I switched from 40 to 30 (6h @ 5 days) two years ago and it’s been magical. I get the same shit done in 6 vs 8 hours (because realistically I can’t concentrate for 8 hours straight, so there is some empty time in there anyway) and have more time in the day for myself. And I still make good money even with the pay cut.

I’d be happiest if full time was 6 hour shifts, 3 days a week, with enough pay to actually have money left over for groceries and vacations after the bills are paid. Any more hours than that, and I’m miserable.

It depends so much on the work but I think 25-35 is a healthy work life balance. I for one would rather have a well rested surgeon that’s on a 30 hour a week schedule than one that’s been pulling back to back to back 12 hour shifts

My first full time job job out in the wild was as a retail manager. I was expected to work 54 hours and during the Christmas season I basically was at the store if it was open, period. My record at that job was 80 hours in one week.

That was between the ages of 21 to 24. By the time I was 23 I was already completely burned out. Unable to enjoy life, making next to no money to boot. Seemed like every year there was some excuse why my bonus sucked, even though I ran the most profitable store, by percentage and dollars, in the entire region. It culminated in my regional manager forcing my district manager to demote me to another store because I didn’t run the sales gain numbers he thought I should… Even though my store was both profitable and I ran sales gains every month. They handed my clean, well sorted store to a god damn thief who they ended up pressing charges against within the next year. But hey, he ran big sales gain numbers. The regional manager was an absolute prick and he later got fired for stealing carpet…

The company is out of business now and good riddance.

40 hours is more than enough time to devote to making a paycheck. Honestly, 32 hours is enough too, especially since these employers expect you to commute. Concepts like “Rush Hour” only exist because of the insanity of making a buck.

I left retail to enter the IT industry, which can have some crazy hours too. I did my stint being on call and doing changes at 3am on Sunday mornings, working outages that lasted for days. Those days are behind me too. Today I work from home and my boss only cares if my work is done and that I’m available to answer emails.

I do more than 40 most weeks and don’t burn out because I have help at home, take time to exercise, take my PTO.

I read once “more than 4 hours a day of work is not conducive to spiritual development” and think they have a point. My ideal workday really would be 4 hours. Probably noon to 4 so that I could manage to be productive.

0! Every second you spend making someone else money is time not spent enriching your own life or building your own wealth. It wears on the soul. You can ignore this fact all they want, but that also takes some amount of energy. When you get to the point where you can be your own boss or charge your own rate for the service you provide, that’s when you will find the real number.

For me 32h/week is fine. Sweet spot would be at 24h/week but that’s pretty unrealistic if you want to pay your bills.

32

I’m pulling this number out of my ass, but I estimate most office jobs are actually only productive for 5-6 hours a day. So I would say 30 hours, and give back 2 hours of people’s lives every day instead of having people be in the office (or be online in front of a work computer somewhere else) for 8 hours.

Science says for knowledge work 3-4 hours/day about 4-5 days/week to not get compounding risk of errors or injury. For manual labor that limit is about 30-32 hours/week including prepping your work.

Both assuming at least 2 weeks vacation and extra time off for injury and illness.

I just read Rest by Alex Soojung-Kim Pang on the topic.

42. Not joking this time.

Was working 32 for a bit. It was amazing. Now we got bumped to 36, not bad, but I do miss the extra time off.

I have worked 40 for most of my life which is tolderable but not ideal. A few years ago, it was 45-50. I really, really don’t ever want to be over 40 again.

I know a lot of people here are fans of the 4 day workweek idea, but personally I think a 5-day work week, with 1 week per month off is a better schedule. Having 9 uninterrupted days off is very stress reducing and allows for working on multiday personal projects or doing some limited traveling.

For that sort of schedule, five 8 hour days is a baseline, but even going up to 9 or 10 hours as needed feels a lot more doable. As long as that flexibility to stretch hours is factored into the salary of course. If that’s done I think it is better for both the employees and the business in terms of getting projects done and people staying motivated.

Making this sort of schedule more common would require more expectations put on managers to properly organize schedules, since businesses I see doing this rotate through who is off so that the business is open the whole month.

In my humble opinion you should be entitled to a minimum of 75% of your day for personal use.

Some weeks I enthusiastically work 60 hours and sometimes I really have nothing to give except like…10. It really just needs to be more flexible all around.