The 4-hour Workweek

A 4-hour workweek. Can you imagine? That's like going to work Monday morning and starting your weekend Monday afternoon. What a dream. In my research online, I came across the book "The 4-Hour Workweek" by Tim Ferriss. He was a workaholic who took a three week sabbatical to Europe. In those three weeks, he developed a new system that boosted his productivity tenfold.

In the reviews I read about the book, one advocate (Joshua Steimle) even wrote a love letter on Forbes to Tim about how much this system had changed his life. I reached out to Joshua via Twitter, and we had a brief exchange about the idea of a new norm for a workweek. My question for Joshua was what it would take for corporate America to adopt a new (a 4-day workweek, for example). His response was whether we want a new norm, or if we want no norm at all.

This completely shifted my perspective. Wouldn't it be better to just abolish the idea of a workweek altogether? We can all work when we want, where we want, how we want as long as we accomplish our objectives. Why even try to redefine what a "workweek" is? Why not just move to a new paradigm shift completely? It does make me wonder what it would take for society to be comfortable with no workweek norm at all.

It makes me think of the "certainty unbound" theme we discussed. Perhaps to see what society would become without the strains of a workweek norm, we'd have to just take a leap of faith. We'd have to go with what Bacon believed about being okay with not having all the answers. Some companies may flourish and some may fail, but we could adjust and continue testing new norms (or no norms) to see how we could benefit from systems that move away from the 40 hour workweek. Only time will tell what the workweek will become.

♫ I will work, and I will pray... ♪

"The ancient Greeks considered work a galling distraction from the more sublime pursuits of the mind—a view that allowed them to justify slavery so that the elite class could focus on thinking great thoughts..." What Is Your Calling in Life? Jeffery A. Thompson

A difference between myself and the Greeks: I believe in a balance of both prayer/meditation/higher thought/study and also hard work.  Here I am about to thrust in my sickle to harvest some rice with members and investigators in Thailand, just hours after morning scripture study.