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Entrepreneur Andrew Barnes ran his New Zealand trust company Perpetual Guardian the traditional way for years — five-day weeks, standard hours, constant presence required.
Then he started questioning whether time in the office actually correlated with results. His observations revealed something disturbing: employees spent huge chunks of their day looking busy rather than being productive. Meetings filled calendars. Email became performance art. Actual focused work happened in scattered fragments.
In 2018, Barnes conducted an experiment no business leader had previously attempted on these terms. He gave all 240 employees a fully-paid day off every week and asked them to maintain their productivity. Two universities measured the results.
What happened challenged everything conventional wisdom says about work. People became happier, healthier, more engaged in their personal lives — and they worked better, not worse.
In 2026, as companies grapple with retention, burnout, and the aftermath of remote work disruptions, the four-day week has shifted from radical experiment to serious business strategy. The professionals thriving aren't grinding harder — they're working smarter within tighter constraints that force efficiency.
Headway, a daily growth app trusted by 55 million users worldwide, breaks down Andrew Barnes and Stephanie Jones's 'The 4 Day Week' into quick insights you can apply immediately. Whether you're commuting or waiting in line, you can start understanding the business case that's reshaping how modern companies operate.
The five-day week is a relic designed for assembly lines
Barnes argues that the 40-hour, five-day workweek made sense when output directly correlated with hours. More time on the factory floor meant more widgets produced. Knowledge work doesn't function that way. You can't force creativity, problem-solving, or strategic thinking by keeping people at desks longer. In fact, cognitive performance declines sharply after about 30 truly productive hours per week.
Research shows the average office worker is genuinely productive for roughly three hours per day. The rest is meetings that could have been emails, emails that could have been nothing, social media breaks disguised as "quick checks," and the performance of looking busy because you're contractually obligated to be present for eight hours. The pandemic exposed this when millions worked from home without constant supervision and productivity either stayed the same or increased.
The insight that changes everything: Your company isn't paying for your time. They're paying for your output. The five-day week obscures this truth by conflating presence with productivity. When you cut to four days, the waste becomes visible and teams are forced to fix it.
📘 Download Headway to explore Barnes's full framework for why measuring output matters more than measuring hours. The app's gamified streaks help you build the habit of thinking about your own productivity, not just your schedule.
The 100-80-100 model proved people work better in less time
Barnes's trial wasn't "cram 40 hours into four days." That creates burnout, not balance. The model was 100-80-100: full pay (100%) for 80% of the time while delivering 100% of the output. Employees worked normal eight-hour days for four days instead of five. The challenge was eliminating the 20% of work time that produced zero results.
Teams got one month to prepare. They analyzed how they spent their days, identified time-wasters, and designed productivity measures. When the eight-week trial started in March 2018, academic researchers from University of Auckland and Auckland University of Technology measured everything — stress levels, work-life balance, job satisfaction, engagement, commitment, empowerment, and actual company output.
The results demolished every skeptical prediction. Work-life balance jumped from 54% to 78% of employees feeling they could manage it. Stress levels dropped from 45% to 38%. Job satisfaction rose from 77% to 81%. Engagement increased from 79% to 84%. Commitment soared from 68% to 88%. And critically, company output stayed constant. Employees delivered the same results in fewer hours, meaning productivity per hour increased roughly 20%.
The practical shift: Teams cut meaningless meetings. Default meeting time became 15 minutes — if you needed an hour, you had to justify why. Employees stopped checking email constantly and scheduled specific times for it. Managers couldn't micromanage when people had different schedules, forcing actual trust and autonomy. People protected their four work days fiercely because they had something worth protecting — their fifth day off.
Headway's 2,500+ book summaries let you explore productivity, management, and workplace psychology from multiple angles — from Cal Newport on deep work to research on organizational behavior. The more frameworks you absorb in quick 3-20 minute sessions, the better you understand what actually drives results.
📘 Check it yourself. Users report that understanding productivity research across multiple books dramatically improved their ability to identify what's actually productive versus what just feels like work.
The real barrier isn't logistics — it's trust
Barnes and Jones address every practical objection in the book. "Our clients need us available five days" — stagger schedules so coverage continues. "We can't lose 20% capacity" — you won't if productivity per hour increases. "Our industry is different" — Perpetual Guardian operates in highly regulated financial services and it still worked.
The actual barrier is psychological. Managers who need to see employees at desks to believe they're working can't implement this model. It requires measuring output instead of presence. That terrifies leaders who've built careers equating hours with dedication. The four-day week forces companies to define what they're actually paying for — results or time.
