Ep 538: The Four-Day Workweek Is Real – So Why Don’t We Have It Yet?

Summary

HerMoney with Jean Chatzky

Episode 538: The Four-Day Workweek Is Real – So Why Don’t We Have It Yet?
Date: July 29, 2026
Guest: Joanne Lippman, journalist, bestselling author, and workplace expert

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Main Theme

The episode explores the ongoing conversation about shortening the full-time workweek—especially the much-touted four-day workweek—and why, despite glowing predictions (often from high-profile CEOs and tech leaders) and a solid research base, it remains largely unrealized in the U.S. Through frank, nuanced discussion, host Jean Chatzky and guest Joanne Lippman cut through the hype, interrogating the real reasons behind resistance to change, and what a time-liberating future could mean for women, workers, businesses, and society.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Big Promises from CEOs About AI and Shorter Workweeks

• CEOs Are Predicting Less Work—But Not Delivering
  • Recent public statements from leaders like Jamie Dimon, Elon Musk, Steve Cohen, Eric Yuan, and Bill Gates suggest that rapid advances in AI will soon let us work less:
    • Bill Gates: "We're going to have a two day work week."
    • Elon Musk: Work might become "optional, like playing sports or a video game." [03:24]
• Disconnect Between Public and Private Demands
  • These same executives who foresee radical reductions in work hours are simultaneously enforcing strict back-to-office policies and encouraging longer hours. Example:
    • "Elon Musk is very famous for saying, you know, 40 hours is a minimum and to actually have any impact at work, you really need to work 80 hours a week." — Joanne Lippman [04:20]
  • Jamie Dimon has been highly critical of remote work and pushes for full in-person weeks.
• Gendered Patterns in Leadership
  • Jean notes, and Joanne agrees, that most of these predictions about the future of work come from men in leadership, who have historically resisted relinquishing ‘FaceTime’ power in the office [05:00].

2. The Research: Four-Day Workweek Works—and Outperforms

• The Evidence is Overwhelming
  • Icelandic pilot (2015), plus studies in New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Brazil—all found either stable or increased productivity, soaring employee satisfaction, and even revenue increases.
  • Largest UK study (2022): 61 companies, ~3,000 employees. Results: Revenue increased; employee stress and burnout fell. [07:34]
  • "We have not seen any studies that have shown the reverse. So far it's been all positive news." — Joanne [07:34]
• U.S. Public Support
  • Most Americans favor a four-day week in surveys, yet little progress is made.

3. Why Haven’t We Moved to Shorter Workweeks?

a. Executives’ Attachment to Control

• CEOs’ "ferocious attachment" to FaceTime and in-office presence remains a major barrier—even though remote and flexible work boosted female workforce participation after the pandemic. [08:25]

b. Overestimating Technological Efficiency Gains

• Historical pattern: New tech should free time, but instead increases workload ("workload creep").
  • "As the technology improves, we find new ways ... to do more work." [09:35]
  • Example: After email, time spent on communication ballooned; household chores remain time-consuming despite machines.
  • Studies show AI often intensifies work vs. reducing it; increased work hours and less leisure are common outcomes. [10:50]
    • "Workload creep, meaning that ... I'm sort of adding on extra things because AI allows me to do extra work." — Joanne [10:55]

c. Cultural Factors: America’s Workaholism

• U.S. culture idolizes busyness and underutilizes vacation days.
• "Americans leave something like 40% of our vacation days on the table..." [12:35]
• Study: Most U.S. parents prioritize their kids having meaningful careers above family life.
• Even if AI saved time, most would use that time... to work more.

4. Barriers to Adoption in Practice

• Smaller Companies Have Experimented
  • Examples: Kickstarter and ThredUp have four-day weeks, with good results—but scaling this practice in massive corporations is daunting due to operational complexity. [16:23]
• Could Legislation Be the Solution?
  • Real step-change previously came from labor law, not just from business. The 40-hour, five-day week was codified with overtime rules, not just by Henry Ford's lead. [15:04]
    • "It's not us and the big companies that need to do this, it's legislation." — Joanne [15:15]
• Movement Stronger Abroad
  • UK and other countries have advocacy/lobbying efforts for a four-day week. U.S. lags culturally and legislatively.

