What It’s Really Like to Have a 4-Day Workweek
To many people in corporate America, working five days a week—Monday to Friday, 9 to 5—feels as habitual as brushing their teeth. But it wasn’t always that way. In the late 1800s, a full-time manufacturing worker could easily spend 100 hours per week on the job. It wasn’t until around 1940, after a concerted push from labor unions, that the 40-hour workweek became standard in the U.S.Now, almost a century later, there’s growing momentum for an even more condensed schedule, with major companies—including Panasonic, Kickstarter, and the online thrift store ThredUp—trying out four-day workweeks. “We’ve all been working far too hard, and we’re missing out on life,” says Charlotte Lockhart, co-founder of 4 Day Week Global, a group pushing for shorter workweeks worldwide. “It’s affecting our hea...