Hello the Internet, and welcome to Season three, O eight, Episode two of der DALY'SI Guys Day production of My Heart Radio. This is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it is Tuesday, October tenth, twenty twenty three. Mm hm oh, yeah, you
know it is. It's a lot of cake. It's National Wednesday, National Angel Food Cake Day, which is always felt a bit light of the Cake Variety's National Cake Decorating Day, National Panbag Day, you know, for everybody grinding out there trying to get it on that burkin life like me, World Mental Health Day, National Walk to a Park Day, a character across the whole National Metric Day. It's all about a grind jack, you know what I mean. Set mindset.
The grindset mindset is what powered my grandfather to look thirty years older than he did when he was.
Forty three, you know what I mean. And that's what I'm trying to do. Like I'm trying to grind so hard people think I'm a time drave.
Yeah. Anyway, well, you know what we're gonna get into that obvious minute. Are you a old like a mountaineer from Turn of the century West Virginia, because you look old as hell. Bro. Anyways, my name is Look at some old pictures of mountaineers back the day because they would just like go up there without oxygen and come down looking so old. It's oh, it's truly the oldest looking like humans I've ever seen. Like they they age like presidents on those mountains. That's a misnomer. They're not
the oldest looking humans you've ever seen. They're the They look like the hardest working people. They look like the hardest grinders that I've ever seen, exactly grinding their bodies down to dust. That's right. Well, my name is Jack O'Brien aka in the Jungle, the Mighty Jungle. Oh, Brian sleeps too nice. That is courtesy of reads these the disporge can't be me, can't be talking about me, must be talking about one of my kids, because I don't sleep.
I always keep one eye open. And I'm thrilled to be joined as always by my co host, mister Miles Great. It's Miles Gray, AKA. Why why don't we do birthday bye? Cake? Is boring? Something something something?
The AKA wasn't finished, but I understand the sentiment from Scouty on discord.
Why don't you Why can't we make birthday pie just a normal thing? You know what I mean? Just do for those that do. Shout out to the trailblazers out there, Miles, we're the ones in charge of these decisions. We should just do it. As people in charge of the zeitgeist. We should just make the make the dang change. Dude. I don't. I don't fucking work three hundred hours a week to not make the wolves, you know what I mean? And I don't even know there are that many hours in
the week, but that's what it feels like. Baby. All right, Well, thank you for calling me baby. I do love me. You do that, and you I have requested that you do that more often. Miles in our seat, we are thrilled to be joined by a professional futurist with a pH d in the history of science. He's been a visiting scholar at Stanford and Oxford Universities and is the author of four books, including Shorter and Rest. Please welcome to this show, doctor Alex Sujung King pang.
Alice, thanks for having me and happy National angel food cake.
Yeah yeah right? Are you a fan of angel food cake.
I love angel food cake. Oh and cake decorating actually, so you know two for one?
Oh wow? Okay, is that like is that a like a hobby of yours decorating cakes? Or you know you admire the artwork.
I admire the artwork though my wife and my daughter are both pretty pretty amazing bakers.
So oh okay, okay, okay, Well, we're so glad you joined us here today. Obviously the listeners probably have heard me really talking about my grindset, mindset. How I get to Lambeau is the thesis statement of this show.
Yeah, but as quickly as possible. You know, Tim Ferriss gave me some ideas they aren't working very well.
Not I don't know why. Yeah, I wasn't able to outsource enough of my work to enough, but yeah, people who work for five dollars an hour, It didn't work that way.
But we are curious to pick your mind because yeah, it was the talk of shortened work weeks and if that's better, I don't know. The jury is still out in my mind. We figured it's good to enlist the help of someone who hasn't like their area of expertise is and precisely that to fight the voices that tell me to keep grinding every day and every night.
We're mainly going off vibes on this end, and you've actually looked at data whatever that means. So we're gonna dig into it. But before we get to before we get into that, we do like to get to know you a little bit better and ask you what is something from your search history that is revealing about who you are or what you're up to.
Well, this morning, I was on Google Translate for a while looking at four day week in other languages. So it's something that I've been interested in for several years, and it's a movement that keeps growing and I have to keep like tracking it now in like Turkish and Hungarian and stuff. It used to be relatively simple. It was like English and maybe one or two other languages, but now it's like just all over the place.
How is that spreading? Is it just like kind of word of mouth that different companies are learning about it, or is it coming usually from the workers themselves, or how do you see that kind of happening?
Yeah, you know a lot of it is spreading through sort of word of mouth with like within industries, So you know, you get a couple of people in like HR and recruiting who try it in their organizations, and then then their competitors will do it because those competitors are starting to lose people to sort of the company
that did it first. And then you know, it gets written up in the news and some you know, and there's some ambitious politician who thinks, you know, this is how they become you know, governor or senator or something, right, champion in the four day week, and so you know, and it kind of builds from there, and it's fortunately been something that's gotten you know, plenty of press and plenty of attention, and so it's, you know, it's it's it's been really great to see it acquire that kind
of momentum and take on a life of its own.
Yeah, is there is there anything to like you think, like, are there certain cultures where the just like innately, some cultures are gonna be a little bit harder for them to like cross the barrier into the four hour work week just based on sort of like ideas of what productivity or what you know, someone's worth is based on work or is it or is there also a thing where too, like humanity is just kind of naturally maybe progressing towards this or it's like I mean culture or not.
It's like this is this feels better, this works better.
Yeah, you know, I think if you've got twenty four hours in a day, you're gonna you're gonna value this. So I mean, you know, I have seen this in like two of the hotspots for the four day week, or Japan and Korea, which are both countries whose languages have their own words for working yourself to death. Yeah, so you know, it's not just like Sweden and Denmark
in places with really good work life balance. You actually see it most in places that have really serious issues with like stress over work, et cetera.
