The 4-day week as a design choice for owners

And that was a model of success that was gradual. You paid your dues, you moved up in the organization. And around, you know, in the 70s and 80s, this got replaced, thanks partly to the tech and the finance industries, but also globalization and outsourcing, you know, etc., with a model in which success is something that happens through like titanic amounts of labor, where you're working very long hours, often when you're younger, um and, you know, hitting the gold mine before the next economic downturn or before your technical skills become obsolete. And you do, you grow up in that world, you do this, you know, you see all your friends, your colleagues doing it, you see Elon and Mark and every, you know, all the other billionaires doing it, and it becomes, I mean, it's just self-evident that that's what you've got to do in order to be a success.

But all of these technologies that we have used in order to increase our productivity, to do great new things, can also be used to create more time, to buy time back for founders, for everybody in an organization. And what, you know, we do at the studio is to help, you know, organizations of all kinds figure out how they can use existing familiar tools, you know, not to perpetually ratchet up the amount of work that they've got to do, but to figure out how they can work better so that they can do the same work, deliver the same value, maintain the same kinds of goals and ambitions that sort of they've always had, without destroying themselves or running the company into a ditch.

And I think our perspective, and clearly your perspective as well, is that, you know, two things can be true. You can be building something valuable that needs you less and uh and taking rest as infrastructure. Um, what do you think is sort of like the mindset, and what are we, what are we today, with all the technology, with AI coming in to make us more productive, what are we getting wrong about the relationship with rest and results, and what can we do to change it?

LeBron James, right? The most fearsome player in NBA history other than Steph Curry. This is a guy who talks, you know, he sleeps 12 hours a day, and the entire NBA has something called NBA nap time, where before, like the couple hours before games, pretty much you turn off the lights and everybody takes a nap, because, you know, after the game you're really amped up, you're often on the road and so you're in a different time zone, and so you need that catch-up rest. And so these are some of the most fit, you know, physically fit, sort of best performing people in the world who now recognize the value of rest.

I think also that we, you know, the other big mistake that we make is that we think of this as entirely like a personal problem that we have to solve for ourselves, because rest is, you know, fundamentally an individual thing. It's, you know, I can't rest for someone else. However, that doesn't mean that we have to solve it by ourselves, sort of just for ourselves. And indeed, you know, one of the great lessons of four-day week companies is everybody's got challenges with work-life burnout or, you know, or balance and burnout, and figuring out how to deal with kids, etc. And the most enduring solutions to those problems turn out to be structural ones that you create and maintain together.

In other words, that collective action is the most potent form of self-care. And so, you know, I think those are the things that I see with, you know, in conversations either, you know, with the public at large or with organizations, with founders who are thinking about moving to a 4-day week and aren't sure if they can do it yet. Those are some of the kinds of things that they have to kind of rethink or get past in order, right, to sort of take the plunge and sort of give it a try.

But number two, the way that the industry works is kind of stupid, and I have this list in the back of my mind of things that everybody does that nobody ever thinks to do differently, and, you know, and I have a chance to actually sort of fix this. And so the 4-day week is not, you know, it's not like this philosophical thing, or you read, you know, Marx's Brumaire or whatever it was and think, you know, we need to rethink our relationship between time and capitalism in the industrial age, but rather they're facing existential issues, right? You know, half the development team left last year, or, you know, the sort of pressure of deadlines is really crushing us, or the founders themselves realize because they've got to make changes themselves to sort of to keep going.

And so, and for them, the appeal of the 4-day week, number one, is it serves as a kind of forcing function to sort of get them to work a little less, because you realize nobody, that if I make this a company-wide thing, then that's going to hold me accountable, right? I've got to model this behavior if anybody else is going to take it seriously. Number two, it becomes easier for me to do it if everyone else is on the same schedule and I'm not likely to get, you know, emails or calls on Friday or Saturday unless there is literally something on fire. Um, and it's going to be a way to unlock among employees a whole bunch of sort of incentives and creativity around how to improve processes, improve meetings, sort of change and improve a thousand and one things about the way that the organization works, in a way that delivers incredibly fast feedback.

Right? It's all, you know, all too often you put in some, you know, new operating system or process and maybe you see the results a few months later, right? And, but with a 4-day week, either everyone's done all the stuff that they need to do to go home at the end of the day Thursday and start the weekend, or they haven't. And that is an amazingly unambiguous signal. And so it's a way of incentivizing people to sort of make positive changes. It's a way of sort of providing feedback on how those changes are doing, that also then have all kinds of downstream benefits for the organization, as well as making the founder's own life quite a bit more, you know, sort of sustainable and happy.

So, people generally moved around an awful lot. When they moved to a 4-day work week, one of the things that they found was that they were saving 250,000 a year in job adverts alone, because they just didn't have to advertise any longer, because their turnover went from, I want to say, like 40% annually to like 3%, which is absolutely unheard of in this industry. The other really interesting thing that happened there was, and this is something that you see in a bunch of places, is that the composition of your workforce changes in the following way: that the 4-day week is great for everybody, but it turns out to be transformational for working parents, particularly working moms. Number one, obviously for the logistical reasons, right? More time with the family. But second, it changes the way that people hire and promote.

You know, I had one founder say that, you know, sort of before they implemented a 4-day week, kind of subconsciously, the person that they thought was the ideal worker was a 25-year-old guy with no pets who could sleep under his desk. Right. You could ask them to do anything, work any number of hours. Right. But when you move to a 4-day week, you don't need someone who can work 60-hour weeks. That's no longer the thing that's impressive. What you want is someone with really good time management skills, who can work well with others, who is a little ruthless when need be, who can knock out the hours and then leave and go home, while taking the job seriously and continuing to want to do a good job. It also helps to have a higher level of professional experience, maybe more time on the job.

And so who is it who has that combination of experience, you know, psychological makeup, personal management skills, etc.? Turns out it's working moms, who, you know, as some of your listeners may know, have, you know, often really struggled to come back into the workforce at the same level that they had left, and once they're back in, to be able to do things like compete for big projects or accounts in the same way, you know, on a level playing field with the men.

And so, you know, once you get, and so for a small company, what this means is you're more attractive to a more skilled, more dedicated category of worker, who is able to do, who is a better fit for the kind of organization you're now trying to build, to whom you're delivering benefits that are still rare enough so that if, you know, the competition offers them 20% more money, they're still likely to say no, because they can calculate the value of their time and sort of realize that, you know, what they have in a 4-day week is worth more than just about anything. And then there were also other stories about, you, as I said, no place loses money, but there are examples of software companies that have continued growing year-over-year, you know, 10, 15%. Um, there's one in Korea, for example, that um increased its revenues tenfold in the 2010s as it was moving from, you know, a 7-day week down to 4 days, and eventually...

The, you know, it's happening in financial services, in tech startups, in places where there are really high stakes, where losing people really can make a gigantic difference between success and failure, and therefore recognize that um moving to a shorter work week can deliver, you know, can both deliver benefits and prevent disasters that, you know, can make or break um, you know, an organization of just about any size.

There was a discussion we had around how Nixon in a speech talked about the 4-day work week. And so we have this interesting relationship, and again, we're in this constraint of a capitalist society. This is where we are, right? It's about making more profit, making more money, and scaling. AI provides that accelerant as a technology, similar to technology in the past, but now we're seeing it exponentially hit more than just physical spaces. We're seeing it hit knowledge work. And so I'm wondering, as technology rose, people actually are taking less vacation than previously, in North America at least. What really needs to change for us to be able to um integrate more rest into our life?

Magnify that across pretty much the entire economy. And that's also true for accountants, new lawyers, etc., despite the dreams of being able to, you know, fire all those people and harvest the benefits so that you can buy, you know, another apocalypse island or whatever. I think the, you know, the second important thing is that it's not AI that is doing this. It is people deploying AI in particular ways to have that kind of outcome in the labor market. This is a choice. Okay? And one of the things that I see in 4-day week companies is they're making a different choice, right?

They're deploying this technology in ways that take like the bottom layer of things that are, you know, maybe would have been harder to automate because you're a graphic designer and what do you know about JavaScript, and to actually automate that stuff so that you can spend more time on those parts of the job that are higher value added, that sort of bring you more in contact with customers and clients and let you do better work. When you give people the option of figuring out how to use AI in their jobs, very interestingly, they don't automate themselves out of jobs. Rather, they figure out how to, you know, how to use this so that they themselves can be more creative.

And it is sort of an unexpected byproduct of one of the foundational things that happens when designing and implementing 4-day weeks, which is that you really need, you know, and I know this can be hard for some founders who are accustomed to sort of being across everything and having to feel like they're really in control, you got to give people a lot of freedom to figure this stuff out for themselves. Because if you're in a company that has maybe more than three people in it, you don't know enough about everybody's job to redesign it for them. You need to give them a reason to be involved and space to be involved in that process and to drive it themselves, right? And so, you know, and it also means that everybody who's part of that, their jobs become more meaningful because they're more invested in them.

They feel like, you know, they're sort of, they, you know, there are all kinds of ways in which being able to have more autonomy at work is good. And designing a 4-day week for yourself turns out to be a really great exercise in creating that sort of autonomy. So I think that, you know, that points to one of the other things that needs to change, besides thinking of AI as a choice rather than sort of an inevitability, which is, you know, I think for leaders it's important to move from a kind of, you know, transactional or top-down managerial mindset to what, you know, to what business school professors call a transformational leadership style, where what you're doing is kind of, it's more like you're creating the environment in which people can do their best work, rather than creating a system that you can just plug anybody into, or creating an environment in which people will do exactly what you tell them.

And then I think that, you know, sort of the other step back is you got to rethink the sort of idea of rest as like either a luxury or an expense. You know, it is neither, right? Rest is a necessity, and at the organizational level or for leaders it is, you know, it's an investment in yourself, and being able to scale that and make it available for everybody, or to create the conditions in which everybody can create that for each other, is a really, really powerful thing. But it requires recognizing the value of rest, putting yourself in a position where you create the space in which this can happen, giving people autonomy over the tools, these days mainly AI, so that they can then make it happen. So that's what's got to change.

But maybe, you know, as with, in the, you know, the Far Side cartoon with the sort of lions who were in, you know, sort of in the circus, who were holding on to the, or of, um, the masks, and they say, and one of them is saying, "Hey, these things just pop right off." You know, maybe this thing that we thought was, you know, was inevitable and immobile, it's actually something we can change. The other important, you know, the other important thing is, in order to make meetings work this way, everybody's got to buy into it, right? And that is a great early example of how collective action and collaboration can unlock all kinds of benefits that no individual can solve or implement on their own.

That also sets up a bigger process of redesigning the workday. And in a lot of places they'll have like a school calendar where, you know, every day from 9 to 11 is deep work, right? You have permission to not answer the phone, you don't talk to people, um, the water cooler, you know, is like a quiet zone. And then people finish that, you get, you can get an, and they find that not only can you get an enormous amount done when you're not checking your email, but you get a little bit more done because you're in the presence of other people who are also doing this, right? It's a little bit like... Yeah, it's a little bit like going to the library during finals when you're in college, right? You're not studying the same thing as the person beside you necessarily, but the fact that everybody is quiet and focused helps you concentrate a little more as well.

And then you come out of that, everybody takes a break, you have coffee, you talk about, you know, how the Blue Jays are doing or whatever for, you know, 20 or so minutes, and then it's on to the next thing. So meeting redesign is a good way to create some of the space in which you can then say, all right, what other things should we put in the calendar collectively that will help everybody sort of work better together. The one other thing I would suggest also is implementing no email in the evenings, or no email after X o'clock, because that's good, you know, that's good both for the organization and for individuals, and because the more, the more as individuals you're able to go home and put work out of your mind, no matter how much you like it, the better, you know, the more energy you will bring the next day and the more sustainable the work will be.

