Is 32 The New 40?
On this episode we talk about the Productivity Week Policy from the Podcast Outside/In, the episode is titled 32 Is The New 40 Published on January 31, 2019.
Summary of the podcast “The 40-hour workweek is as American as apple pie, and it’s been around almost as long. So, is it finally time to re-think our Monday-through-Friday lifestyle? With modern mechanization and automation, should we all have more leisure time? And what would that mean for the environment? Producer Jimmy Gutierrez looks into the history of work culture, where it’s being challenged, and makes the argument that we all should be working less, you know, to save the planet.” Outside/In
We talk about the possibilities of this policy becoming a widespread success, some of the drawbacks and some of the things we think they overlooked or missed in their arguments about having a 32 hour work week. As well as some of the potential successes and drawbacks of instituting a 32 hour work week and other subjects in and around this topic.
Books & Links From The Episode
Perpetual Guardian
The four-day work week is good for business
After spending two months testing a 20% shorter week, a New Zealand company found its employees happier, more focused, and producing the same amount of work. Now they’re making the change permanent.
Article from Fast Company 7/20/18 BY ADELE PETERS
OUTSIDE/IN
Producer Jimmy Gutierrez explores the options for a 32 hour work week for himself and possibly his coworkers.
HIDDEN BRAIN
BS Jobs: How Meaningless Work Wears Us Down.
Have you ever had a job where you stopped and asked yourself: what am I doing here? If I quit tomorrow, would anyone even notice?
In 2013, anthropologist David Graeber wrote an article in which he described these types of positions as “bullshit jobs.” He received a flood of responses from people for whom this label struck a chord — people who felt their work was, essentially, meaningless.
Episode Transcriptions
Tyson: 00:13 welcome to the social chameleon show where it’s our goal to help you learn, grow and transform, into the person you want to become. Today, we’re talking about the 32 hour work week. I came across a podcast I really like, uh, outside in. I’ll link to that in the show notes. I think it’s great podcasts. You’re, especially if you’re interested in environmental type issues, is what generally what they focus on out of New Hampshire on episode is 32 is the new 40 and a quick little synopsis from episode. The 40 hour work week is an American as American as apple pie and it’s been around as long as almost as long. So it is finally time to rethink our Monday through Friday lifestyle with modern mechanization optimization. Should we all have more leisure time and what would that mean for the environment? A producer Jimmy [inaudible], sorry if I’m mispronouncing your name, but uh, looks in the history of work culture where it’s being challenged and makes the argument that we all should be working less, you know, to save the planet. That’s their angle on episode, I would say. Really interesting angle. Did you like the episode rounds?
Ransom: 01:16 Uh, I dunno. I guess I didn’t really know what to expect. I don’t, I don’t listen to all these podcasts before. So like there’s like hearing this guy talk about all the lights in the building and I’m like, all right, where’s he going with it? And then I was like, oh, I was like, I was like, is this an environmental podcasts or is this guy like just trying to like skip out on work. You might get kids all the time. I don’t know. It’s funny, but um, but it was interesting though. It was interesting. Um, Nah, I dunno.
Tyson: 01:48 Yeah, that’s the thing. When he walks up to the building, whatever it was early in the morning, the lights are all on the soul warm in there and audit computers are honestly, nobody’s in there. Yeah. It’s completely empty. Yeah. Yeah. That’s something to drive me nuts too. Like, especially in the army stuff, like all the computers were always mount lights always beyond like, and even some jobs I work like w why, why is all the lights on in the on office? Nobody’s been here for 12 hours.
Ransom: 02:14 Wow. Well, I mean I definitely think nowadays, especially like with um, Google home and Alexa and stuff like that, like that can definitely easily be fixed. Like yeah, you can automatically set things for timers and I dunno, one of our friends works like, you know, engineering acs or buildings and stuff, but it’s not an easy task. They can go in and click things on online to fix it, but it’s not the easiest task. Like you think it’s like, okay, we have this entire big business building and we’re going to just, everybody comes in to eat so we’re going to turn it on at eight and were like, Nah, dude, it takes like couple hours to get it. Right. Right, right, right. Yeah.
Tyson: 02:55 But like he was saying an episode, he was saying that I, that building in particular could retain heat. He said the building way it’s engineered or whatever it was, it would only lose a degree or two of temperature. But yet the building is, is forced all night long to keep that whatever 72 let’s just call it when the building would only ever get down to 70 you know, if the heat was turned off or whatever it was. But I mean, yeah, I know, I know that’s a hard task. Especially these big towers and stuff to heat and cool them. And you gotta wonder what is the, what is the cost savings like to wrap up this building, you know, three hours in advance is going to run these acs hard. What’s that cost saving that that is a good argument. Yeah. Cause I’m out. I don’t know where you live or where I live. There are certain places where it just makes sense to keep your ECR. Yeah. Here in Arizona in the summer when it’s like 120 ish, my ac just doesn’t even turn off. It’s just like turning it off for the
Ransom: 03:56 six to eight hours you’re at work and then like when you come home you got to run them hard. Yeah. Wow. That’s cool. And then like I, yeah, it just makes better sense to just keep it running. So yeah.
