For six months, 2,896 employees at 141 organisations worked a four-day week on the same pay, most often dropping from 40 hours to 32. Their burnout fell. Their job satisfaction, mental health and physical health all rose. At the companies that kept the five-day week, none of that happened. And the people who cut the most hours gained the most, partly through better sleep and less fatigue.
In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes imagined a time, a century on, when "three-hour shifts or a fifteen-hour week" would be enough work to go round. That century is nearly up.
You may not be able to shorten your week by next month. You can change what happens around it, and that's where work-life balance is won. Ahead: the evening email you never open that still costs your partner, why the urgent task keeps beating the important one, the holiday glow that fades within weeks, why paying for a cleaner can make you happier than a new jacket, and the invitation you're scared to turn down.
1. Draw a line around your workday
The damage starts before you open anything. When employees felt they were expected to keep an eye on work email in the evening, they grew more anxious, their health suffered and they argued more at home. Their partners' health and happiness with the relationship slipped too, just from living with that expectation.
Children notice too. In 170 American families with toddlers, mothers whose phones kept interrupting time with their child reported more behaviour problems in that child, and so did the fathers. The link may run both ways.
Drawing that line is an old fight. In 1817, the mill owner Robert Owen gave the shorter working day its slogan: "Eight hours' labour, Eight hours' recreation, Eight hours' rest." France went further and wrote a right to disconnect into its labour law in 2017.
A commute can be a line, too. Long morning commutes wore down job satisfaction and made people more likely to quit, above all for people already torn between work and home, but those who spent the trip thinking through the workday ahead were less affected. Used that way, the trip becomes a bridge between home and work.
The middle of the day needs a line as well. Employees were less tired by the end of the day after a relaxing lunch break, and even a lunch spent chatting or working helped when it was their own choice.
Your line may sit in a different place from a colleague's. Some people like a firm wall between work and home, and others like to blend the two. Across 325 employees, work–home conflict and stress were highest when the job's boundaries failed to match what people wanted.
Choose a time when your workday ends, tell the people you work with, and switch work notifications off after it. If you work from home, give yourself a commute: a short walk before you start and another when you finish.
2. Do the important thing before the urgent one
A deadline grabs attention whether it deserves it or not. Given a choice between two tasks, people picked the one with a short time limit, even when the other paid more and there was plenty of time for both. Reminding them what each task was worth weakened the pull. When another team re-ran the tests, the effect was smaller, and it held.
Dwight Eisenhower, quoting a former college president in 1954, put it neatly: "I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent." The urgent-versus-important grid people use to sort their tasks is named after him.
The opposite trap is the task with no edge at all. In 1955, the historian C. Northcote Parkinson joked in The Economist that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion." An end time for your day takes him at his word.
Before you open your inbox in the morning, write down the one task that matters most today, and start there.
3. Switch off in the evening
Leaving work at work is a skill, and it pays off by the next morning. Over a working week, 166 office employees felt more tired and more on edge the next morning after evenings when they kept thinking about work. Evenings spent learning something or taking on a challenge left them with more energy, and evenings spent relaxing left them calmer.
The catch is that switching off gets hardest when you need it most. Heavy workloads, time pressure and conflict at work all make it harder to let go in the evening, so a hard week is when your evening needs a plan.
Give your evening one thing that absorbs you: a new recipe, a class, a run, a project of your own.
4. Take your holidays
"Holiday" comes from the Old English hāliġdæġ, holy day. Rest was once sacred, and time off may matter for your heart. In 12,338 middle-aged men at high risk of heart disease, those who took more yearly holidays had a 17% lower risk of dying over the next nine years, and an even lower risk of dying from heart disease. That's a link, in men who were already at risk.
The glow is short, though. Holidays lift health and wellbeing a little, and the lift fades soon after you're back at work. That's a good reason to spread your time off through the year.
Part of a holiday's gift arrives before you leave. In 1,530 Dutch adults, people with a trip coming up were happier than people without one, possibly from looking forward to it. Afterwards, only the most relaxing holidays kept the extra happiness going.
