Cal Newport

You don't have to run it through the ringer.

And then you're like, okay, if it really sticks with me, then maybe I'll be like, all right, all right, I'll do it.

Well, it depends what you mean by work and what they're doing, right?

Because think about it.

Let's say you're an athlete.

It's super well-defined.

Like, here's optimal training, here's optimal rest, and, like, that's what you should be doing.

Like, that's really clear.

We don't have those limits as clear in the culture for other types of jobs that we probably should.

If you're at a high-wage hourly rate,

build job like a law partner at a big law firm there the economic model is the more you work the more profitable it is and we'll pay you big money to do this but like you should basically work as much as you can that your body will take it that's the economic engine that's why I think those jobs are those jobs are scary if you're a novelist

that writes literary fiction.

So you're like, I really need to be award nominated for each book, or I'm going to fall out of this like slipstream of, because no one's going to read these books unless they're some of the best books.

Then you should be doing like four hours in the morning and then just

disappear right like you should be doing all very little more work than that because almost anything else will get in the way of you like sticking in that position and so it all just depends on what on what you do you know didn't you look at some experiment of shorter work weeks yeah what what did you learn from that

There was a lot of these right around the pandemic, right before and then right after, in Europe and Iceland.

So some European studies, I think Germany did one, Iceland did one, UK did one.

And they were looking at four-day work weeks.

So what would happen if we take away one day?

The interesting thing about those experiments is what they found is whatever measures of productivity they came up with, they didn't get worse, which I thought was very interesting.