Barnes provides a detailed implementation guide: cultural preparation to align teams on productivity goals, legal considerations for employment contracts and compliance, measurement systems that track output instead of hours, and trial design that starts small and scales based on data. The book includes case studies from Perpetual Guardian plus organizations that followed: Microsoft Japan (40% productivity increase), Unilever New Zealand (successful ongoing trials), and the 2022 UK pilot with 61 companies where 92% wanted to continue.
What this means for you: Whether you're an employee who wants to propose this or a manager evaluating if it's feasible, the framework exists. Barnes proves this isn't theoretical or utopian — it's practical business strategy backed by data. The question isn't whether it can work. It's whether your organization will measure what matters or keep measuring what's easy.
📘 Start understanding how modern work actually functions with Headway's bite-sized wisdom delivered every morning that you can practice throughout your day. Users consistently report that small daily doses of business innovation thinking compound into major clarity about what's broken in traditional work culture over months.
Transform how you think about productivity with Headway
Barnes and Jones's book proves that working less can mean producing more when you eliminate waste and measure what matters. In 2026's talent wars, companies that figure this out will attract and retain the best people while competitors burn them out.
Headway makes building this understanding simple and fun. Beyond 'The 4 Day Week,' you'll find 2,500+ book summaries in text and audio covering management, productivity, business innovation, and workplace culture. The app's gamified challenges turn abstract concepts into daily practices — whether you're standing in line, floating in a pool, or commuting to work.
The app adapts to how you learn best, making self-growth more convenient, enjoyable, and intuitive. Start with 15 minutes today and discover how questioning assumptions about work can change your career trajectory.
📘 Download Headway and join 55 million people who've made daily growth a habit.
Frequently asked questions about the four-day workweek and Barnes's model
What's the difference between the four-day week and compressed schedules?
Compressed schedules cram 40 hours into four 10-hour days. Barnes's model cuts total hours by 20% while maintaining output. Employees work four normal eight-hour days instead of five. The difference is fundamental — compression just shifts when you're exhausted, while the four-day week eliminates wasted time so you actually work less. The 100-80-100 model means full pay for 80% of the time delivering 100% of the results, not working harder in fewer days.
How do you actually measure productivity for knowledge workers?
Barnes addresses this extensively because it's the hardest part. Define outputs before the trial starts. For marketing, it might be campaigns launched or leads generated. For engineers, features shipped or bugs fixed. For customer service, tickets resolved with acceptable satisfaction ratings. The key is making productivity concrete and measurable rather than subjective "worked hard" judgments. Teams need clear goals so they can tell whether they're maintaining output in fewer hours.
What about industries that need 24/7 coverage or have client-facing demands?
Staggered schedules solve this. Not everyone takes the same day off. Team A gets Monday, Team B gets Wednesday, Team C gets Friday. This maintains five-day coverage while everyone works four days. Some companies let employees choose their day off based on weekly workload. Others rotate. Perpetual Guardian had customer service requirements — they coordinated schedules and actually improved coverage because multiple people knew each role for backup.
Did Barnes keep the four-day week permanent after the trial?
Yes. Following the successful trial results, Perpetual Guardian made the four-day week an ongoing option. Not all employees chose it — some preferred traditional schedules — but the majority did and the company continues operating this way. Barnes has since become a global advocate, advising companies and governments on implementation. The trial sparked hundreds of similar experiments worldwide, with many becoming permanent.
Won't this only work for white-collar office jobs?
Manufacturing, healthcare, retail, and service industries can adapt the principles through rotating shifts and schedule coordination. A hospital can have staff work four eight-hour shifts but ensure proper coverage through staggered schedules. A factory can run five days with different teams working four-day rotations. The core principle — better productivity through eliminating waste and respecting people's time — applies everywhere, though implementation varies by industry constraints.
What's the business case for employers beyond happier employees?
Lower turnover saves recruiting and training costs. Higher productivity per hour means more output from the same payroll. Better work-life balance reduces stress-related health costs and sick days. Companies implementing this report improved talent attraction — top candidates choose them over competitors offering traditional schedules. The gender pay gap narrows when parents (especially mothers) can manage both career and family. Environmental benefits from reduced commuting improve corporate sustainability metrics. Barnes argues the business case is stronger than the humanitarian case.
How do you convince skeptical leadership that this isn't just giving away free time?
Data. Barnes's book provides the framework for running a measured trial. Start with one team or department, define clear productivity metrics, measure before and during, compare results. When productivity stays constant or increases while employee satisfaction improves, skepticism evaporates. The key is making it a business experiment, not a perk. Frame it as "testing whether we can increase productivity per hour" not "testing if people like working less." Leadership responds to evidence, not ideology.