Okay, it stood out that yet, hit yeah, we're not We're we're not on board yet.
But you said, you said twenty four hours in a day, My man, you gotta find some more hours.
I got thirty in a day over here. But anyway, that's another story. It does cut against the standard narrative
that we see in the mainstream media. I feel like that that's one of the things that made to jump out to me, is like this wouldn't be getting coverage unless it actually worked because so much of the mainstream like narrative is focused on emphasizing the impact of these like billionaires and how they worked so hard and did it all by themselves and bootstrapped their way up, and so to have this thing that keeps getting media attention that feels like really counter to the logic that the
entire that is, like the software that the entire media that we consume runs on. Like that, That's one of the things that made me be like, huh, I feel like there's must be something here, because if it wasn't true, like the media wouldn't allow it, you know, yeah, like weapons of mass destruction. We were saying that to Okay, why would they talk about that the yellow cake? That's right, it's got to be true. What is something you think is overrated?
So what do I think is overrated? You know, I think over work is actually overrated. That you know, there is there is a centuries worth of research that tells us that that is a counterproductive both for people and for actually for for organizations, and that you know, humans are able to sustain brief periods of you know, bursts of work for short periods of time, right, you know, sort of running away from the tiger or harvesting crops
in the fall. But the idea that you do this sort of as a way of life turns out to sort of lead to bad outcomes in all kinds of industries. And you know, we spent industrial like engineers or of sociologists started seeing this as early as like nineteen oh five, nineteen oh eight in the optics industry, right, high performing industries, and like explosive and munitions industries during World War One.
And it's just taken us a really long time to take that data seriously, but I think we're finally at a point where it is it is it is getting a sympathetic hearing.
So what did they find? What did those industries see? The people like kept that just accidents were happening when they were overworking people.
Yeah, so you get more accidents, which in a munitions factory when you're dealing with explosives is not a good thing. But you know, more generally, you get sort of higher rates of mistakes. You see people overlooking small things that maybe signal big problems down the line. So you know, out of a few years ago, Samsung had an issue with one of its cell phones with the batteries exploding, and this was like only you know, this is like
one in a million odds of it happening. But when you sell several hundred million of these things, you got a class action suit. And one of the things they found was that the engineers who are working on this were working like eighty hour weeks literally sleeping, you know, sleeping under their desks. And they had some data suggested that this was potentially a problem, but they were so rushed and basically so exhausted that nobody followed up on it.
And so, you know, I think it's and you know, today, when you've got incredibly complicated technologies, amazingly sophisticated products, that kind of you know, that kind of really tiny problem actually can have gigantic consequences now and then you know, people also are more likely to get sick to just up and quit. They're also more likely to cut corners
and cheat when ort of they're overworked and tired. So you know, not a good look, like if you're you know, a sort of investment bank or a law firm or something. And so you know, for all of these reasons, it turns out it's not good for people, and it's not good for companies.
So what I'm hearing is they work hard or work smart, not hard, and that you're basically a hater on the grindset. You know, definition of what you just said. Is it okay if we just come out and say that you might be a hater against the you know.
I will, I will. I will also add the odds of crashing your lambo go up a lot when you're sleep deprived, so you know, until until they come out with a self driving version, then you know, this may be something to consider.
I mean, with all, dude, I'll just put it. I'll just throw another three hundred hours on and give me another mine off. That's the thing. That's how easy it is, you know what I mean. I think that's too it's too scarce. There aren't enough lambos out there. There are enough lambos out there. It's not enough hours in the day. We're all search of you. I mean, should we just, like with all the slander against grind said, should we just run through our schedule real quick and see if yeah,
maybe yeah. I mean I can't find anything wrong with yeah, like if he spots any problems? So all right, I mean I don't know about you, Miles. I wake up at two a m. Before Mark Wahlberg, before the Rock. Okay, I fuel my workout by thinking about all my enemies still sleeping in their beds, right, and laugh to myself so loud that it wakes people that I share a house with, because they're you know, it's just funny to me. Yeah,
they're they're sleeping. Well the dust, yeah, exactly, they're sleeping and inhaling a bunch of dust is what's happening to them. How about you? When do you? When do you wake up? I wake up, you know, and to be honest, you said you wake up at two am? Yeah? Oh man. And this this is every day. This is humiliating for me because I always we always live comparatively, as we both realized that's the healthiest way to live is to compare your situation to an arriving each other exactly, drive
each other towards total dissatisfaction with our lives. And so I wake up at three forty five. Actually wow, yeah, so don't judge. I mean, but then that workout, work out till five, U shower, drink two pots of coffee. Uh. Then five point thirty I begin working reading the news, writing. Then at ten to three back to work doing the real work.
Yeah, that's like recording the show, taking meetings, doing development stuff.
Things like that. You're working, but then the next thing on your schedule is back to work.
Yep, exactly, well, the real work obviously. Then three pm, I obviously take a second to be a parent. I look at my infant son on the monitor for about fifteen twenty seconds. Then I go back to work again. Then five point thirty, have a light breakfast. Six to nine pm look through used Lambeaux listings to see what's out there. Nine pm, I eat a lunch of whatever my wife and son have left over from their quote unquote dinner.
Yeah there do you also do you also go in after they leave, because I've noticed that sometimes that creates friction, Like when I go in and they're still there, It creates friction, and it like slows me down a little bit. I look through the doorway and I giggle to myself and I go so that's why y'all are unemployed?
And I get back to it. Then again nine to fifteen to twelve am leisure time. I do take some time up for myself. That's where I watch American Psycho on VHS. But I'm right now, I'm trying to learn every single line word for word. That's what I do my leisure time. Then twelve am time for dinner, where I just go for a run in the park where I'm usually looking for sleeping squirrels to eat. And then at two am I go to bed do it all
over again. I'm sorry, and I cut you off. So you're up at two, up at two.
