WEBVTT - Making work more efficient, with Juliet Schor 0:00:03.000 --> 0:00:09.280 Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of iHeartRadio. Good Morning. 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:14.640 This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast. Today's 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:16.840 episode is going to be a longer one part of 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:20.560 the series where I interview fascinating people about how they 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:23.560 take their days from great to awesome, their expertise, and 0:00:23.720 --> 0:00:26.239 any advice they might have for the rest of us. 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:29.360 So today I am delighted to welcome Juliette Shore to 0:00:29.400 --> 0:00:32.560 the show. She's a professor at Boston College, the author 0:00:32.600 --> 0:00:36.199 of several books, including The Overworked American and a new 0:00:36.240 --> 0:00:37.320 one called Four. 0:00:37.159 --> 0:00:39.480 Days a Week. So, Julie, welcome to the show. 0:00:40.280 --> 0:00:41.400 Thank you, great to be here. 0:00:41.479 --> 0:00:43.280 Yees, So why don't you tell our listeners a little 0:00:43.320 --> 0:00:44.920 bit about yourself and your work. 0:00:46.320 --> 0:00:53.000 So I'm an economist originally, and I worked on issues 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:58.040 of work time. I was in the Harvard Economics department 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:01.680 when I sort of got intrigued by a sort of 0:01:01.800 --> 0:01:04.760 theoretical error in a philosopher's book. I mean, it just 0:01:04.800 --> 0:01:06.800 kind of a strange way to get into it, but 0:01:06.920 --> 0:01:11.200 it got me looking at American work time, and I 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:15.720 was surprised to find that contrary to what everyone believed 0:01:15.760 --> 0:01:19.920 would happen, and was happening. Americans were actually starting to 0:01:20.000 --> 0:01:22.080 work more and more. So that book came out in 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:25.520 the nineteen nineties and it cataloged a couple of decades 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:30.360 of rising work time, high levels of stress, burnout, et cetera. 0:01:30.720 --> 0:01:36.280 And since then I've done much more research on work 0:01:36.360 --> 0:01:39.880 and work patterns, and in twenty twenty one, I was 0:01:39.920 --> 0:01:43.440 invited to be the lead researcher for a path breaking 0:01:43.520 --> 0:01:47.000 series of trials that ended up taking place all around 0:01:47.040 --> 0:01:53.000 the world with companies who were giving their employees a 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.200 four day, thirty two hour work week, so not a 0:01:56.280 --> 0:02:01.840 compressed with full pay, but with an attempt to try 0:02:01.840 --> 0:02:05.400 and maintain their productivity. So a lot of the kinds 0:02:05.440 --> 0:02:09.480 of things that go under the rubric of personal productivity 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:12.640 of course, that you work on and so forth. These 0:02:12.800 --> 0:02:15.920 companies were trying to implement some of those ideas in 0:02:16.000 --> 0:02:21.040 the workplace and the results have been phenomenal, like very 0:02:21.160 --> 0:02:25.800 very successful, huge increases in people's well being and great 0:02:25.840 --> 0:02:27.079 successes for the company. 0:02:27.240 --> 0:02:27.919 Well, let's talk. 0:02:27.760 --> 0:02:30.359 About that successes for the company, because you know, I 0:02:30.400 --> 0:02:33.040 have many people here who are probably individual contributors listening 0:02:33.040 --> 0:02:36.320 to this. Also people who are managing companies, running companies, 0:02:36.400 --> 0:02:39.400 who are wondering like, Okay, I can see why, you know, 0:02:39.440 --> 0:02:42.400 your average worker might enjoy having a four day week. 0:02:42.720 --> 0:02:44.400 What's in it for the organizations? 