Time management strategies

The idea that people might one day work far fewer hours is not new. In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, within a century, rising productivity would allow people to work around fifteen hours a week. Average working hours did fall considerably in many industrialised countries during the twentieth century, but the decline slowed long before it came close to Keynes's figure. With his century almost over, the prediction is very unlikely to come true, but the question behind it, what we should do with the gains of rising productivity, has returned to public debate in the form of the four-day working week.

The model most often discussed is sometimes summarised as '100-80-100': employees receive 100 per cent of their pay for working 80 per cent of their previous hours, in return for a commitment to maintain 100 per cent of their output. It is different from schemes that simply compress five days' work into four longer days, which leave total hours unchanged and are generally less popular with staff.

Several large trials have tested the idea. Between 2015 and 2019, public-sector organisations in Iceland reduced the working week of around 2,500 employees, roughly one per cent of the country's working population, without cutting their pay. In 2022, about sixty companies in the United Kingdom took part in a six-month pilot covering nearly three thousand workers. In both cases, organisers reported that productivity was maintained or improved in most workplaces, while employees described lower levels of stress and burnout. Of the British companies, the great majority chose to continue with a shorter week after the pilot ended.

How can people do the same work in less time? Participants frequently mention shorter and fewer meetings, fewer interruptions and a sharper focus on tasks that genuinely matter. Several firms introduced rules limiting meetings to thirty minutes or kept mornings free of meetings for concentrated work. Some managers found that the reduction forced them to identify work that had been done out of habit rather than necessity. Others noted a fall in sick days, which partly made up for the lost hours. A shorter week also appears to help with recruitment: companies offering one report receiving more applicants for their vacancies.

Sceptics, however, point to several weaknesses in the evidence. Companies that volunteer for a trial are likely to be those already well suited to it, so their results may not apply to the economy as a whole. Much of the data relies on employees' own reports of their wellbeing, which may be influenced by enthusiasm for the scheme. There is also the question of whether early gains last: the energy of a well-publicised trial may fade once a shorter week becomes routine. Moreover, many jobs cannot easily be shortened without additional staff. A hospital ward or a primary school must be covered every day, and in such settings fewer hours per person may simply mean hiring more people, at significant cost.

Even supporters tend to acknowledge that the four-day week is not a universal solution. What the trials do suggest is that the number of hours people spend at work is a less reliable measure of their output than many employers assume. They also encourage organisations to ask harder questions about which meetings, reports and routines actually add value. Whether or not the four-day week becomes standard, that lesson may prove to be its most lasting contribution.