Tyson: 04:08 But anyway, that’s why I like I have the, the programmable thermostat and it’s just like, it just does its thing. It goes up and down in night, in the morning, whatever and all. I get stuff to light lights and computers though. That kind of stuff is just nowadays you can have sensors so that when people turn on, um, you have smart timers, even led light bulbs and some, I think it would make a big difference. I’m not just energy lines but like the type of light you can produce. I really, I really like, I think they make a big difference and I’m sure, I know the energy consumption is so much. That’s the LEDs even I have, um, I didn’t know they existed until I was kind of looking for, I needed a new light and one of my, I have one of those fluorescent lights in my walk in closet and there’s an led one like that. It was so cool.
Ransom: 04:57 All right, well I think we’re getting off on, I see environmental tip 32 hour work week. So the guy like opens up the podcast with all of these costs that it takes to run this building at night. And then he kinda like sneaks it and he’s pretty nonchalant about it. Like how he just like slipped it in there. He’s like, well what if we could turn that building off for an entire day? And I was like, oh. I was like, Damn. He was like, here, good.
Tyson: 05:26 How much energy would we save if we all didn’t work on Friday? They were like, Oh snap.
Ransom: 05:30 It’s like, let’s just all take three day weekends, like every week. That’d be great. We’d saved so much more on, we’d help the environment by reducing our carbon emissions. I was like, I was like, damn, this guy’s like selling this thing hard.
Tyson: 05:45 Oh, it was funny. His bosses were like, I see what you’re saying, but we still got to come in on.
Ransom: 05:54 Yeah, I feel like office space. Yeah, we’re to need you to call me. That’d be great. Yeah,
Speaker 4: 06:03 it was cool. I, whatever the environment part, and I agree with a lot of that. I think we could save thousands. I’m turning off lights and computers, but there was so much things that he wanted researching, like the all the benefits or whatever to it. It was unreal. Like was it employee loyalty and more time with family and friends and hobbies. Like there’s so many things like this other,
Ransom: 06:25 no, I think he just Kinda like lightly like grazed upon those and then you got too far to detail. But definitely I guess me being a strong leader that I am, like I, I definitely take into account things like morale and things. They keep employee retention because that’s your number one cost is acquiring people. Yes, I spent all this money training them and whatever. I mean you gotta make sure that they’re not the right fit and then all of a sudden they leave because you know, you’re not treating them well, you’re not treating them well and affects their performance. But I burn out and all that stuff. And I’ve worked at many jobs where just burn people out because there’s just, there’s no way to do it. But you know, I think that would require a great manager. I don’t want the reader to actually get that started, but I think shot, I don’t know. I could, I could use every weekend off Friday, Saturday, and Sunday like, well, a lot of people listen to be like, I always have Friday, Saturday, Sunday off, like every week. Like I wouldn’t even need to. But see, that’s the other thing is like, what’d you need to take vacation if that were the case,
Speaker 4: 07:38 you gotta wonder, right? Like, yeah, you got to, I don’t, I don’t, you know, I did a lot of research kind of like digging more into this. I didn’t see anything about that. And I don’t remember anybody talking about that. I know they talked about people being happier and less likely to call in sick and as he quit
Ransom: 07:59 calling in sick and taking vacate days, like, I mean, granted, you’re going to want people that want two solid weeks of vacation, right? No problem. Right. Because we’re going to go on a trip, our family. But I mean, think about it, if you had Friday, Saturday, Sunday off every week, would you really need to take vacation days? Cause this one, most people do anyway, right? Yeah. Or they would probably use their vacation days on Monday so that they get 40 weekends. You know what I mean?
Speaker 4: 08:26 Or, yeah. Like I know people that do that, they’ll, they’ll take like, you know, there’s three 40 holidays, they’ll, they’ll back in or out of the holiday and then they’ll have this week off or whatever with only using one or two vacation days.
Ransom: 08:37 Yeah. And that’s just, I mean like, I dunno, I think about stuff like that and it’s definitely, I think would make them more enjoyable. Work Environment, make things a little bit less stressful. Um, I remember one of our friends went to, I forget, but don’t just somewhere in your, uh, in Europe they have that long lunch hours. Yeah. Or whatever. Trying to get out there and like, you know, go to eat lunch during this lunch hour and like, no place was open. Like Lowe’s for lunch and then finally like one other shop owners. So it was like you guys American. Yeah. Okay come, come, come. My family eating just come. And then one of the shop owners like took him in the back. We’re like everybody there, her entire family, this is a family business right in the back like eating lunch together and like they invited a man or something like that and I was like, dude is crazy. That’s fucking awesome.
