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Music.
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Welcome to a homebody podcast my name is Mary Grace and here we explore big questions in embodied ways.
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These conversations intersect the mystical the Practical and The Artful.
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Bridging a range of topics such as astrology creative practices what healing can look like and cultivating deep love and care for the more than human world.
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We not only want to live better but live more fully with more connection courage and creativity in our day-to-day lives and work.
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And this podcast asks what are the ways we can do that.
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We hope to enliven you and inspire you towards possible regenerative Futures and we hope to encourage you so together we can become Dynamic agents of beauty fully awake Fully Alive to all that life has for us.
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We want to be here for ourselves and for one another with more grace while making room for curiosity sensitivity.
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Enjoy if you enjoyed today's episode please take a few moments to share it with someone else and thank you so much for listening.
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Music.
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I believe that it matters not just what we do and even more than the popular why we do it I think both of those are important but I think what often gets overlooked Is How We Do It.
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And I am particularly interested in this question as it relates to creativity and how we work many of us are good.
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We get really good at what we do and the past few years have had a lot of information and emphasis on the why of what we're doing.
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Which is important so many of us may have been a robust understanding of why we're doing something the big purpose behind it.
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But what I find the most with folks when you know especially when we're working on things like workflows and systems Etc is that where we struggle.
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Often now is often on how we're doing it if the how is not aligned or it isn't working then we likely that's where we end up burned out resentful overworked overwhelmed even if we love what we do and even if we understand why we do it so the how is actually really important in order for both of those to manifest.
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So I've definitely learned this lesson in some of the hardest ways possible as it relates to work and my work so I'm a very devoted student to this question of how and it's a lot of what I help folks do inside of system sessions again we're talking about workflows or creative project management or building out our digital spaces this is important the how of the work so that the what in the Y can be more shiny and come more forward.
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So it's not just enough that something gets done it matters how it gets done so how it gets done determines our longevity it determines our sustainability and it also determines the quality of our outcomes which is to say it determines our true impact.
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How is a very holistic question so I'm curious you know how does the how.
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Relate to your work where are you feeling tension around how something is getting done.
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Is that something that you're working with right now maybe you feel totally aligned around it or maybe you feel some friction or some tension.
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So if you're watching this on YouTube leave a comment below this video I'd love to know and if you're listening on the podcast let me know in an email or a review.
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So my ongoing question of how we work.
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Is and how we created just getting into the house of the process led me to a book called shorter by Alex who's young Kim poong and it's a book all about four-day work weeks how organizations are shifting towards them how they're doing it why they're doing it and what are some of the benefits of shortening working hours in the first place as he says in the book in this project he's focusing on companies that have done three things at the same time one they've shortened their total working hours to they've kept salaries the same and three they've maintained the same levels of productivity profitability and customer service.
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So I don't know about you but the first time I heard that I was thinking what like you work fewer hours but you get paid the same like this is like a corporate thing and my mind was personally blown when I first consider that on the high organizational level.
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But as you work your way through the book not only does that proposition become really tangible it arguably arguably becomes the obvious choice and it makes us question and instead why aren't we already doing this so while the book goes into greater detail into you know bringing this design thinking into the four-day work week and more detail into how different organizations have trialled this experiment and made it work for them.
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I'm not going to go to so in the weeds here if you want that level of detail you can find it in the book and I have a link to that in the link below in this video I'll focus more on a summary of some of three of the main themes that really jumped out at me in the book including you know the problem that the four-day work week can help solve and then what are some of the changes that make a four-day work week more possible and those include seeing Focus as something that is social and not individual and then also emphasizing the quality of ours over the quantity of ours.
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And then everyone taking ownership of their work so I'll go into more of these in a few minutes but for now let's go ahead and jump into the problem so it's 2022 we already know that burnout and overwork are a huge issue and even though much of work culture thinks that if we just work hard enough will eventually get ahead or you know if we just work hard to put forth more effort that will always be the correct answer that will always see us through the problem is just for work harder but actually what we see and we're starting to understand is that overworked especially on a long-term basis is actually counterproductive for companies in the long run not to mention individuals.
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To quote the book overworked or burned-out employees are actually less productive than well-rested workers they're also less engaged at work they're more likely to leave their even more likely to cut ethical corners or steal from the company.
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And employee burnout costs the global economy and estimated 300 billion dollars a year in sick days and lost productivity.
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So even in countries where formal workplace discrimination and two decades ago long hours make it difficult for women and parents to manage the demands of bosses professions and family and to also maintain their careers after they become parents.
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So in addition to that the Stanford business professor Jeffrey pfeffer discovered unsurprisingly that overworked people also suffer from higher rates of chronic disease and depression.
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And another study mentioned in the book quote a team led by University of California San Francisco Professor Michael Freeman had found that half of entrepreneurs have at least one mental health condition and have significantly higher than normal rates of depression and other issues founder burnout is a major factor in 65% of new company failures.
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I know I can attest to that on a personal level and if you work for yourself whether you're an entrepreneur or a freelancer solopreneur however that works I'm sure that that statistic maybe not so surprising to you.
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As someone who's done some spearheading and I do have done and do a lot of work for myself I often find myself in those statistics I catch myself inside massive cycles of overworked or burnout depression even health issues that arise from stress or get triggered from work-related pressures.
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So for me it's I have this way that I will often feel that by a sense of like work first and then when it all gets done then I get to play and rest or do anything besides work and while this has given me a very strong sense of discipline in my life which I'm grateful for I can get a lot of things done which is awesome but the problem with that philosophy is that the work is never done so unless you're on an academic schedule we don't really have lives where there's like a clean clean up.
