I'm reading a great article from the Wall Street Journal,
The 5-Hour Workday Gets Put to the Test. (Paywalled, but I have a PDF if anyone wants it.) It's about a tech consulting firm whose owner reduced the workday for everyone in the company from 8 to 5 hours - and it seems to be working.
I love this part, where he says that the standard 8-hour workday is padded with time-wasting activities (amen!), and that many more companies could do this if they eliminated distractions from the workplace and made sure that an employee's five hours in the office are their most productive hours:
Mr. Rheingans, the firm's managing director, says employees can deliver the same output during a focused 25-hour week as in 40 hours interrupted with distractions.
“We have all experienced that: We sit in the office, out of energy, reading newspapers online or Facebook, just in need of the little pauses to recharge, but you don’t really recharge,” he says. “My idea is focusing on the first five hours and then just leave, and have a proper break.”
To accomplish that, small talk during work hours is discouraged. Social media is banned. Phones are kept in backpacks. Company email accounts are checked just twice a day. Most meetings are scheduled to last no more than 15 minutes.
As a result, the company produces the same level of output for clients despite shorter days, says Mr. Rheingans. He says the company, which develops websites, apps and e-commerce platforms, was profitable in 2018, the first full year he owned it. He says happier employees deliver better work for clients, and the shorter workday is a draw, boosting recruitment in Germany’s tight labor market.
He got the idea from another company,
Tower Paddle Boards, which did the same thing in 2015. But they had just one problem - the best problem:
Mr. Aarstol says the five-hour experiment was an initial success, allowing him to reward productive employees and weed out those marking time. Two years later, he limited five-hour days to the summer months because it sapped some employees’ enthusiasm.
“We lost the startup culture,” he says. “Everyone’s outside life got so much better, at the expense of their passion for the work.”
Even when business owners have generous policies and treat their employees well, there's always going to be a clash of interests: they want to get the most work they can out of us, we don't want to work any longer than necessary. But working life would be more pleasant for a lot of people, especially those who don't plan to retire early, if more employers followed Mustachian policies like these.
