Weekends start on Saturdays. What if they could start on Fridays? What?!? Are you out of your mind?

Hmm.

Carlos Slim set the dialog rolling for fewer workdays recently. He advocated 3 11-hour workdays a week. Larry Page has referred to a 4-day week. Debate has continued, with views ranging from impracticality to glee. The more I think about it, the more I believe it is worth trying.

What if we actually do it while the world debates about it?

Allow me to share some thoughts – benefits, problems, constraints, and possibility.

Benefits
Contiguous time off from work helps our minds to relax, and our fires to recharge. It means time for hobbies and interests. Learning for techaholics. Research for thinkers. Tinkering for doers. Open-source contribution or personal projects for workaholics. Ideas for would-be entrepreneurs. Community and social work for do-gooders. Parties for party animals! Travel for travel-lovers. Family and kids time. Romance for couples. Sports for sport lovers. Home travel for those from other cities. A mix of all of the above for most of us!

Better life. Broader outlook. Broader minds. Better work.

Problems

On days you work, your work of 11-12 hours blocks out the rest of life. Those days can be more tiring. Work can suffer. An organization with longer weekends may be mistaken to be lazy, under-ambitious, and neglectful of work.

Constraints

With many benefits, fewer work days seem attractive. But there are constraints we have to consider.

Commitment
Every organization commits something to its customers/clients. At Mindfire, we commit 160 hours of work a month, 40 hours a week. Anything less and we have to suffer – when the organization earns less, everyone earns less. Work is the economic activity which generates wealth for all. Income is carved from eternity with our time. When income suffers, everyone suffers. That cannot be allowed to happen.

Non-work activities at work
In flexible workplaces, most of us have some non-work activities at work, perhaps about 10% of the time. In other words, 40 hours of work need about 44 hours at work.

Possibilities!

Now let us consider the possibilities.

3 x 11
3 days of 11 hours each is 33 hours a week, so that is infeasible.

4 x 11
4 days of 11 hours each can mean 40 work hours, which is feasible. However, getting clients to agree to one day off every week, even when other days are used to make up – is tough. Anything which harms work, will harm those who work.

4 x 10 + 4
Practically doable, similar benefits: 4 10-hour days followed by 4 hours on Friday!

This would mean 9am-7pm or 11am-9pm or whatever, Monday through Thursday, and 9am-1pm or 11am-3pm or whatever on Friday. Work ends and the weekend begins with lunch on Friday! Yay!

Interesting? Interested?

This could be a giant step for work, a small leap towards Work 2.0.

What do you think?