Should We All Be Working A Four-Day Week?

Let’s explore a familiar scenario. Your alarm goes off and, once again, you wake up in a bad mood. Already dreading the day ahead, you pick up your phone to check how long you can snooze for. You squint at the violently bright light and suddenly you feel a little better. No, not because your ex text you back. And no, your boss hasn’t emailed to say that the day is cancelled. But your phone says it’s Friday which means it’s basically the weekend and today will be a better day.

Chances are, by the time you get to work on a Friday morning, you’ve already tapped out of any prospect of productivity. There have been studies that suggest on how the amount we're working is causing us a dangerous amount of stress (40+ hours a week, anyone?), having just two days for the weekend messes with our sleep cycles, and how condensing our work weeks might make us more efficient; so why has no one rung the klaxon of change to implement this not-so-revolutionary idea yet?

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BBC 1 have (sort of) made the first move. This week it was announced that Mollie King will be co-hosting Matt Edmondson's show from Friday to Sunday and with this move, all existing weekend shows will be starting a day early too. It means that for the very first time, Radio 1 will be operating that coveted four day working week. So should we all be following suit?

I hate to break it to you but the reality is that starting the weekend early would probably just mean that Friday feeling would happen on a Thursday instead. Wouldn't spending the last few ours of your working week clock watching, craving a pint and scrolling through social media just be shifted 24 hours earlier?

It's all about that glorious quest for a work-life balance at the end of the day, which we're all for of course. But the bit we're likely to miss as we fantasise about waking up at 12pm on a Friday and having an extra day to endure tedious boozy brunch queues, is that knowing our luck, four days weeks could mean even less pay and even more pressure. You know when you take a day off work but then forget that, as nice at it may be, you've still got to compensate for the stuff that evidently still has to be done while you're away? No one wants that every week.

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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.