So by the time you wake up, Unfortunately, my man, I am already out the door on my way to the hospital because I'm generally like unable to see very well when I wake up that early because my eyes are like half closed, and so I totally will often run into things and at you know, three forty five of them, just so tired, I can't remember if I've like done that already that day, or if it was
the day before or like a month ago. So I'd just like to check in with urgent Care just to be like, everything, look okay here, do I have any major holes in my body? Yeah? But other than that, it's like a lot of the same stuff, you know. Five point fifteen, I add in a little you know, give my reflection in the mirror, that get to work fat boy speech. But then I'm just grinding, straight, grinding,
you know. Eight thirty I will usually come to in a parking garage or grocery store loading bay somewhere within a twelve mile radius of my office. I'm working on my speed so I can get them radius up. But then yeah, just kind of use context clues to figure out how I got there and why I'm talking to the person I'm talking to. Yeah, and then yeah, midnight, Saga night to each individual picture of Lambeau and influencer on my vision board. One thirty five am, fall asleep,
standing up like a horse. Does that okay? Does that sound like what are we thinking there? Do you think that is over work? Would you call that work? That's a good work life balance, know, Alex, You know.
I got to say, first of all, I really admire sort of the like combination of sort of Genghis Khan, Elon Musk and Joker that you've managed to sort of achieve here.
Oh my god, you you listen to the show, right, because we always start off that's our triune God, Musk and the Joker, the experience.
I might have a couple ideas, you know, around the edges about maybe expanding the amount of sleep that sort of and there's some good science behind why get it more than let's say, twenty or thirty minutes of sleep per day is a good thing, right.
You know.
And you know, the sort of the other the other thing I might you know, recommend, is that there's there might be a little bit more room for sort of some breaks, some non Lambeau and influencer related activity. Okay, okay, So you know, I will say, looking back at my book, I studied a lot of historical figures who really were around before you know, before the founding of the Lamborghini company. So we can't say that today, you know, would Charles Darwin, you know, not be going for a Lambeau.
Who knows? Because so here's the thing. I don't get the lambro Lambeau for the breaks. I get it for the gas, all gas, no breaks. Is how I live my life like a Lambeau. So that's the thing that I feel like Darwin kind of wouldn't have been able to wrap his mind around. Necessarily, Survival of the grindest is what he would have you know, I came up with that concept. But that's neither here nor there. Well, thank you so much for bearing with us and for
looking at our schedules with us. What is something that you think is underrated?
Let's pick up on where we were just a second ago, and I think, you know, actually sleep is underrated despite in a sort of the you know, the like internet, mattress companies and things that are sort of you know that are sponsoring lots of podcasts, maybe like yours. I don't know, but there's.
Okay, it's time to talk with sponsored does in a while.
You know Peter Rettia who wrote who wrote a sort of terrific book that's actually sort of behind me about called Unaging, which is all about how sort of the you know, all the all the amazing things you can do in order or of to have a great long life, talks about sleep is one of like the great secret weapons in or you know, sort of in our arsenal, and that it does, you know, it does amazing stuff
for brains, for bodies. It even does really good stuff you know, for us create and helps us you know that sort of helps us have better ideas and have better, more sustainable lives. So and the problem is we underestimate, you know, we underestimate sleep at our peril, but everybody
does it right. Nobody ever says I'll work when I'm dead, but you know, sort of we do say all sleep when I'm dead, which is you know which sort of which I think, you know, just illustrates the way that we value the one, you know, the one over the other.
So that I mean, and I never sleep because sleep is a cousin of cousin of death. Because we're in a New York state of mind. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that you talk it. You mentioned like the word of obliquity, which I had not really heard, but like that kind
of it's something. It's an idea that I've been kind of dancing around and like talking about this show and talking about like people coming to like having scientific breakthroughs in their dreams or you know, that they're just being these unconscious forces in our lives that kind of break through and like guide us in a direction that we
might not be even consciously aware of. Just this idea that there's so much work happening at an unconscious level, and that's what you're it seems like a lot of the value of rest and you know, not being on task all the time. To quote my other philosophical hero,
Jeff Bezos. You know, some off task time, yeah, can actually make you much better at solving problems, right, Yeah, And like you, there's this anecdote that I'd never heard before, but about like how studies of the brain have found that the brain is using up as much like when I'm staring off into space, you know, sitting at my desk and just like I'm like, all right, my brain needs a rest. I'm looking off into space in the
middle distance with my mouth open like that. That is that that time, my brain is using just as much oxygen as it does when I'm working on a problem, right, And it's like, but but my brain prefers or like craves that rest. You talking about that and like why why you think it craves up?
Yeah? Okay, So you know, first off, absolutely correct that sort of our brains when we are apparently just spacing out, are actually not slowing down or shutting off. They're just as active as they are when we are trying to do our taxes or you know, or sort of talk our kids out of.
You know, sort of we're because there's some there's some bad habits he's talking about.
Yeah, that's you're giving that's Lambeau money you're giving away out.
But you know, it turns out, you know, even when we're when we're like thinking of nothing at all or you know, sort of day dreaming, that there's a lot going on, you know, under the hood, as it were. And what scientists have found is that there are basically parts of our brain that switch on when we are when we're mind wandering, as they sort of as they call it, and these are parts that are associated with creative thinking, with thinking about the future, or it's often
sort of the more visual parts of our brains. And that default mode network, as scientists sort of call it, does two things. Number One, it switches on really really quickly, like in the time it takes us to blink your eyes, the default mode can be seen firing up. And the second thing is the default mode is really good at attacking problems that you've been working on but haven't solved yet.
