That Neuroscience Guy - Neuroscience Bites-The 4 Day Work Week

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

In today's Neuroscience Bite, we discuss the current state of neuroscientific evidence for the 4-day work week.

Hi, my name is Olaf Krigolsen, and I'm a neuroscientist at the University of Victoria. And in my spare time, I'm that neuroscience guy. Welcome to another Neuroscience Byte. So again, I'm going to answer something that's been asked by one of the listeners, in other words, you. And the answer is this, or the question was this, is there any neuroscientific support for the four-day workweek? There's some countries where they're pushing four-day workweeks. We now have flex days that impact this. And the question is, what does neuroscience say about this? And the answer is nothing. No one's really done a lot of true

neuroscientific research on the four-day work week. So what I'm going to do is just give you a quick opinion to answer the question, because if you want to ask it, I feel like it deserves an answer. The reality is, is the modern work life that we have, for the most part, isn't good for our brain health. Most people don't get enough sleep. They don't have enough relaxation time. They're under a fair bit of stress most of the time with their work life. And because of that, your brain health isn't optimal. You're more likely to be anxious. You're more likely to be stressed. You're more likely to be depressed. So one potential plus for the four-day work week is if you could keep your work contained to that four-day stretch, it means you have three days to recover for another four-day week. And assuming you don't take your work home on the weekends, in principle, in those three days,

your brain should be able to recover and get that bit of extra sleep you might need, eat healthy, exercise, let go of work a little bit. So I would make an argument for the four-day work week in the sense that it should be better for your overall brain health. The downside would be that the days would have to be longer to make up for it. And you'd have to really look at an individual to individual basis as to whether those longer days were having more of a negative impact than a five-day work week. And my hunch, based on my experience and my training, is that it would be individual.

So some people would be better on a four-day work week, and some wouldn't, and then you get into how do you implement this. So there you go, the answer to the question. Remember, if you have ideas, you can email us at thatneuroscienceguy at gmail.com, or you can just follow me on Twitter at that neuroscienceguy and DM me. The question was,

what does neuroscience say about four-day work weeks? And as I've just said, not that much, but you could make a case that it would be better for your overall brain health. Anyway, that's another Neuroscience Byte. Thank you so much for listening to the podcast. Please subscribe. My name's Olof Kregolsen,

and I'm that neuroscience guy. I'll see you soon for another episode of the podcast.