www.fastcompany.com: The nonprofit 4 Day Week Global wants to create nothing less than a million new years of free time. The organization has been advocating for a four-day workweek since its founding in 2019, guiding businesses through the planning and implementation of trials of shortened work schedules, then sharing the results.
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Although I know theatre is an entirely different ball game and this won’t likely trickle over to us (for a plethora of reasons), I am heartened to see that it is possible for other industries. I feel like we see studies over and over again that rest is the best way to make employees more productive, and also to improve mental health and quality of life across the board, and it would be nice to live in a world where you don’t have to choose between your career or your life taking the lead. Four day work weeks seem like an excellent step towards that, to reduce burnout and give employees more time to catch up with life and return to work feeling refreshed. I wonder how this impacts different industries, or how likely it is to catch on large scale. And while I know a four day work week would be pretty much impossible for theatre, I do hope that the five day work week continues to take the world by storm.
A 4 day work week kind of seems like a bit of a pipe dream in the work schedule of theater. I’m in the middle of a 6-7 day work week for two productions - and while I hope I get Sunday off, it’s not known for sure yet. While I know that it’s in the nature of our industry and I do enjoy the work, it’s challenging to not be a little bit wistful for the idea of a four day workweek. Having a few days of decompressing and focusing on other aspects of life seems to drastically reduce burnout and improve productivity overall. While obviously the four day work week is not necessarily applicable to the theater industry, I hope that we at least look to the five day work week when possible in order to best take care of ourselves. It’s always a good goal in my opinion to strive for the best quality of life possible in our fast paced industry.
I love the four day workweek. Whenever I have the opportunity to design my own schedule, I always give myself a break in the middle of the week-a break designated as "Weekend Wednesday." It's really nice to have a vacation in the middle of the workweek, and it keeps me refreshed and ready for more work later on. I think that breaks are undervalued in our current working culture, as I know that my focus and energy starts to drain after spending too long working for a single stretch of time. Companies see genuinely good results with the four day workweek, and it causes less employee resignations and absenteeism. The 36% rise in revenue figure is staggering, and I hope that this will hopefully partially make up for the stagnation in salary over the past couple decades. I think that more companies should mandate breaks, not just in the workweek, but during the workday, and I think that they would see a lot of improvement in productivity, as well as performance overall.
In the theatre industry, our schedule is generally 6 workday week. I believe that the original intention of such design is to focus the entire production process in a relatively short period of time and obtain the optimal solution in terms of cost and other factors in the most efficient way. However, in this article, we can find that 4 workday week can achieve the effect of increasing efficiency. In my own experience, by the fifth or sixth day of continuous work, my body tells me that you are no longer as focused and productive as you were the previous days. And a day off does not give me enough time to deal with personal matters that I do not deal with during the working day. After working for six days in a row, I often just want to lie in bed for one day. However, when you enter the new work week and find that you are not fully charged, this vicious circle will reduce the efficiency of the work. Therefore, I also hope that the theater can explore a work schedule that can better balance work and life and achieve optimal efficiency.
Throughout my academic career I have always loved the idea of a four day work week. Children are taught from an early age that work week is five days, followed by a two day weekend, which always seems to go by way too quickly and not leave you enough time before the next week starts. however during the pandemic, my school went to a four day work week, allowing teachers Monday as a teacher workday/office hours. And although the pandemic was a weird time, anyway, there was a noticeable difference in how much more manageable the work week was being only four days. it didn’t feel like an all consuming part of our life, and that we could still do things other than school. And as the daughter of one of the teachers, it was noticeable for them as well.
Theatre, however, is scheduled around other peoples leisure time. that’s why our typical day off is a Monday. With most people off during the evenings and weekends, I find it hard to believe that Theatre will be able to achieve a four day week when we already struggle to have a five day work week.
It was so interesting to read this article, as the Wonka experience was relatively brushed over in news outlets while it had its time in the spotlight on social media.
I really want to feel pity for those who fell for such a scam. However, after seeing the advertisements, it immediately looks suspicious. Think with this revealed was actually a lack of Internet, safety knowledge amongst society today. Well, of course, it’s important to note how AI was used to create these advertisements, AI is not yet at the point where it is 100%, reliably, realistic looking. Even in the ads for this event, there are consistently misspelled words, and innumerable signs that none of the images were taken of the event itself. So I wonder why so many people were apparently taken up by the scam, when the adverts themselves did not look very convincing. Once again, I truly do think this reveals a lack of Internet safety awareness.
I remember reading an article about this last semester, talking about how a shorter work week could increase productivity even if they work a little longer on the 4 days they are working. While I know that this premise is just wishful thinking in the theatre industry I do know that it would likely benefit many people in the greater world. So many people wish that they had one more day in their weekend and I think that knowing you could have that could be good but I do still raise the question of if this becomes the standard than 5 years from now maybe less people will want a 3 day work week. Because then it will not be special to have that extra day off, therefore people will want more. That being said I do wish that the theatre industry was more balanced to even just keep hours that are more normal and not be so demanding on people's time, because I know that is why so many people burn out so quickly. You can only burn the candle at both ends for so long before there is nothing left but a puddle.
I think this is a cool idea from a student point of view, but from a theatre industry point of view I think it would be difficult. I think a four day work week would take away work and paychecks that many people in various low paying industries already struggle to have. I also think the third day may just become a work from home day to keep up with the workload that hasn’t changed despite the hours being shortened but with no pay. As a student however I think 4 days could be the difference between being a husk of your former self and a happy young person. I wish we had Wednesdays off to have a break in the middle of the week to catch back up. I think no matter how many days you have off in a week, projects will forever be left until the last minute. However if one of those days you procrastinate on doing work is relaxing and enjoying life I think it would still be beneficial.
This is such an interesting idea. I have heard a lot of talk about the idea of a 4 day work week, however I wasn’t sure how feasible it would be or how it would actually operate in regards to project deadlines and keeping up to date with what is happening in the industry. I feel like a potentially better solution would be shorten the working hours each day on monday through friday because thenyou still are connected to your industry for 5 out of the 7 days in a week but then you are still overall working less which does seem beneficial. One of my best friends from back home goes to the Savanah College of Art and Design right now and she has a 4 day school week with no classes on fridays and she seems to love it. I just don’t under stand how she gets a full education with only 4 days of classes and they have the quarter system and so it just really doesn’t seem like the same amount of school but apparently it is.
I'm pretty sure I already wrote about this in another article a long time ago, but here it is again. I genuinely think a 4 day work week is so important. It provides a nice break for people in order to actually relax and kind of feel like they have time to regroup and restabilize before the next week begins. I really really wish that you truly followed there no Friday classes thing, and that we could continue with a really four day week. however this is never going to happen, as we do get too much work for that. but I'm just saying in a perfect world … Anyway, I think it would be cool. We just read an article about how rest is important and how you need to practice rest, and I think that a four-day Work Week really focuses on rest as well. I like how the topic was approached through a timeline, and shows that people have been trying for their work weeks before. I think tweaking it and getting it to the most ideal situation is smart, and we should definitely keep working on that.
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