So when you're trying to remember you know, the name of the actor who is in the movie and that other thing, and sort of it doesn't come to mod you know, you can't remember it, and then five minutes later sort of you're doing something else, and all of a sudden, the name pops into your head. Right, it's Hugh Jackman or yeah.
And that's.
Okay. But that's the default mode working on something even while your attention has moved elsewhere. And one of the things I think that really creative people are good at is recognizing just how powerful the default mode can be, especially if you give it some time, some regular time
sort of in your day to do its thing. And so you know, not only do you have time for rest and recovery, but you get this kind of extra time when sort of your creative subconscious is able to take on to take on problems that you haven't been able to solve just by grinding away at them and find, you know, hacks and shortcuts and so forth, and find solutions that you know that you haven't been able to find through sort of conscious effort, but are down there
in your brain somewhere, and it can kind of bring into the surface for you.
Yeah, now we have to take a break. But before we do, just one thing I picked up from what you were just saying is that it sounds like you're having trouble remembering Hugh Jackman's name, and a helpful little trick is think huge jacked man and then picture him from Wolverine and it like does it's like a little mind palace thing. But there's also interesting, other interesting stuff
in there. Let's take a quick break and we'll come back because I want to hear you talk specifically, you know, about your background as a historian of science and kind of how that led you to where you are today. So we'll be right back and we're back. And yeah, so you started as a historian of science, and I've heard you talk about like what you learned from Darwin, and you know, Ernst Macht talked about kind of these
ideas of you know, letting the subconscious take its turn. Look, can you just talk about like just looking at the historical record around these great thinkers and what they what they knew.
Right, So, you know, part of the reason that I talk about these these folks un rest is number one, their lives are really really well documented.
Right.
There were fourteen thousand letters in of the Darwin archive at Cambridge University, so we actually know an awful lot about their daily lives. We also have enough perspectives so that we can, you know, say, with a pretty high degree of confidence Charles darn Darwin was an important person who's you know, who made an enduring contribution to or
to our understanding of the natural world. And you know, finally, in contrast to today's great so many of today's great achievers, they don't you know, we can see them without the filter of like pr handlers and sort of you know, people who are worried about their stock price, sort of making the argument that you know, these people actually sort of never rest there, always serving the customer, you know,
creating delightful products, blah blah blah. And so we have actually a better understanding of how they worked and how they did their work than we do of many inventors and entrepreneurs today.
That little fish with feet that Darwin came up with was pretty sick. Marketing. I gotta say that branding is pretty tight. He's kind of a marketing genius.
He did have his moments, you know, it's it's us. It's us too bad that he was working before there was actually any you know, social media.
But yeah, I've always thought him more than an influencer than anything. But yeah, okay, I think he did other important stuff, you know.
I mean, you know, he definitely had a lot of influence,
no question about that. And the other thing you see when you look at these lives is there's an amazing consistency in things like their daily schedules and sort of when they worked, when they took breaks, and how they kind of layered these periods of really focused work of only like ninety minutes or ninety minutes to two hours and then a break and then another deep dive what Cal Newport calls deep work, and you do that like three times a day, and that's about all they needed
in order to you know, come up with ideas that sort have changed the world. And I think that's a you know, it is a it's a great challenge to the assumption that in order to do you know, world changing stuff, we have to work enormously long hours. We have to in effect sacrifice ourselves and our happiness and
our health and sometimes our families. Is in you know, sort of to make you know, sort of to reach some mountain top, make a discovery, et cetera, and that it's possible to have you know, long sort of lives that are longer, that are more sustainable, but also still let us do really amazing work that or of you know, lets us express our passions and that sort of is deeply satisfying for a really long time. So that ultimately is you know what Darwin taught me along with the fish with the feet.
Yeah, which is I've got I've got a ton of those in my garage, trying to get rid of if you want to buy something. Yeah, that is kind of the whole point of this episode is actually trying to help Miles move that product because he is.
I shouldn't haven't made it in pure gold. I think that's right, I shouldn't have pure gold. Yeah, but what do you think?
Like? So you know from my we talk about culturally right, like how some places work themselves to death. I know that from like I'm I'm a Japanese family who when I first was working in media, they thought my job was not serious because I wasn't like working day and night.
Are what like sort of what was sort of the evolution of being able to be like I don't know, Darwin works like a couple hours a day to sort of this like new like the exaltation of like the non stop working person and that is why they are successful. How did we like what what jumps?
Did we make I'm assuming the Industrial Age had a lot to do with that, but what what what like.
Where where were we and where are we now?
Essentially it did have a lot to do with it. But even you know, one hundred years ago, there was this sense that you know, super successful people of kind of earned earned the right to leisure because of their success, you know, not that getting rich met that you had
to never ever stop. Like if you look at old issues of Forbes magazine from the nineteen tens, nineteen twenties, right, Forbes magazine has never been one that's been especially critical of capitalists, but you know, lots of those profiles have stuff about how these guys spend like you know, still go to Minnesota to tramp in the woods where they grew up before, you know, sort of coming back to Wall Street and you know, sort of you know and
sort of cornering the silver market. I think, you know, so, you know part, but what happened to change that? I think really starts like in the seventies and eighties, when you have sort of the realignment of the American economy, you have sort of the sort of along with the growth of the computer industry, of the high tech industry and finance simultaneously, both of which teach us that the way to be successful now is not to chard at
the bottom, pay your dues, and work your way up. Right, the age in which both General Electric and General Motors could be run by guys named Charlie Wilson, both of whom started in the mail rooms of their companies, was now over right. The way you became rich was to be like Steve Jobs right, or of overnight success or like you know, Charlie Sheen and Wall Street, and that becomes that becomes the model for what a successful career
looks like. In a sense, sort of you get rich before the next you know, either before your technical skills become obsolete, before the next turn of Moore's law means that someone else has a sort of chance at bat or you know, or of the next or of you know, the next stage in the global economy or economic turndown, or of you know, wipes everybody out, and then you know, other structural factors like sort of the growth of or of increasing reliance on sort of temporary labor stone of wages.
