In a London office tuned to the drumbeat of email and espresso, I tried it for a month. The twist wasn’t where I expected: my body quietly rewrote the story before my calendar did.
At 8.51am on a grey Monday in Holborn, I swiped into the office with wet sleeves and that jangly hum that lives in open plan. The coffee machine coughed, someone cursed the Wi‑Fi, and Teams pinged like rain on a tin roof. Week one of a 4‑day work week—same salary, tighter days, Fridays off—felt like stepping onto a faster escalator. I planned to track it properly: resting heart rate on my watch, sleep, steps, and that vague but stubborn knot behind my right shoulder. By Thursday night I expected to be shattered. Friday came, and something odd had happened. My body noticed first.
One month in: what my body told me
By week two, a pattern emerged that didn’t read like hustle culture. I slept deeper, woke earlier, and stopped doom‑scrolling in bed. Monday didn’t gnaw at me like it used to. The knot in my shoulder eased, not dramatically, just enough to feel like a window cracked open. Four days did more than free up Friday. It changed the feel of the whole week, like moving a heavy sofa and discovering the room had light you forgot about.
Here’s the human bit. On a Thursday, our sales lead hit a wobble and I almost took my laptop into Friday. Instead, I left it shut and cleaned the kitchen, walked the canal, called my mum. By Sunday, I didn’t dread Monday. My watch told the same story: my resting heart rate dropped 4 beats per minute across the month, average sleep stretched by 42 minutes, and my daily steps nudged up by 1,300. In the UK’s big 4‑day week pilot, companies reported fewer sick days and less stress. My tiny data set nodded along.
Why did it happen so quickly? Partly the recovery runway. Three nights in a row away from work is a different animal to a standard weekend. It interrupts the cortisol drip, restores focus, and makes Monday feel less like a cold start. The other piece is pressure. Four days forced tighter boundaries and fewer half‑meetings. I moved from performative busyness to deep work, then actually downed tools. The shorter week didn’t make me lazier. It made the work feel like a series of sprints, not a marathon with no finish line.
How to make four days work without burning out
I learned to front‑load the week like a chef lining up mise en place. Monday morning became a 30‑minute sprint to write a single, shared “Done by Thursday” list. Meetings shrank to 25 or 45 minutes, camera‑on, agenda‑first. We ring‑fenced two focus blocks daily and pushed status checks into written updates. Fridays were sacred: no slack, no sneaky email. A simple rule: plan hard on Monday, land things on Wednesday, clear the runway on Thursday.
The biggest trap? Overstuffing the four days until they eat your brain. People jam chores into Thursday night, forget handovers, and then panic on Friday afternoon. Start by pruning one thing: cancel the one meeting that delivers nothing. Replace it with a two‑paragraph note. Build handover notes that a tired colleague can read in 60 seconds. And breathe. Let’s be honest: nobody does that every single day. You aim for it, miss often, and keep nudging the culture anyway.
You’ll feel a moral wobble the first time you ignore a Friday ping. That’s normal. Say it in the open: Friday is off. Keep the door closed and the phone upside down. Boundaries aren’t rude; they’re how the week actually fits.
“I didn’t get lazier; I got sharper. The work shrank to what mattered, and my Sunday stopped feeling like a countdown,” a colleague told me by the kettle.
- Hard stop at 5.30pm, four days. No stealth overtime to “pay” for Friday.
- One team-wide planning doc, updated daily by 4pm.
- Two focus blocks per day, calendar-protected, notifications off.
- Meetings with a verb in the title: Decide, Draft, Answer, Ship.
- Friday autoresponder with clear emergencies path—and what counts as one.
The bigger trade‑off I didn’t expect
We’ve all had that moment when a free day feels like a test you might fail. More time can expose the life you’ve parked in the margins. In week three, Friday wasn’t just a bonus day; it was a small mirror. I actually read, exercised, and did one thing slowly. The odd part is how it leaked back into Monday. I stopped carrying a low throb of fatigue that made bad habits look sensible. We don’t get extra hours; we get a different rhythm.
The trade‑off is discipline. Four days mean saying no faster, writing clearer, and leaving good enough alone. It also means trusting colleagues when you can’t hover on Friday. That trust builds muscle. After a month, my energy was steadier, my irritability dropped, and that shoulder knot barely showed up. The office didn’t become a utopia. It became a place where my body and my calendar finally agreed on something simple: work is better when it has an edge to it, and a real end.
| Key Point | Detail | Interest for the reader |
|---|---|---|
| Health shifts can land in 30 days | Resting heart rate down 4 bpm, +42 minutes sleep, fewer tension headaches | Signals to watch for that tell you it’s working—without a GP appointment |
| Focus beats hours | Shorter meetings, protected deep‑work blocks, ruthless handovers | Tools you can copy next week to get the same work done in less time |
| Culture is the hard bit | Shared rules, Friday boundaries, honest comms on what’s truly urgent | How to make it stick in a real UK office, not just in a brochure |
FAQ :
- Does a 4‑day week mean longer days?Some teams keep eight‑hour days, others stretch to nine. Mine didn’t add time. The gains came from fewer meetings and cleaner focus, not from sneaking in extra hours.
- What happens to customer support on Fridays?Rotate coverage or run a small on‑call. Publish a Friday autoresponder with response times and true emergency routes. Most “urgent” items waited just fine.
- Will my manager think I’m slacking?Show outcomes, not online time. Share a weekly “Shipped” list by Thursday at 4pm. Once results are visible, anxiety fades fast.
- Is there any proof beyond anecdotes?Yes. In the UK pilot, companies saw fewer sick days and lower stress, with most choosing to carry on. My personal metrics echoed that shift within a month.
- What if my role simply can’t drop a day?Try a 9‑day fortnight, or a staggered Friday. Pilot it for six weeks with clear metrics. Small wins still buy back energy and calm.