0:02:44.400 --> 0:02:47.120 Like? Why were the organizations willing to try this out? 0:02:48.560 --> 0:02:52.440 Yeah? I think there's sort of two categories, and I 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:57.320 talk about these in the book. The founder of the 0:02:57.440 --> 0:03:00.440 organization that ran the trials was an entrepreneur or in 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:03.360 New Zealand, a man named Andrew Barnes, and he tried 0:03:03.360 --> 0:03:06.600 it at his own finance company. He called it the 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.360 one hundred eighty hundred, so one hundred percent of the 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:12.800 pay for eighty percent of the time. But he asked 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.280 his employees to all sign a contract saying they would 0:03:15.280 --> 0:03:17.320 get one hundred percent of their work done in those 0:03:17.360 --> 0:03:20.000 four days. He believed there was a lot of slack 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:25.040 in his organization, and many of the companies are in 0:03:25.080 --> 0:03:28.519 that model. So what's in it for them is they're 0:03:28.560 --> 0:03:32.560 able to maintain their productivity or maybe even increase it. 0:03:32.760 --> 0:03:34.839 And we can get into a bit more about how 0:03:34.880 --> 0:03:38.640 that happens. I think a key point of this is 0:03:39.360 --> 0:03:44.360 although individuals do make changes in how they do things, 0:03:44.400 --> 0:03:48.560 there's also a full organizational effort. I mean, often by 0:03:48.640 --> 0:03:52.240 teams sometimes by the whole group together, and you know, 0:03:52.280 --> 0:03:55.760 depending on size of organizations, to figure out what they're 0:03:55.800 --> 0:03:59.440 doing that isn't efficient, you know, where they're wasting time, 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:02.640 where they putting a lot of time into low value activities, 0:04:02.720 --> 0:04:11.280 et cetera. And so the organization maintains its productivity, but 0:04:11.360 --> 0:04:17.720 it gets big well being impacts for its employees. And 0:04:17.839 --> 0:04:21.680 that has multiple impacts. One is that often they report 0:04:21.720 --> 0:04:25.000 better quality of work because people are rested, they're not 0:04:25.839 --> 0:04:28.719 burning out, they are looking forward to coming to work 0:04:28.839 --> 0:04:32.480 on Monday morning. Many of them take Fridays off, they 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:34.960 don't get the Sunday scaries, et cetera. So there's that 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.560 piece of it, but that also leads to the other 0:04:40.880 --> 0:04:44.560 interesting phenomenon that I call the one hundred eighty eighties. 0:04:46.000 --> 0:04:48.880 One hundred percent of the pay eighty percent of the work. 0:04:49.040 --> 0:04:51.520 We're not asking you to do anything more. We're not 0:04:51.680 --> 0:04:55.760 asking you to get more efficient. Why you're already crazy efficient. 0:04:55.960 --> 0:04:58.880 You are a nurse in a hospital with no wasted time. 0:04:59.360 --> 0:05:02.520 You're the chef ft a restaurant who's just working a 0:05:02.560 --> 0:05:08.960 really long day and you've already optimized out anything time wasting. 0:05:09.680 --> 0:05:12.480 But you're burned out and so you just need a 0:05:12.600 --> 0:05:19.640 day off to recharge. And so for those companies or organizations, 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:25.400 they're stopping the bleeding of the burnout, the resignations, et cetera. So, 0:05:26.000 --> 0:05:29.200 for example, with some of the nurses in our studies, 0:05:29.560 --> 0:05:32.720 they rescinded resignation letters when they heard they were going 0:05:32.760 --> 0:05:35.360 to get a four day week. And for these people 0:05:35.480 --> 0:05:38.480 it's just life changing because they're kind of on the edge. 0:05:38.520 --> 0:05:42.680 So it's a paradox I argue because it's the low 0:05:42.720 --> 0:05:46.520 intensity organizations that could actually you know, they got a 0:05:46.560 --> 0:05:49.719 lot of slack there and they're really high intensity that 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:52.679 at the beginning are sort of the early adopters here 0:05:53.880 --> 0:05:57.200 where it's very easy to see how they might benefit. 