Even with a 40-hour week, I would love if the work day was shifted to allow one to get sunlight for a few hours each day.
I have had that experience for years. It can be quite disheartening to see the sun set while you are on your way home. I do not mind the cold in the winter, but the darkness can literally be depressing.
Last year, after some health issues, my boss surprised me (in a good way), when he offered me to reduce my working hours to 30 hours a week. That went along, of course, with a proportionate cut in my salary, but I was surprised to find it is actually worth it.
I start working at the same time as before, which means I still have to get up at 05:30[1] in the morning, and in winter it is still dark when I arrive at the office. But I get to leave at 14:00 now, and even in the deepest winter, the sun is still up when I get home. I also am less exhausted when I get home, so keeping up with housework is much less of a chore now. I could shift my work time to start later and finish later, but having the afternoon to myself is worth getting up early to me. In summer, it is much easier anyway, because the sun is already rising or up when I get up. And in spring and fall, I get to watch some gorgeous sunrises, which is not a big deal in the greater scheme of things, but amazing nevertheless.
Also, at this point, imagine me ranting about DST, which gives me an hour's worth of jet lag without traveling, twice a year.
I have had that experience for years. It can be quite disheartening to see
the sun set while you are on your way home.
The weather in winter is close to summer in Scotland during the day, but by the time I was out of the office it was dark.
I'm most productive in the mornings, and my productivity only takes a dive in the afternoon because that's when all my meetings are.
Turns out, anecdotes about an individual's workflow aren't broadly generalizable!
I get that there are issues of collaboration or interaction that may be necessary. But in general, it seems like, as long as your job doesn't depend on customer interaction or some other constraint, why not let people work a schedule that suits their lifestyle, and lets them work when they are most productive?
Part of the "why not" is a deeply ingrained belief in at least American culture that morning people are just "better" than night people. It's so ingrained that we mostly forget to talk about it and it's just assumed. "Early bird catches the worm" and all that.
I once saw a workplace where there were night-person-friendly policies and schedules. Then one insanely morning person joins and wants to leave at 3:30 every day. Suddenly all of his scheduling preferences were presumed valid, and all night-person preferences had to be fought for and justified.
So if you want to reach a world with truly optimal flexible schedules, first you'll need to wrest ownership of the culture from the "morning people are better" people who currently dominate it.
That'd be nice from a free-time perspective, but it doesn't line up with business needs.
Ask around, look around, and discuss stuff like this before signing the offer if it's important to you. It's definitely not impossible. :) Barring a union or such, things like this will only change one job at a time.
I shifted my schedule to early morning(6-7am) just so I could get 3-4 hours of uninterrupted work in before the onslaught of meetings. Highly recommend it.
This idealized notion of "when I feel like it" workdays is particularly unrealistic in a workplace where you collaborate across timezones. I work best in the morning Eastern time, and I have teammates on the US west coast. If there's any chance of working with them instead of around them, I can't just say "eh, I'm less productive after 11am Eastern, so I'm just gonna call it quits."
I can get the most work done between 8:20 - 13:00 or so, then lunch, then the productivity tails off after that
I'm sure it sounds like I'm being pithy, but you fall into line when your kids get home at 4 and you want to spend time with them before they go to bed at 8.
Maybe his point stands in some sense, but once you add kids into the mix it quickly becomes "9-5" again or "burning the candle at both ends."
Especially for high school kids (maybe 14-18 ish?). No one could possibly think that sending them to a school that starts at 7am is any way good for them. In our distract the high school starts at 7am and the small kids start at 9am. This makes no sense to me at all. (I'm not a kid complaining, I'm a parent)
https://www.westonschools.org/blog/2017/10/23/proposed-chang...
I suspect the problem is that teens just stay awake FAR LONGER than is advisable perhaps to maximize their free unstructured time at night and to minimize the crushing grind of the mornings?
I expect that if the school start time was shifted to 9am, the kids would just stay up until 5AM instead of only 3AM.
