One of my students told me that 100 companies in the UK recently switched to a permanent four-day work week for their employees without loss of pay, and that they hope to be a vanguard of a major change in work patterns by doing so. Moreover, the student told me that proponents of the four-day week argue that it will make companies improve their productivity with fewer working hours.
The more such an idea gains popularity, the more we will find ourselves questioning why so many companies insist on five or even six-day work weeks with long working hours. However, I think that the cons of the four-day work week would outweigh its pros because people in general do not know how to use their leisure time constructively. That is, if we would give more leisure time to people en masse, then we could expect to see a vast increase of problems in families: more arguments, divorces, problems with the kids, and so on.
Increasing our leisure time without implementing the learning of how to improve our relations would bring about more and more ruptures in our relations.
We thus need connection-enriching learning in order to build balanced lives between our home, family, work and leisure time. That is, we need an overriding purpose and meaning to everything we do, otherwise our engagements will end up tearing away at our relations. If we then set ourselves up to regularly improve our relationships throughout society from one day to the next, we could confidently lessen work hours and give people more time to rest and be with their families.
𝘉𝘢𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘦𝘰 “𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘈𝘳𝘦 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘗𝘳𝘰𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 4-𝘋𝘢𝘺 𝘞𝘰𝘳𝘬 𝘞𝘦𝘦𝘬?” 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘒𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘋𝘳. 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘭 𝘓𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘖𝘳𝘦𝘯 𝘓𝘦𝘷𝘪. 𝘞𝘳𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘦𝘯/𝘦𝘥𝘪𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘣𝘺 𝘴𝘵𝘶𝘥𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴 𝘰𝘧 𝘒𝘢𝘣𝘣𝘢𝘭𝘪𝘴𝘵 𝘋𝘳. 𝘔𝘪𝘤𝘩𝘢𝘦𝘭 𝘓𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘮𝘢𝘯.
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