0:05:57.400 --> 0:06:00.960 Yeah, well, especially on that latter one, because what I 0:06:00.960 --> 0:06:03.479 think a lot of people don't understand is the toll 0:06:03.520 --> 0:06:08.039 that turnover takes on productivity. That you know, if you 0:06:08.120 --> 0:06:11.279 have your five member team running at full tilt, that's great, 0:06:11.880 --> 0:06:14.840 but when one of them leaves, you are suddenly not 0:06:14.920 --> 0:06:18.719 running at full tilt until you can you know, hire replacement, 0:06:18.839 --> 0:06:21.520 train that person. You know, for the first however much 0:06:21.600 --> 0:06:24.640 time they are not you know, operating at where that 0:06:24.680 --> 0:06:28.760 person was who left and you're also encouraging management costs 0:06:28.839 --> 0:06:30.159 in training the person. 0:06:30.760 --> 0:06:32.919 And so from an organizational perspective, if you. 0:06:32.960 --> 0:06:36.560 Can cut that at all, you boost productivity even if 0:06:36.560 --> 0:06:39.400 the average person is working fewer hours. 0:06:39.440 --> 0:06:40.720 Is that's what I'm hearing you say? 0:06:41.720 --> 0:06:44.440 Absolutely, Laura, I mean that is such an important point. 0:06:44.560 --> 0:06:48.719 So I have a sort of deep dive into a 0:06:48.839 --> 0:06:54.680 company where that was so interesting what happened. And the 0:06:55.680 --> 0:06:57.680 book is both a lot of you know, kind of 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:04.040 statistical findings, but also those deep dives into individual companies 0:07:04.040 --> 0:07:10.160 that represent different ways, strategies, experiences. So this one is 0:07:10.200 --> 0:07:15.960 a global marketing company and advertising and marketing. They were 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:22.200 the person who ran the trial, the manager saying like 0:07:22.440 --> 0:07:27.720 thirty to forty percent turnover in that industry. And so 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:31.640 what she figured out she did a lot of calculations 0:07:31.640 --> 0:07:34.320 with their accounting people to figure out how much it costs. 0:07:34.320 --> 0:07:36.680 But when she went the company, which is a lot, 0:07:36.720 --> 0:07:38.520 and she said on her team, she had a fifty 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:44.120 seven person team, they're constantly onboarding, hiring, training, et cetera. 0:07:45.120 --> 0:07:48.040 And when she put in the four day week, she 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.080 went to zero resignations, zero turnover. Okay, And that we 0:07:52.160 --> 0:07:56.360 hear that from quite a few of our companies. And 0:07:56.520 --> 0:07:59.800 then what was so fascinating about it was she began 0:07:59.840 --> 0:08:04.440 to figure out, I can monetize this in my contracts. 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:10.480 So she put in, we get a bonus if no 0:08:10.520 --> 0:08:13.920 one leaves the team, and the clients just couldn't believe 0:08:13.960 --> 0:08:21.400 it because like table, yeah, and sure enough, and so 0:08:22.360 --> 0:08:26.080 it's yeah, it's really I mean there's very cold, hard 0:08:26.160 --> 0:08:29.440 cash here sitting on the table, lying on the lying 0:08:29.480 --> 0:08:32.120 on the table, if you will, if you can stop 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:35.839 that those resignations in those high turnover places, and that's 0:08:35.880 --> 0:08:40.120 why we're hearing from like social service agencies, restaurants, healthcare. 0:08:40.320 --> 0:08:42.960 I mean, these are many of the places which have 0:08:43.200 --> 0:08:48.600 had these big turnover problems in recent years. And you know, 0:08:48.679 --> 0:08:51.840 of course advertising and marketing, there's a lot of a 0:08:51.840 --> 0:08:53.800 lot of those kinds of companies in our sample. 0:08:53.920 --> 0:08:56.240 Absolutely, Well, we're going to take a quick ad break 0:08:56.240 --> 0:09:05.640 and then I will be back with more from Juliette Shore. Well, 0:09:05.679 --> 0:09:08.320 I am back talking with Juliette Shore, who's the author 0:09:08.400 --> 0:09:11.240 of the new book Four Days a Week, looking at 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.360 the results of a broad experiment with a number of 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:18.079 organizations that experimented with a four day work week. So 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:21.359 Julie we were talking about very you know, intensely structured organizations. 