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Clean wrap up where all the work of a parades deadlines and homework assignment cease and everything gets tied up in a pretty little bow well you get a three-month summer vacation that doesn't exist for most of us so how do we work then when there is no end to work.
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To quote the book he says in creative and knowledge intensive Industries work is never done no matter how many hours you put in so overworked is not a sustainable source of a competitive advantage.
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End quote.
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I think a lot of us have a sense of like I'll get ahead if I just put in the extra work now like this kind of this eternal front loading but if again if the work is never done there were actually setting ourselves up for this never-ending Sprint so for me the switch is has been and is in changing the motivation instead of how can I fuel more constant work so that I can work more the question became how can I feel my best work.
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How can I fuel enduring creativity which is actually what runs my business and runs a lot of my life so for knowledge workers artist folks who whose work relies heavily on their creativity on their ideas on their information their research their intuition you know I think we should all be asking ourselves how can I care take my creativity I think this is also become a really important question as opposed to how can I constantly achieve more.
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So but it worked there can be all this pressured you know to always be present to make sure people know that you're really working hard that you're you always have the best idea and I think work culture forgets that often our best ideas come from learning.
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They come from being unproductive or having time to synthesize and play and experiment or try something new.
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So to quote the book presenteeism and overwork are particularly toxic and creative Industries because they crowd out opportunities for the constant learning and exposure to new ideas which feed creativity.
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Pushing back against it requires learning to respect the value of varied experiences and apparently quote unproductive time.
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So that shift really asked us to think more long-term to think more sustainably about our careers our ideas and then the trajectory of our work as a whole another quote from the book in a start-up world that values fast burn rates Rocketship growth and then always has one eye on the exit Founders who shortened work weeks they want to create lasting companies.
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To quote a neat Evelyn she says my motivator is to have a good life to have a business that I'm in control of that's not growing too much I'd rather grow my company to something that feels very special 10 years from now then something that's worth 10 million dollars two years from now put another way these leaders treat the company as an end in itself not merely a vehicle for getting rich and famous.
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So let's look at some of the solutions that a four-day workweek can provide.
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You know can it provide any solutions how is it working for different companies so different organizations have gone about reducing their working hours and a lot of different ways some folks actually just work four full days so that's 32 hours over the course of four days another solution some companies that you know who have four full Company days and then their fifth day is like a free day where they get to work on personal projects or develop their skills learn something new or just focus on creativity so it's again valuing that seemingly unproductive time.
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Other companies have simply kept to working five days a week which is a reduction in hours you know for instance you know if they're used to working 80 hours a week simply holding to actually 40 is a really big adjustment and they start to create Frameworks that actually penalizes folks were working more than that which is you know a big shift in values you can you imagine instead of getting promoted for overworking you actually lose vacation days instead which is cool other companies they kept working five days a week but then they simply shorten each day for instance getting off at like 2 or 3 p.m. each day instead of 5 p.m.
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The book shorter also discusses a lot of the benefits of reducing working hours and here are some of them that are explored at more depth in the book one is that it improves performance which we talked a little bit about earlier to is it improves recruitment including attracting older and more experienced workers and then also helping smaller companies attract talent and helps them compete with larger companies who might have bigger wallets and more benefits to offer it decreases turnover not only because folks stay because having a shorter work week is such an amazing benefit but also because the company's hiring process gets a lot more refined working parents it really benefits particularly women not only does it help them achieve more success and income over the course of their life but then of course they're also able to be better parents it boost creativity and happiness and in turn it also helps make better leaders.
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So now we're going to dive into the top three things that really stood out to me as far as how working in a four-day Work Week differentiates from other modes of working the first one is that changing work is social it's not individual it is the culture of an organization's team or that has to change and that's an effort that includes the individual but it is beyond the individual so we can't blame a single individual for feeling burned out or overworked if technically the rules are people have to be available after hours but the culture is that people do work after hours and maybe those people are rewarded promoted recognized then regardless of what the rules technically are the culture says otherwise and culture is a social Endeavor it's something that we make together.
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Another key distinction that really stood out to me about this social versus individual identification is that you know making sure that we understand the shorter working hours is not the same as flexible working hours.
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And this is something that I hadn't really put my finger on quite as clearly until I read this.
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So shorter work is a collective decision making process it's an efficiency upgrade to shorten working hours.
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Which is different than just saying work whenever you want sometimes just get it done or maybe just some people if you need it take it if you need it with shorter working hours everyone is given the gift of more work-life balance people who need more time at home or with their families or they just want to have a life outside of their job they can now honor those responsibilities and desires.
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So the book does a lot to differentiate these and so I'll offer a small quote from the book flexible hours place the burden of scheduling and coordinating with colleagues who are working two different schedules.
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Squarely on the individual flexible work policies do little to counter presenteeism or the perception among perhaps like maybe unmarried colleagues or people who aren't parents who leave promptly at 501 it makes them feel like flexible work doesn't really counter their perception that those people aren't pulling their weight as many employees will testify flexible working hours easily morphs from moving working hours to Simply working more shorter hours and contrast succeed through company-wide and normative changes not only do parents have more time for children but everyone has more time.
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So by encouraging concentration and focus Towers shorter hours diffuse the potential conflicts and organizational challenges that come when colleagues are on different schedules.
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So this all reminds us that you know we judge people based.
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51 you know whatever it looks like and that begs the question of like who was the current work week designed for.