And culturally, I think the sensibility that you know work goes from something that is important in every American's life, to essentially the only thing right, more important than family, than community, than religion. It means that it is like the undisputed champion of everybody's existence. And so, you know, all of that stuff together means that it's been really hard to push back against all of that and to
imagine an alternative. And it's taken something as dramatic as the pandemic right to sort of shift, to make a lot of us shift gears to see that actually, you know, all these things that we took for granted, that we thought were like inevitable and inescapable turned out to be things that we can change, and to begin to take seriously the possibility that we can actually, you know, or rather than have our workplaces changed virus, make these changes
ourselves for ourselves for the better. But you know, that's that's a that's a brief history of how we got how we got in here, and how we're getting out.
It's interesting to me that it happened in like the seventies and eighties at a time when like people started really like hoarding and getting immoral amounts of wealth for like doing things that like building things that weren't lasting
or you know, doing corporate rating and stuff. Yeah, corporate rating, Like it reminds me the anecdote from the people's history of the United States, where like the War Department changes its name to the Department of Defense at the moment that they start waging non defensive wars because they're like they need this you know, linguistic defense mechanism to like
throw people's attention away. And it's like the the powers that be in capitalism need this idea that like, well, you just have to work harder, you just outwork every one to justify that they're actually not doing anything that is harder or more worthwhile and certainly not millions of times more important than the people who they're out earning by a factor of a million.
You know, Jack. That points to another important thing, which is that you know, we've we've come to see or of both success and challenges in the workplace as totally like sort of individual and personal. Right, sort of, my success is because I worked enormously long hours, not because I have a social network I have patrons, friends, you know,
et cetera. Right, and if I have a pretty you know sort of if I have if I have a problem at work or if I want to be more successful sort of the you know, the key is all in what I myself do right, get up earlier, hustle harder, et cetera. And I think that we've you know, of even even those of us who turn out whose clocks have thirty hours in a day rank you discover that you know, at some point you run out of hours. And the ability, you know, the ability to solve problems
that way hits a limit. And the fact that we all share that we all have these kinds of problems suggests that actually maybe a more powerful and enduring way to deal with them would be to solve them together, right, to act collectively. And that's one of the big things behind stuff like or of the four day week is that you know, it's something that's done in companies when where everybody does it from the CEO or of you know,
CEO on down. And I think part of the success of the movement has been that it has you know, it has shown us, that shown us the power of collective action to change how we work and to make work better for us.
All. Yeah, that just made me think of the fact that Zach Morris is the ultimate capitalist because you can freeze time. He can freeze time, and that saved by the bell. Yeah, of course do I don't think I have to explain that to anybody here, but I'm sure this comes up all the time in academic circles. But what like that he was and that that was a fantasy, that was like a thing that I was when I
was younger. I was like, oh, man, to be able to freeze time, you have like so much extra time, I can like get so good at things or like do all the all my work and then just like come back and really, you know, living my life on Zach Morris's clock, you know how, Like I'm curious, like you know, when I got a lot more on Zach Morris here, Miles, if you Oh, no, I was about to. I was actually about to talk about the Jack Morris when he had to take two people to the same dance.
Jack, let me finish the question. No, But Alex, like we I think when we talk about what we talk a lot about on the show, just sort of the just terrible habit we have, especially in America and other like western capitalist societies, just like it's all about work. Productivity is the only metric to define your life, and like, you know, we see that obviously, like at a more professional level, but I feel like it's also really difficult for people who like have like you know, hourly wage
working jobs and things like that. What is the sort of same way because obviously I feel like when people go like, I'm sure if you tell business owners like, oh, four weeks, what for all my productivity to go down?
How do those sort of lessons apply to various industries? Because I can easily see how, like in a professional thing, it's like, well, we've got all these like invoices we have to process as an accounting firm or whatever. Once you're done, then you have something there. But like for something that's like sort of like an always on business, like retail consumer sort of facing business, what is the
same way? What is the way that that needs to be messaged to those people for them to not think, well, my line will go down if this happened. And how does this how does this sort of vision offer a new sort of form of I guess, you know, time liberation for workers that are like in like in every sector.
Right, So okay, first of all, I think that the you know, it's the four day week is something that the very you know, who's very earliest adopters tended more to be in like professional and creative services. And partly because that work is kind of more malleable and more shapeable by individuals, it's also tends to be a little more project based and so right, and you know, you're not like actually moving physical things around, so sort of
easier to imagine how to redesign it. But one of the really interesting things is that we've seen is it move into places like nursing and I'm actually working with a police department that's moving that is experimenting with thirty two hour work weeks for officers, you know, and talk about you know, talk about two industries where you don't want you know, sleep to prived or of overworked people coming in and making mistakes is like in an ICU,
and you know, sort of during any interaction with sort of with law enforcement. And what we found there is that, you know, okay, a couple things. Number One, that that kind of work turns out to be just as creative as what we think of as you know, creative work of like people sitting around in meetings, you know, drawing
on whiteboards, it's just we don't recognize it as such. Right, there's just as much ingenuity, sort of problem solving skill, et cetera required to either defuse a situation, to you know, assess what's going on in an emergency room, to calm down people. And that's and so this kind of work is just as responsive to the benefits of a shorter
work week on the part of individuals. Now, the way that organizations make it work is for nurses, you know, like plate places, like nursing homes, they have huge issues
around sort of turnover and sort of recruitment and retention. Right, these are of these oftener jobs that are not very well paid, they're highly stressful, and so you know, in so it's easy for people to come into those jobs work you know, for maybe a year or two, and even if they like it, to find the stresses you know, sort of are too much and for them to leave.