0:09:21.360 --> 0:09:25.120 We're reducing turnover had a positive benefit. Now we mentioned 0:09:25.120 --> 0:09:27.480 that there's also some you know, organizations that have a 0:09:27.520 --> 0:09:28.360 fair amount. 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.840 Of slack in how people are working. 0:09:32.480 --> 0:09:34.440 And I'm sure you and I have both seen the 0:09:34.440 --> 0:09:37.480 time diaries of people at some organizations. Who are you know, 0:09:37.600 --> 0:09:42.520 in meetings all day or who are you know, switching 0:09:42.559 --> 0:09:47.080 applications frequently? You know as they're constantly interrupted? You know, 0:09:47.080 --> 0:09:50.000 what's going on in those organizations and how are they 0:09:50.120 --> 0:09:54.280 sort of thinking about becoming more productive instead of just 0:09:54.360 --> 0:09:56.440 assuming that there's kind of an infinite number. 0:09:56.200 --> 0:09:58.199 Of hours that you can you can put out a task. 0:09:59.320 --> 0:10:04.959 Yeah, so that's probably the more common kind of organization 0:10:05.200 --> 0:10:11.559 among the hundreds that we have been studying. So for them, 0:10:12.160 --> 0:10:16.280 I would say ground zero has been meetings, and that's 0:10:16.320 --> 0:10:20.359 a kind of well known problem in these kinds of organizations. 0:10:20.400 --> 0:10:26.760 So when a company joins one of these trials, there's 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:31.720 a they're sort of groups of companies doing it together 0:10:31.840 --> 0:10:36.080 and they do two months of onboarding and what we 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:40.120 call work reorganization where we figure out with them, they 0:10:40.160 --> 0:10:43.200 go through these trainings and so on for they get 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.480 peer mentors people who have done it before figure out 0:10:46.520 --> 0:10:50.480 where they're wasting time. So meetings is a key place, 0:10:50.760 --> 0:10:53.640 and a lot of them make their meetings more productive. 0:10:53.679 --> 0:10:57.400 They reduce their numbers of meetings, and there's a you know, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.760 there's like a huge amount of literature now on meetings 0:11:00.800 --> 0:11:04.960 and sort of how they're affecting productivity in many organizations. 0:11:06.000 --> 0:11:09.760 The flip side of that is the focus time. Because 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:15.199 of that distraction problem, so many of these organizations also 0:11:16.880 --> 0:11:20.600 set times in the day when people will have focused 0:11:20.600 --> 0:11:22.800 time and they shouldn't be bothered and so forth, and 0:11:22.840 --> 0:11:25.400 there will be no meetings, et cetera. Other people can 0:11:25.440 --> 0:11:29.480 do that sort of individually, but then there are other 0:11:29.800 --> 0:11:33.679 sorts of things that they do to figure out how 0:11:33.679 --> 0:11:37.240 to make it work. So in some of the manufacturing companies, 0:11:37.280 --> 0:11:40.200 they do like a process engineering exercise where they go 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:44.640 through every stage of their process and figure out where 0:11:44.679 --> 0:11:48.719 they wasting time. Where could they slot one thing one 0:11:48.800 --> 0:11:51.600 task into a dead time with another task. If they 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.760 you know the brewery that I talk about in the book, 0:11:54.800 --> 0:11:58.480 they have many different tasks going on it once. But 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.040 the same thing can be done in way call organizations 0:12:01.040 --> 0:12:05.079 where you sort of follow the chain of decision making 0:12:05.440 --> 0:12:09.200 or you follow you know, a form going through all 0:12:09.240 --> 0:12:11.720 the steps, and so they do those sorts of things. 