5. Will AI Lead to More Free Time—or Just More Work?

• AI Increases Volume and Velocity
  • ActiveTrack report: Email and messaging time increased over 300% after AI adoption; actual focus time dropped. [18:42]
  • New technology (email, Slack) creates even more tasks and expectations—AI risks doing the same.
• How Can Workers Use AI Wisely?
  • Useful as an assistive tool (data organization, brainstorming, admin tasks).
  • "I can throw my word doc into AI and say, make this into a spreadsheet... It's a lot faster than me doing it myself." — Joanne [20:10]
  • But: The danger is workloads and expectations simply spiral up (“productivity guilt”).

6. How Leaders and Workers Should Respond

• Bosses Should Set Healthy Boundaries
  • Good leadership models the behavior they want—e.g., email blackouts after hours; respect for calendar blocks (like dinnertime).
  • "The best bosses... are those that sort of model the desired outcome. Right. So those that maybe have an email blackout in the evening..." — Joanne [23:00]
• Self-advocacy is Essential, Especially for Women
  • Setting boundaries crucial in today’s uncertain job market.
  • Recognize that institutional change comes slowly, but individuals and leaders can take steps.

7. Reinvention and Using AI for ‘Next’ Steps

• AI Can Accelerate Career Pivots, but Use With Caution

  • Joanne’s book, Next, covers career reinvention; she finds AI helpful for skill upgrades, research, brainstorming—but not for creative or deep thought tasks. [26:47]
  • "I would never use AI for writing... the process of writing is thinking." — Joanne [28:12]
  • Some find it helpful for synthesizing strengths, career reflection, and exploring new fields.

• Joanne’s Next Steps

  • Executive producing a documentary with Katie Couric about the state and future of the news industry. [29:57]

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Tech Titan Hype:
  “Bill Gates says we’re going to have a two day workweek. Elon Musk says work’s going to be optional. It’s going to be like playing sports or a video game.” — Joanne Lippman [03:24]

• On Productivity Paradox:
  “Our workload should have just plunged with the advent of digital tools. But instead, workloads have exploded because technology gives us this ability to publish around the clock.” — Joanne [08:38]

• On American Workaholism:
  “We have this workaholic culture… The most famous line, it’s that Miranda Priestley, right, The absolute workaholic editor. And she says, boy, I love working. I really do. Don’t you? And that’s sort of the American ethos.” — Joanne, referencing The Devil Wears Prada [13:11]

• On Boundaries:
  “Doesn’t matter how great the technology is with a bad boss.” — Joanne [23:03]

• On AI and Career Reinvention:
  "I know ... people who have been able to pivot much more easily because of the ability to kind of get up to speed ... you can kind of immerse yourself in a topic in a way that you weren’t able to do before." — Joanne [27:00]

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Key Timestamps for Important Segments

• 03:24: CEOs’ contradictory predictions vs. real workplace expectations
• 05:00: Gendered pattern in workplace leadership and its impact on flexibility
• 07:34: Summary of research showing the benefits of shorter workweeks
• 10:55: Technology’s role in ‘workload creep’ instead of time savings
• 12:35: Discussion of America’s workaholic culture
• 15:15: Argument for legislative action over company-by-company change
• 16:23: Examples of small U.S. firms doing four-day weeks; why scale-up is tough
• 18:42: AI as a driver of more (not less) work—ActiveTrack report
• 20:10: Practical ways workers use AI (and what to watch out for)
• 23:00: Importance of boundaries; best bosses model healthy behavior
• 26:47: How AI enables personal and professional reinvention (and when to avoid it)
• 29:57: Joanne’s upcoming documentary on the future of news

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Tone

The conversation is frank, witty, and compassionate—grounded in research but empathetic to listeners who juggle real pressures and aspirations. Joanne is practical and data-driven but realistic about barriers to change; Jean is candid about her own hesitations and the broader cultural dilemmas.

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Summary Takeaway

Despite the hype from tech leaders, the four-day workweek is already possible and highly beneficial—but barriers of corporate culture, mismanaged technology, and America’s workaholic ethos keep it out of reach. Real change may require legislative action and cultural shifts, and until then, both leaders and workers must set healthy boundaries and use AI thoughtfully to enhance—not overrun—their lives.