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Are those actually the people who work here and are those the people that we want to work here is it working for them does it work for anybody who does that working schedule that working default schedule exclude by the nature of its design and who does it include so the way our default work week is designed now makes it seem like.
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You know if this doesn't work for you there's something wrong with you but really it's designed for people who might be like 21 don't need to sleep a lot and don't have a lot of responsibilities besides going to work you know but anyone who's got it kare-kare work or home life responsibilities.
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You know it's not really designed for people who don't have periods it's not designed for people.
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Who experienced death are birth or celebrations you know it's not designed for people who need a pause of any kind ever her time to digest it's not designed for people who want to exercise.
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Is not designed for people who want to take care of their house or have time to recharge and that's.
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Basically most people so the author goes on to say by giving everyone more time off it removes the suspicion and the resentment that otherwise attaches to leaving early.
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It's egalitarian nature means that you know people don't feel obliged to put in extra hours to make up for this like gift of flexible working it makes work-life balance something that everyone aspires to there's a problem with only.
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A fraction of what the other people in the organization work and that means that for people who want to go part-time and it's no surprise that a lot of them are women there is a systemic problem with things like lower to Lifetime earnings.
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So from a social justice point of view just giving people the flexibility to work part-time is not good enough.
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That's fine from the company's point of view but for the person who goes part-time it is more difficult and it has these long-term hidden costs and quote.
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So I'm a nerd for many things including systems and creativity and workflows and P km and some of the things that don't get included in those kinds of conversations about.
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Activity or creative workflows Etc is acknowledging that sometimes.
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Is always your fault that you can't do it all or meet the expectation sometimes it's not that you haven't gotten efficient enough are you haven't gotten productive enough.
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It's the the time expectation doesn't add up especially if the work life or the work schedule isn't set up to support people who have any of those things I mentioned above which is mainly a life outside of work or want to have a life outside of work so in response to a question asked on a radio show that was regarding working mothers.
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The author said to put it another way what I should have said to the radio show callers and I think this can improve you know apply to people Beyond working mothers of course but it's really honing in on that like it's not the individual problem he said working mothers don't need tips and tricks they need a workplace and a career model that doesn't expect them to work as if they don't have kids and raise children as if they don't work demand that they do both at exactly the same time and then say it's their fault if they can't do that to some poorly articulated impossible standard they've gotten all the personal advice they need what they need now is structural change.
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So we can see that it's not just about changing rules or giving people flexible work options it's about changing a culture because everyone has to be on board for shorter work to work it's social it's not just individual so if we work on the same team or in the same company we need to work more efficiently in order to work less we have to help each other do that it's not just about one person changing work.
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So if you need to be able to focus more to get your work done I have to help you do that by not interrupting you or you know reaching out only an agreed-upon times so there's this reminder that our attention is social our focus is social and cultural so I would also say that creativity is social productivity a social we can only be as productive.
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As our environment allows us to be so we can only be as creative as our culture enables us to be in quote the book again in an age where everyone wants everything now not bothering people can feel like a gift to which I of course say amen and think about you know in what ways can you help the people around you.
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Work better and vice-versa how does the environment support better or shorter work and how does it not.
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The second point I want to focus on is prioritizing quality over quantity obviously shorter work requires that we work differently and better so if we're keeping the same standards and but we're changing we're shortening the the time in which those standards come out obviously something has to change if it's not about clocking more hours than it needs to become about working better hours and what supports that quality one mindsets need to change what habits what social environments so the first thing I want to address which it may be obvious by now but that more hours doesn't necessarily mean better work happens.
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So the goal of a shorter week is not to cram what you're already doing into a shorter period of time the goal is how can the limitation of fewer hours prompt us to work differently so the same way we approach creating our products our services our clients problems we can employ that same creativity and design to how we work so again not just what we work but how we do it should get the same kind of attention and focus and Design so to quote the book but we often regarded as separate issues such as work-life balance burnout Career Development inequality the future of the high-tech work place can be approached and managed more.
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When the author put the same question to Tosh Walker she starts by saying I think the first thing is to recognize that it's not about doing five days and four days it's not about getting people to work faster you're trying to think about different ways of working that allow you to work more efficiently so that you don't need the fifth day and quote so I think when we figure out how to work better together we get to take home the benefits in a very tangible way everyone reaps the benefits as opposed to a lot of the time only the owners are stakeholders of a company get the rewards of anyone doing better work so here's some small changes that many companies found across the board that support better work and that includes.
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Some of the following avoiding multitasking and creating intentional periods of deep attention where we agree to not disturb each other or schedule meetings to focus most of your effort on your most valuable work it feels obvious but how much of us like we realize that like Wow all I did today was like get through my inbox that's not your most valuable work right so focus on what is your most valuable output take a quick and purposeful breaks you like stretch your muscles get the blood flowing and help you synthesize some of the problems you're trying to solve again front-loading important work at the beginning of the day which is when most people have more energy more ability to focus.
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I think even with these just these four things that I've mentioned so far it's helpful to notice here that a lot of workflows or business expectations they act like every hour of the day equally supports our best work but actually our energy varies throughout the day so 10 a.m. is it necessarily interchangeable with 2 p.m. and even just that distinction is really changed a lot about how I make myself available or how I don't so we are delegating different kinds of work towards the hours of the day that meet our energy and that can already support better work and more Focus even just those things and then the other two are changing meetings which is a really big thing for people who work with big teams or larger companies default meetings you know shortening them to 30 instead of 60 Minutes making sure that everyone has an agenda before the meeting so that you're talking about Solutions only you're keeping them more focused you're having fewer of them you're making sure that the only the people there need to be there.