0:12:12.080 --> 0:12:16.440 One interesting one at Kickstarter, which was the lead company 0:12:16.480 --> 0:12:20.760 in our first US trial, was that they realized the 0:12:20.840 --> 0:12:25.960 leadership team was not giving clear enough instructions to the programmers, 0:12:26.240 --> 0:12:28.560 you know, when they wanted them to do something, and 0:12:28.600 --> 0:12:32.240 they would get stuck or go down the wrong fork 0:12:32.880 --> 0:12:36.480 for a while. So leadership team figured out how it 0:12:36.559 --> 0:12:41.360 could make its intentions clearer to itself to begin with, 0:12:41.640 --> 0:12:46.679 and then give better instructions to the programming teams and 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:50.440 then kind of just let them run with things. One 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:55.600 other thing really important in certain kinds of businesses. We 0:12:55.720 --> 0:13:00.960 had a broadband provider that got a massive new contract 0:13:01.000 --> 0:13:03.520 at the same time that they went to the four 0:13:03.559 --> 0:13:06.200 day week, and we did in addition to all the 0:13:06.280 --> 0:13:09.080 surveying we did before and after interviews with this group, 0:13:09.480 --> 0:13:12.320 and when we came back to them, we were like, well, 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:15.160 how did you make it work? You had this huge 0:13:15.200 --> 0:13:19.720 influx of business and mostly it was like dealing with 0:13:19.760 --> 0:13:24.400 customer service problems, connecting and so forth. And what they 0:13:24.480 --> 0:13:29.240 explained was, well, they finally got serious about documentation. They said, 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:31.160 first of all, no, the four day week is what 0:13:31.240 --> 0:13:34.840 made it viable. Otherwise everybody would have burned out. But 0:13:34.920 --> 0:13:38.440 they got serious about documentation something. And this is a 0:13:38.440 --> 0:13:41.079 more general point, like if you don't put the time 0:13:41.120 --> 0:13:45.199 in upfront to save you time later, you're going to 0:13:45.240 --> 0:13:48.480 get overloaded. And so you know, their people had previously 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:52.880 been reinventing the wheel with customer service, but now they documented. 0:13:52.920 --> 0:13:57.400 And that's a more general point to which I think 0:13:57.440 --> 0:14:01.080 many of us, you know, don't do it, which is 0:14:01.080 --> 0:14:03.640 you get some new piece of software, equipment, whatever, you 0:14:03.640 --> 0:14:05.960 don't spend the time at the beginning learning how to 0:14:06.000 --> 0:14:09.000 make it more efficient for you because you just want 0:14:09.040 --> 0:14:12.679 to get going. And I call it the forcing mechanism 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:15.200 of the four day week because it forces you to 0:14:15.280 --> 0:14:16.920 get more efficient earlier on. 0:14:17.360 --> 0:14:17.760 Yeah. 0:14:17.840 --> 0:14:20.520 Well, just in general, I think a lot of people 0:14:20.680 --> 0:14:24.840 and probably organizations too, just don't treat time as valuable. 0:14:24.880 --> 0:14:26.000 And it's one thing. 0:14:26.000 --> 0:14:28.880 If you're paying somebody by the hour, because then obviously 0:14:28.920 --> 0:14:31.680 you know how many hours they are working and there's 0:14:31.720 --> 0:14:38.160 a you know, natural accountability on that. But for people 0:14:38.200 --> 0:14:42.640 who aren't, there just isn't that accountability. It is why 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.440 you see one of these things. But with that I 0:14:45.440 --> 0:14:47.080 think you mentioned in the book that it was harder 0:14:47.120 --> 0:14:50.360 for managers though to adopt this sort of. 0:14:51.040 --> 0:14:57.400 Schedule, especially the scene, especially seniors. Yes, so what we 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:02.720 heard a bit more from them is more some of 0:15:02.760 --> 0:15:05.320 them took that day off and that was it. So 0:15:05.760 --> 0:15:07.600 I don't want to make it seem like none of 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:11.240 them were successful with this, but what some of them 0:15:11.280 --> 0:15:14.160 would do is use it a little bit as a 0:15:14.160 --> 0:15:18.360 catch up day because nobody else was working. So this 0:15:18.400 --> 0:15:19.320 is another key thing. 