I feel the same. If I work 5 days I'd feel like I'm wasting so much time, when realistically I can do the same amount of work in 4 days. I'm working as a developer so it's also about retaining my attention span. I just can't do it for 5 days straight anymore.
My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.
This was true for me, I was more productive at 4-days/week, Mon-Thu. I tried having Wed off for the reason you described, but it was hard to get into the flow, both at work and in my home life. Turns out 4 days in a row for work and 3 days in a row for home was actually better for both work productivity and personal satisfaction.
I would love to have Wed/Fri as no meeting days, so I could choose which one to take off depending on how I’m feeling, what the current work streams look like, and personal plans.
A three day weekend is great for a trip. Hump day off is great for a break. Either could be good for an extra day of big exercise/recovery or deep cleaning my house.
And then if working on either day, I get a full day of heads-down time.
Yes. I have tried both Friday off and Wednesday off and the latter is better. Fridays at work are more relaxed anyway, so there is less value in skipping them.
Same for me. With Mon-Tues work, traffic, meetings, kids' drop off and pickup gets me drained. If there were wednesday break it'd be great. Mon-Tues hustle, a mid week break and then wrap up things on Thu-Fri.
So you're working 3.5 days a week? This seems to go against the entire point of 4 solid days > 5 marginal days, which is how you're describing Fridays.
My team currently does Monday through Thursday, although we've done Tuesday through Friday before too. M-Th has aligned much better with other teams in the company. It was never great when someone discovered something late of Friday or over the weekend and our team was the only one there not on Monday to help address it.
That said, I wish we could go to MT and ThF schedule. Only ever have 2 days in a row with out a break would seem pretty magical to me. I'd either had yesterday off, or tomorrow - always. Fridays are such a slower day though that I feel like I miss out on less than I would on Wednesdays.
Same on both counts. MT_TF would be cool, but MTWT has big 'economies of scale' benefits and also reduces unexpected "asynchronous" PTO that we get every time someone wants to take a long weekend. Essentially, almost all of our "working days" should then be working days when we're all here.
Ideally though the 4-day program shouldn't be a thing only for specific teams because the "that team isn't here" side-eye quickly promotes resentment of the "lobsters pulling other lobsters back into the pot" variety.
Teams that need coverage during the full work-week (such as B2B support) should normalize having two schedules which overlap, just as B2C companies have weekend shifts (they don't just force people to work 7 days to achieve this).
My perfect 4-day workweek is having the Wednesday off so I have a 'mini-weekend' in my week. I only ever have to work 1 more day until I have some time to clear my head, make some music, etc. It feels like a more healthy work/life balance. And I feel sharper after a day off.