It often feels like there are only 3 productive hours in typical American white collar work day.
What if we just cut out the rest?
Edit: Some great responses. So responses must have also been said about the 5 day and 40 hour work weeks.
I think the problem would be getting everyone’s 3 hours to line up.
After 3 hours you’d go to your next job.
Then you miss out the unmentioned part of the work - idle thinking. Not only the time spent typing something on the keyboard is work. All the time spent thinking how to solve a problem is also work.
It sounds great! The real trick would be finding any company willing to pay the same 40 hours of wages every week for 15 hours of work. There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
There’s not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs
Not that I’m advocating for it, but… Working 3 jobs @ 15 hours a week each would mean you’d be a lot more resilient against layoffs and would be able to quit any of those jobs at the drop of a hat if things got shitty (knowing you’d only be losing 1/3 of your income, rather than 100% of it). It would represent a solid shift of power into the hands of the workers.
True, but the whole point of having a shorter work week would be to have more free time wouldn’t three jobs kind of defeat the whole purpose? That would just mean I wake up dreading three jobs instead of one…
And all the wasted time getting from one job to the next. Even if the travel is all virtual you still have to get setup/organised, put one thing down and pick another up.
i’ve been down that road before. three part time jobs means no benefits and no employer-sponsored health coverage. it’s also extremely difficult to schedule multiple part time jobs so they don’t conflict with each other while still giving you something resembling ‘weekend’ off.
Some meetings are BS while others are legitimately helpful - I think a 3 hr day would make those good meetings hard to squeeze in.