Tyson: 09:33 It wasn’t there. They were talking about episode two like they were saying a lot of other countries do similar things like this already because of automation and these different things like that. There already are working less hours in a week but getting paid the same as they’ve always kind of been.
Ransom: 09:47 But I think that’s just more of like lifestyle. And that’s kind of, and I guess to me that we were talking a little bit about this yesterday is like, I don’t really know, cause I think when people come to America or when in America, they just have that mindset that this is the place where you can work 24, seven if you want. And if that’s what you want to do, then you’re, you know, quote unquote gonna make more money. Um, yes and no, but at the same time, this is America. So you can do that, you know, versus other countries. Like they just have a different lifestyle. It’s more family oriented, it’s more, you know, it’s not so much about the money per se. I don’t know if I’m saying that right. It just, the lack of a better word. I mean,
Tyson: 10:35 yeah. No, and that’s the thing I think about. Sometimes I, I worry about her or I try not to subscribe to. It’s like, how is it America created this culture, this idea of these super long, no vacation. Don’t do nothing. Just work your ass off every single day, all day long. Fuck your friends. Fuck your family. Fuck everything. Like I got to get that money and we created that and then they, and if we have a what costly. There’s so many things, and I keep hearing like, Americans increasingly more and more don’t take vacations. They so much use vacation days, so much stress and depression. Like is this part of that? That’s the things I wonder. Yeah.
Ransom: 11:17 It’s just the fact that, you know, we have the ability to make more money. So like some people put the correlation together that money equals happiness. But talk about this before on other episodes. Yeah. A real person only needs like, you know, 50 to 60,000 a year and they can be sustained. Yeah. They should be able to be happy with that amount of money. Um, you know, but I dunno, there’s plenty of people I know who work well beyond the 40 hour work week. Oh yeah, definitely. Um, just me and myself actually, it was for fun. I was 52 hour weeks. Like that’s just how it goes sometimes. Yeah. But, um, yeah, I dunno. I, I definitely do see the difference though, when, um, somebody who’s not from America right there, alien or whatever the case may be, or you know, they’re just not from here. Like they do have a different mindset, like their, their whole lifestyle, the way they prioritize things. It’s not, it’s not necessarily about the money if you want. I’m trying to say.
Tyson: 12:21 Yeah, not a lot of my experience with those immigrants or whatever it is. They come here and make, they make so much money that they can not only keep the, what they need to live in America, they can send the rest back home. And I think that’s maybe part of what’s happening with that.
Ransom: 12:37 But I mean if you think and you look at, you know, not trying to be, I try not to say anything but like people like Hispanics or nose or whatever here in Hawaii, very culturally diverse with a lot of ethnic groups. But if you look at those types of lifestyles, right? Like thanksgiving dinners, like the whole family coming together and like they don’t even need like Thanksgiving or Easter or anything like that. It’s just like, oh, Friday, whatever. Like the whole family’s coming over. I mean, and it’s just like they get together just to get together and be part of a family because that’s, I guess maybe what life is more about where they’re from.
Tyson: 13:18 Definitely. It’s definitely a cultural thing. I noticed the difference being here in the mainland now with without those swear there’s a party for everything. Like kindergarten graduation. Yeah. I remember party next week and Sunday like, okay.
Ransom: 13:30 Yeah. Yeah. But I mean that’s just, that’s all part of it, right? You need to enjoy life. You know, the stress that I get calls at work. You have enough time to do that. Yeah, I definitely think five days of working in two days off. Like if you take that example and then you’d go to working only four days and having three days off a week. Like I don’t care what the math looks like. That sounds great to anybody.
Tyson: 13:56 Yeah.
Speaker 4: 13:58 I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve worked a job where it was, you know, 10, 12 hours a day, you know, five date or I work, you know, one job where it was at least six months, uh, 12 hour shifts, seven days a week. There was no such thing as we were so short handed in his soul, you know, overwork it and it’s like you just become like a Zombie. And I’ve worked both ends of the spectrum and I dunno, I, I enjoy now know that I take my kids to the school every day. I, I’m up with them every morning for at least an hour. So we hang out, we chat, we whatever. Sometimes we work out, I take my son to the bus stop, you know, I picked them up from school or when you know, a daughter comes home from school, I’m here, you know, we sit and chat for half an hour or whatever. Like I make less money, but I don’t even notice. Like, I don’t know, it’s like, it feels better I think. I don’t know.