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

Hey everyone, thanks so much for joining us today on HerMoney. I'm your host Jean Chatsky. Every few weeks it feels like another tech titan is promising us our time back. Wouldn't that be lovely? Jamie Dimon says a shorter work week is coming. Elon Musk says AI will make work optional that will only do the work that we actually want to do. And Bill Gates is predicting two day work weeks. There's just one problem. While executives are promising that AI will give everyone more free time in public, many of them are demanding more hours, more innovation, more output, and more overall of their employees in private. My guest today has been tracking the disconnect and what it could mean for your career. She is no stranger to her money. Joanne Lippman is a best selling author, one of the most respected journalists in the country. She has led newsroom teams to six Pulitzer Prizes and her recent reporting shows something that might surprise you. We don't need AI to get a shorter workweek. The research proving it's completely possible has been sitting in front of us for over a decade. So what's actually standing in our way? And what could getting our time back mean for our money and our productivity? Joanne, welcome back. Let's get into it.

[A]

Great. Thank you, Jean. It's great to be here with you.

[B]

You wrote a piece recently in the New York Times that had us all wrapped. And it basically it says that although these days all of these CEOs are predicting that AI is going to shrink the work week, it's not exactly clear that that is what is going to happen. So can you walk us through who is predicting what and why they're saying this?

[A]

Sure, absolutely. So what we have seen recently, it does seem like every single day there's yet another high powered business leader who comes out and says that artificial intelligence is going to lead to this shorter work week. It's going to supercharge all of our productivity and give us all kinds of time back to us. So it ranges from, you know, people who are saying we're going to have a four day work week, like Steve Cohen says. So there's a few others. Nvidia's Gen says so to people who say maybe we'll have a three day week, like Eric Yuan, who's the CEO of Zoom. Bill Gates says we're going to have a two day work week. Elon Musk says work's going to be optional. It's going to be like playing sports or a video game. And that is a direct quote from Elon Musk. And they all credit this to artificial intelligence. And there are a couple of things that struck me about this. First of all, almost all of these executives also are the people who are demanding back to work, who are against remote work, who are demanding longer hours. Elon Musk is very famous for saying, you know, 40 hours is a minimum and to actually have any impact at work, you really need to work 80 hours a week. It doesn't square. Right. Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan has been the most vocal critic of remote work. He wants FaceTime and he wants it five days a week. So there are a little bit at odds with these predictions about artificial intelligence and what it can do for us.

[B]

Did it strike you as anything that all of these CEOs seem to be men?

[A]

There is definitely. This was not in the article. And it's so sharp of Eugene to pick that out. There is something to be said, and this is actually quite related to their return to office mandates that we've seen with remote work, which is that leaders generally have been demanding FaceTime in a way that they are very reluctant to give up. And these leaders are almost all men. And this is something that we've seen for years and years. And I don't expect that's gonna change much. And in fact, we know that for women, for people of color, for people with disabilities, that having flexibility in the workplace is so important and allows many of those people to actually participate in the workforce. It's no surprise, and it is directly related, that we had a record level of female participation in the workforce, led by mothers of small children, all in the wake of the pandemic when remote work became more regular. So, yeah, that's a great point, Jean. But also I have to say I've been covering, you know, as you know, I've been doing this for four plus decades as a journalist and most of my career as an editor as well as a reporter, and a large part of that in business journalism. So I have assigned, I can't even tell you how many pieces about the future of work. And I've written about it, I've written books about it, and I've always been struck by people who are predicting that shorter work week are always wrong. It hasn't come true yet.

[B]

So why do you think that they're wrong this time? I mean, because as you point out, this body of research showing the benefits of flexibility, the benefits of a four day work week, it's not new that you've written, as you said, you've written books about this. What does the data actually tell us about the impact of shorter work weeks on things like productivity and pay and well being? And why is this just another prediction that may not come true?

