or just a chance to make some top quality memes.
But this year’s meet at Davos, Switzerland needs your attention as the world’s big thinkers are talking about a 4-day work week.
You heard that right. Not a 5-day work week with just Saturday and Sunday at your disposal. An extra frikkin’ day to do everything you thought you would accomplish on your day off: NOTHING.
The proposal was, both, met with enthusiastic nods and some disapproval. *Wondering if my school principal was one among the folks objecting to this awesome idea*
Two experts weighed in as to why we should have a shorter work week. And honestly I just agreed before I could even read what they said. But you should read it. Here it is.
Adam Grant, a psychologist from the Wharton School in Pennsylvania said
I think we have some good experiments showing that if you reduce work hours, people are able to focus their attention more effectively, they end up producing just as much, often with higher quality and creativity, and they are also more loyal to the organisations that are willing to give them the flexibility to care about their lives outside of work.
Economist and historian Rutger Bregman, author of Utopia for Realists agreed and said
For decades, all the major economists, philosophers, sociologists, they all believed, up until the 1970s, that we would be working less and less. In the 1920s and 1930s, there were actually major capitalist entrepreneurs who discovered that if you shorten the working week, employees become more productive. Henry Ford, for example, discovered that if he changed the working week from 60 hours to 40 hours, his employees would become more productive, because they were not that tired in their spare time.
Many studies also back up this claim, suggesting that a shorter work week actually increases productivity by 20%.