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Questioning whether or not it actually needs to be a meeting so it's really about again honoring that quality of focus and attention is the meeting valuable enough to disturb someone else's best work and then some others of solve that by just having meetings only on set days are during non Peak Focus hours and the final common work tweak is that if you use slack or other chat apps or even emails I'm only checking them at select times instead of being constantly available to them which constantly disrupts focus and attention.
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To quote the book it's necessary to encourage workers to both take control of their time and treat their colleagues time is just as valuable as their own when you're redesigning the day people can't just follow business as usual they need autonomy to experiment prioritize and spend their time as effectively as possible but this control has to be tempered by mutual respect and a recognition that within organizations time is a collective resource no one gets to take Friday off unless everyone is done and everyone's ability to finish their work depends on everyone else's willingness to respect their time.
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As a leader you have to move away from thinking in terms of getting the most time out of people presumably is ringing the most value out of them and then instead think of getting the most value out of them instead of Time end quote.
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Third and final point I want to bring up as a foundational shorter work hours thinking is this idea of ownership we'll start with a quote that says a forward a week is a leadership instigated change but what you really need is for everyone to take ownership of it.
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As the leader you open the floodgates and say right we're now going to do this but then you need everyone to find their own Rhythm and their own way of embracing it and being really mindful of letting the team develop its own answer.
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As me personally someone whose work for themselves a lot and manage other teams of people this struck me as something really important and something.
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Wasn't always able to articulate when I needed to be is that often work places especially corporate ones or organizations that are really big they have a culture that's kind of similar to high school where we're just trying to get through the day doing the least amount of work necessary to get a good grade paycheck and then be able to go home.
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And a few pokes who are super driven or have it that innate sense of like ownership or high-performance tend to Rise Above the Rest via their Hustle or they'll get sometimes they get judged culturally as overachievers maybe they get promoted and Orbiter and then often they become isolated from the rest of the workforce without making any real change to the culture of work overall.
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But the cool thing that seems to happen when you shorten working hours in a really intentional way across the board everyone standard of work can go up everyone gets the rewards of working better.
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And overachieving is no longer required and in some cases it's not even allowed.
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Now we're more focused on cooperation and it's asking everyone to take more ownership of their work and also how they do their work.
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And that creates a sense of investment more value instead of just simply waiting to get your homework assignment or counting sheep until the Bell Rings there's some motivation to really be a leader of your own workflow and your own output so that we can all reap the rewards of that together.
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So the book points out that it's not only important for people to find ownership but to also let employees have ownership during the transition into a shorter week they need to be given the ability to make decisions and design what their work looks like so for one thing they know their job better than their bosses do and so they know best what could run better what needs to run differently they already have a really strong sense of what that is.
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So if a shorter work week is going to work that transfer of input needs to happen quotes people are more likely to make rules that work for them and to follow the rules that they make end quote so to explain this the book goes into explain the Ikea effect and the Ikea effect is essentially this cognitive bias in which people place a higher value on products that they partially created and so the book explains it people like having autonomy over their work and the control over their environments and they Place greater value on things that they build giving people more control over the physical design of their workplaces increases their job satisfaction and productivity.
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They found that people who got to decorate their own offices felt better about.
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Employers they said they feel more physically comfortable they had higher rates of job satisfaction and were more productive.
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So it doesn't matter so much you know we're talking about dacor we're also talking about workflows and expectations but just even talking about like the physical design of a space it didn't really matter so much in the study like weather you know the office looks like architectural digest or Not What mattered was having some sort of input and control over the space that's what really made a difference in productivity so when we help to make something we feel more ownership over it whether those are rules the design of a space rhythms routines expectations so we're more invested in it because we helped to build it.
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This reminds me a lot of Adrian Ruby Brown and her book emergent strategy which he says trust the people and they will become trustworthy.
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And then she also asks us to move at the Speed Of Trust so sharing ownership but then also taking ownership and I think this should apply to work as well and also if we find ourselves in a work environment where we can't trust the people then I think maybe the wrong people got hired or in the room with the wrong people so what does that look like you know often we associate the people in charge as the sort of the leaders of the teachers who are giving us our homework or discipline disciplining us when we do something wrong rewarding us when we do something good but what happens when everyone is approaching their work their work culture like a leader and taking ownership of it.
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You know if you're a leader how can you invite more ownership into the process and share some of that decision-making and if you're an employee how can you offer more ownership of what you're doing and what does everyone need in order to do that.
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So in conclusion we talked about shorter work as one way to make work better for people and for more people and some of the things that can help us do that which are remembering that better work is social and not just individual you know value and quality of work over quantity focused hours beat long hours to quote the book anyone can sit in a chair for 12 hours and workers who habitually put in long hours need coaching not Awards time is valuable but not all of ours are equally valuable.
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And then the third thing is to share ownership or to Foster an environment of shared ownership quote people are more likely to make the rules that work for them and they are follow the rules that they make so when we change the structure of work we can create careers and jobs that are more marathons than Sprint's and then work then can become something not just for you know people who are super young or people who don't sleep or people who don't have kids but we allow more people into better income into longer-term careers and some more community.
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Shorter work becomes less about you know finding a few star individuals and the becomes more about investing in people who will take ownership and respect one another and then find ways to work better together so while there's a lot that we need to change about work and economies.
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Taking a small step such as shorter can make really big Headway towards making space for even more questions.
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Explorations making more space for imagination as we seek to make work something that is more human something that is more open to systems and community and creativity that serve life and one another.
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Music.