Moving to a shorter work week means that they have more time, more time for recovery, so more time to you know, and then but also it means that the organizations themselves, like nursing homes that have moved to six hour shifts while still paying people the same amount of money that they were that they were paying for eight hour shifts. They save enough in like in temp agency fees.
You know, when someone calls in sick, you've got to get someone from a temp agency and it's like five times is expensive hours to sort of you know, have
a regular full time person. You save so much money on that that the programs pay for themselves and you get higher quality of care, so less administration of psychotropic drugs, fewer like bed sores, slips and falls, all the kinds of things that indicate whether whether you know, whether nursing home residents or people in the hospital are being well
cared for. And so you know, in a sense basically there are there are industries in which there were hidden costs to overwork and high turnover that a four day week are subsidized by I think that's andre and we're seeing, you know, we're seeing that in the restaurant industry, in healthcare.
The trial with the police force, it's an eighty person force and they've saved something like two hundred thousand dollars in overtime, which is like incredible in like the last you know, four months or so they've been that they've been doing it, and so you know, it's and so it's not just that you know, these are sort of these are jobs that you know, in which individuals benefit.
But it turns out that once you dive into the numbers, there often are kind of systemic savings that justify moving from sort of sort of from you know, eight from eight hour shifts to or to shorter ones. So you know, even when you have to pay more people, you have to hire more staff, it's you know, the numbers still work out. And then with retail, the most interesting thing I'm seeing has been sort of places that will stay open now for twelve hours and have two six hour shifts.
So that means that you get more walk in you know, you get more walk ins. People can you know, come into the store or the garage before work, you know, maybe get some work done or before they've got to you know, drop the kids off. And it means that you know, for you know, you get more customers and more revenue. And so even if you have to hire of one or two more people, it often can pay for itself that way, or you know, sort of on sort of more sales.
Yeah, it's about to think about the creative work that police do. That's crazy because every time I'm pulled over, they're like, why are you in this? Why are you in this neighborhood? Because they're coming up with like really interesting reasons why I shouldn't be there. But in their yeah, they have that it's an exhaustion issue. I'm like, you just get some rest. You could you need a nap? Sorry? Sorry, officer, sir, you you seem so sleepy. He seems so sleepy.
But no, it is like, is there are there any is there potentially any like this could apply to any job?
Right? Like is there like when looking at sort of the way we toil and labor, is there any job where you're like, okay, maybe that one has to kind of stay that way. It's it's sort of it seems I don't know for life perspect like I think it supplies everything, right, Can we just call to day? Everyone goes to four days?
I think you know, they were sort of looking at economically, I think if you commute to work by helicopter, it's going to be hard to move to a four day week. So like if you're working on an oil rig or something, right, it's like ten days on, ten days off. Just the cost of getting to work and back is such that a four day week is probably not going to work very well. And then after that it becomes it really
becomes a matter of like a professional ideology. Right, Hedge funds are not going to do it because they have constructed incredibly profitable systems for hiring twenty two year olds, working them to death and then discarding, you know, discarding the desiccated husks three years later and hiring new kids right right, so until they're you know, Viking freezers are full of woggu beef right in their like apocalypse bunkers.
They're not going to have a lot of good vision board, yeah, exactly, you know, but there were, you know, and then places like law and medicine, you know, they pride themselves on being able to work these kinds of titanically long hours and they even though they recognize that they are high costs to it, and it leads to sort of instability for organizations and unnecessary burnout. Until now, it's been hard
to envision constructing something different. But so, you know, and some of the you know, there were there definitely are older people in these fields who really resist the idea that you can you know, sort of you can scale back hours and make the work better without making the work worse. You know, occasionally you get people who say that I can't do this because, look, I don't have another life other than reading SEC filings or you know, X rays, So don't ask me to do this.
Yeah. Yeah, let's actually, let's take one more break and then I have another thing that I heard you say that kind of made the whole thing fall into place for me. So we'll be right back, and we're back. I was just telling these guys I once came to out of one of my sleep fugs while flying one of those oil rig helicopters, and I didn't even know how to fly a helicopter. I didn't think, but I think I was just learning at an incredible rate. It's
called grinded man. Yeah, that's right. But so you I heard you interviewed where the host I think it was ten percent happier. The host was like, so, but you're asking them to do the same amount of work in
less time, Like, how does that not cause problems? And you responded with the thing that makes this whole thing makes sense to me, that the idea that when you're a worker and you get to keep the dividends of your efficiency as the as the worker in this case, like in the past, when you had workers doing their job more efficiently and just the overall goal the overall idea was that they had to work forty hours a week. If they did their job more efficiently, capital kept the
dividends of that efficient work. They would just give you more work to do. So if I figure out how to make eight baskets in four days, and you know, it used to be take me five days in the traditional version of things, now my company asks me to make ten baskets, They're just like, well, now you make two baskets a day, buddy, you just did fuck it up. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah,
you just fucked you by learning to do that. So, like the incentive structure is all off, and so you know, in that case, I would probably keep it a secret or like build inefficiencies into my schedules so that I could, you know, kill time at work unless there was like some sort of structure attached to it. But even then, like like working longer and faster and more intensely, like I might not share that information with my fellow workers.
