The 4 day mindset

Why a 4 day week is more than just an alternative working schedule

This month I’ve been reflecting on the mindset shift that lays the foundation for a successful 4 day working week.

When I first transitioned to 4 days, I wasn’t prepared for the change of perspective that was simmering away beneath the practical and logistical arrangements. I was busy writing my flexible working business case, adjusting my childcare plans and completing HR forms. I didn’t realise that I was also building a completely new frame of reference from the moment I first asked myself whether there might be an alternative to a 5 day week.

A true 4 day working week is different from other types of flexible working. Typically, flexibility means working from non-office locations and/or shuffling the standard number of hours around (e.g. compressing 5x 8 hour days into 4x 10 hour days, or working outside office hours). A 3 day week is also a very different premise, given the clear case for ensuring that a 3 day role is “cut to size” to fit the time available.

In contrast, an 80% schedule is shorter than a traditional week, but not so much shorter that there needs to be a drastic difference in output. For me, the 4 day week creates a genuine incentive to optimise my time and sharpen my thinking on how I add value, especially because everyone else around me works 5 days.

So, what are the key elements of the 4 day mindset?

1. Be willing to go against the grain. This is the very first hurdle for a prospective 4 dayer to take on, and the reality is that many will stumble at this point. Going against the grain is challenging and uncomfortable, but it’s also liberating. I included the video below in the email that is automatically sent to new subscribers to The 4 Day Lawyer. Eccentric animations aside, it’s a thought-provoking watch that perfectly captures the big question I started out with: if history tells us that the 5 day working week is a construct, who says we can’t we revisit it?

2. Define your purpose. It’s important to set aside the passive work-until-the-job-gets-done approach, take a step back, and consider what “done” really means. This is not just about being outcome-focused or ditching the perfectionism (although that is critical and continues to be a real problem in the legal profession). It’s also about understanding the broader purpose of your role, and structuring your time in a way that enables you to achieve that purpose. In my role as a law firm associate, my purpose was split multiple ways: I was a subject matter expert, a project/deal manager, a supervisor and a business developer. Rather than waiting for tasks to land on my desk and then simply working harder to cram them all into 4 days, I thought proactively about how I could best use my time to advance the purposes I had identified.

3. Think creatively. It often feels jarring or inauthentic to talk about using creativity in a corporate role – especially as a lawyer. However, the 4 day week is essentially a design project. Having defined your purpose, you’ll need to structure your week creatively to set you up for success, whether that’s by:

   • setting up new ways to share information, collaborate with colleagues, ensure smooth handovers and avoid duplication of work,

   • planning ahead to identify potential crunch points, or

   • identifying the elements of your role that are crying out to be automated, delegated or eliminated.

4. Maintain healthy boundaries. A 4 day week will never work unless you’re prepared to make it work. I won’t sugar-coat this: it’s not easy. You’ll need to become good at saying no, honing in on the hard deadlines and the true priorities, and speaking up when it doesn’t make sense for you to do something. I’ve seen 4 day arrangements fail spectacularly, and I’ve benefited from the wisdom and guidance of established 4 dayers. There is no faster route to resentment than working a 4 day week that regularly becomes a 5 day week, or a 4 day week plus late-night and weekend catch-up sessions. My (very unscientific) research tells me that excessively flexible boundaries are a strong contributor to the failure of a 4 day arrangement. Note that I said excessively flexible, which brings me neatly on to the next point…

5. Be flexible (within reason). A 4 day week involves give and take. I don’t expect it to work perfectly every single week, and perfection isn’t my measure of success. I work in a demanding role, I’m sometimes called on to deal with urgent issues and, most importantly, I really enjoy doing my job. I will fire off an email that can’t wait or take an urgent call, even if it happens to be my non-working day. If I know there’s something unavoidable coming up, I will make the effort to swap my days around if I can. The flipside is that my colleagues are incredibly respectful of my schedule and I trust that they’ll only contact me on my non-working day if I’m genuinely needed.

6. Make yourself dispensable (yes, you read that correctly). Traditional thinking says that career success comes from making yourself indispensable: your importance is measured by how well – or how badly – people manage without you. Over the years, I’ve discovered that one of my superpowers is in fact the opposite: making myself dispensable on my non-working day. I’ve developed a knack for horizon scanning, planning ahead and setting up processes to ensure that things continue ticking over while I’m not there. This is not just about being organised, systems-minded and getting the right tools in place. It’s also a serious ego check. It can be counterintuitive if you prefer to follow standard career advice, but the cornerstone of a successful 4 day week is enabling the work to roll on smoothly and sustainably in your absence.

Photo by Artem Kniaz on Unsplash

As well as welcoming the shift in your own mindset, you’ll likely find yourself needing to convince others (your line manager, clients, peers, direct reports, HR…) that doing something out of the ordinary will yield the same, or better, results.

I mentioned above that I created a business case to support my application to transition to a 4 day week. This was in part a practical document setting out how I would structure my role and my working days, but I also saw it as a sales pitch, showcasing the benefits that my 4 day week would bring to my team and the wider organisation.

An example: I set out my plan to assign a trainee or junior lawyer to each of my projects and transactions, to provide some level of cover and continuity on my non-working day. But I also took this one step further and highlighted the development opportunities this created for others, and the potential positive effect on the team’s collective skillset and retention figures.

When I first switched to 4 days, I was in the fortunate position of being able to build on collective mindset shifts that had already happened. At the time, I worked for a law firm that imposed no billable hours targets, which meant that there was an existing acknowledgement that hours worked weren’t the sole measure of output and productivity. (For readers who are unfamiliar with the legal industry, a billable hours target is the number of hours a lawyer is expected to spend doing chargeable client work each year, which is often linked to performance ratings and bonuses.) This made it slightly easier to demonstrate that client service wouldn’t be impacted by my non-traditional working schedule. In the spirit of not sugar-coating, I will say that there are other inherent sticking points that make the 4 day week tricky to implement in a law firm setting - more on that next time.

It’s so tempting to give up on the idea of a 4 day week when you start to consider the challenges involved in making a success of it. The key is to look beyond the practical and first embrace the 4 day mindset, putting yourself in the strongest position to handle the inevitable twists and turns (and potential failures) along the way.

Next month, I’ll share some thoughts on the role of experimentation in creating a successful 4 day working week. Until then, please feel free to share or like this post and join the discussion by commenting.

The fine print:

All opinions expressed on The 4 Day Lawyer are my own and not those of my current or former employers. My 4 day working week is an individual arrangement and is not associated with the UK’s 4 day working week pilot.