Scientists: We Should Have Four Working Days a Week

Finally someone who we believe talks about four working days a week. If you ask me this rule should come into force right away. We should work Monday through Thursday, and take Friday off to get ready for the upcoming weekend.
That’s it. We’ll all be happy and full of energy.
But that’s my observation. Let’s see what the scientists say.
Anders Ericsson, one of the top experts on the psychology of work, did a lot of experiments around this topic. We proudly share his success because someone finally complies with our wishes for four working days a week.

Evening Standard

He says that people can only do four or five hours of productive work every day. After their energy and performance hit the highest point, the output stalls and lots of people suffer at work.

“If you’re pushing people well beyond the time they can really concentrate maximally, you’re very likely to get them to acquire some bad habits. What’s worse, those bad habits could end up spilling into the time people are normally productive,” Ericsson tells.

There are managers out there who are testing this approach out by shortening the working week. The result is incredible as there were significant returns on their investment of worker retention, output, and the professional happiness of the personal.
Ryan Carson, the CEO of Treehouse, started with a 32-hour work week in 2006. Since then, his employees are happier and more productive.
Carson says that the company is very successful today and the annual revenue comes in millions of dollars. The people are happy and looking forward to coming and work every day.
The similar story comes from Reusser Design. That’s a full-scale web development company. They switched to four-day working week in 2013. According to the founder:

“Even if employees work overtime on Fridays, their performance is much higher. You have no idea how people hustle to finish projects before they go on vacation.”

There is another experiment coming from a school in Colorado. The four-day school week was introduced for 4^th and 5^th graders. The returning results were amazing. It turns out that the reading and math results for the students who were under this test period went up 6% and 12%, respectively. That’s compared to the kids who attended for all five.

“I think the idea that children will be fully concentrating during all their classes is unreasonable,” Ericsson says. This is especially true for children who have problems concentrating and staying focused.

There are a lot of other examples that could be put here, but you get the point. So, four working days anyone?
I guess companies and schools will implement this case study and make some changes.
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