Why I'm capping my workday at 4 hours (with receipts)
On November 3rd, 1980, our Lord and Saviour, Dolly Parton (may she rest in rhinestoned peace), released one of the most iconic songs ever written about work.
Workin' 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin'
Barely gettin' by, it's all takin' and no givin'
If you somehow haven't heard ‘9 to 5’ (who the hell are you?), it's a 3-minute protest song disguised as a banger.
It's about handing your best hours to someone else's fortune and getting a pat on the head in return. She reportedly wrote the rhythm by clacking her acrylic nails together like a typewriter. Iconic behaviour.
9 to 5, yeah, they got you where they want you
There's a better life and you think about it, don't you?
Dolly was the OG progressive. She was calling out corporate bullshit in the 80s, and 45 years later here we are... still shackled to a working day that nobody seems able to justify.
I'm done with it.
The 9-5 was never designed for well-lived lives.
In 1817 a Welsh mill owner called Robert Owen campaigned for "8 hours labour, 8 hours recreation, 8 hours rest." He was trying to rescue factory workers from 14-hour days.
In 1926 Henry Ford brought in the 5-day, 40-hour week, partly because rested workers made fewer mistakes, and partly because people needed free time to go and buy his cars.
So the 8-hour day was a genuine win... for people standing on an assembly line a hundred years ago.
It was never built for thinking, creating, leading, or any brain that works in bursts and not in shifts. But no one seems to want to accept and then change this.
But I want to change this.
Around 5 years ago I read Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang, and - alongside I Didn’t Do The Thing Today by Madeleine Dore - it completely changed how I think about productivity and time.
It was the first time I took the idea of a 4-hour workday seriously. Cue raised eyebrows, eye rolls and a lot of "sure, if you say so" from pretty much everyone around me.
Pang's argument is simple and slightly outrageous. Loads of history's most prolific people did their serious work in about 4 hours a day:
Charles Darwin worked in 3 short bursts, then spent the rest of the day walking, reading letters and napping
the mathematician Henri Poincaré worked from 10 till 12 and from 5 till 7, and that was it
in the famous study of violinists at a Berlin music academy (ironically the one the "10,000 hours" idea came from), the best players practised about 4 hours a day, in sessions of 90 minutes or less... and slept more than everyone else
And it's not just a few eccentric geniuses:
a Stanford economist looked at hours and output and found productivity per hour falls off a cliff after about 50 hours a week. People working 70 hours produced barely more than people working 55
in the UK's 4-day week pilot in 2022 (61 companies, around 2,900 people), 71% of staff reported less burnout, resignations dropped by 57%, revenue held steady, and 56 of the 61 companies kept it going afterwards
So no, this isn't a fantasy.
It's just not the default. And defaults are sticky af.
I'm done talking about it as a dream.
I'm experimenting with actually living it.
And let me be super clear, this is about working less because I hate my job. I love my work more now than I ever have. This is about working less so that I can pour more into the other areas of my life that bring me joy as well.
Here's what that looks like so far:
I'm tracking my hours every day to make sure I land around the 4-hour mark. And (this is the new bit) I'm feeling genuinely good about stopping there
I'm working with a business coach on my revenue strategy, to figure out what my pricing needs to be to support this and my annual targets. Because obviously a 4-hour day, 4 days a week that leaves me skint isn't freedom, it's just a different kind of stress
I'm thinking properly about what the extra time is actually for: fitness, self-care, writing, art, courses
I truly believe this is possible. And I refuse to be patronised or shamed into submission any more.
I'll report back in a few months with what I learn - the good, the bad and the inevitable spreadsheets.
