Summer is an ideal time to enjoy a four day work week. Most businesses are a bit slower in the summer than during the rest of the year. Plus the weather is so beautiful that it’s great if you can take some three-day weekends and get out into nature. This can be really refreshing for you which ultimately makes you more productive. However, you don’t want to spend the summer being lazy. To make a four day work week work for you, you need to get enough done and also earn enough money to pay your bills even though you’re taking that fifth day off each week.
Most people will find that it is possible to accomplish as much in four days as you get done in five. There are multiple ways that you can achieve this. One is to work ten hour days instead of eight hour days. Another is to simply be more productive in the first four days of the week. To do this, simply set weekly goals that reflect what you would like to get done in the normal work week. Then organize the tasks for each week to allow you to meet those goals. Allow yourself the reward of taking Friday off if everything gets done before then. You’ll be motivated to stay on task and you’ll probably find yourself getting everything done in those four days. Continue reading ‘Make a 4 Day Work Week Work This Summer’
If you operate a small business then there’s a good chance that you started that business with a normal schedule. You’re open Monday through Friday from 9-5 or something close to that. You work forty hours per week (or sometimes more) and so do your employees. But does this work schedule really make sense in today’s society? More and more people are realizing that 9-5 just doesn’t work for them.
Employers with companies of all sizes are trying to find ways to increase the productivity of their employees. Recent studies indicate that there are some interesting ways to approach this problem that most businesses haven’t even been considering. Although employers are doing many different things to increase productivity in the office, most of them aren’t paying attention to employee health issues and concerns about mobility in the business. Combined with more traditional methods of improving employee performance, attention to these two key areas could significantly improve the productivity of the entire nation’s work force.
Step into any office or place of business and spend some time eavesdropping on the conversations there. You will discover that the only thing that anyone wants to talk about is the recession. People are in constant discussion about what the recession means for them, for the places where they work and for the financial lives of everyone that they know. Is this ongoing conversation taking away from employee productivity? Perhaps to some extent we’re seeing a decrease in productivity because people are talking about the recession but for the most part the recession seems to be motivating employees to work more productively at their jobs.
People who have a drive to be productive often end up sabotaging themselves in their efforts to achieve this very goal. That is because most people believe that being productive means working as much as possible all of the time. Although part of productivity is being prolific in whatever you do, part of it is also being at the top of your game. You can’t be totally on the ball if you’re exhausted or overworked. That’s why those people who are the most productive in their lives and in their work are the people who have learned the difficult task of balancing a busy working life with the ability to take time for themselves on a regular basis.
Many businesses are cutting back their employees’ work hours because of the economic recession. Some businesses are having all employees take one paid day off every pay schedule; others are working a Monday-Thursday schedule and still others are shortening the work day. Whatever the method, the end result is that there are fewer hours in the week to get things done in the office. This is having an interesting impact on the productivity at many offices. While some productivity is lost because of fewer working hours and because of the negative working environment that this creates, many businesses may discover that productivity during working hours is higher than before the cuts were made. 
There are approximately twenty work days in every month which you could theoretically use to be productive. However, we both know that it doesn’t quite work this way. Some days are naturally filled with high levels of productivity whereas other days seem to be a waste of time no matter what you do to make sure that you are working. The key to a productive month is to make sure that you maximize your use of the month’s most productive days and then use the rest of the month to take care of the mundane tasks that move your work along even though they don’t feel very productive. By understanding the most important days of each month, you can significantly increase your overall productivity.
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