Ransom: 14:54 Weird. Yeah. You got to have that balance. I mean I’ve worked both sides too. And I think last year, this time, like I had like three days off in March. I had two days off in February or late 20 the street. Um, and that’s, but I mean also when you’re in that mode, like it’s just kind of, you, you just become like a robot, like, like systematic. Um, a lot of your everyday choices kind of just like fade away because you don’t really have a choice. It’s just like, oh, what am I gonna wear it and Oh yeah, I’m going to working for, right. Yeah.
Speaker 4: 15:29 Where you live. Like you got to also spend hours with traffic.
Ransom: 15:33 Oh, well back then I was working in closer to work. Yeah. Um, to one of my jobs anyway, I was working two jobs and between those jobs or 28 days straight. So it’s cool when I have the job that’s close, I don’t really have that commute time. But yeah, I did half the job that was probably at least 30 to 40 minutes away. Uh, but with traffic it will extend that sometimes our sometimes,
Speaker 4: 15:59 but it’s going to get it to two hour commute times. That’s, I mean that really does impact so many
Ransom: 16:04 things. But um, but in general, like my everyday choices, like what am I doing tomorrow? What am I doing? You already know we’re going to go get up, get your stuff ready, breakfast, make lunch, whatever or come home and like you just kind of get into like this cycle in this habit. Sometimes you don’t even feel it. You don’t even notice it. It’s like one of my day 20 already, I haven’t had a day off yet. And it’s like, you know, it sucks the first week or so, but after the first week it’s like, Eh, this is kind of what life is well enough.
Speaker 4: 16:39 Yeah. And that’s the thing that they’re talking about. That was interesting. You know, all these less stress and is happier stuff. That one star, it was really cool. It’s like the, the it guy was able to pick up his kid from school and he’s like, I’ve never been able to do that. Like you think that guys quit anything, that guy’s going to go work somewhere else? Hell No. Exactly. I was like, Ooh, I never thought about that.
Ransom: 17:01 But yeah, I mean that, that definitely, it just depends on what those individual motives are. And like you’re saying, I mean, America has just designed, both family members were mom and dad. Right. But if you want to take this example, say let’s be generous. Say maybe 30 years ago, mom never worked, right? Yeah. It was dad that worked. Mom stayed home and was home all the time doing laundry, cleaning the house or whatever. Yeah. When one parent working back then nowadays it doesn’t matter where you go in America, where parents were initially, um,
Speaker 4: 17:40 these little becoming lower and middle class where, yeah, even like the lady on the show, the producer, she’s like, I’m embarrassing. My husband doesn’t work. Like, she’s like, I just feel like we’re losers or whatever. She was kind of trying to say like, what are they, his value is so much more at home. Then he was a doctor, so I was like, you know, it’s not like he was just some not to diminish any of the jobs. Like he was just like a regular, you know, middleclass everyday kind of kind of worker. He was a doctor and he’s like, I’m tired of this shit. And she’s like embarrassed of that. It’s kind of weird.
Ransom: 18:13 Ah, well I mean, and that’s just, that’s just it, right? Like that’s just, you are amongst your peers, right? If everybody in America is doing it and you’re not like, you know something’s wrong with you, right? I mean, I’m sure you get weird looks right. Like it’s like, how the heck is this guy bringing his kids to school
Speaker 4: 18:33 every day? Right. I people wonder all the time like, what do you do? Like always see you try neighbors. My neighbor is going to be funny. They’re like, what are you doing? I think the neighbors stick up salad dope. I like, what are you doing? I was, I told her to fuck at one. They’re like, that’s amazing. That’s amazing. And I’m like, it’s harder than you think. Really. Exactly. It’s so much easier just to be expected to be somewhere for a set amount of time
Ransom: 19:08 and it’s easier to just punch in and punch out. Definitely. But I mean this, this topic brings up a good thing. It’s like, is the 30 hour work week? Like, is that something that we should strive for now? Is that something that would better people’s lives? That, I dunno man. I think it definitely has a lot of benefits, but I agree, but I’m not sure if everyone can pull it off because I mean, let’s just say if you work at a magazine company, right, that change might be a little easier to make. You’re just putting out magazines or whatever the case might be. It’s like, okay, let’s figure out how we can be the most productive, right? Like real weights, skim the fat and just put our most productive hours into 32 hours a week instead of 40 and we can get it. Not like that’s an easy switch.