[A]

Sure. Let me first tell you about what the research tells us about a shorter work week. And then there's really three major reasons that I go into about why those predictions have not come true. So first, this is what we know about the shorter work week is a four day work week with the same pay and fewer hours than 40, maybe 32 hours. It's not just possible, it's actually superior. And the research shows us that it's superior. So the first big trial was more than a decade ago. It was in Iceland in 2015, and it was with a portion of the workforce there. And it was massively successful. So successful that it's actually been rolled out across much of the country since then. So here's what they found. They found that productivity remained the same or it improved and employee satisfaction soared. So that study has been followed by others elsewhere, including in New Zealand, Japan, Australia, Brazil. They all have about the same kind of result. The biggest study that we know of was in 2022 and it was spearheaded in the UK, but it involved 61 companies, almost 3,000 employees. That one found that actually revenue increased in these companies while employee stress and burnout plunged. We have not seen any studies that have shown the reverse. So far it's been all positive news. So it makes sense. Americans in surveys will overwhelmingly also favor a four day work week. So the question is, why hasn't it happened? Why aren't more of these executives trying it? Every one of those executives that we talked about just a few minutes ago, every one of them could have already already rolled out a shorter work week, no AI required, right? We already know you don't need artificial intelligence to have a shorter work week. So there are a couple of reasons. One we already talked about, which is this ferocious attachment that CEOs have to FaceTime in the office. The other, a second really important issue is that we overestimate, and all the forecasters overestimate how much technology saves us in terms of time versus how much extra time we spend. So if you think about it, like I said, my career goes way, way back. I was a college intern in the early 80s at the Wall Street Journal and we literally typed on manual typewriters, used triplicate carbon paper. We fixed mistakes by literally cutting and pasting scissors and glue. So theoretically, our workload should have just plunged right with the advent of digital tools. But instead, journalists, workloads, all have exploded because technology gives us this ability to publish around the clock. And so now we actually spend more hours. And that is true across the board. If you look at full time employees in 2025, they spent an average of about 42 hours a week at work. And that figure has been barely changed since the early 90s of the pre Internet age. And we've seen it elsewhere, you know, at home. There was a really interesting study recently of housework that found that today we spend as much time on housework today as we did in 1900, even though we now have every modern convenience or dishwashers and washing machines and coffee machines and everything else. Because as the technology improves, we find new ways. You know, in the case of housework, we've improved our standards of nutrition and dress and child rearing and cleanliness. And now we're seeing that in the workplace. So I know of two studies about artificial intelligence in the workforce. There was a very recent one, it was a 200 employee tech firm. And they found that when they introduced AI to their employees, it did not reduce work and in fact it intensively intensified work. This study said it led to something called workload creep. Workload creep, meaning that, you know, what I used to do. I'm sort of adding on extra things because AI allows me to do extra work. And there was a second study, again just last year, that found that AI use is associated not only with longer hours, but with less leisure time. And if I'll just briefly mention just. The third reason why this hasn't happened is actually because of all of us. I mean, we're a workaholic nation. You know, Americans leave something like 40% of our vacation days on the table. We don't take vacation. There was this really mind blowing survey recently. 88% of parents. This was American parents. 88% of parents said it was important for their kids when they grew up to have careers they enjoyed, which sounds great. Yes. But only about 20% of parents said it was important for their kids to get married and have kids. It's just our. We have this workaholic culture. You know, it's funny, if you saw the Devil Wears Prada too, or even if you didn't.

[B]

I did.

[A]

Even if you didn't. You know, the most famous line, it's that Miranda Priestley, right, The absolute workaholic editor. And she says, boy, I love working. I really do. Don't you? And that's sort of the American ethos. And that also has been, you know, an issue. I mean, there was a study of Americans who do use AI at work. And in a recent survey, the majority of them said they would use most of their time savings from AI to do more work. So we. There's a cultural shift that needs to happen as well.

[B]

I was thinking, because one of my employees asked me, God, four, five, six, pre pandemic, maybe we should think about a four day work week. And my, my feeling at the time was I work like seven days. I'm not gonna go to a four day work week. But as the research has continued to roll out, I've thought about like, okay, what is. That was so dug in so much. And I think part of it is it's not the being in the office issue, because we don't have an office. We're all remote, we're all everywhere. I think for me, part of it was as a company that also has clients. Like, how are my clients going to react if all of a sudden they send an email on a Monday or a Friday and they get this out of office? I almost feel like we need some big companies to go first, which is really kind of chickenshit of me, honestly, but it would make me feel a little better.