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Thank you for participating in this conversation with us if you enjoyed the episode please take a few moments to subscribe to the show leave us a review and share the episode these tiny tasks help our independent podcast so much.
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Be sure to also check out the links below to learn more about any free resources guests or things we talked about today.
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Our intro and outro music was created by artist Aaron pelvic and Jared Kelly our podcast logo was created by Elaine Stevenson and this show is produced by softer Sound Studio thank you for being here be well.
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Peace.
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Music.
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Music.
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Welcome to a homebody podcast my name is Mary Grace and here we explore big questions in embodied ways.
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Music.
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I believe that it matters not just what we do and even more than the popular why we do it I think both of those are important but I think what often gets overlooked Is How We Do It.
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And I am particularly interested in this question as it relates to creativity and how we work many of us are good.
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We get really good at what we do and the past few years have had a lot of information and emphasis on the why of what we're doing.
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Which is important so many of us may have been a robust understanding of why we're doing something the big purpose behind it.
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But what I find the most with folks when you know especially when we're working on things like workflows and systems Etc is that where we struggle.
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Often now is often on how we're doing it if the how is not aligned or it isn't working then we likely that's where we end up burned out resentful overworked overwhelmed even if we love what we do and even if we understand why we do it so the how is actually really important in order for both of those to manifest.
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So I've definitely learned this lesson in some of the hardest ways possible as it relates to work and my work so I'm a very devoted student to this question of how and it's a lot of what I help folks do inside of system sessions again we're talking about workflows or creative project management or building out our digital spaces this is important the how of the work so that the what in the Y can be more shiny and come more forward.
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So it's not just enough that something gets done it matters how it gets done so how it gets done determines our longevity it determines our sustainability and it also determines the quality of our outcomes which is to say it determines our true impact.
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How is a very holistic question so I'm curious you know how does the how.
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Relate to your work where are you feeling tension around how something is getting done.
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Is that something that you're working with right now maybe you feel totally aligned around it or maybe you feel some friction or some tension.
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So if you're watching this on YouTube leave a comment below this video I'd love to know and if you're listening on the podcast let me know in an email or a review.
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So my ongoing question of how we work.
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Is and how we created just getting into the house of the process led me to a book called shorter by Alex who's young Kim poong and it's a book all about four-day work weeks how organizations are shifting towards them how they're doing it why they're doing it and what are some of the benefits of shortening working hours in the first place as he says in the book in this project he's focusing on companies that have done three things at the same time one they've shortened their total working hours to they've kept salaries the same and three they've maintained the same levels of productivity profitability and customer service.
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So I don't know about you but the first time I heard that I was thinking what like you work fewer hours but you get paid the same like this is like a corporate thing and my mind was personally blown when I first consider that on the high organizational level.
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But as you work your way through the book not only does that proposition become really tangible it arguably arguably becomes the obvious choice and it makes us question and instead why aren't we already doing this so while the book goes into greater detail into you know bringing this design thinking into the four-day work week and more detail into how different organizations have trialled this experiment and made it work for them.
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I'm not going to go to so in the weeds here if you want that level of detail you can find it in the book and I have a link to that in the link below in this video I'll focus more on a summary of some of three of the main themes that really jumped out at me in the book including you know the problem that the four-day work week can help solve and then what are some of the changes that make a four-day work week more possible and those include seeing Focus as something that is social and not individual and then also emphasizing the quality of ours over the quantity of ours.
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And then everyone taking ownership of their work so I'll go into more of these in a few minutes but for now let's go ahead and jump into the problem so it's 2022 we already know that burnout and overwork are a huge issue and even though much of work culture thinks that if we just work hard enough will eventually get ahead or you know if we just work hard to put forth more effort that will always be the correct answer that will always see us through the problem is just for work harder but actually what we see and we're starting to understand is that overworked especially on a long-term basis is actually counterproductive for companies in the long run not to mention individuals.
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To quote the book overworked or burned-out employees are actually less productive than well-rested workers they're also less engaged at work they're more likely to leave their even more likely to cut ethical corners or steal from the company.
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And employee burnout costs the global economy and estimated 300 billion dollars a year in sick days and lost productivity.
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So even in countries where formal workplace discrimination and two decades ago long hours make it difficult for women and parents to manage the demands of bosses professions and family and to also maintain their careers after they become parents.
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So in addition to that the Stanford business professor Jeffrey pfeffer discovered unsurprisingly that overworked people also suffer from higher rates of chronic disease and depression.
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And another study mentioned in the book quote a team led by University of California San Francisco Professor Michael Freeman had found that half of entrepreneurs have at least one mental health condition and have significantly higher than normal rates of depression and other issues founder burnout is a major factor in 65% of new company failures.
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I know I can attest to that on a personal level and if you work for yourself whether you're an entrepreneur or a freelancer solopreneur however that works I'm sure that that statistic maybe not so surprising to you.
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As someone who's done some spearheading and I do have done and do a lot of work for myself I often find myself in those statistics I catch myself inside massive cycles of overworked or burnout depression even health issues that arise from stress or get triggered from work-related pressures.
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So for me it's I have this way that I will often feel that by a sense of like work first and then when it all gets done then I get to play and rest or do anything besides work and while this has given me a very strong sense of discipline in my life which I'm grateful for I can get a lot of things done which is awesome but the problem with that philosophy is that the work is never done so unless you're on an academic schedule we don't really have lives where there's like a clean clean up.
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Clean wrap up where all the work of a parades deadlines and homework assignment cease and everything gets tied up in a pretty little bow well you get a three-month summer vacation that doesn't exist for most of us so how do we work then when there is no end to work.
