Wednesday is the new weekend why a fourday week is so beneficial
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[Music]
[Applause]
think about how you work today
what is the invention that has had the
biggest impact
on how you work maybe you thought about
computers
or smartphones or perhaps assembly lines
or electricity maybe you already work
closely with artificial intelligence
or robotics but i’ll bet there’s one
invention you didn’t think of
that affects how almost all of us work
and yet we take it so much for granted
that we’ve forgotten that we invented it
the weekend do you know when the weekend
was invented would you have guessed that
it was less than a hundred years ago
imagine if your boss decided to give you
one extra paid day off
every week it sounds unbelievable
but that’s exactly what happened in 1926
when henry ford the famous car maker
decided that the regular six day working
week no longer made sense
for how his company worked the time it
took to make a model t car had dropped
from 12.5 hours
down to 1.5 hours ford worried that his
workers were becoming exhausted working
long hours
and didn’t have enough time or energy
left to buy
and use his cars he did research in his
own factories
and found that workers were more
productive
and less likely to quit when they were
well rested
and had enough leisure time so
he gave everybody saturdays off at full
pay and became the first major company
to create the two-day weekend and the
five-day workweek
in two years the company’s profits
doubled
and his competitors were shocked into
doing the same
to compete for talent and public opinion
workers had been fighting since the
mid-1800s
to reduce the workday from 16 hours a
day
down to 12 down to 10. and finally
in 1919 the eight-hour working day
became an international standard but
most people still worked six days a week
the five day work week was the next
frontier
nobody expected that the next big step
forward would be taken by a factory
owner
but when ford created the five-day work
week
in 1926 he was 15 years ahead of the
laws that were eventually passed
in the u.s and european countries
starting in 1940
which made the five-day 40-hour workweek
a new normal
notice the dates an 8-hour working day
in 1919
after the great war and another global
pandemic
of influenza the five-day working week
in 1940 after nearly 10 years
of the great depression sometimes a
crisis
can bring about change that decades of
activism alone
could not we have now had a five-day
working week for more than 80 years
just think for a moment what has changed
since then
do you still do the same kinds of jobs
as your parents
grandparents or great-grandparents do
men
and women still play the same roles in
work and family life
that they did in 1940 today we have
other inventions that henry ford
couldn’t have dreamed of that have
fundamentally changed how
when and where we work
yet the flexibility offered by our
mobile devices
comes with a hidden cost in unmeasured
unpaid mental working time
think about dinner time after a typical
work day
when your partner or your kids or your
best friends are telling you about their
day
how often does it happen to you that
your mind wanders
to the email that you said just before
walking in the door
so the message from a colleague that
pinged during the meal
or to the conference call that you’re
going to join just this once
after the kids are in bed it definitely
happens to me
more often than i’d like to admit it
means that we haven’t really stopped
working
even if we don’t have a phone or a
computer in our hands
if you calculated the number of hours
that you spent
thinking about work on top of the number
of hours you spend doing the work
it would surely exceed 40 hours
companies today want us to be more
creative
collaborative and resilient than ever
before
the work itself is constantly changing
forty percent of what we do in our jobs
today is expected to change
in the next five years half of us will
need to learn
entirely new skills do we really think
that the old model of five days of
back-to-back working time
with mental work added on top in the
evenings and the greater expectations of
the roles that men
and women will play in family life can
really achieve this result
it’s in the interests of workers
companies and societies to create the
space
for a culture of lifelong learning to
emerge
so maybe it’s time to get rid of the old
idea of the five-day work week
and the two-day weekend what if the time
has come for a new kind of day
that is neither weekday nor weekend
a day whose purpose is to spend
re-energizing for ourselves
our families and our communities not
just our employers
a day that is hiding in plain sight
wednesday taking wednesdays off
would give us a weekend a day in the
middle of the week
to re-energize or reskill and a
productivity boost to finish off the
work week
i discovered the power of wednesday six
years ago
when i stopped going to work on
wednesdays
thanks to this break in the middle of
every week i could be more focused and
productive at work
on thursdays and fridays my husband and
my kids could have my full attention at
dinner time
at least one extra night per week i even
managed to do a part-time master’s
degree
in a totally new topic that i was
passionate about
ironically i was able to achieve more
than ever at work
despite being there 20 less
yet i took a pay cut in order to
liberate my wednesdays
i hadn’t dreamed that someday a full
paid four-day work week
could be possible but now
something amazing has started to happen
companies
around the world are testing out a new
idea
the full paid 4-day 32-hour work week
like henry ford employers are
discovering
that productivity goes way up by around
40 percent
when they give more paid free time back
to workers
when time becomes a resource that’s
controlled by the employee
and not the manager it’s amazing how
much can get done
rather than squeezing more hours into
every day teams figure out how to work
together more efficiently
they shorten meetings they send fewer
emails
and they spend less work time on social
media
and personal errands when work no longer
steals time from our personal lives
we don’t have to steal personal time
from work
sales revenue and profitability go up
because
people are more engaged and committed to
their work and to their companies
you don’t have to wait until hr agrees
to give you wednesdays off
you can start now to try making
wednesdays different
email and long meetings are notoriously
bad for our energy
so block your calendar on wednesdays and
don’t check your inbox
reserve time for learning you could read
more about the research on the four-day
workweek
take an online course or start a new
project create the boundaries
in order to give your full attention to
the people who matter most
big or small
we as a society invented the weekend
and the five-day work week when our
technology enabled us to jump to the
next level of productivity
the four-day workweek makes sense for
the technology we live with today
making the four-day workweek a
successful reality
will require boldness from companies
creativity from workers
and supportive policies from governments
to ensure that it doesn’t become a
special privilege
for a limited few we are in the middle
of the most disruptive economic scenario
in a generation
too many lives and livelihoods have been
lost
or put on hold the four-day work week
alone
cannot solve all the problems we face in
our economies and societies
but when the world does get back on
track let’s be ready with a new idea
to give one day back to people to
re-energize
and reskill for their sake and the
benefit of their companies and
communities
whether it’s wednesday or any other day
whatever makes the most sense for the
kind of work
that you do are you ready to live in a
world where we talk about balance
between work
life and learning where the idea of the
four day work week
is as natural to our grandchildren as
the weekend
has become for us what will you do
with your wednesday thank you
[Applause]