Ransom: 20:01 But for me, I guess I work in health care. Like you can’t close a hospital three days a week. Like, yeah, it’s just not gonna work. You know why the job was a security guard? Like you can’t just be like, oh yeah, we only have security Monday through Thursday through Saturday and now there is no security guard who were about it. It’s just like, Nah, that’s not really gonna work. Like those managers would have a really challenging time trying to find manpower or you know, they already have so many employees and now you’re going to cut the 40 hours of the week down the 32 like you’d have to have really good managers to try and finagle that and make that happen though. I don’t know.
Speaker 4: 20:46 Yeah, you do bring up a good point and I got those issues are hard but I still think it’s doable. I you would just, obviously you would need more employees, but I wonder like would you save anything or at the least not spend so much? Like what I’m saying, like let’s say it costs you 50 grand a year in Los Employees and sick time and retraining, rehiring like, and then you, you say, okay, well we’ll hire somebody for 40 grand a year. So when only going to lose 10 grand in this year, but guess what? Morale goes up. People start calling in sick, the turnovers is lower. I, I gotta wonder if you know what and then not even that. What is the unmeasurable costs? Like what is the, the happier employees, the more productivity, like where are these costs? It is hard to measure.
Ransom: 21:36 Yeah. Those, I definitely do like the additive effect, you know, it’s like one plus one doesn’t always equal too often too, because when you have happier employers, happier, well, yes. Happier employers and happier employees working together. Like there is more production that gets done. There’s something about coming to work where, you know, people come to work this past month, you know, that 52 hour work week. But you know, I enjoy the people that I work with and like there’s something about being in the trenches with somebody, you know what I mean? That you like working with that you’re happy to be there with like, I don’t know.
Speaker 4: 22:18 Yeah, no there is that, you know, I don’t know if being around them a day less, we’ll make that relationship stronger or not. I don’t know. But I, yeah, I’m not saying that, I’m just saying I wonder, you know, I’ve got, does pay a factor? I mean, yeah, it’s, it’s fun.
Ransom: 22:34 What if you took that extra Friday and just been, you know, you’re like, okay guys, instead of, you know, it’s like this is company party day or you know what I mean? Lots of see that, that they’re not going to hang out on the days off. I think it would, especially if they have more days to hang out with. Yeah. You know, I have a like a pretty decent size group of coworkers that, you know, from all over the hospital or whatever. We have every other weekend off and like we usually fill that time with something like usually at least make it a point if not every other week at least once a month to get together and do something. So like, I think that if they had more days off, I think the employees would hang out together after work. I Dunno, maybe
Speaker 4: 23:16 I have worked many jobs where, you know, we either played in a sports league on the side or we did other things on the side. Yeah, I mean definitely. And then you come to work and it’s like, it’s definitely a different dynamic.
Ransom: 23:30 Like we went out on an outing one like two nieces or whatever. And like, yeah, when I would come after the holiday, I came to work next to him like, Hey, what’s up? Hey, what’s most fun? Our last thing. And again in like, ah, it’s just, there’s just something about that. And like I definitely, to me, I enjoy the hidden effects, the hitting aspects of like, you know, um, people being happier at work. It’s just, there’s just something about going to work at a job that you either like or going to work when you are happier here. That just makes it better for that person. I Dunno.
Tyson: 24:13 And it makes me wonder now that we’re talking about this not so I guess for most jobs I think this would apply, but if your employees are happier and they’re more willing to be there, I bet you could figure out a way to that, that you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re getting more business, you retain more customers. Like, cause everybody’s happier. They treating everybody better to treating the opposite things better. Revenue goes up or at least stays more stable or something. I, I would imagine there is a lot more things that happened in trends late and to the exterior, you know, facing customer interaction, sales and all of these different things.
Ransom: 24:50 Right. I mean, any good manager or any good teacher in that position, hopefully they’re doing that when people are working 42 hours a week for sure. Right. Um, because that will be a parent, you know, you can see the morale of coworkers when you come into the workplace and it’s like, crap, our managers here, like everybody look busy or you know what I mean? You know what kind of say
Tyson: 25:12 been there, done that to everybody. Put your stuff away. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, oh fuck so and so’s working today. It’s like, Ooh, let’s call it with the code word
Ransom: 25:36 Shit, but every, you know what I mean? Like everybody can relate to that. Um, but at the same time, like if, if people were happier at work, like the tolerance for that kind of stuff goes up or if people have, I think if people have more days off, I mean, hopefully you like to think that they would utilize that time to be happier. Some people don’t. Um, yeah, so I can tell you number one, there’s going to be a lot of people, you got three days off, guess what they gonna do, take them, get another job, unfortunately. Right.
Tyson: 26:10 But then that’s their choice. I, I’m just saying, I’m saying, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know firefighters, nurses and these types of, you know, three 48 week kind of people that they do have a second, you know, side thing, job, hustle, whatever it is. Um, there’s these guys here at firefighters, they have, they, they roast coffee, I’m on their days off. Nice. And then they saw that stuff. And it’s like a little company that these guys have started.
