“Don’t count on it.” That’s what Joanne Lipman recently wrote at the New York Times, in a piece titled “The Elusive Promise of the Four-Day Workweek.”
Lipman’s pessimism about the four-day workweek becoming the norm is ironically informed by studies that reveal the four-day workweek as “superior.” They show productivity resembling the five-day workweek, albeit over four days. Lipman notes that "employee satisfaction [has] soared" where the four-day workweek has been implemented.
Ok, so why the alleged elusiveness and Lipman's downcast countenance about the possibility of businesses broadly moving to a four-day schedule? She believes it’s very much about difficult CEOs who demand “face time.” In her words, “we consistently underestimate executives’ ferocious attachment to face time.” Lipman could perhaps be persuaded to be more optimistic.
That’s because a four-day workweek is already the norm. Lipman’s mistake was in taking the notion of a four-day week literally.
What she missed is that workers rendered more productive and happier by the four-day workweek are also the kind of people for whom work is increasingly joy. In other words, the four-day workweek is proliferating alongside people working more than ever.
Lipman seemingly views work as something people must do, as opposed to what they can’t not do. That’s mistaken. See the productivity gains she cites.
Why are people more productive? It’s easy to shoot fish in a crowded barrel and say that machines, the internet, and AI make the work easier. No doubt they do, but the bigger story about more productive workers is that they’re that way due to the happy fact that they’re doing what increasingly elevates their unique skills and intelligence.
Which is the genius of technology. What does and thinks for us amounts to the entrance into every workplace of literally billions and eventually trillions of mechanized hands and thinkers that will enable relentless increases in specialized work. Is it any wonder that workers are happier?
Lipman’s focus is once again on how many days people are expected in the office, but she’s arguably not focused enough on what the four-day workers are doing when they’re not in the office. They’re much more likely to be working because they want to be, not necessarily because they must be.
Talking The End of Work whose more appropriate working title was The End of Laziness, it argued in 2018 that economists including Tyler Cowen got it backwards about rising economic growth correlating with less ambition and less work. Cowen was unwittingly channeling Lipman, or Lipman is unwittingly channeling Cowen now.
In truth, economic growth is just another way of describing rising productivity which, if anything, begets more work. Really, who wouldn’t be working all the time if “work” reflected individual passion?
So, while Lipman cites certain companies (JPMorgan, SpaceX) that most certainly benefit from the collaborative aspects of face-to-face time as evidence of a turn away from four-day weeks, she might ask around. It’s increasingly true that businesses operate on hybrid five-day workweeks in which some days an in-office presence isn't required. The ease of internet and AI from anywhere surely informs the latter, but the unsung and much bigger story is that face time and office politics are much less important when people are doing what they enjoy. Translated, productive workers don’t require policing
The four-day workweek is once again already here. And that's because even with explicit four-day workweeks, people would still be working on days five, six, and seven. What Joanne Lipman arguably isn’t seeing is that four-day jobs are seven-day jobs not by requirement, but due to employee choice.