[A]

I think that's first of all, Fantastic point. You and I have both run organizations and when you run an organization, I know that as an editor, I work 24 7. And it can be very infuriating if you're working 247 and the people around you are not. So I can, I totally get that feeling. Honestly, I get it and it's real. But to your point that we need big companies to do it, that's what I thought too. And in fact, in writing this, that's what I thought. You need big companies to be the first mover. But I got a lot of response to this article and there was one response that really got me thinking, which was, it's not us and the big companies that need to do this, it's legislation. And they pointed out that, you know, Henry Ford gets the credit for the five day, 40 hour work week, down from six. But really what codified that was legislation. Right. And about overtime. And it's a really interesting way of thinking about it. Who should be the first mover and what would it require? And you're 100% right. If some people are doing it, but not everybody's doing it, you're the problem. Right?

[B]

Yeah. Yeah. And the Washington Post, I'm sure you saw this story where they profiled some companies who said they were companies, not that I'm really familiar with. They said AI is letting them sustain a four day workweek without cutting pay or output. Now, four doesn't make a movement, but is there anything that you think we can learn from companies like that?

[A]

So there are a few companies that actually, since the pandemic, moved to a four day work week. I think Kickstarter is one, ThredUp is one. They've seen good results, but they're small. I think doing this with a very starting out with a large company, to be fair to Jamie Dimon at Elon Musk of giant empires, the machinery, it's so complex. The systems, the intertwinement you have with your clients and with your vendors, it's so complex. So I totally understand why it's been difficult to move in that direction, which by the way, is one of the reasons I was intrigued by this idea of legislation. But I have to say that, you know, there's the inklings of a movement in the us it's stronger in other countries. The UK has several organizations that are committed to either lobbying for or doing research on the four day work week. So there is a push elsewhere. And this might be one of those cases where it starts somewhere else before it ends up coming here.

[B]

Possible Right. We are going to take a short break. Coming up, we'll dig into why AI might end up making us busier, not saving us time. Back in a sec.

[A]

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[B]

We are back with Joanne Lippman. We're talking about AI. Joanne wrote an amazing piece in the New York Times about AI and productivity and the four day work week. And you made the point that it's freeing people in some cases to just do more work. There was the ActiveTrack report that found that time spent on tasks like email and messaging went up after AI adoption, in some cases up over 300%. And focus uninterrupted work time went down. How can we use AI and not fall into these traps?

[A]

Yeah, and you know, as we were saying, I mean the research is absolute that when we have new technology, we actually tend to do more. And you mentioned email. After the introduction of email, which was supposed to be a time savings, it ends up sucking that extra time from us because we are such slaves to email and now to Slack. And so a lot of what ends up with this new technology is that we have to spend time on the new technology. So look, I do think there are ways that we can use AI to become more productive. I'm seeing it every day. I use AI myself. It's very useful for certain things. When I'm writing a piece like the piece I just wrote and I'm interviewing a ton of people and I'm keeping track of it in a word doc. I can throw my word word doc into AI and say, make this into a spreadsheet so that I can keep track of it better. It's a lot faster than me doing it myself.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So there are, I Think there are some use cases that make a lot of sense. I think the issue is that the expectations, and this goes for your own self expectations, but also institutional bosses expectations keep increasing with that level of new technology. And I think that's where we just have to be very, very careful and also we have to have a really good sense of what is realistic and what's not. One of the really interesting things I found when I started digging into these predictions, I didn't put it all in the article, but people have been predicting the end of the five day work week since before there literally was. Before Henry Ford, before there was an institutionalized five day workweek, there was a very famous electrical engine who a guy named Charles Steinmetz in 1923. Okay, the five day work week in Henry Ford, that was 1926. In 1923 this guy said, well we have electricity everywhere now, so within a century we're going to have a four hour workday. Right. And John Maynard Keynes, I think everybody's familiar with that prediction we're going to have a 15 hour workweek by now. The original Tesla said robots were going to be doing all of our work by now. He also said women would be the superior race by now. So we're still waiting for that one.

[B]

Waiting. That one is definitely on its way. Look, I hear you that we're on this very slippery slope that there's been a lot of buzz about productivity guilt and whether you have been at your company for a long time or a short time, I think in this job market that is a really, really hard thing to escape.

[A]

Right.