Ransom: 26:35 Yeah. And I mean the, the podcast does talk about that flip side too, right? Cause he goes in like before he asked his boss to like, it’s hard sell this to Australia as we’ve talked to him. Why? He’s like, well you know what if my boss asked me to tee, you know, a five, 10 or he dropped the bomb now at 20 20% drinking a cut in salary, I was like, Ooh, that’s rough. You don’t even think about it. Right. But like five days you minus one day like that is this 20% yup. No, I was like, I was like, Ooh, at least at least like the wife was in on it. She’s like, well I know and I know how this is going to go. So she was like, if 20% it is like I’m game. I was like day almost.
Tyson: 27:17 Yeah. And it’s cool how they kind of gained it all. She’s like, yeah, that’s going to suck. Or they were trying to see a house. We’re trying to pay off our student loans, but you’re going to be happier. You’d be more creative and you’re going to just me a better husband and you’re going to be able to catch up on your sleep. And I was like, oh wow. They came that out. Nice.
Ransom: 27:30 Well that’s all the unknowns, the factors that I don’t think people put much attention to sleep like we talked about on previous episodes to the happiness, being able to contribute, being home more being, you know, being a cohesive unit together as a family. Like you can’t put a value on that and you can’t always put monetary value on those things. Yeah,
Tyson: 27:55 it’s not something I thought that was missing from the episode a bit part of his argument. Maybe it got left on the curtain floor and maybe, I don’t know what it was. But you know the, the, the Parkinson’s law, if you’re not familiar, you know, work expands to fill the time. You have to complete it. So, you know, I’m sure we’ve all experienced that where you know, you’re like, I got all week to do this project and ain’t going to take me all week, but that’s all I’m going to work on this week versus saying I got four days to do this, you know, I, I can’t f around as much. And then it goes back to what they were saying in the podcast too as well. On this same note, they found the original company that had kind of started this movement or whatever, that the British workers are only productive 2.5 hours in a day and Canada, they said it was 1.3 hours a day. And if I found something that said just about three hours a day,
Ransom: 28:49 three hours a day, eight hour work day, right. Ours is the actual work.
Tyson: 28:55 Right. Exactly. Exactly. And I was like, if that holds true, let’s just, let’s just say it is, well, we can easily go to 32 hours because you’re just, you’re, you’re, you’re going to do the same amount of work anyway
Ransom: 29:09 correctly. It’s like you need eight hours, then the minus five hours. So 40 hours to produce, um, shouting six hours of work. No, six times five, three times five is 15. So you need a 40 hour work week. It is 15 hours of productivity. Now if you go to 32 now you’re only going to get 12 hours of protein. Z. You gotta do the math, uh, math, it doesn’t matter. It really did. That’s junkie.
Tyson: 29:39 No. Hey they at the end, they were eluding to a 21 hour work
Ransom: 29:42 weeks. I was dying laughing or they’re like, Oh God, just Dallas. Some areas, but you know, all right, take joking aside though. Four hours, four hour, eight
Speaker 4: 29:57 ATB Hallock a Holla at me a four hour work week. It’s not the title is and what you think, but, but you got to wonder though with like they were saying, these advances in automation and drive it as for vehicles and AI and stuff. 21 hour working is not probably that far off where that’s all you have available to do anything. You know what I mean? Like you know, these different, who knows, it’s hard to say what kind of jobs and things are going to be available in the next 10 15 2030 years as these things start to come on mind, but maybe that’s more realistic and we spend a lot more time in leisure than we do working.
Ransom: 30:36 I’m not so sure man. It just depends on, again, it also depends on the job. Like yeah, depends on the job. Depends on the things that are out there. I definitely see some businesses that this 32 hour work, like if you’re out there and you work in one of those businesses where you think that this may actually work for you, like I, I think it may be, but like if you work in industries that are open 24 seven like your hospital, you work security or whatever else is open 24 seven gas station, I don’t know. It’s like, yeah, superstores and whatever. I mean, Walmart’s or whatever, say three manufacturing stuff. I’m sure there’s still, it’s like, you know, that kind of goes away. Like the 32 hour work week just kind of doesn’t seem plausible because now it’s just every employee you get is just that let you know that much less valuable. Like I dunno,
Speaker 4: 31:37 I see what you’re going with it. I’m just, I just feel like to fill that gap, you just need more people working less.