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To quote the book he says in creative and knowledge intensive Industries work is never done no matter how many hours you put in so overworked is not a sustainable source of a competitive advantage.
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End quote.
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I think a lot of us have a sense of like I'll get ahead if I just put in the extra work now like this kind of this eternal front loading but if again if the work is never done there were actually setting ourselves up for this never-ending Sprint so for me the switch is has been and is in changing the motivation instead of how can I fuel more constant work so that I can work more the question became how can I feel my best work.
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How can I fuel enduring creativity which is actually what runs my business and runs a lot of my life so for knowledge workers artist folks who whose work relies heavily on their creativity on their ideas on their information their research their intuition you know I think we should all be asking ourselves how can I care take my creativity I think this is also become a really important question as opposed to how can I constantly achieve more.
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So but it worked there can be all this pressured you know to always be present to make sure people know that you're really working hard that you're you always have the best idea and I think work culture forgets that often our best ideas come from learning.
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They come from being unproductive or having time to synthesize and play and experiment or try something new.
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So to quote the book presenteeism and overwork are particularly toxic and creative Industries because they crowd out opportunities for the constant learning and exposure to new ideas which feed creativity.
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Pushing back against it requires learning to respect the value of varied experiences and apparently quote unproductive time.
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So that shift really asked us to think more long-term to think more sustainably about our careers our ideas and then the trajectory of our work as a whole another quote from the book in a start-up world that values fast burn rates Rocketship growth and then always has one eye on the exit Founders who shortened work weeks they want to create lasting companies.
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To quote a neat Evelyn she says my motivator is to have a good life to have a business that I'm in control of that's not growing too much I'd rather grow my company to something that feels very special 10 years from now then something that's worth 10 million dollars two years from now put another way these leaders treat the company as an end in itself not merely a vehicle for getting rich and famous.
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So let's look at some of the solutions that a four-day workweek can provide.
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You know can it provide any solutions how is it working for different companies so different organizations have gone about reducing their working hours and a lot of different ways some folks actually just work four full days so that's 32 hours over the course of four days another solution some companies that you know who have four full Company days and then their fifth day is like a free day where they get to work on personal projects or develop their skills learn something new or just focus on creativity so it's again valuing that seemingly unproductive time.
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Other companies have simply kept to working five days a week which is a reduction in hours you know for instance you know if they're used to working 80 hours a week simply holding to actually 40 is a really big adjustment and they start to create Frameworks that actually penalizes folks were working more than that which is you know a big shift in values you can you imagine instead of getting promoted for overworking you actually lose vacation days instead which is cool other companies they kept working five days a week but then they simply shorten each day for instance getting off at like 2 or 3 p.m. each day instead of 5 p.m.
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The book shorter also discusses a lot of the benefits of reducing working hours and here are some of them that are explored at more depth in the book one is that it improves performance which we talked a little bit about earlier to is it improves recruitment including attracting older and more experienced workers and then also helping smaller companies attract talent and helps them compete with larger companies who might have bigger wallets and more benefits to offer it decreases turnover not only because folks stay because having a shorter work week is such an amazing benefit but also because the company's hiring process gets a lot more refined working parents it really benefits particularly women not only does it help them achieve more success and income over the course of their life but then of course they're also able to be better parents it boost creativity and happiness and in turn it also helps make better leaders.
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So now we're going to dive into the top three things that really stood out to me as far as how working in a four-day Work Week differentiates from other modes of working the first one is that changing work is social it's not individual it is the culture of an organization's team or that has to change and that's an effort that includes the individual but it is beyond the individual so we can't blame a single individual for feeling burned out or overworked if technically the rules are people have to be available after hours but the culture is that people do work after hours and maybe those people are rewarded promoted recognized then regardless of what the rules technically are the culture says otherwise and culture is a social Endeavor it's something that we make together.
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Another key distinction that really stood out to me about this social versus individual identification is that you know making sure that we understand the shorter working hours is not the same as flexible working hours.
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And this is something that I hadn't really put my finger on quite as clearly until I read this.
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So shorter work is a collective decision making process it's an efficiency upgrade to shorten working hours.
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Which is different than just saying work whenever you want sometimes just get it done or maybe just some people if you need it take it if you need it with shorter working hours everyone is given the gift of more work-life balance people who need more time at home or with their families or they just want to have a life outside of their job they can now honor those responsibilities and desires.
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So the book does a lot to differentiate these and so I'll offer a small quote from the book flexible hours place the burden of scheduling and coordinating with colleagues who are working two different schedules.
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Squarely on the individual flexible work policies do little to counter presenteeism or the perception among perhaps like maybe unmarried colleagues or people who aren't parents who leave promptly at 501 it makes them feel like flexible work doesn't really counter their perception that those people aren't pulling their weight as many employees will testify flexible working hours easily morphs from moving working hours to Simply working more shorter hours and contrast succeed through company-wide and normative changes not only do parents have more time for children but everyone has more time.
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So by encouraging concentration and focus Towers shorter hours diffuse the potential conflicts and organizational challenges that come when colleagues are on different schedules.
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So this all reminds us that you know we judge people based.
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51 you know whatever it looks like and that begs the question of like who was the current work week designed for.
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Are those actually the people who work here and are those the people that we want to work here is it working for them does it work for anybody who does that working schedule that working default schedule exclude by the nature of its design and who does it include so the way our default work week is designed now makes it seem like.
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You know if this doesn't work for you there's something wrong with you but really it's designed for people who might be like 21 don't need to sleep a lot and don't have a lot of responsibilities besides going to work you know but anyone who's got it kare-kare work or home life responsibilities.
