Transcript
Hey everyone welcome another dailyjim it is July one Friday 2022, Canada day, which apparently used to be called Dominion day, which Is I just learned, I mean I've known it was Canada day, but I just learned that it was a day in 1867, just a couple years after the American civil war. Around that time frame when it became a confederation, I believe in Canada. So to all those out there celebrating Happy Canada Day and I wanted to talk today about, four day work weeks, you know, thinking here it's friday, it's friday night, why am I recording this on friday night? You know, should I be not recording this on a friday night? Should I be hanging out relaxing even on a friday afternoon? And it reminded me of, I have a friend, there's an organization used to be called the Unreasonable Institute, it changed its name to Uncharted, based out in boulder colorado and they switched to a four day work week a couple of years ago experimented with it and from all that, I know it went pretty well, and I hear that a couple, I think some countries in europe, maybe the european union in total is thinking about shifting more towards that direction of doing a four day work week. And I, you know, there's something that seems really compelling about it to me and maybe it's the idea of working fewer days but more intense days or just trying to work more efficiently while working those days. I don't know, I've noticed that uh you know, I've been trying to do these daily gyms monday through friday and when I think about it friday in some parts of the world is actually part of the weekend. So I believe in some of the countries in the Middle East that friday is part of the weekend and you know, here in the US, it's saturday and sunday, that's typically the weekend. So I was like, well maybe I could just do monday through thursday, that means I wouldn't be working on anyone else this weekend. Who knows, who knows? I don't know, I think we can, especially in the US, we get really obsessed with working really hard and if somebody is not working, putting their nose to the grindstone and. Constantly professing that they're busy, then they aren't, then they're lazy and they're not putting in any effort, but maybe it's not the case, maybe there's a way of working a little this combination of maybe working hard but also working smart, some other words putting in a lot of effort, but also being kind of wise where to put the effort, so not just, you know, it's like hammering nails and all day and going, oh wait, I can actually get a nail gun, wow, this will go a lot faster. Yeah. Um do people have, you can tell, I don't know too much about construction, like nail guns? Yeah I know there's a staple gun, there's a nail gun, right? I think there's a nail gun. Oh goodness. You can tell that I've put a lot of work into computer programming. I know a lot about different computer technologies but when it comes to carpentry I a little lackluster but. Yeah, I don't know, I'm not really sure what else to talk about. Just kinda reflecting on whether I want to Continue this five day work week, especially when there's no external pressure on me necessarily to do that or you know, an employer or a manager telling me I have to but rather just a lot of cultural pressure. I think that I've been feeling to do it but I'm curious about you, especially people who are working kind of more freelance or not within a formal structure of an organization. Whether you, I would like to go to a four day work week or even people who are working in more formal structures, would you like to go to a four day work week. Is it even possible? Do you think? Well, you know something I even threw out when I worked in consulting before was I would love to work half time. They didn't like it too much but I wanted to not increase my pay, I wanted to decrease my hours so I wanted to work 20 hours a week instead of 40, And then maybe even split that job with somebody else, two people could work 20 hours To add up to the 40 hours. I know some people have experimented with that. I think even in Germany that was a thing, there's a very long german word as is common with german words that something like half work something our bite. I don't know, it's like Cutting work in half where I think it was a measure so they didn't have to lay people off, especially during 2000 and 2009. It was so that people could keep their jobs but maybe worked half the time. So I don't know, it's just curious to explore different ways that we could change the culture of work ideally to improve it. But maybe it's a balance of improving work but also improving life and improving emotional well being and health and try to balance all these things. Anyways. I'm tired, It's friday. I'm going to go have a beer and chill out so I hope you all have a good weekend and talk to you soon.
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