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7-Day Work Week (with shorter days)

If you could work 7 days a week, 5.5 hours a day, would you?

  • Yes

    Votes: 2 11.8%

  • No

    Votes: 15 88.2%
  • Total voters
    17
Gritches

Gritches

The Happy Dog
V.I.P Member
If you could choose to work a 7-day work week, 365 minus 8 paid holidays, 5.5 hours per day, would you? This is as opposed to either the traditional 5 days a week/8 hours a day, or 4 days/10 hours, or I guess any arrangement where you have something akin to a "weekend".'

I ask because this is exactly what I've done. To make a long story short, I'm getting burned out at work going 9-5 M-F; because with that kind of work day +2 hours of commuting I barely get to do anything that day but work and sleep, and it's incredibly taxing to work 8 hours. If I have doctor's appointments, I have to make up those hours the other days of the week, so really it usually ends up being more like 10.

AND DEN, as soon as I'm used to the work/sleep cycle, the weekend comes along and cocks everything up. I get super depressed because I'm not busy (is what I figure as to why), and my whole routine that I just spent 5 days establishing goes out the window.

When I burn out of a job, I just get flaky. I get flakier and flakier until I flake away. But I think back to the one job I've had where I didn't burn out, and it was when I worked 7 days a week, literally 365, no holidays, no weekends, but a somewhat shorter day.

It was the routine that made it so doable. I was never looking at the clock thinking "okay, 4 hours and 17 minutes til I can leave." It was just every day, 3 AM, same exact thing every day with just a few occasional and minor tweaks that kept it from being too monotonous. And I didn't miss one single day of work; over 730 consecutive days.

So I asked my boss if I could work 7 days a week, 5.5 hours a day, and she said yes. I made the compelling argument that my stamina only goes to about 5 hours anyway, after that I'm basically just BSing through the rest of the day.

Today was my first day of working a Saturday, for 5.5 hours, and I'll be doing it again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next day. But you know what? I'm not tired/fatigued/burned out. I got a lot of work done. And my day's not even over yet, I get some time to be myself.

Am I a clever Aspie or a dumb one? If you could choose to work that kind of schedule, would you?
 
I remember my mother talking about The proposed idea of working three days a week so that everybody would have a job sounded very interesting
 
It's great that it's a winner for you and that your boss had the sense to let you do it. I'm retired but I don't think I could have worked 7 days without a break like you did. In fact it's amazing you did that with no days off for 730 consecutive days. I think your boss is getting the best end of this deal but glad you like it! You're going to be their most productive employee if you're not already so. But then what happens if you decide you want to take a trip or visit someone or do something that requires a few days off?
(Also if you're not busy on the weekends you need to learn how to play!!!!)

P.S. You're clearly a clever aspie even without this, XD.
 
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For me? I need my days off just to relax and enjoy myself... The weekend is also when I'm able to indulge in my photography... In my job some times of the year we are working a 48 hour work week, I basically put aside my photography during the work week except for any editing I will do...

I will echo everyone else, I'm glad you found something that will work for you, not for this guy though...
 
I had a few jobs where I worked (4) ten hour days which opened up more time to work on my side gigs.

I was no stranger to double shifts.
 
LucyPurrs said:
It's great that it's a winner for you and that your boss had the sense to let you do it. I'm retired but I don't think I could have worked 7 days without a break like you did. In fact it's amazing you did that with no days off for 730 consecutive days. I think your boss is getting the best end of this deal but glad you like it! You're going to be their most productive employee if you're not already so. But then what happens if you decide you want to take a trip or visit someone or do something that requires a few days off?
(Also if you're not busy on the weekends you need to learn how to play!!!!)

P.S. You're clearly a clever aspie even without this, XD.
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Aww thank you :) If I needed a couple days off, I'd just ask. And here's where this becomes an even bigger advantage:

If I'm working 8 hour days and need a day off, that's either 8 hours in lost wages or 8 hours of PTO spent. At a 5.5 hour day, that's only (yes you guessed it) 5.5 hours.

But what about making up those hours? In the 5-day model, I'd have 4 days to spread out those 8 hours, making for a grueling 10 hour day, which there's no way I could do (I eventually have a shutdown I can't really recover from in a timely manner). In the 7-day model, I'd have 6 days to spread out 5.5 hours, which means just tacking on an extra hour to each day, which I can manage.

On top of that, I won't have to miss nearly as much work. Working 9-5 is annoying because I can only really get into a doctor/lawyer/whatever from 9-5, meaning I have to miss at least some work. At 5.5 hours, combined with the fact that nobody cares when I come or when I leave, if I start work at 7:30 AM I'm done by 1 PM (or 2:30 if I start at 9) so as long as I schedule appointments for the afternoon, I don't miss work and I don't lose/have to make up hours in the first place.