I might try and you know, or only apply it when like the incentive structure was set up in the right way. But like in a four day work week, you figure out how to make eight baskets, you get to keep the dividend of that efficiency by getting a day off to you know, chill or do what you want. And also you don't have to like keep it a secret. It's just that like arbitrariness of that five day work week is is like what gets in the way, like
just being like you have to fill the forty hours. Also, something that like I came across just in researching the five day or four day work week is the idea that like just the seven day week is also arbitrary, like years, days, months all correspond to physical events happening two our planet, and the week is just kind of made up. Like the the idea that like, oh no, we have to fill five sevenths of this seven day
week is kind of bullshit. But but yeah, that that idea that like this allows you to like keep the dividends of your job of like your efficiency and make your life better. Like that started that That was kind of the key detail I needed to make this whole thing makes sense to me, is that does that Does that help you kind of understand what's going on and is that sort of the dynamic that you see going on when you see these programs working.
Yeah. Absolutely, you know, I think that the of the the one of the big ideas that we work with companies and work with leadership to sort of to understand is that the four day week is not just you know, it's not a concession that companies are simply making to their workforces, but rather, the four day week is something
that everybody is creating together, all right. By finding efficiencies, by making meetings shorter, by doing other things in order to use technology smarter or give people more focus time sort of, you are in effect creating time that the creators are able to reclaim for themselves. And that's incredibly powerful for two reasons.
Right.
First of all, there is it's a tremendously short feedback loop between what you're doing and what you get.
Right.
It's not like or if you're working harder, therefore or of your retirement account is experst bigger, and you will appreciate that forty years from now. It is we've done these things together, and therefore we can go home at the end of the day on Thursday and have a three day weekend sort of. So you know, that's that's a that's a very very immediate tangible reward. The second thing I think that's important is the sort of collective aspect to it, right, that everybody works together in order
to make this happen. One of the class sick moves in you know, sort of labor relations or management labor relations is you know, offering the new guy on the factory line or the machine tool you know, or the machine tool shop sort of more money if they can work faster, and the struggle always is between Traditionally sort of wage incentives can be used as a way of breaking labor solidarity and sort of and sort of forcing a ratcheting up of sort of of output at the
expense of workers. And you know, one of the things that skilled laborers part of their power is an ability collectively to push back against increases in you know, demands
and increased productivity. And in a sense, the four day week takes the kind of vision of collective action of efficiency and flips it around so that you are working together and you have a great incentive to share, you know, to share those greater efficiencies to share ways of working smarter, but not in a way that benefits me, becomes at
your expense, but helps all of us. And you know, it does mean that companies you have to sort of the one big thing they've got to they have to get there, you know, get their heads around is you don't you know, let people figure all this stuff out and then at the end of the trial say, you know, it's awesome, you figured out how to do all this work in four days. Now let's go back to five and you can just produce twenty percent more for me.
Right, yeah, yeah, imagine we took that and do that five days a week.
Fortunately, fortunately it has not happened, and you know, not with sort of not with not with any of the companies that sort of that four day week glow has
worked with. And I think partly number one, everybody recognizes that this is the this is the you know, this is the fastest way to getting your sort of your business burned down, and any jury saying yeah, that's okay sort of the sort of yes, the purpose, Yeah, you know, the perpetrators were sort of we're acting out of a sense of justice, but also you know, the boss is get a forty week two and for all of our you know, and the sort of indignation at capitalism, it
is a fact that you know, particularly entrepreneurs and people in executive roles do have really high levels of stress, burnout, drug dependency, sort of, et cetera, all of which signals that they benefit just as much from a four day
week as everybody else. And so when the seat, you know, after after six months of having a four day work week, most CEOs are willing to say, you know, actually this is kind of saving my life and I'm not as much of a heart attack risk, and I remember the names of my children and that, you know, when my wife recognizes me, and maybe the dream maybe I can live with that, right?
So right?
Yeah?
Is it sort of do these like do a lot of CEOs because obviously those are that's the neck that turns the head in most instances in an organization. Does it take them to like they can't just understand it intellectually when this is described to them, it's sort of like I have to experience it and then I can
come around because it's too abstract. Or do some people when told about like the efficiencies and how much how beneficial it is not just for the business but also the workers and employees that they're able to turn around. Like what, because I feel like that's that's the one thing that's probably keeping so many companies from doing this. You're like, ah, that's a bunch of hippie crap or whatever they think it is. It's like, I'm a I'm gonna I'm gonna work to I die.
And also I work hard so I can afford to do the drugs that I do.
I do the good ones, that's how hard. So I can afford more coke so I can do more cokes so I could do more Yeah.
Yeah, you know, you raise a terrific point, which is that you know, first of all, almost every company there is some senior person who is championing this. Very often, you know, in startups it's the founder or like founding team who have themselves spent like ten or fifteen years doing seventy eighty hour weeks and they're realizing, you know, they've got kids, now, they're getting a little older, and they're wondering, how much longer can I keep this up?
And then I think that they so they very often are sort of or are leading the charge within their organizations. And then in terms of you know, can you just look at the numbers that you have to feel it? You got to feel it, and right, I think that you know, sort of one of the pieces of advice that we give to let's say, people who are not at the executive level about how to sell this sort of you know, sell it upwards is the numbers are good, but they're not the thing that really sort of gets
people over the line. What gets people over the line is a vision of how their lives and how everybody's life could be different and could be better if the CEO is willing to take the lead on this. It's a little bit like One Last Job movies, which I absolutely love, right, Yeah, you know you've always got the rock or nick Cage or someone you got to steal fifty cars before you know, in twenty four hours, or they're going to kill your brother and one of the things,
you know, and it's a huge goal. But in these movies, you never do it by yourself. Right. The first thing you do is you assemble your team, you know usual and you know of it's you know, you have your sort of driver and your hacker and your master of disguise, et cetera.
Maybe a big, muscular, huge Jackman.