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You know it's not really designed for people who don't have periods it's not designed for people.
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Who experienced death are birth or celebrations you know it's not designed for people who need a pause of any kind ever her time to digest it's not designed for people who want to exercise.
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Is not designed for people who want to take care of their house or have time to recharge and that's.
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Basically most people so the author goes on to say by giving everyone more time off it removes the suspicion and the resentment that otherwise attaches to leaving early.
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It's egalitarian nature means that you know people don't feel obliged to put in extra hours to make up for this like gift of flexible working it makes work-life balance something that everyone aspires to there's a problem with only.
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A fraction of what the other people in the organization work and that means that for people who want to go part-time and it's no surprise that a lot of them are women there is a systemic problem with things like lower to Lifetime earnings.
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So from a social justice point of view just giving people the flexibility to work part-time is not good enough.
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That's fine from the company's point of view but for the person who goes part-time it is more difficult and it has these long-term hidden costs and quote.
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So I'm a nerd for many things including systems and creativity and workflows and P km and some of the things that don't get included in those kinds of conversations about.
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Activity or creative workflows Etc is acknowledging that sometimes.
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Is always your fault that you can't do it all or meet the expectation sometimes it's not that you haven't gotten efficient enough are you haven't gotten productive enough.
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It's the the time expectation doesn't add up especially if the work life or the work schedule isn't set up to support people who have any of those things I mentioned above which is mainly a life outside of work or want to have a life outside of work so in response to a question asked on a radio show that was regarding working mothers.
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The author said to put it another way what I should have said to the radio show callers and I think this can improve you know apply to people Beyond working mothers of course but it's really honing in on that like it's not the individual problem he said working mothers don't need tips and tricks they need a workplace and a career model that doesn't expect them to work as if they don't have kids and raise children as if they don't work demand that they do both at exactly the same time and then say it's their fault if they can't do that to some poorly articulated impossible standard they've gotten all the personal advice they need what they need now is structural change.
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So we can see that it's not just about changing rules or giving people flexible work options it's about changing a culture because everyone has to be on board for shorter work to work it's social it's not just individual so if we work on the same team or in the same company we need to work more efficiently in order to work less we have to help each other do that it's not just about one person changing work.
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So if you need to be able to focus more to get your work done I have to help you do that by not interrupting you or you know reaching out only an agreed-upon times so there's this reminder that our attention is social our focus is social and cultural so I would also say that creativity is social productivity a social we can only be as productive.
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As our environment allows us to be so we can only be as creative as our culture enables us to be in quote the book again in an age where everyone wants everything now not bothering people can feel like a gift to which I of course say amen and think about you know in what ways can you help the people around you.
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Work better and vice-versa how does the environment support better or shorter work and how does it not.
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The second point I want to focus on is prioritizing quality over quantity obviously shorter work requires that we work differently and better so if we're keeping the same standards and but we're changing we're shortening the the time in which those standards come out obviously something has to change if it's not about clocking more hours than it needs to become about working better hours and what supports that quality one mindsets need to change what habits what social environments so the first thing I want to address which it may be obvious by now but that more hours doesn't necessarily mean better work happens.
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So the goal of a shorter week is not to cram what you're already doing into a shorter period of time the goal is how can the limitation of fewer hours prompt us to work differently so the same way we approach creating our products our services our clients problems we can employ that same creativity and design to how we work so again not just what we work but how we do it should get the same kind of attention and focus and Design so to quote the book but we often regarded as separate issues such as work-life balance burnout Career Development inequality the future of the high-tech work place can be approached and managed more.
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When the author put the same question to Tosh Walker she starts by saying I think the first thing is to recognize that it's not about doing five days and four days it's not about getting people to work faster you're trying to think about different ways of working that allow you to work more efficiently so that you don't need the fifth day and quote so I think when we figure out how to work better together we get to take home the benefits in a very tangible way everyone reaps the benefits as opposed to a lot of the time only the owners are stakeholders of a company get the rewards of anyone doing better work so here's some small changes that many companies found across the board that support better work and that includes.
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Some of the following avoiding multitasking and creating intentional periods of deep attention where we agree to not disturb each other or schedule meetings to focus most of your effort on your most valuable work it feels obvious but how much of us like we realize that like Wow all I did today was like get through my inbox that's not your most valuable work right so focus on what is your most valuable output take a quick and purposeful breaks you like stretch your muscles get the blood flowing and help you synthesize some of the problems you're trying to solve again front-loading important work at the beginning of the day which is when most people have more energy more ability to focus.
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I think even with these just these four things that I've mentioned so far it's helpful to notice here that a lot of workflows or business expectations they act like every hour of the day equally supports our best work but actually our energy varies throughout the day so 10 a.m. is it necessarily interchangeable with 2 p.m. and even just that distinction is really changed a lot about how I make myself available or how I don't so we are delegating different kinds of work towards the hours of the day that meet our energy and that can already support better work and more Focus even just those things and then the other two are changing meetings which is a really big thing for people who work with big teams or larger companies default meetings you know shortening them to 30 instead of 60 Minutes making sure that everyone has an agenda before the meeting so that you're talking about Solutions only you're keeping them more focused you're having fewer of them you're making sure that the only the people there need to be there.
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Questioning whether or not it actually needs to be a meeting so it's really about again honoring that quality of focus and attention is the meeting valuable enough to disturb someone else's best work and then some others of solve that by just having meetings only on set days are during non Peak Focus hours and the final common work tweak is that if you use slack or other chat apps or even emails I'm only checking them at select times instead of being constantly available to them which constantly disrupts focus and attention.