Ransom: 31:43 You’re just about that four hour work. I don’t know. We’ll buy, we’ll do
Speaker 4: 31:48 I, I just, I just keep doing things like the least efficient way possible. It’s just,
Ransom: 31:55 well I just drives me up the walls and that’s what I liked about that book
Speaker 4: 32:00 and, and the thought, and it’s this whole thing. I liked this because it forces you to, to really drill down. Like I said, you know, you’re gonna, you’re going to work as much time on this project is you’re allotted for it. If you’ve got an allowed an hour for it, guess what’s going to take you to fucking hour to do it. The same project. You give it two hours, guess what, syndicate two hours to do it, you know, and, and then, you know, the 80, 20 principle and all these different things and this, I think there’s so many. I bet if we stopped them and you evaluate it and we looked at these things and we analyze between being effective at what we’re doing and being efficient. I think this needs are there and I know they’re there. I think we talked about before, how do you get an a task? The faster it happens, the more you can find maybe waste for, for shortcuts
Tyson: 32:39 or automation or whatever it is. Like I think these things are there.
Ransom: 32:44 I definitely think for it will take some adjustments to get to this model going from 40 to 32 because again, we’re talking about a 20% cut somewhere that’d be in PE with the IBM productivity. Um, and I think that you need a good manager and or be here that’s going to be able to facilitate that. We want to do the things that you’re talking about like location, time spent here is not, well it’s time soon here. Like not well, but ultimately I still think of people as resources. The resources that they provide are wanting in 40 hours a week for every person that you hire. Um, you know, when you take that resource of 40 hours, regardless of how they’re using it, it’s still 40 hours. When you take that and minimize it down to 32 like you’re, you know, as a company you taking ahead, like regardless of how that they’d be too, you know, for you, you’re saying that you can take that person worked 40 hours and meet them as productive as if they only work 32 and like, hey man, I get it. That I like being positive. Like, you know, doing a great job on that, but at the same time I don’t know what you’re smoking bro. Like you know as like people will not going to change. Like, I don’t know,
Tyson: 34:08 I, you know where you’re going with this. You’re the one smoking little to so much talk to my friend. I think it’s there. I think it’s possible. Not only is this just my thoughts, this is what some of the research has shown that um, especially this company that kind of started this, they found that productivity went up, happiness went up, all these things went up. Like these are these objections we have went up and I think it’s there. You know, I really do think, I mean, I can think back to every job I’ve ever had that I would just do whatever I need to do to fill that time, whatever it was, whether it’s f and off on the internet or dragging my ass on a project or spending more time than I needed researching something or half fasting shit. So it takes longer to do.
Tyson: 34:56 I’m like, fuck, I got six more hours in this motherfucker. I got to figure out how to do to make this go slower. Yeah, possibly. You know, it’s true. But how do I think I just, I think there’s something there and this is why I thought this was kind of fun to, to talk about and think about and kind of maybe came out a little bit. You know, I was looking over today, so I was looking over, I icon out, you know, anywhere from three to six things to do, like I gotta get done today. And then I set a projected time, which is, if you’re not aware of where a horrible projecting, how long does it take us to do something. But I looked at my thing, like the things I got to do today I should be able to do today is five hours. And the odds of me getting all those done is slim to none. It’s an ambitious list
Speaker 4: 35:38 everyday. It’s ambitious. So let me maybe once or twice a week and just get all of it done in four hours. Right. What happens is I underestimate how long it’s gonna take me to do the task. That’s really what it comes down to. There’s this snafoos, there’s things that happen. Other data was a technology problem I was having and it was out of my control. The Shit was shut down and I was doing everything I could and it would’ve taken me, I think I want to spend four hours smashing my head against a wall until I realized that Eddie, any happened in today, you know, you know, and again that happens at any, anywhere you go. So I will say that if people made the same amount of money and I just Kinda wrap this up and trying to type of agreement with you, um, I can agree to disagree, my friend.
Speaker 4: 36:31 I know. Hopefully we can have a common ground. Is that I definitely for sure think that people, if they only work 32 hours versus more, they made the same amount of pay. I think majority of the ticket on that would be happier. Probably would absolutely agree with that. Maybe set maybe seventies a little under cut, but I think 70% of people would say, all right, you’re going to give me an extra eight hours off every week. I’ll be happy with that. Like that. Yeah. I think that, I definitely think that now, now whether they become more productive at work, that’s a slippery slope. Whether they go out and get another job. I think that’s possible too, you know? Absolutely. I definitely think at least the news of being like, Hey, you know what, what, what we decided to do as a company is just everybody’s just going to have eight hours less of work each week and you guys are, we’re not going to cut your pay. Like happy with that. I agree. Even if you have a shit job you don’t like, I would agree with that. I can agree with that a less hours. His mother Fucker, it sounds good to me. Or you know, if you love your job, you’re like, oh, but what am I gonna do with those eight hours? I really love coming here. My fear, you’re taking it away.
