Why the Four-Day Work Week Isn’t the Answer to Stress & Burnout

Published by Kell Delaney at October 27, 2022

You may have heard about the four-day workweek experiment that’s been happening across the UK this year. While the four-day workweek isn’t a brand-new idea, this trial (run by a think tank in partnership with researchers from Cambridge, Oxford, and Boston College) is considered the largest experiment in the approach to date, involving more than 3,000 workers across 70 companies from a range of industries.

The purpose of this experiment and similar ones is to see if reducing the expected weekly work time would impact productivity and/or happiness and well-being. The interest in exploring this solution has understandably increased since the pandemic, when rates of anxiety and stress increased, along with the number of hours employees were working.

So far, the results seem to be mixed. For some, a four-day workweek is shockingly effective. For others, it leaves them feeling even more stressed and overwhelmed. That is because the issue is complex and a simple, one-size-fits-all solution will never be the best answer. At Conversant, we explain that all projects or experiments must start with an aligned Purpose, clearly defined Results, and that the ideal Method is the one (or several) that best serves that Purpose and achieves those desired Results. In the example here, the four-day workweek is a Method and it is meant to serve the Purpose and Results, which it clearly does sometimes and for some people. However, there are other (possibly better and more effective) ways of addressing burnout and overwhelm.

The way I have been thinking about this challenge is like traffic. We know that adding lanes to congested areas works in the short term but encourages more traffic over time. Wait a little and the congestion will become just as bad. A similar thing happened when mindfulness retreats became popular to “reduce stress.” They worked, and then people went back to their day-to-day lives and added more to their plate until their stress levels were back where they started. This is because those retreats did not help people understand and take control of the underlying emotional drivers behind the choices they were making and change day-to-day behavior to support a different way of operating long term.

For many of us, the way we schedule our days is familiar and oddly comfortable in its familiarity, even our stress. We unconsciously return to this set point, filling the space once we find some because it’s what we know. How often in a check-in at the beginning of a work call do you say you are “busy?” Why are we always busy and never seem to do anything to change that? Because it is familiar and most of us have not spent any time thinking about or addressing the underlying habits and emotions driving our choices connected to that experience of busyness. How do we learn to notice (and change!) these habits?

In the traffic example, rather than adding more lanes what has been shown to best manage flow is metering. Metering is a traffic control method that limits the rate of traffic flowing into freeways using traffic signals on freeway onramps, based on an optimal flow rate calculated with the help of road sensors.

From my perspective, with all the stress, overwhelm, and burnout people are feeling we do not need more lanes in their week. If we could find more time and space, the high likelihood is we would just find ways to fill it the way we’ve habitually been filling the time we already have. Instead, we need help metering the work we have to do based on a more realistic relationship to the time we have available.

An Individual AND Collective Responsibility

This is both an individual responsibility problem AND a social system challenge. On the one hand, each of us needs to take a hard look at how we make decisions in our work and with our time, and investigate what drives both—for example: where do ego, fear, and emotions cause each of us to say “yes” to more than we can realistically handle?

At the same time, we are all operating in a community and therefore our individual choices are heavily influenced by the forces within the community—the desire to fit in, do a good job, carry our weight, historic patterns that have stuck around, implicit expectations, what we see (or perceive) others are doing, power differences… the list goes on.

I believe we will have the greatest chance of success with a “metering” approach. As a community, you can explore 1 or 2 “metering methods” that could be implemented. This would need to include working at the individual level to figure out what each person needs to address or grow in themselves to implement the “metering” successfully.

Here’s an example of one method you could consider exploring with your team or organization:

Meter Method #1

Purpose: Learn how to better manage the use of our time.

Start with defining on the individual level: What are the crucial areas of our work that require my time? What can only I provide?

Outcomes:

Understanding how much time it takes to do each aspect of your work
Clarity around what is required on a daily/weekly/monthly basis to have a good balance in your work while maintaining vitality, joy, and connection
View into current time commitments so that new requests can be responded to with clarity, honesty, and accuracy
Confidence in the choices you make in how you use your time and what you say “yes” to

Method:

Each person defines the areas of work that require their time and estimates how much time they think they need to be successful on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.
As best they can, each person maps out each of these time commitments on their calendar for the next month by “scheduling” them in (and I mean literally putting them on your calendar as if they were scheduled meetings – this method is often referred to as “time blocking”)
Each person is matched with a partner to:
1. Share the areas of time commitment they each chose
2. Walk through how they scheduled these commitments into their daily and weekly rhythms on their calendars
3. Share learning, insights, and new perspectives based on the exercise
Partners meet once per week for an Adjust Conversation to share what they are learning, trade ideas for improvement, and hold one another accountable.

*Note about #3: This addresses the individual as well as social accountability. Having a partner to point out where your actions are running counter to what you initially committed to is crucial for two reasons: (1) It helps us become aware of these discrepancies and, (2) it allows us to make a choice about how we wish to use our time instead of running on our normal autopilot. This step harnesses the power of community and connection for commitment, accountability, and learning.

A couple things I have found in practicing this method myself:

This is not about rigidity, but rather freeing yourself to make better choices creatively. Using your calendar this way should give you a visual of your time (and energy) commitment on a daily and weekly basis to equip you to make better choices.
When you first start, you will likely notice that your “guesstimates” of the amount of time you will need for each commitment are way off. Great! Now you have a ton of accurate information to help you better manage your time.
When someone asks if you have time to help with that project they are struggling with, it is fine to move a block on your calendar to accommodate, but you must put that block somewhere else!
You are welcome to delete or shorten blocks of time held for specific things if you wish, but you must share that choice with your accountabilibuddy along with your rationale for why. This ensures that you stay in an honest relationship with your reality.
You don’t have to meet with your partner every week until the end of time. Do this for at least 6 weeks to build the muscle and establish that relationship with someone in your system. This will train new mindsets and habits, and a connection you can turn to when you need to reset or would benefit from reflecting with someone else that is familiar with your best interests and your goals.

What I have found is powerful about this approach is that it puts you and your organization (or team) into thoughtful conversation about everyone’s work, available time and energy, and what a decent work/life balance looks like for you and your community. If we take the time to define this up front and together, we are more likely to support one another in making it a reality. Then, by applying this “metering” approach, everyone gets an accurate snapshot of what it takes to get the work done and valuable insight into how individual habitual choices are perpetuating stress and overwhelm.

With this information, you can do two things: Come together as a community to adjust priorities to fit the available time and capacity more realistically and empower individuals to find the Methods that work best for them in creating an enjoyable, low-stress, work life. In some cases, the four-day workweek might be exactly the answer. In other cases, you may discover something even better that fits your circumstances and goals. By engaging in an experiment like this you are more likely to find the method(s) that work for you and your organization.