And, you know, I think that in an earlier era, what this meant, you know, detachment basically meant closing the door and just going home, putting your tools down, right? Yeah. You couldn't bring, you couldn't bring home work when you worked in a factory. Um, these days, of course, our offices, we're carrying our offices around in our pockets. And so it, you know, and so what you need are some basic rules around accessibility, when you're going to interrupt someone at dinner. And implementing that has the benefit of sort of giving people, sort of when they're in their off hours, a greater opportunity to detach, to unwind, to reflect, to rest. So,

You mentioned the NBA uh teams, right, in terms of their rituals. You see this so often, and it is inextricably linked to performance and our ability to create, and going for walks. I think was it Isaac Newton? There was one of the greatest inventors who would deliberately walk. Now we are so in consumption mode, chained to our desk, that literally we're wearing, I'm, you know, wearing devices to remind us to move our bodies. And so I'm curious, on the individual level, what does deliberate rest look like if you're a founder listening, that it's going to really help you get more results from your company? It is counterintuitive, but what does that look like?

But, you know, in addition to that though, it's really useful to have something to fill that space, because busy people, you just get accustomed to kind of being always on. And the most effective way to detach when you're in that mode is to have something else that you do, right? A hobby that is really absorbing, that maybe is physical in a way that your work is not, that delivers benefits, or maybe puts you in a little bit of risk but also delivers benefit quickly. So this is why, you know, for example, uh, there were plenty of executives and also scientists who are rock climbers or mountain climbers, right? That um, it is, in a way, it offers some of the same benefits as work when it goes really well, but it's incredibly physical. It, you know, at the end of an hour you're either at, you know, the top of the rock or you're not.

So the feedback loop is very, very clear, but it also feels like work when it goes well, because maybe for a scientist you're solving problems, right? You're taking this thing, you're breaking it down into a lot of little things, little steps, and then solving each one as you go. For, you know, there were, you know, CEOs who are mountain climbers talk about it being like leadership, because, you know, you're taking a team and pushing them past their limits and getting them to work together in ways they never have before, etc., etc. Same sport, but you're finding different things in it. So that's one thing. I think that um being, you know, being serious about um sleep is the next really simple daily thing that you can do that makes an enormous difference, both in the immediate term and in the long term.

So if you are, you know, doing any complicated thing, from choosing who to hire to evaluating, you know, contracts, etc., you will do that better when you're well-rested than when you are not. 40 years later, you are more likely to still be able to do that thing, rather than struggling with memory issues or other kinds of chronic illnesses. There are significant long-term benefits to sleep deprivation that um by now are sort of undeniable. And then the other, and I will close with, you know, take your vacations and encourage other people to take their vacations as well.

If you, you know, there's a great, the Framingham Heart Study, which was a study of thousands of people in Framingham, Massachusetts, over the course of like 40 years or so, actually found that the people who took vacations not only were healthier, both in the short run and less prone to chronic disease, but they actually were better at their jobs and sort of were promoted faster and sort of rose higher in their careers than people who did not. It sounds a little counterintuitive, but it's another illustration of the fact that rest is not an expense, but rather an investment. And if, as a founder, you take your vacation days, then that's a really clear signal to everybody else that they can do so sort of as well. And it might nudge everybody also to think through, all right, what things do we need to put in place, what systems, delegation, etc., buddy system, um, in order to make it possible for everybody to do this. So,

Could you go to an island right now? And do you have the system that would work without you or not? And these are some of the questions that we address. And there's this inherent need to control that is really linked to, I think, frankly, a lot of fear around the end result and where you're going. And so a lot of this is deep inner work for founders too, to start to kind of pull back. But it's so clear to me that the evidence is there, both personally, in terms of years of your life that sleep provides, but also on the systems level, for the productivity in the company, to your point about turnover and your ability to retain and attract super, like, high-quality mature talent that is, you know, kind of at that level where this is a major attractive lever for attracting and building your employer brand, if you can't compete with Meta, for example.

Um, you built a strong case here. So, I uh, I really appreciate it, and it's something that I'm excited to look at, how we might design at Horizon, as we go. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, and uh, appreciate you, Alex.