We should be looking forward to a 90-hour work schedule—per month

Since 2021, the government of Japan, a hard-working nation, has supported a shorter workweek. At least 54 “deaths from overwork," including heart attacks, occur in Japan annually.

According to Dutch author and journalist Rutger Bregman’s 2016 article in The Guardian, titled ‘The solution to (nearly) everything: working less,’ cutting back on work hours will improve worker safety and address environmental issues, stress, inequality, happiness and unemployment.

Also read: 90-hour work week? No, it will not lead to higher productivity

For example, over the course of two years, Portugal gradually lowered its workweek from 44 to 40 hours, which had positive benefits, particularly for women and employees who had a lot of family responsibilities.

Therefore, if someone believes that the amount of work done is just proportionate to the number of hours worked, they should revisit the well-known Parkinson’s Law, which was illustrated in a hilarious essay published in The Economist in 1955 by Cyril Northcote Parkinson.

It claims that work expands to fill the time allotted for its completion. Parkinson tells the story of a lady whose only daily chore is to mail a postcard, which would take three minutes for a busy person to do.

But the woman takes an hour to find the card, another half hour to locate her glasses, 90 minutes to write it, 20 minutes to decide whether to take an umbrella on her stroll to the mailbox, and so on, until her day is full.

Before the Industrial Revolution, workers put in about 15-16 hours a day at work. Work hours have historically decreased steadily as technology has advanced. Henry Ford switched from a six-day workweek to a five-day one in 1926.

Productivity wouldn’t suffer as a result, according to experiments. It was a century ago. The evolution of technology thereafter was geometric. Of late, Generative AI has been promising productivity.

In his 1930 article, ‘Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren,’ John Maynard Keynes made some fascinating forecasts concerning social life and economic conditions one hundred years later, or around 2030.

Following in the footsteps of many eminent intellectuals, Keynes has forecast a century of enormous income growth and an unparalleled period of leisure brought about by improved standards of living, during which time people would work “three hour shifts or a fifteen hour week." “[T]hree hours a day is quite enough to satisfy the old Adam in most of us!" Keynes reckoned.

“The four-day workweek is inevitable," Richard Nixon said in 1979. Around the world, this concept is finally gaining traction. Entrepreneur and business inventor Andrew Barnes argues for the four-day workweek as a solution to many of the problems facing the global economy in the 21st century in his 2020 book The 4 Day Week, coauthored with Stephanie Jones.

It’s based on an experiment at his own company, Perpetual Guardian, a trust corporation in New Zealand, which gave workers an additional day off each week with full pay and no additional work hours on their four working days.

Employees were seen to be more focused and productive at work, happier and healthier, and more engaged in their personal lives.

Also read: Growing health concerns force startup boards, investors to press for work-life balance

In contrast, in 2023, N.R. Narayana Murthy, co-founder of Infosys, startled the country by urging young Indians to work 70 hours per week for India to compete with other emerging economies.

Raising the bar, the chairman of L&T now wants a 90-hour workweek. How long before someone breaks the 100-hour mark?

Similar recommendations have lately been made by a few other billionaires around the world. In April 2019, Chinese billionaire Jack Ma defended China’s controversial 12-hour workday (9am to 9pm) and six-day-per-week work culture.

Amid a tumultuous start to his leadership at Twitter, Elon Musk warned employees in November 2022 to get ready for 80-hour workweeks.

Millions of ordinary employees, however, may wish to achieve a meaningful work-life balance rather than aim to become great or wealthy professionals.

They require time for parenting, family life, housework, lengthy public transit commutes, entertainment and other activities. Thus, the opinions of some ultra-wealthy individuals and the Keynesian economic theory on the evolving workweek are still at odds.

Remarkably, Jack Ma, who was on stage with Elon Musk at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai in August 2019, has held varied opinions.

With the aid of technological advancements and educational system reform, Ma said, people may work as little as three days a week, four hours a day, in the next 10 to 20 years.

He gave the example of electricity: “The power of electricity is that we make people more time, so that you can go to a karaoke or dancing party in the evening. I think because of artificial intelligence, people will have more time [to enjoy] being human beings."

It’s interesting that this conforms with Keynes’ predictions of the future workday and its arrival time.

Also read: CEOs quizzed on longevity, curiosity as hiring for top job takes upto 1 year

Future generations will test Keynes’ forecast. Will AI eventually cause the seismic change in workplace culture that Keynes foresaw? By about 2030 or a little later? Let’s first wait and see if AI-powered technology can get us putting in 90 hours of work—but in a month, perhaps, rather than a week.

The author is professor of statistics at Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata.