Rethinking Work Hours for Introverts

Hello, and welcome to the traveling introvert. Today, I want to talk about a 4 day work week and what a great thing it is. So I was remembering back in the day that I used to work a 4 day work week. At this point, how did you go? And so this is really common in the casino community in the UK. We definitely worked 4 days on, 3 days off, and it was great. Interesting. And I always say that the casino jobs that I did were some of the best jobs that I had because they really catered for the way that I work without me realizing it at the time and why this might be a really good thing for introverts is that it gives you more time to reach out. I mean it's good for everybody, let me start with that.

It's good for everybody, but it might be particularly good for introverts because it gives you more time to recharge or, I mean, depending on how you wanna do it, you could be 2 days on, one day off, 2 days on. 2 days off and that's another way of doing a 4 day work week. It's really interesting when you say 4 day work week a lot of people immediately assume it's like, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and then you get a long weekend. It could be Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and then you get Sunday, Sunday, Monday Or it could be like I mentioned sort of you work Monday, Tuesday, get Wednesday and then work Thursday, Friday and have something else. 4 days, 4 day work week can mean anything. There are so many different configurations of what that might look like. It could be a couple half days in there. It could be half day Monday, work Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, half day Friday.

That's still a 4 day work week and so why I think this is a useful thing for introverts to think about when they are planning their work or, when they're planning their businesses and how to build their businesses around their introversion is what that looks like and how amazing that could be to have what feels like an extra day to recharge. Now for a lot of people, I see a lot of memes where they work Monday to Friday and they're like, oh, Saturday is running errands and Sunday is recovering from the week and preparing for the week before. There doesn't seem to people feel there isn't enough room to sort of breathe and relax and fully recharge if you have sort of a 9 to 5 Monday to Friday job. Because let's be honest, if you are working 8 days a week, not wow where did that come from? Working 8 hours a day, maybe you commute, you gotta feed yourself, make food, maybe see friends, or pet a dog or or get some exercise in and let's save generously 8 hours sleep, it doesn't really leave a lot of time Monday to Friday for anything else. Never mind all the errands you might have to run, well, shopping, buying food, making sure your car, if you have a car, is okay. There's all these other sort of adulting things that need to happen that aren't really taken into account when you are working 8 or more day hours a week, 5 days a week. And so if you are working instead 4 days a week, how much space that gives your brain and for you to get all these other things done so you can keep up relationships with other humans? Do you see your friends? So you can spend time doing creative stuff, maybe having a hobby even. It makes such a huge difference if you have this extra day to be able to do this, do adulting stuff and work and your brain will thank you.

And there have been hundreds of studies done and so many countries and counties and cities around the world are taking on the idea of the 4 day work week but what's been really interesting is how it's being implemented and that they don't seem to be any flexibility in what a 4 day work week looks like and I think that organizations and people are missing an opportunity to let people decide what a 4 day work week looks like to them in a way that suits them. Maybe they have elder care, maybe they have kids. Like, let them decide rather than you being like, oh, it's gonna be Monday to Thursday and that's our 4 day work week. There is an opportunity there that, organisations are missing out on and if you're running your own business, there's an opportunity there for you to sort of really reimagine what your work day and work week could look like. And so for introverts, take a look at that and see how much breaks and pauses and recharge time you get in your week compared to if it was a 4 day work week. Thank you for listening. This is Janice at The Career Introvert, helping you build your brand and get hired. Have a great rest of your week.