It seems to me slightly unfair that in the main most of us have to work 5 days for 2 days off. Your working week and your weekend; one is longer and goes slow, the other shorter and goes fast.
It’s an evolution I suppose. In earlier times we were working 7 days a week, because we were hunter-gatherers, or we were slaves. We were literally working to survive. Then comes the industrial revolution and the factory existence and it wasn’t uncommon to be working 6 days and get one solitary day off to recover. A hard life, and one which I’m sure a good number of people still have to endure.
Starting from the other end, if you’re working no days or one day a week, you’re probably independently wealthy, or you can rely on someone else to bring in the bread. If you’re 2 days on and 5 days off, or perhaps 3 days on and 4 days off, then you work part-time in my book. Nothing wrong with that at all. It works great for many millions.
Which brings us back to where I started. 5 days of work and 2 days of play doesn’t feel all that evolved to me. 4 days working, however, and 3 days to yourself – well, that feels a lot more equitable. If your work situation is flexible enough that you can fit your working week into 4 days, or if you can get by on 4 days’ income rather than 5, then that feels a lot fairer to me.
There are 168 hours in a week, of which we’re asleep for about 58, leaving 110 hours left. When you factor in getting ready for work, getting to work, lunch, getting back from work and getting changed, that’s about an 11-hour day, or half of the 110 hours at your disposal if you work 5 days. Half the hours are work-related, so my feeling is the balance of days should be closer to half as well.
We simply need to have the right culture and make the economics work for the 4:3 work:play balance.
Paul Dilger's blog 
Many commentators on ‘The Future of Employment’ claim that not only is 4:3 a desire for the white-collar dudes like us, but it’s inevitable for the blue-collar dudes.
Folks in Victorian England were only worked 6 days a week because the productivity demands were only being met by manpower. As we move towards a more automation-based production environment — it sounds like sci-fi, but I assure you it’s real — we’ll be producing more overall for considerably fewer man-hours.
The way to make this happen without the arse falling out of society are complex and challenging, and will need the leaders and thinkers in our childrens’ generation to be careful, scientific, apolitical and — above all — compassionate to ensure we don’t end up in a mess.
Fewer job-hours to share around will lead to either more jobless, or everyone working 4:3, but if this is for less earned £ per work-week there’ll be less money being spent by workers, leading to less demand, and less productivity — see where this is going?
Experts say the answer is a reduced work-week bound tightly to a universal basic income. That’s a tough sell…
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Very well reasoned Andy, thanks for commenting. I see a regular blogger in you emerging :-).
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