Four years on a 4-day workweek

Today marks 4 years since I started working 4 days a week - I currently take Fridays off, in exchange for a 20% pay cut. A 4-day work week is such a normal fact of life for me now, but I realised I’ve never talked about it on my blog before. I figure 4 years in is a good place to start as any!

I currently work as a software engineer at a tech company, and don’t have any kids, expensive mortgages or other financial pressures, so I will say that I’m in a pretty privileged position to be able to do this. Not to mention that my company actually offers it as an option, which I’m sure many don’t.

And I think that privilege has been part of the reason why I’ve been a bit hesitant to talk about it - as much as I want to recommend everyone to switch to a 4-day work week, the reality is it’s not really feasible for a lot of people! Nonetheless, if you’ve ever been curious about doing it, or just want to know what it’s been like for me, I hope you can find some use in this post.

How I ended up doing 4 days a week

So to give a bit of backstory, I was seriously considering leaving my current job around 2020. I had been there for a couple of years at that point, and the days of being a bright-eyed and eager graduate developer had worn off. There wasn’t any toxic teammates or overtime, so the working conditions weren’t bad, but I just didn’t find the work I was doing to be very fulfilling. Spending 5 days of my week feeling “meh” at work was just making me feel “meh” overall. I was basically having a quarter-life crisis. (The COVID lockdowns probably didn’t help with the situation either).

So I got curious about a startup, did a job interview, and got offered a role. The first problem was, I was looking at taking a bit of a pay cut. And the funny thing is, I was seriously considering taking it - which is very uncharacteristic for me because I quite like money.

The second problem was that I lived in Australia at the time, and my long-term goal was to move to Japan, and I saw my current job as the most viable path to that since they had a pretty good remote working policy. So I was a bit stuck on what to do.

So then I had the idea - if I was seriously willing to take a pay cut for a “better” job elswhere, why not trying staying at my company, reduce my hours, and take the pay cut here first? The logic is a bit strange, but since I’m so money-oriented, that was really the only way I could justify it to myself. And so I got approval from my manager, and began working 4 days a week.

Considering I’m still at my same job 4 years later, and I now live in Japan, I’d like to say that that decision worked out pretty well.

What do I do with that extra day off?

When I first started doing 4 day work weeks, I struggled a bit with answering this question. Because if I just spent my Friday sitting on the couch or running an errand, that’s a boring answer to give to people, right? I felt this pressure on myself that I should be using this extra free time “productively”, especially since I was taking a pay cut. But I don’t think that’s a good mentality to have - it’s just another weekend day. And the weekend should be used for resting, so I don’t think you need to do something productive.

With my Fridays off, you’d also think that I could do a lot of 3-day weekends away. But realistically speaking, although I’m on a 4-day week, my friends and partner are not, so this hasn’t really happened as much as you’d think. Unless I’m keen on doing a weekend solo trip.

What’s it like working 4 days a week?

Getting one more day of leave a week is as great as it sounds. The easiest example to point to is that I never ever get the “ugh, tomorrow is Monday” feeling of dread that I used to get on a Sunday afternoon. Working 5 days and then only getting a 2 day break can feel pretty rough, but the 4/3 split feels so much more balanced - I’m sure you feel a bit more refreshed whenever you get a 3-day weekend, so imagine having one of those every week.

I’m also quite an introverted person, and as much as I love my partner I also like having some quiet alone time. So Friday is like my recharge day before I jump into the weekend and spend time with my partner and/or friends.

Another advantage of having a weekday off is you can escape Japan’s crowds. I like to go hiking but depending on the mountain, carparks can fill up ridiculously early on weekends, the trails are full of people, and the traffic on the highways out of Tokyo can get pretty bad too. So if I go for a hike on a Friday, it usually tends to be a more pleasant experience.

Am I less productive?

I like to think it’s not immediately obvious that I work 4 days a week, or that I produce 80% the capacity of my teammates. Although even if I did, that is perfectly OK too - after all my company is paying me less.

I suspect Parkinson’s law (“work expands to fill the available time”) has something to do with it. I have a set of things of things that need doing, and a more compressed time to get it done in, so I might just be more efficient. And with the 3 days leave, I feel like I have more energy in the 4 days that I do do work.

Has it had an impact on my career at all?

I think this is a valid concern especially if you’re working for a company with strict performance reviews. I can’t sit here and say it definitely won’t have an impact on your career. I will say though that I have still had career growth since beginning 4-day work weeks, and was promoted to senior engineer last year. I can’t say whether maybe I would have gotten promoted earlier if I working full-time. I don’t think so, but even if it did, I’m happy with the tradeoff.

How does it impact my team?

My team works around me by not scheduling important meetings on Fridays. For less important things, I’m able to catch up just by reading meeting docs or watching recordings. I’m really grateful to have such a supportive team who are totally fine with me just disappearing once week.

We do have an 24/7 on-call rotation, which is probably the only place where I felt like there was a bit of a grey zone. Usually, if we get paged out of hours (during the night or on a weekend), we need to log-in to our laptop within 15 minutes, diagnose the issue, and if its determined to be a “minor” incident (i.e. low customer impact), you can log back off and come back to it during the next working day.

So if I get paged during the day on a Friday, that’s technically my day off, but since it’s still working hours for everyone else, I can’t really ignore the incident, even if it’s minor. But it’s also weird that I would then have to work to resolve the incident on my day off, right?

Rather than thinking about this too hard, the simplest fix was that I would swap my Friday on-call day with someone else’s Monday. Again, super thankful to my team for giving me the flexibility on this one (and I try to pay it back by helping out other people when they want roster swaps as well).

Another place where I make an exception is when my team has in-person gatherings, which happen once or twice a year. Since I’m taking an 9-hour flight from Tokyo to Sydney for that, I’ll work the full 5 days and take a day in lieu, because it’s a bit of a waste otherwise.

On the 20% pay cut

I actually do care a lot about money, and am interested in the FIRE movement - so you’d think this goes against the idea of doing a 4-day work week. But I think there is a balance to be struck between trying to make as much money as possible, and enjoying the life you have in the meantime. There’s no point being miserable for 10 years just so you can retire at 40, right?

So even if it takes me a little longer to get enough savings to retire, I think it’s a fair trade-off if I’m happier during the process. Finding what makes you happy is pretty important for FIRE too, since there’s no point retiring early if you don’t know how you’re going to enjoy it. I like to think I’m setting myself up for success in that sense, by giving myself the time to now to develop hobbies and find what brings me joy outside of work.

Am I going to continue the 4 day work week?

When I first started working 4 days a week, I didn’t think it was immediately going to solve my problems. Instead I saw it more as a trial run, where I was trying to see if it would help me feel less “meh” about life and working in general. Over the ensuing 4 years, my life had a lot of ups and downs - the world overcame COVID, my dog passed away, I changed teams at work, and I moved to Japan where I developed a new love for mountains and hiking.

So I can’t really point to that date where I first started working 4 days and tell you that that’s when my life changed for the better. But I can say that overall, I’m really happy today, and I can’t imagine going back to 5 days a week.

So most definitely yes, I will be continuing to work 4 days a week - and if your life circumstances allow for it, I definitely recommend you consider it as well.