Exactly, huge Jackman. Yeah, to return to the previous to.
The yeah, I think yeah, yeah.
But and you know, one of the things that successful pitches do in a sense is say, we've got the team, right, We've got the chief, you know, resource officer. We've got sort of people and culture. We've got sort of this small crew that's willing to do it, but we need the leader. And what CEO doesn't secretly want to be
Nicholas Cage stealing fifty cars. And you know that's a sort of that you know, that turns it from you know, kind of a you know, an abstract you know, business calculation into something for which they can really have sort of some passion and some dedication.
Right, Yeah, And it appeals to the ego, which is always exactly you know. It's a great, great tool obviously when trying to motivate people.
Yeah, this can't happen without you, but it will change everyone's life if it does.
Yeah, and you to be like a local god, you know, right in your mind, if you'd be so kind enough in benevolent that's right. Well, I feel like we could keep talking about this for a long time with you, and we'll have to have you back on as you kind of continue to spread the word about this. But doctor Alex Sujun King Peng, it's such a pleasure having you on the show. Where can where can people find you? Follow you all that good stuff? Read you?
Right? So the forty week globals website is four Day week dot com, which is very convenient. And then my book rest is available everywhere fond you know sort of books are sold, and also the place where books are sold online. And then my book about the four day Week is called Shorter, and you know, once again that's out. And then I don't do a whole lot on social media these days because I'm sort of busy with another
book project and lots of other stuff. But if you want to see like pictures of my dog on Instagram, I am ask Pang ask p a ng and that's actually my handle on pretty much everything, So you can be part of that select circle of my forty three followers or so sort of social media.
There you go. I like that, Yeah, I like that. What kind of dog do you? Just so we can chum the waters.
Little fifteen little fifteen pounds spaniel who's about who's about like sixteen years old now.
So, oh, a lot of books. We do. We do Spaniels on this, Yeah, we do, we do. I've got a couple of them. And is there a work of media that You've been enjoying.
A work of media that I've been enjoying social or otherwise social or otherwise you know, watching can I can? I say, sort of a certain sort of schadenfreud, sort of watching the dumpster fire of X, sort of that whole story, you know, just you know, living in Silicon Valley and knowing a couple of people who had been working at Twitter, sort of seeing what's been going on with that has been remarkable and kind of terrifying in terms of, you know, any other media that I've been enjoying.
Ryuichi's I've been listening to a lot of Ryuichi Sakamoto, who was a composer. He was a founding member of Yellow Magic Orchestra and then went on and did lots of soundtracks and very experimental stuff. He just died a few months ago, So Mark, yeah, you know, yeah, in March.
But you know, as an example of someone who was incredibly creative for an incredibly long time, he is sort of I think a real model for us, all right, the guy who could do you know, bring electronic music to Japan but also win an oscar for you know, his soundtrack work and collaborate with David bow you know, sort of co star in a movie with David Bowie. You know, this guy was a baller and so sort of and you know his work is so varied there's
something in it for everyone. So that's amazing. So yeah, that sounds great. And Miles, where can people find you? Is there a workingmedia you've been enjoying?
Oh? Man, find me on wherever they got the at thing? Shift heild the shift key and then hit number two and then type in Miles of Gray, m I L E s oh I just hit my knee on the desk. M I E S O F g R A Y. And then also, if you like basketball, you can hear Jack and I on our basketball podcast Miles and Jack Got Mad Boosties. And if you like ninety Day Fiance, catch me on four twenty Day Fiance and also The
Good Thief. That's so many shows, so just you know, just just look for me and deal you'll find the podcast. Listening to Miles's voice, Oh, please. That's all I hear. Although, help me get to Lambeau please. I haven't seen my son in five months. Then that's by choice. That's by choice, because I'm not done grind. But Alex has given me the courage to maybe shave off an hour or two of just looking at used Lambeau ads. And to that, I am, I am. I owe you a debt of gratitude.
Let's see in terms of tweets or anything like, I not I don't. I don't have anything on Twitter Instagram that I've liked. I let's see, did I see anything? No? I don't really have anything to suggest at the moment. It's mister, you know, let me know, put me onto something. I need a new show that's a murder mystery because that's the only thing her majesty my partner likes to
watch with me. She won't watch comedy with me, so give me, give me good and something with European people in that always works, So hit me as I imployed. That got to be European people. She loves a good European people and all the meme and murdering. All right, Uh, you can find me on Twitter at Jack Underscore O'Brien tweet, I've been enjoying. David Hines tweeted me, So you just released the Exorcist Believer Blumhouse. Yes me, and you're calling
the second one the Exorcist Deceiverhouse. Yes me. My pitch is for the third one Blumhouse. Oh no me, Extreme airbud guy voice. There's no rule that says a dog can't conduct an exorcism the exercise Golden Golden Believer. It's up to you, that's what That's what You guys are the creative ones. You're the ones who are allowed to take breaks, not us. You can find us on Twitter at daily Zeikeeist. We're at d daily Zeitgeist on Instagram.
We have a Facebook fanpage and a website daily zeikeist dot com, where we post our episodes and our our footnotes. We link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy. Miles, is there a song that you think people might enjoy? Yeah, I was just listening to this duo that I think they're from Atlanta. I heard them years ago, like where there was a track
with claro like rapping on it. With them. They're called Coco and Claire Claire and they have a track called Outro and it's like their music just like fun dy, like bedroom hip hop and they're like monotone. Flow is just always I've always I've always been a fan. So this is Outro by Coco and Claire Claire. All right, well, we will link off to that in the footnotes. The Daily Zeitgeist does a production of iHeartRadio for more podcasts from my heart Radio is the heart Radio Wrap, Apple
podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That's going to do it for us this morning, back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we will talk to y'all then bye bye