0:15:19.560 --> 0:15:21.120 So you don't have any meetings. 0:15:21.160 --> 0:15:23.200 You don't have any meetings, and you don't have people 0:15:23.240 --> 0:15:29.040 giving you work. And that's also an important principle when 0:15:29.080 --> 0:15:31.040 companies think about how are you going to do this? 0:15:31.120 --> 0:15:32.560 Is everybody going to be off on the same day, 0:15:32.560 --> 0:15:35.440 because that's one way of making sure that people don't 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:38.840 just get overloaded when they come back because their coworkers 0:15:38.880 --> 0:15:42.800 were putting more on their plate. They use it as 0:15:42.800 --> 0:15:46.000 a catch up day, or they you know, they work 0:15:46.040 --> 0:15:48.600 a little bit on that day. They can't take it 0:15:48.640 --> 0:15:51.960 totally off. But part of what that means is they 0:15:51.960 --> 0:15:54.240 don't have to do as much work on weekends and nights, 0:15:54.720 --> 0:15:57.440 so they are getting a break. It's just a little 0:15:57.480 --> 0:16:01.520 bit different number one, I did. She talked to me 0:16:01.600 --> 0:16:04.960 about how she would work from home that day and 0:16:05.040 --> 0:16:07.600 she'd feel free to put in laundry, pick up her daughter, 0:16:07.720 --> 0:16:10.560 this than that, which on a regular work from home 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:13.120 day she wouldn't feel she could do that. And so 0:16:13.160 --> 0:16:16.000 it was just it was a huge blessing to them 0:16:16.040 --> 0:16:18.720 as well, even if they didn't manage to reduce by 0:16:18.760 --> 0:16:20.880 the full eight hours that many of their. 0:16:20.720 --> 0:16:21.520 Co workers do. 0:16:21.760 --> 0:16:23.920 Yeah, well, I wonder and I think you talk a 0:16:23.960 --> 0:16:28.080 little bit about this, that there's some drifting toward this, 0:16:28.720 --> 0:16:32.160 especially as you know, if you think about summer Fridays 0:16:32.280 --> 0:16:35.160 or more, people are sort of working from home on Fridays, 0:16:35.160 --> 0:16:35.920 not that they're not working. 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:37.120 I mean, I want to put that out there. I'm 0:16:37.120 --> 0:16:38.320 a big fan of working from home. 0:16:38.320 --> 0:16:41.160 People working from home generally are working, but they're probably 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.040 is a tendency to leave a little bit earlier on 0:16:43.360 --> 0:16:45.640 a Friday, if it's a work from home day for instance. 0:16:46.400 --> 0:16:48.840 And we are seeing, yeah, this is great. I call 0:16:48.880 --> 0:16:52.560 it the evolution of Fridays. We are seeing this showing 0:16:52.640 --> 0:16:56.320 up in hard numbers, interesting numbers, like in finance numbers, 0:16:56.960 --> 0:17:02.840 where like stock traders and other kinds of people, there's 0:17:03.120 --> 0:17:08.400 less activity going on, or studies of business people responding 0:17:08.440 --> 0:17:14.040 to surveys. And this is actually one of the interviews 0:17:14.080 --> 0:17:17.840 of a guy a marketing the head of a marketing 0:17:17.880 --> 0:17:22.719 company talk to me about how by taking Fridays off, 0:17:22.960 --> 0:17:27.120 there really wasn't as much going off on Fridays anyway, 0:17:27.240 --> 0:17:29.919 So Friday is no longer a sort of twenty percent 0:17:30.000 --> 0:17:34.800 productivity day in lots of places. And then I you know, 0:17:35.080 --> 0:17:37.640 I've got a lot of anecdotal stuff in there about 0:17:38.240 --> 0:17:42.440 how things really have evolved to be different on Fridays, 0:17:44.160 --> 0:17:49.920 and it's just it is evolving into less of a workday, 0:17:50.119 --> 0:17:51.600 especially Friday afternoons. 0:17:51.680 --> 0:17:54.879 Yeah, well, there's I mean, there's obviously some caveats here. 0:17:54.880 --> 0:17:56.440 I mean people are like, well, okay, four day's great, 0:17:56.440 --> 0:17:58.040 how about three? How about two? You know, I mean 0:17:58.560 --> 0:17:59.360 there's there's. 0:17:59.119 --> 0:18:02.440 Some limits on this obviously, of how much productivity we 0:18:02.840 --> 0:18:06.000 can wreak out of the ring out of the system. 