Long weekend fever

Making every weekend 3 days long is not as indulgent as you might think

In my writings, I’m always urging us all to increase our sustainable living practices. Maybe I don’t do it directly in every article, but I hope the conclusion that our consumer choices will continue to shape the future always shines through. I advocate for various habits such as preparing meals from whole foods, repairing tools and appliances, and learning about sustainable living, the latter of which you do when you read my newsletter. So well done.

Many eco-lifestyle choices take time, especially when we start with a new practice. In our busy day-to-day lives, many of us feel we don’t have time or energy to sort out a new sustainable practice. Those of us with good paying jobs are often caught in the paradigm of being cash rich and time poor. And so we buy a new appliance rather than seek out a way to repair our current one. We drive to work rather than cycle. We pick up a coffee in a disposable cup or bottled water. We throw our clothes in the dryer. We don’t adopt a more sustainable diet, or a renewable electricity supplier or an ethical mortgage company because we don’t want spend our little free time researching those questions.

Given the current work practices of many people, it is pretty understandable that even well informed people don’t adopt every sustainable living practice. This is part of the reason I always advocate for the small steps we can and do take. And, importantly, perhaps the most impactful of sustainable living choices we can make - reducing our meat and dairy - doesn’t require more time than a healthy meat rich diet once you’ve adjusted. I guess it would only be fair to acknowledge at this point that I’ve found a time barrier in ‘going vegan’. For years I’ve been toying with eliminating all animal products from my diet but every week I find myself at the grocery store without a vegan meal plan shopping list. Harumph. Hoisted on my own petard, again. I sense a vegan week experiment newsletter coming on.

But back to the topic at hand - being time-poor. In my book, I argued that our collective obsession with paid work, leading to us being time poor, is one of 3 social trends which are accelerating our consumption of natural resources. The other two trends are a rise in material expectations and an increase in the perception of independence, both of which are mindsets that are at some level under our own control. On the other hand, how much time we spend at work is often out of our control. This is especially true in the US where health insurance is tied to work. What’s more, if we don’t work 5 days a week, we are less likely to be valued by our employers, to get good recommendations for other jobs, or to be promoted. And just sticking to working hours, rather than putting in overtime, may even threaten our job security.

But the world does not have to be this way. I’d argue it is this way because most businesses want to secure their largest market share and most consumers get caught up in the goal of amassing money. Everything becomes about financial efficiency and competitiveness, with the result being that the well being of ourselves and nature fall by the way side. In the distant past, hunters and gathers are estimated to have worked only 4 hours a day. Whereas in the US, thirty percent of male college graduates work more than 50 hours a week. And the hours-worked-trend is only increasing: the average working person worked 180 more hours a year in 2006 relative to 1979. Not only are we missing out on time with family and friends, but overworked employees have much high incidences of stress, poor health and depression. Increasing annual hours works is also found to be correlated with an increasing ecological footprint, leading to resource depletion and all beings suffering. (Schor, True Wealth 2010)

It is therefore delightful to see that Spain is close to embarking on a trial run of reducing their citizen’s work week to four days. Their motivation is not environmental, at least not primarily. Rather the choice to shorten the work week is driven by the desire to improve the lives of their citizens and to share out job opportunities. As automation is poised to eliminate many jobs, having a standard four day work week will increase the number of jobs available as well as improve the well being of the Spanish citizenry.

And it’s not just Spain - the UK’s Labour Party included a four day work week in their 2019 manifesto and companies around the world have trialed shorter working weeks. One analysis of businesses which have adopted a four day work week found a savings of 92 billion pounds, as well as fewer sick days and heightened rates of productivity. For instance, Microsoft Japan trialed a four day work week in August 2019 and found a whopping 40% increase in productivity against August 2018, although they had implemented other changes at the same time they attributed much of their improvement to the shorter working week. Over the same time sales rose by 40% and the company’s electricity bill fell by 23%.

While we can easily see many positives from a 4 day working week, there are of course hurdles to overcome. Service industries, such as nursing, which need so many hands on deck, and small businesses need to be folded into the discussion early for it is difficult to see how a 4 day work week will pan out for them. But in a working population for which only 13% of people consider work meaningful and actually look forward to work, alongside 24% of us who actually hate our job, an extra day off a week will have huge benefits. Not only will it allow people to spend more time with their families and to live well, but it will give us the time to train for and look for a different job.

As a final thought, in researching this article I came across a fascinating tidbit. For quite some time we’ve recognized that there are many mental health benefits to working - from feelings of being valued to having meaning and purpose. But it has been found that we only need a very few hours of work each week to access these benefits. In fact, as little as 1-8 hours a week yielded the same benefits as working 44-48 hours a week. Luckily for me, writing this newsletter each week takes around five or six hours and is an important aspect of my work. So I’ll stick with this writing work and continue to fill the rest of my life with gardening and activism. See you outside.