THE 4 DAYS WORK WEEK
Adult lives has it ups and downs, but it can truly be amazing. I am among the luck ones who do not (at least for the moment!) miss being a child. That being said, I think that a lot of people are stressed in their adult lives with paying the bills, commuting to work, having to be competent and efficient at the work place most of the time…
I think that the adult life can easily be much better for all of all, and please let point explain how and why:
In my humble opinion, the work life isn’t balanced with the personal life. Working 5 days per week for 40 years is way too much, and does not give us enough free time to relax, enjoy our friends and family, do sport, take care of our diet, develop personal projects, engage in local associations …
Imagine you could have the Friday, Monday, or Wednesday free. You could more become a fulfilled version of yourself, dive into these personal projects, take care and spend time of your loved ones, and recover from work.
Other reasons for considering the 4 days work week:
- studies has proven that working 4 days a week, with the same salary, does not negatively impact the overall productivity of the company: workers are happier, more productive, and more implicated into doing their job.
- Less commuting at work, which results in less time spent stuck in the traffic and less emission of carbon dioxide.
- More time to spend our moneys, and contribute to the whole economy. I recall the formula of the Gross Domestic Product: GDP = C + I + G + E – M, where C designs the private consumption. Restaurants, movie theater, grocery stores … make by far their best turnover during weekends.
For all these reasons, I do firmly believe that we need to implement the 4 days work week for both white and blue collar jobs (exception made maybe very physical demanding jobs), as it is already the case in Islande, and in some companies in Belgium and Spain, the first step being implementing it in Europe.
What are your taughts on this, given that there are different versions of the 4 days work week (for instance the Spanish and the Belgium versions)?