0:18:06.440 --> 0:18:09.680 And then also with that, one of the caveats being 0:18:09.720 --> 0:18:12.879 that I imagine one of the things that makes this 0:18:12.960 --> 0:18:17.399 extra weekday off useful is that places are open that 0:18:17.440 --> 0:18:19.400 you could then go. I mean, one of the things 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.560 people are doing is they're doing their grocery shopping, or 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:23.400 they're going to the doctor, or they're you know, doing 0:18:23.480 --> 0:18:27.280 those life maintenance things, which we couldn't then have every 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:30.280 place only open a certain limited number of days or 0:18:30.280 --> 0:18:31.680 we'd lose that benefit. 0:18:32.680 --> 0:18:36.680 Oh absolutely. I mean there are many organizations in our 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:40.840 trials that are twenty four to seven organizations and they're 0:18:40.880 --> 0:18:46.200 still twenty four sevens or that are five days. That 0:18:46.320 --> 0:18:51.000 marketing person I was just talking about his company went 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:54.719 to half teams on Monday and Friday because they wanted 0:18:56.200 --> 0:19:00.640 a full forty hour availability for their clients for example. 0:19:02.200 --> 0:19:05.320 You know, another message of the book is that there 0:19:05.359 --> 0:19:09.560 isn't a one formula for this, that each of these 0:19:09.600 --> 0:19:12.240 companies sort of figures out what's going to work for 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:17.600 them based on their their business, their what their employees want, 0:19:17.920 --> 0:19:21.280 you know a lot of different factors. But yeah, absolutely 0:19:22.400 --> 0:19:28.080 you need to Uh, if you're an access business, good 0:19:28.119 --> 0:19:29.879 chance you're going to keep that access. 0:19:29.960 --> 0:19:31.479 Yeah, yeah, that people are counting on that. 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:33.320 We're going to take one more quick ad break and 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:35.160 then I will be back with more from Juliette Shore. 0:19:42.440 --> 0:19:42.600 Well. 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:45.080 I am back talking with Juliette Shore who is the 0:19:45.119 --> 0:19:47.240 author of the new book Four Days a week. 0:19:47.920 --> 0:19:49.680 So, Julia, we always like to. 0:19:49.920 --> 0:19:54.040 Hear about how people manage their own personal productivity. I mean, 0:19:54.040 --> 0:19:57.080 you're obviously, you know, leading research and writing books and 0:19:57.840 --> 0:20:00.040 being a public intellectual about things like that, and I 0:20:00.000 --> 0:20:02.359 I assume have duties at your university as well. 0:20:02.920 --> 0:20:05.560 Do you have any routines that make you more productive? 0:20:08.520 --> 0:20:11.440 It's funny you ask this, because I do. Just we 0:20:11.440 --> 0:20:14.760 were just talking about the Friday evolving thing. I mean, 0:20:14.800 --> 0:20:18.360 I often get asked when I wrote The Overworked American, 0:20:18.440 --> 0:20:21.439 I was always asked how many hours a week do 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:25.040 you work? And at that point I was like the 0:20:25.080 --> 0:20:29.639 poster child for needing a makeover by you, which was 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:32.680 I was in the office long, long hours, and many 0:20:32.720 --> 0:20:33.840 of them were not productive. 0:20:34.040 --> 0:20:34.679 It was okay. 0:20:34.840 --> 0:20:37.960 The office was also my socializing place. I didn't have kids, 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.520 I wasn't married in those early days. So with this one, 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:44.520 of course, I get asked how many days a week 0:20:44.600 --> 0:20:46.760 I work? And I always used to say, well, I 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:48.439 just work when I want and I don't work when 0:20:48.480 --> 0:20:50.040 I don't feel like it, et cetera, et cetera. But 0:20:50.119 --> 0:20:54.600 I noticed about two weeks ago someone asked me that 0:20:54.800 --> 0:20:57.760 and I was like, you know, what Friday is evolving 0:20:57.800 --> 0:21:04.080 away from a workday for me, so productivity. Yeah, So 0:21:04.160 --> 0:21:07.520 I do think taking that Friday has really helped me. 0:21:08.040 --> 0:21:11.200 I'm feeling pretty relaxed, despite you know, juggling a lot 0:21:11.200 --> 0:21:17.560 of balls. When I am writing a book or articles, 0:21:17.720 --> 0:21:21.119 I start first thing in the morning, after exercise, so 0:21:21.160 --> 0:21:24.240 I have started a morning exercise routine. I do my 0:21:24.359 --> 0:21:29.440 exercising first thing in the morning. I actually run exercise classes. 