I can see why this fits for me but wouldn't fit for most others. I don't do anything where I'd need an entire day off, I love using work as an excuse to get out of social obligations, and I don't like weekends anyway because apparently I need to learn how to play which, @LucyPurrs if you have suggestions I'm all ears, I've been trying to figure out how sober people have fun for like 8 years now :P
 
What matters is that it works for you. We all have different ways of handling fatigue; in my case, I know that the commute, even when it's not long by local standards, is the greatest factor of stress, anxiety, and feeling tired, so naturally I'd gravitate towards fewer days (and fewer commutes), although it often made for longer days that were sometimes too long.

The schedule I've liked best is one I had for just a few months, caused by a mistake in the planning department: I would work 2 days, followed by a day off. Rinse, lather & repeat. The day off came just before I would start feeling tired, left me enough time to recharge from too much socializing, and since it was a single day, it wasn't enough for me to mess up my sleep schedule by staying up all night & getting up too late.
A close second was working 4 days, followed by 2 days off. Both involved working weekends, but I actually don't mind, and having a weekday off for running errands, doing grocery shopping was nice.

I've also had a 9-to-5 that was extended by one hour a day so that I would have an additional hour to my break (which I used to take a nap at home, but I was living literally 5 minutes from the office). It was a cool alternative, as being able to come home, pet my cat, eat familiar food really helped with some issues, but I still ended up badly burned out from a year on that job, so... either it didn't work, or it wasn't enough to counter all of the mess that was coming my way.

Anyway, glad that you've identified something that works for you, and your boss agrees to implementing that.
 
Gritches said:
Aww thank you :) If I needed a couple days off, I'd just ask. And here's where this becomes an even bigger advantage:

If I'm working 8 hour days and need a day off, that's either 8 hours in lost wages or 8 hours of PTO spent. At a 5.5 hour day, that's only (yes you guessed it) 5.5 hours.

But what about making up those hours? In the 5-day model, I'd have 4 days to spread out those 8 hours, making for a grueling 10 hour day, which there's no way I could do (I eventually have a shutdown I can't really recover from in a timely manner). In the 7-day model, I'd have 6 days to spread out 5.5 hours, which means just tacking on an extra hour to each day, which I can manage.

On top of that, I won't have to miss nearly as much work. Working 9-5 is annoying because I can only really get into a doctor/lawyer/whatever from 9-5, meaning I have to miss at least some work. At 5.5 hours, combined with the fact that nobody cares when I come or when I leave, if I start work at 7:30 AM I'm done by 1 PM (or 2:30 if I start at 9) so as long as I schedule appointments for the afternoon, I don't miss work and I don't lose/have to make up hours in the first place.

I can see why this fits for me but wouldn't fit for most others. I don't do anything where I'd need an entire day off, I love using work as an excuse to get out of social obligations, and I don't like weekends anyway because apparently I need to learn how to play which, @LucyPurrs if you have suggestions I'm all ears, I've been trying to figure out how sober people have fun for like 8 years now :p
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Sounds good since you can ask for a couple of days off. As for fun....as I recall you seek thrills and chills so how about learning to hang glide, parachute jump, or other stuff in that ilk which is kind of scary/thrilling. I don't know where you live so if you have ocean access I can recommend scuba diving (XD), especially with sharks to give you a charge. Or what about taking flying lessons? or better yet helicopter lessons?
 
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I have taken my vacation days one day a week for the next couple of months so I have a four day week. It has helped a lot.
 
I am out and about a lot to meetings and on two main work sites plus moving between those sites and I find all that refreshing. I like working out the travel routes too and the journeys. It gives thinking time. I am liking the weekends I recently was working quite a lot of weekends now I just work some but I do sometimes do work emails Saturday afternoon. I feel better getting it done and am maybe a tad of a workaholic. I like the short day option tho Gritches just 5 of those would be great. ;)
 
I voted yes, because this is actually how I work. I have a job with a lot of interaction/talking, and there is no way I'd be able to work 8 hours a day, that would be too much. I prefer it this way because I don't get so tired each day, I can handle it better. I have a couple of mornings and a couple of afternoons off and I don't do early mornings.
 
No, I enjoy the standard 9-5 job Monday to Friday. I worked a job 1 time where I worked 3 12 hr. days with a 4 hr. Friday. That was a good job as you had 3 days off a week.
 
I couldn’t. I need days off to decompress. Recently did two 7-day shifts and noticed that I really am quite prone to mistakes on day 7. But then again, my workdays are usually 11-12 hours long, instead of the proposed 5,5 ;)
 
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