[B]

There feels like, it feels like there's A, not as much security but B it's a lot harder to get the next job. Things are just taking longer. And so of course we want to show that we are up to the task, that we can handle whatever our bosses are throw at us or our clients throw at us. So what do you say to both employees who need to be able to step out and bosses who need to really check ourselves when it comes to what we're demanding of people?

[A]

Yeah, I think, you know, it really comes down to and this is something else that came across in the many of the comments and emails that I got after this piece was published. Which is what it always comes down to is good bosses, good organizations who are setting the standard. Doesn't matter how great the technology is with a bad boss. So I mean you're raising a great point. We're in an uncertain job market right now and you do want to show that you can step up. The best bosses I've seen are those that and best organizations I've seen are those that sort of model the desired outcome. Right. So those that maybe have an email blackout in the evening or that you can block out on your calendar, men and women can block out on their calendar, dinnertime hours. Right. Those sorts of things. It's a lot of the same policies I think, that you've talked about quite frequently over the years, and I know I have as well that particularly in a tough job market, drawing of the boundaries is important. But I think that setting the standard, the bosses really need to be drawing some boundaries.

[B]

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[A]

Yeah, actually since the book came out is the AI revolution. And that has really, really been able to supercharge a lot of people's efforts at reinvention. And that actually has been a great use of A.I. you know, I've heard from people who have been able to pivot much more easily because of the ability to kind of get up to speed with a. Because of the ability to kind of dive deep into sort of a new interest. So people who are pivoting. I mean, I spoke to someone who had been a television producer and has pivoted into screenwriting. Right. So there's so much that you can learn about sort of how to structure a screenplay. Just sort of the nuts and bolts part is very helpful. And then sort of getting feedback. I know. So people who are getting into writing has been interesting. I would never use AI for writing. And I teach a course at Yale, and I tell my students, you cannot use AI for writing because when the process of writing is thinking and you've got to learn how to think, but at the same time, there are ways that it becomes more useful. I do know of journalists who have, you know, just for headline writing, like, here's my 5 ideas for headline. Give me me 10 more ideas for headline and using it for brainstorming in that purpose, not for the original work, but for that kind of brainstorming. So there's a lot of uses. And I think in Next, I talked about sort of the difficulty of the in between phase. I talk about sort of the four phases that you go through. The search, the struggle, the stop, the solution, and the search at the beginning is when you're kind of thinking about leaving something, but you're very often unintentionally sort of thinking about the next thing. AI has been great for that. Right. AI is great that you can kind of immerse yourself in a topic in a way that you weren't able to do before. The struggle, which is that middle section where you're leaving the place you were, haven't quite figured out where you're going. Again, this is something where I've seen people who are in that process. It's really frustrating, but AI can be both helpful and, in a sense, reassuring. I mean, it's kind of creepy to say that, but I do think AI is a terrible tendency to be sycophantic. We've seen that. To tell you how brilliant you are at every move.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

Sometimes that's not a terrible thing. Depends.

[B]

It depends on the kind of day I'm having. Honestly, like, sometimes I'm just like, I'll take. I will absolutely take it.

[A]

Yes, yes, exactly. You know, this friend of mine who was pivoting was able to put in her previous work and her ideas into AI and it was able to come back and kind of synthesize her strengths in a way, in the same way that you or I would for a friend. And was able to synthesize her strengths in a way that she kind of knew. But there it was in black and white. And it was, you know, it was helpful. It was helpful.

[B]

And what is next for you at this point?

[A]

Well, right now I'm actually working on a documentary about the news industry. And where is the news industry going? I'm executive producing with Katie Couric, co executive producer. And we are looking at where we are now, how the news industry has changed and where it might be going from here.

[B]

Well, I can't wait for that. Joanne, thank you so much for being here, for the great conversation, for the work that you continue to do. And tell Katie I said hi.

[A]

I will do. So great to be with Eugene. Thank you.

[B]

And before we go, if you love today's episode, please take a moment to leave us a five star review on Apple Podcast. Your feedback means the world to me, but it also helps other women find the show. And if you haven't yet, be sure to pre order my new book, the Forever Paycheck. It's your guide to building a secure, steady income stream that actually lets you enjoy the retirement you've worked so hard for. Tap the link in the show notes to pre order your copy today. Her Money is produced by Hayley Pascalides. Our music is provided by Video Helper. Thanks for listening and we'll talk soon.