0:21:29.480 --> 0:21:32.080 I'm not the teacher. I just put on the tape 0:21:32.200 --> 0:21:35.840 and do the zoom room. But it means I have 0:21:35.920 --> 0:21:40.800 that accountability to the other people who come. And then 0:21:40.960 --> 0:21:44.439 I then I, you know, go trudge up to my 0:21:44.480 --> 0:21:48.119 third floor and start writing. I do find that first 0:21:48.880 --> 0:21:52.280 period of the day, the morning, is most productive. I 0:21:52.400 --> 0:21:56.719 write until I just peter out. You know. If I'm 0:21:56.720 --> 0:21:59.880 writing a book, for example, and that works really well 0:21:59.920 --> 0:22:03.720 for me, I just do that. What are some of 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:06.720 my other tips? So I think those are the two 0:22:06.760 --> 0:22:10.119 most important things, Like I have a dedicated place and 0:22:10.240 --> 0:22:13.840 time for my most And you say that you made 0:22:13.840 --> 0:22:16.400 that point about trying to do the hardest thing first. 0:22:17.040 --> 0:22:17.760 I always do that. 0:22:17.880 --> 0:22:20.159 Now with writing a book, I always start with my 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:31.960 hardest chapter and dedicated time, place, exercise routine. And then 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:34.840 I think also that point I started with just making 0:22:34.840 --> 0:22:38.359 sure I have enough rest time and relaxation, and that 0:22:38.440 --> 0:22:41.480 I'm not feeling like I work all the time and 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:43.800 I don't have time to do other things that I want. 0:22:43.880 --> 0:22:47.119 I just I just you know, I'm lucky because I 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:51.760 control my own time basically, so I take as much 0:22:53.480 --> 0:22:57.560 time non work time as I feel I want. And 0:22:57.600 --> 0:23:00.479 that also makes the working so much easier because I'm 0:23:00.520 --> 0:23:02.560 not feeling like, oh, I have to work all the time. 0:23:02.760 --> 0:23:06.440 Occasionally during the semester when I'm teaching, I sometimes feel like, oh, 0:23:06.480 --> 0:23:09.560 why am I working so much? But that's you know, 0:23:09.680 --> 0:23:11.920 that's the part of my job I can't really control. 0:23:12.080 --> 0:23:16.560 Well, that comes with the territory, So dealing with people's 0:23:17.080 --> 0:23:19.719 messages and questions all the time, I am sure in 0:23:19.760 --> 0:23:23.600 that role. Well, I always ask guests something and man, 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:25.359 we can talk about the things maybe that you do 0:23:25.440 --> 0:23:28.159 in your non working hours. What is something you have 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.280 done recently to take a day from great to awesome? 0:23:35.560 --> 0:23:41.439 The delayed Mother's Day celebration, so my favorite thing to 0:23:41.480 --> 0:23:43.720 do is to take a bike ride. On a Sunday, 0:23:44.520 --> 0:23:47.720 took a bike ride with my son, which was really wonderful, 0:23:47.880 --> 0:23:52.040 and then went out with son and husband sadly daughters 0:23:52.080 --> 0:23:57.840 on the other coast to our favorite vegetarian restaurant and 0:23:58.080 --> 0:24:04.639 had an awesome meal and then watched a playoff basketball 0:24:04.680 --> 0:24:09.760 game for my wonderful team that sadly lost, the Boston Celtic. 0:24:11.320 --> 0:24:14.840 We can guess where you are, and yes, sadly, well, 0:24:14.880 --> 0:24:16.959 I'm not a I'm not a Boston fan myself, but 0:24:17.280 --> 0:24:20.040 I understand, I understand the feeling and the Sixers here 0:24:20.080 --> 0:24:23.720