The one-day work week

A modest proposal for a better life

Feb 25, 2024

Three-day weekends are glorious, but you pay the price the following week. For one thing, Tuesday feels like Monday, Wednesday feels like Tuesday, and by the time you get to Thursday, the week feels like mush. Also, the abridged week means longer work days because, well, you still have to get shit done (GSD).

On Tuesday morning, I was scrambling to GSD, when I heard a trash truck come thundering down our street. Makes sense, I thought at first, the trash guy also needs to GSD. But then I thought, what’s he doing here on a Monday? Trash day is Tuesday.

I ran to the window. All of our neighbors had their trash cans out for pick-up. Had I missed something?

“Alexa, what day is it?”

I felt silly asking that question, but in times like this I appreciate the little spies Christina has placed around the house. Sure, they harvest our data and sell it to the highest bidder, but they don’t judge you for asking questions like, what day is it?

“It’s Tuesday February 20,” Alexa said. Then she asked if I wanted to know where I could find the nearest donut shop, but I was already out the door and headed for the spot where we store our trash cans.

It was raining—something about an “atmospheric river” parked over Los Angeles—so I got soaked as I lugged the trash cans to the curb. That was the bad news. The good news was that I had managed to GSD in time. Trash day, which is Tuesday, even if it feels like a Monday, had been saved!

After my first year of law school, I had a miserable summer job that paid remarkably well. The hours were long, which was fine, but the work was boring. Each day, I’d comb through quarterly reports trying to understand how multinational corporations valued their intellectual property. Like I said, boring. One day blended into the next, and everyday felt like Groundhog Day, except the punchy dialogue had been replaced by legalese, and the story literally went nowhere.

One day that summer, America celebrated its birthday. I was happy for America. I drank a beer, ate a cupcake, and watched the fireworks. I also got the day off because the office was closed. A three-day weekend!

The week following America’s birthday was a short week, just four days. But by the end of the week, I noticed something odd. In only four days, my coworkers and I had churned through the same number of quarterly reports as a normal five-day week. Naturally, I asked my boss if we could shift to a four-day work week. We’d continue to GSD at the same rate, I argued, so why not save everyone from a case of the Mondays?

“Don’t be ridiculous, Estrin.”

I wasn’t being ridiculous, I protested, I was being serious. We weren’t being paid to show our faces at the office, we were being paid to GSD.

“Actually, a four-day work week is bullshit.”

That comment came from Eric, my colleague in the quarterly report mines. I felt betrayed. Did Eric, the guy who always came in late and asked to leave early, really want to work a full week?

“When you think about it, Friday is always a total loss because everyone is thinking about the weekend,” Eric told our boss. “And Monday is a shit show because everyone is recovering from the weekend.”

“Let me get this straight,” our boss began, “Estrin wants a four-day work week, but that won’t fly, so you’re counter-offer is a three-day work week?”

“No,” Eric said. “Tuesday is also rough because I go hard on the weekends, and I can’t fully recover on Monday. Thursday is fine, but it’s so close to Friday that the weekend anticipation bleeds over, so it’s hard to get stuff done on Thursday too.”

“But Wednesday is good?” our boss asked.

“Wednesday is great,” Eric said. “Hump day is crunch day.”

There it was: the one-day work week, also known as the six-day weekend. Could we make it happen? Could we live the dream?

In theory, yes. All we had to do was continue to GSD.

But did it actually happen?

I’m not saying that sharing this post will change the world, but if you don’t share it, there’s no way we’ll ever see a one-day work week. So share it, please!

Did you know you can hire me?

True story! I’m an award-winning journalist (B2B & B2C, print & digital), an op-ed ghostwriter who has helped hundreds of start-ups tell their stories, and a versatile copywriter who kicks ass and triple-checks the spelling of names. My bona fides are on LinkedIn. I recently launched Thought Partner to talk more about how companies and individuals can use thought leadership to make themselves heard over the noise. Maybe my services are what you’ve been looking for, or maybe there’s something else I can help with, such as:

Fresh website copy that makes your professional story sing? ✅
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If it’s legal and if it falls under the heading of writing / storytelling, I can help. Email me at michael.j.estrin@gmail.com.

Stick around and chat!

You know the drill. I’ve got questions, you’ve got answers.

Are you team one-day work week, or are you part of the problem? Confess!
Imagine that the six-day weekend is a thing. What would your life look like? Go big!
Back in the 1930s, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that advances in technology would make us so productive that very soon a 15-hour work week would be normal. That was before the digital revolution and the AI revolution. What the hell happened?
How do you treat a case of the Mondays? Asking for me.
Atmospheric rivers are bullshit, right?

Situation Normal

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