Speaker 4: 37:54 But you know, I bet you know, you could work out something maybe like were you pick up an extra eight hour shifts or something like that or whatever. I’m just saying in general. I think, and you know it’s a good thing I didn’t, they didn’t touch on in this episode that I think they kind of missed the a little bit was I’ve heard of other companies where the either you choose the third day off you get or you choose like Wednesday or Friday, so there’s always a, a decent amount of people in that, in, in the office of the building, whatever it is and it’s not, everybody’s got a three day weekend. It’s like you choose like one lady I was, she was saying, she goes, I love it. I said, I’m off Friday, Saturday, I’m off Saturday, Sunday I got to work Monday, Tuesday, I’m off Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And she’s like, I feel like I’m never here. Yeah, we got so much time to do these things. She’s like, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s like, it was like the greatest gift to her. She’s like, I get to pick up my kids early on Wednesday and we get to do things. I got to go to places that are in our open during the week that normally are harder to do after work on the weekends. I was like, oh, that’s a pretty creative solution as well. Yeah.
Speaker 4: 38:57 But yeah, I don’t know. Some of the things I think they did right. And then maybe miss, I don’t know why or whatever they’re, whatever their angle was. But no, I definitely think it’s a good topic to talk about it though. Yeah, it’s good stuff. And they all say they were pretty hard on this topic now. I think we’re good man. Like I said, guys, I’ll link to the episode in there and the articles as well as um, the company that kind of seemed like this is a company that started this all [inaudible] over in England. Um, I perpetual guardian, some type of insurance company, whatever. I’ll link to the original article and then the results and things that they found as well as the episode on this as well. Um, I also believe there’s a freakonomics episode that’s kind of talks about something similar about how much people actually don’t work while they’re at work.
Speaker 4: 39:39 And a lot of these fluff jobs and stuff. I’ll link to that as well if you guys want to hear another angle on this. But if you’re looking to maybe voluntarily go down to 32 hours a week or maybe you need a little extra money can start a micro business side hustle. Hey, this Moby, we reviewed a couple episodes back. Go check that out. Uh, the generation of freedom, that’s this month’s giveaway. We, we enjoyed the movie so much within the message is great. All the resources they put together, we’re giving away five copies of this. If you want to learn more about these types of things, starting a microbusiness done a side hustle, going down to 32 hours a week or whatever it is, cause you don’t like your job. I don’t know what you’re going to go over to social community that show slash pick me.
Speaker 4: 40:25 Jump into this giveaway. Be One of these five lucky people that are going to witness copy. If you don’t want to roll your dice had ever to Jen, freedom.com and just getting into them by the movie, it’s 20 bucks and ain’t that big of an investment. There’s some other options for more elaborate packages in lessons is that they have, they do also have a free four video course. Things are great compliments in the movie, whatever it is, go over there or head over to the search committee that show such pick me. Get into this month’s giveaway and work on building more freedom, building more choices into your life and Alex, I’ll link to all of these articles in different things like that and then this week’s challenge. I’d like you to evaluate what you’re doing with your day. Are you being effective or being efficient?
Speaker 4: 41:14 Now the difference is being effective is doing the right things while being efficient is about doing things right. Okay, awesome. Did I get that right? Being effective is about doing the right things, what? Being efficient. It’s about doing things right. Evaluate what you’re doing. I challenge you guys to write down the things you’re doing in a day and start a timer. Each of those tasks, I guarantee you you’re underestimating or overestimating how long it’s taking you to do a task. It’s really enlightening, is really eyeopening to, you know, write out your tasks right out, you know, three to six things you’ve got to do today. How long do you think is going to take you? And when you start you just taxed are on a timer. Um, there’s a bunch of things you can just, you know, uh, open up chrome or whatever and just type in time or whatever. And then you start a timer, challenge you to see how long it’s taking to do these things. I guarantee you can find time in your day to free up from these different things. And then I guess then final thoughts. It’s like what, what happened is she had an extra eight hours a week, one extra day off a week. What would you do with it? Would you be happier? Okay. Be Sad. Would you contribute more or would you work more? What would you do with that time?
Speaker 4: 42:27 My, my thoughts is, I hope all of you will be enjoying that time, but not sure. Gotcha. Well, I’m enjoying my time here and if you guys want to share the enjoyment and the love and the opportunities had us with to other people, you know, the best way right now to support this show is to share it with other people. Leave a like, leave a review in between shows. You guys can catch us on social media and social meaning. Show Instagram, Facebook, autos, fun little places. And you can also subscribe on Youtube and your favorite podcast app for past episodes and links to everything we talk about here today. You missed the social [inaudible] show and until next time, keep learning and growing, transforming to the person you want to be.