What would a 3 hour work day be like?

After 3 hours you'd go to your next job.

Then you miss out the unmentioned part of the work - idle thinking. Not only the time spent typing something on the keyboard is work. All the time spent thinking how to solve a problem is also work.

For many jobs, it won't change much. My advisor comes to the university 3 days a week, and stays for 4 ish hours. But he's a very good researcher with high research output. (I do math, this might not be possible for lab based researchers.)

Usually these jobs can't be measured in hours you spend in your workplace. You're kind of always working since you can't really turn your brain off while working on an interesting problem, but what others see is that you're sipping coffee with your laptop open.

3 hours a day wouldn't be that useful. You still have to "be" somewhere 5 days a week.

What is useful; I did this for a few years; 3 x 8hr days. Mon - Wed, normal work hours, and a 4 day weekend. No need for "public holidays" even paid time off becomes less relevant, when you can switch one week to Wed - Fri. Leaving Thur - Tue as a "normal" way to take time off, giving a 6 day weekend possible every second week.

morning coffee, break, afternoon coffee, go home

As a non-white-collar worker, I always find conversations like this very alienating. The idea of being on the clock while not working is bizarre to me.

For many office workers, it would be about the same.

you get up at 12 and start to work at 1, take an hour for lunch and then at 2 you're done.

To be honest, while I feel while this is true for many jobs, we should also keep the people whose jobs where this isn't possible in mind.

I think the problem would be getting everyone’s 3 hours to line up.

Congratulations you just figured out how to have four jobs without breaks.

Sadly we are so obsessed with squeezing "productivity" en masse out of the workforce. We rarely justify technology or process enhancements that result in fewer hours worked. We generally optimize how much we get out of each hour worked. I have always had an issue with this.

Take AI for example, we are seeing some tasks automated or accelerated by AI powered tools. However, I have not heard any employers state how their employees will be able to get their work done in fewer hours. I only ever hear how people will get more done during their work hours.

The system in this way is very much broken. In an ideal world, you'd get paid for the outcome and not the hours worked, but that is not a working relationship many outside of entrepreneurs and consultants have.

I would struggle get anything done. 3 hours is just not enough time. Sometimes it feels like 8 isn't even enough.

I'm not sure I could condense my work like that. If I have 3 hours of work I want at least 4 hours to do it in. And if you decide you can condense it, employers will simply double everyone's workload, and we are not computers. Maybe 3 hours of work is all anyone can do in a day, and some of us can do it in 3:15 but most of us like to spread it over 8. Plus there are insights that only come in non-active time, again, we aren't machines.

Ok. Let's say we have 4 hour workdays, 4 day work weeks. Not just for white collar.

A business would require to hire 2 more people to cover a 24h continuous prosuction line (3 8h shifts to 5 4h shifts).

there would be more employment and higher productivity. More happiness I suspect.

I'd take it.

Some meetings are BS while others are legitimately helpful - I think a 3 hr day would make those good meetings hard to squeeze in.

I think logistics job titles would be numerous and intense.

Like, not office work, but with my auto body business in the past. I can absolutely crush it in a day when all the pieces come together. While I may only be working an average of 3 hours a day, my time is spent moving pieces around. I might be able to knock out $2500 in a day, but this is a stupid number. It doesn't account for my 75% overhead, or how it took all week to setup all that work that happened to align with one day of intense effort. Never trust anyone saying what they can make in a day, week, or month with their business. What they did on their best day has no bearing on their average.

I get the skeptical impression that these shortened hours figures neglect the setup and true nature of most jobs. Like some grad student went to an office for a week, took notes, and extrapolated meaning that lacks perspective, but I could be wrong.

When painting, I'm much more effective in a shorter amount of time but it wasn't a choice.

Personally, long term, I think we are beginning to recognise the barbarism behind allowing a complex social hierarchy to develop based on the fundamental human need for survival. There are other forms of complex hierarchical display that do not kill people and oppress billions. Some examples are awards based accolades in academia and performing arts, another is merit from physical performance in events and Olympics. This will ultimately happen in the distant future. A wealth based social hierarchy is unethical barbarism if you step outside of cultural norms and objectively assess the ethics. The hard part is always convincing the winners to step aside and play a new game with new rules.

The only problem that I would have with the 3-hour work day is that sometimes they're generally is more work to do. Average is probably only about 3 hours but occasionally you need more.

Although quite a lot of time could be saved by not having meetings about meetings about when you're going to have a meeting to book the meeting. But let's be reasonable that's not happening.

It sounds great! The real trick would be finding any company willing to pay the same 40 hours of wages every week for 15 hours of work. There's not much point to a 3 hour work day if you have work 3 different jobs

It’d look like an 8 hour day with more overtime paid out.