This Organization Is Giving People Five Days to Work Four

How the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute is responding to the emotional pressures of the pandemic.

Cal Newport noted that knowledge workers typically end up working 20% more than they have time to comfortably handle in a recent New Yorker essay.

He put this down to having knowledge workers self-regulate their workload.

According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), 40 percent of workers say that their job is very or extremely stressful

And as I noted in my 2020 book, Time Rich: Do Your Best Work, Live Your Best Life, the three key drivers of workplace stress are excessive workload, office politics, and work-life balance conflicts.

Newport asked what would happen if we flipped the script and aimed to work 20% less than we had time to reasonably handle. “How much would this hurt you professionally?”, he asked, before suspecting the answer would be “not that much”.

One organization is now poised to answer that question.

75% Time?

In light of demands that lockdowns present for people — be it additional obligations such as homeschooling or simply the emotional…