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To quote the book it's necessary to encourage workers to both take control of their time and treat their colleagues time is just as valuable as their own when you're redesigning the day people can't just follow business as usual they need autonomy to experiment prioritize and spend their time as effectively as possible but this control has to be tempered by mutual respect and a recognition that within organizations time is a collective resource no one gets to take Friday off unless everyone is done and everyone's ability to finish their work depends on everyone else's willingness to respect their time.
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As a leader you have to move away from thinking in terms of getting the most time out of people presumably is ringing the most value out of them and then instead think of getting the most value out of them instead of Time end quote.
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Third and final point I want to bring up as a foundational shorter work hours thinking is this idea of ownership we'll start with a quote that says a forward a week is a leadership instigated change but what you really need is for everyone to take ownership of it.
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As the leader you open the floodgates and say right we're now going to do this but then you need everyone to find their own Rhythm and their own way of embracing it and being really mindful of letting the team develop its own answer.
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As me personally someone whose work for themselves a lot and manage other teams of people this struck me as something really important and something.
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Wasn't always able to articulate when I needed to be is that often work places especially corporate ones or organizations that are really big they have a culture that's kind of similar to high school where we're just trying to get through the day doing the least amount of work necessary to get a good grade paycheck and then be able to go home.
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And a few pokes who are super driven or have it that innate sense of like ownership or high-performance tend to Rise Above the Rest via their Hustle or they'll get sometimes they get judged culturally as overachievers maybe they get promoted and Orbiter and then often they become isolated from the rest of the workforce without making any real change to the culture of work overall.
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But the cool thing that seems to happen when you shorten working hours in a really intentional way across the board everyone standard of work can go up everyone gets the rewards of working better.
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And overachieving is no longer required and in some cases it's not even allowed.
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Now we're more focused on cooperation and it's asking everyone to take more ownership of their work and also how they do their work.
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And that creates a sense of investment more value instead of just simply waiting to get your homework assignment or counting sheep until the Bell Rings there's some motivation to really be a leader of your own workflow and your own output so that we can all reap the rewards of that together.
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So the book points out that it's not only important for people to find ownership but to also let employees have ownership during the transition into a shorter week they need to be given the ability to make decisions and design what their work looks like so for one thing they know their job better than their bosses do and so they know best what could run better what needs to run differently they already have a really strong sense of what that is.
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So if a shorter work week is going to work that transfer of input needs to happen quotes people are more likely to make rules that work for them and to follow the rules that they make end quote so to explain this the book goes into explain the Ikea effect and the Ikea effect is essentially this cognitive bias in which people place a higher value on products that they partially created and so the book explains it people like having autonomy over their work and the control over their environments and they Place greater value on things that they build giving people more control over the physical design of their workplaces increases their job satisfaction and productivity.
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They found that people who got to decorate their own offices felt better about.
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Employers they said they feel more physically comfortable they had higher rates of job satisfaction and were more productive.
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So it doesn't matter so much you know we're talking about dacor we're also talking about workflows and expectations but just even talking about like the physical design of a space it didn't really matter so much in the study like weather you know the office looks like architectural digest or Not What mattered was having some sort of input and control over the space that's what really made a difference in productivity so when we help to make something we feel more ownership over it whether those are rules the design of a space rhythms routines expectations so we're more invested in it because we helped to build it.
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This reminds me a lot of Adrian Ruby Brown and her book emergent strategy which he says trust the people and they will become trustworthy.
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And then she also asks us to move at the Speed Of Trust so sharing ownership but then also taking ownership and I think this should apply to work as well and also if we find ourselves in a work environment where we can't trust the people then I think maybe the wrong people got hired or in the room with the wrong people so what does that look like you know often we associate the people in charge as the sort of the leaders of the teachers who are giving us our homework or discipline disciplining us when we do something wrong rewarding us when we do something good but what happens when everyone is approaching their work their work culture like a leader and taking ownership of it.
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You know if you're a leader how can you invite more ownership into the process and share some of that decision-making and if you're an employee how can you offer more ownership of what you're doing and what does everyone need in order to do that.
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So in conclusion we talked about shorter work as one way to make work better for people and for more people and some of the things that can help us do that which are remembering that better work is social and not just individual you know value and quality of work over quantity focused hours beat long hours to quote the book anyone can sit in a chair for 12 hours and workers who habitually put in long hours need coaching not Awards time is valuable but not all of ours are equally valuable.
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And then the third thing is to share ownership or to Foster an environment of shared ownership quote people are more likely to make the rules that work for them and they are follow the rules that they make so when we change the structure of work we can create careers and jobs that are more marathons than Sprint's and then work then can become something not just for you know people who are super young or people who don't sleep or people who don't have kids but we allow more people into better income into longer-term careers and some more community.
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Shorter work becomes less about you know finding a few star individuals and the becomes more about investing in people who will take ownership and respect one another and then find ways to work better together so while there's a lot that we need to change about work and economies.
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Taking a small step such as shorter can make really big Headway towards making space for even more questions.
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Explorations making more space for imagination as we seek to make work something that is more human something that is more open to systems and community and creativity that serve life and one another.
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Music.
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Be sure to also check out the links below to learn more about any free resources guests or things we talked about today.
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Our intro and outro music was created by artist Aaron pelvic and Jared Kelly our podcast logo was created by Elaine Stevenson and this show is produced by softer Sound Studio thank you for being here be well.
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Peace.
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Music.