Book your next few days off now, before the year fills up.
5. Buy back your time
Money spent on time can buy happiness. Across 6,271 people in four countries, those who paid for time-saving services, such as cleaning, delivery or help with chores, were more satisfied with their lives. When working adults were given money to spend, they felt happier after buying something that saved them time than after buying a thing. Ashley Whillans, who led that work, turns it into a plan in .
Pick one chore you dread and hand it over, even for a month.
6. Bring the weekend into the week
Weekends feel better for a reason. In 74 working adults, mood and energy rose and aches and pains eased over the weekend. The lift came from two things: choosing what to do, and spending time with people they cared about.
The two-day weekend is younger than it feels. The first five-day week in the United States came in 1908, at a New England cotton mill, so its Jewish workers could keep the Sabbath. In 1926, Henry Ford began closing his car factories for the whole weekend, partly so his workers would have time to travel and shop.
More free time helps only up to a point. Across 35,375 Americans, wellbeing rose with free time, then levelled off, and dipped for people with a great deal of it, mostly when they felt unproductive. Spending that time on something worthwhile removed the dip.
Put one thing you chose yourself, with someone you love, into the middle of your week.
7. Say no more often than you dare
Turning something down feels riskier than it is. Across five experiments with more than 2,000 people, those who declined an invitation expected the person who asked to be angry, disappointed and less likely to ask again. The people who'd done the asking were much less bothered. An occasional no costs little, and a habit of refusing is a different matter. Nedra Glover Tawwab's has the words for the no you keep swallowing.
Part of what keeps people saying yes is status. Americans rated someone who seemed constantly busy as higher in status than someone with plenty of free time, reading busyness as a sign of skill and demand. In Italy, it was the other way round.
The always-on image can be partly theatre. At one consulting firm, some staff worked fewer hours in secret while letting everyone assume they were always available, and their reviews were as good as those of colleagues who did work the long hours. The people who openly asked for lighter hours were the ones marked down.
The next time you're about to say yes out of guilt, say a kind no instead, and see how it lands.
8. Ask for a say in your hours
Control over your own time is a balance tool in its own right. At one large tech company, 867 IT workers were split into teams that got more say over when and where they worked, with managers trained to back their lives outside work, and teams that carried on as before. Over a year, burnout, stress and distress fell and job satisfaction rose in the first group, among the staff surveyed before a merger shook the company up.
Working from home for part of the week can help too. In a six-month test with 1,612 staff at a Chinese tech company, two days a week at home raised job satisfaction and cut quitting by a third, with no drop in performance reviews or promotions over the next two years.
Ask for one change in when or where you work, and offer to try it for a month.
When it's burnout
Sometimes the scales have tipped too far for small lines to fix. The World Health Organization describes burnout as the result of long-term work stress that was never brought under control, with three signs: exhaustion, a growing distance or cynicism about your job, and getting less done at work. If that sounds like you, talk to someone you trust, and raise it at work: burnout belongs to the job, and the job is where it gets fixed. Emily and Amelia Nagoski's explains how to finish the stress cycle your body starts at work.
Balance is a line you draw
Two centuries ago, Robert Owen asked for eight hours of work, eight of recreation and eight of rest. Small lines are how you claim the second and third eight: an end to the workday, the important task first, and a kind no when you need one.
You may never get the four-day week. You can still win back your evenings. Start tonight: pick the time your workday ends, and keep it.
Working late because it has to be perfect? Why Your 'High Standards' Are Holding Back Your Career — which kind of high standard costs you your evenings.
Lying awake replaying the workday? The Stress-Sleep Vicious Cycle: How to Fix Both at the Same Time — how stress and sleep feed each other, and where to break in.
Know someone who answers work email in bed? Send them this, and ask what time their workday ends.
Disclaimer: This article is general information. For advice about your own health, talk to a qualified health professional. If your mood has been low for weeks or you're having thoughts of harming yourself, reach out for help today.
Affiliate Disclosure: This article contains affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, All For Life earns from qualifying purchases, at no extra cost to you. We only link to products we would recommend without the commission.
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