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A little over one hundred years ago, a New England mill instituted the five-day workweek to accommodate Jewish and Christian day of rest observances.
One hundred years later, this five days on, 2 days off cadence still exists but is somewhat blurred. Thanks to the Internet, then mobile devices, and now the COVID-induced momentum towards virtual work, employees are more likely to sprinkle their work across all their waking hours (I.e., not just “9 to 5”)and across the seven days of the week. Would it be so bad to work every day? I typically put in somewhere between 2 to 4 hours on Saturday and Sunday. Why not? I have relatively little, if any, emails, calls, or meetings on those days, so I’m very productive. Additionally, because I work few hours during the traditional five-day workweek, I get more time to knock out non-work tasks, take breaks, and most importantly, spend time with family. I find it somewhat odd that organizations are going the other direction and experimenting with a four-day workweek. This just means even more hours crammed into fewer days. Most of the time it doesn’t work because the marketplace demands quick responses. I know that not everyone has the luxury of choosing when they work. But I can’t help be curious why more people don’t try working fewer hours each day, but six or seven days a week. For me at least, I don’t “work for the weekend.” I get my work done when I can so that I can live my life every day. How often do you have text message conversations with friends and family during your work time? Let me guess - the dozen or so texts are spread out over 30 minutes as you toggle back-and-forth to your work tasks. This is not ideal.
We know that distractions are bad for productivity. However, you can’t ignore friends and family, right? My colleagues, clients, and students respect my worst-case scenario, 24-hour turnaround time. This is unlikely to fly with friends and family. It’s personal, therefore, it’s rude to not respond quickly. But what about a compromise? What if we promised to do all of our non-work responses during a specific window of the after-work evening hours? Would that be so bad? This aligns with the common productivity philosophy of “chunking versus sprinkling.” The more we can chunk together common tasks, the better we’ll be at staying focused on the task at hand. The downside is that not everyone will be available when we’re ready for our scheduled chunk of communication. Perhaps that deserves a coordination message where you give each other a window of availability. The upside is that we’ll actually be engaged in the conversation - not multi-tasking with work concerns in the background. Additionally, if we stay focused on getting work done during work hours, we’ll free up more time to engage in more non-work interactions. |
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