Not sure I follow exactly. The point is that 5 hour work days can be a better setup than 8 hour days (given that no manager is in your way etc.). What's stopping you from putting those hours in when the kids are in school?
I would agree of course that choosing to be employed in a 9-5 job is probably a much better deal when you have kids because of parental leave.
Now for me I work better at night/early morning. Because of this I have worked third shift (midnight to 8am) for over 30 years and it works perfectly for me. If I want to be up while first shift is working I can. Or if I want to sleep during first shift and be awake for second shift I can do that too. It is nice to get off of work and do my errands and such without much traffic or that many people in stores. I get my errands done faster which gives me more free time.
Third shift has the advantage that most of the population is asleep when I am working. So when I drive into work at night the roads are mostly empty and when I leave work in the morning the morning rush traffic is moving in the opposite direction that I am.
Another advantage of third shift is I only spend 20 minutes driving to work and 20 minutes driving home from work each day. All the first shift people I know spend at least double that in traffic each day because dang near everyone works first shift.
I do wonder if cities could benefit from a 24 hour schedule. Sure, during first shift the cities near me are bustling with people and activity. Second shift there are still people about and things to do, but after 8pm or so most cities around here start to look barren. Third shift. Shoot, it's me, the police, the newspaper delivery drivers and pretty much no one else.
Honestly I enjoy my commute. For me it's not long and I get time to get into and out of my work mindset on the way to and from work. Most of the time I end up listening to classical music or books on tape during my commute.
I used to go in right before lunch to avoid the impromptu meetings associated with people coming back into the office. Coming in 11am-1PM allowed me to block off my productive time and work until dinner sometime between 6-8pm; and then come back to problem solving after dinner. This gave me one 6-8 hour stretch of time with little distraction vs a 3 and 4 hour stretch with lots of distractions in the first period.
Unless you start having kids. Or work in an area where you need to meet customers face to face. Or both.
Just like working from Bali, working from a van, working from a plane, etc.
If you're a SINK or a DINK, go for it, 100%.
Of course it’s not everyday I don’t work in the afternoon, but it’s nice that you can spend the afternoon with the kids if you want.
Ok, sometimes duty calls in the middle of my night (last Tuesday I was woke up at 3am for an emergency on a client server) but in the 3 years I’ve been living this side of the ocean, it happened 7 or 8 tiles max.
In order to be able to work like that you need a very specific set of circumstances, probably first of all being self-employed.
Since I work by contract for a company, and they force me to put 8 hours a day, I can't do that. However, it is true that I am the most productive in the afternoon. That is why I try to enter and leave work as early as possible, so that I can spend those sweet afternoon hours being productive.
I've worked in remote jobs where, in general, people worked whenever they wanted, and we'd get on phone calls at agreed upon times if needed. I've also worked in jobs where we set aside a 2 hour window each day for everyone to be there, not caring if that window was the beginning, middle, or end of your day. Both of those scenarios felt more productive than "9-5".
I'd also be okay starting at a 1-9 if people are against the idea of working less hours per day.
Now this would only work if everything adapted. Schools, shops, banks, would all need to shift their hours.
Finally we could enjoy daylight. Imagine spending time outside in the sun with your kids and wife during the day!! Everyday!
Imagine not being too tired after your hard day of work to spend quality time with your family, hangout with friends, so household chores, work on that hobby project of yours, exercise!
I don't think its feasible without a King or dictator forcing this change though. I hope we did, the idea of working on the hours that the sun is out is old, everyone works indoors now.
Also, its difficult to gage the health and mental health impact of how little less sunshine we now consume compared to days past when we were outside a lot more during daylight times.
My fear of a 5 hour day would be that I'd be running at 80% for 5 hours instead of 80% for 8 hours.
I have certainly worked my fair share of > 40 hour weeks, but it’s safe to say you are forced to learn a way to be very efficient when you don’t have all day available to work.