Vishen Lakhiani argues for government-mandated shorter workweeks (a four-day or four-and-a-half-day week) to improve public health, social connection, and happiness. He critiques GDP as an insufficient success metric, cites environmental and health harms from excess production, points to experiments showing productivity gains (e.g., Microsoft in Japan), and urges governments to pilot and adopt shorter workweeks to boost wellbeing and performance.
Questions this video answers
Microsoft
About 300 people
A four-and-a-half-day work week (weekend starting at noon on Fridays)
Chapters
What if governments across the world mandated a four day work week? This means the weekend is actually three days long. This is a really interesting idea and it's an idea that I'm all for.
Faz, you know, we finally here, right? It's Friday, then it's Saturday, Sunday.
What?
It's Friday then.
I'm getting myself into trouble for saying this. The government in Dubai just did something which I think is so forward thinking, I absolutely applaud. They decided to enact a four and a half day work week, which basically.
Means that the weekend will start at noon on Fridays and those working in the UAE will not have to return to work till Monday.
Now I love this idea and I love the fact that the government made this a mandate. But now let's go philosophically. Why is this such an intriguing idea? Well, think about the concept of gdp, okay? When we measure the success of a nation, we use this absolutely bull Post World War II idea called GDP or Gross Domestic. And so we've created a culture that we are constantly on the hamster wheel to raise output, to grow gdp. But what exactly is gdp? It's a measure of productivity of a nation, but it doesn't actually measure the health of a nation or the happiness of a nation. Look at what's happening to America. Lifespans are going down, obesity is going up, people are getting sicker. Americans are now delaying producing kids. American birth rate has been falling, but Americans are working harder than ever. Very often having to have two to three jobs just to make ends meet. This idea that we have to constantly be on a hamster wheel is dysfunctional for a society. It makes us less human. In the words of Alan Watts, I'm going to read that quote. If you say that getting money is.
The most important thing, you will spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living. That is to go on doing things you don't like doing, which is stupid.
He says. Now this obsession with GDP causes us to push human beings to deliver output. Now there's a good side to output. Innovation, creativity. New products come when output goes up. But look at the state of the world today. We're actually producing more output than we need to destructive levels. Here are some examples. Okay, if you go Back to the 80s, the average American bought 12 new articles of clothing a year. Today that number is closer to 60. Why? Because output for clothing, for the fashion industry has gone up. But do we really need that much? Because that has a toll on the Environment. Look at the food industry. It's constantly creating new things for us to put in our body. But so much of this is actually bad for our health. Look at the news. Recently Jamie Oliver just won a lawsuit against McDonald's proving that the hamburger meat that they are serving is not fit for human consumption. Yet we are producing massive companies that are delivering output that actually make us worst off environmentally, physically, psychologically. The greatest things that correlate to human happiness is our connection to other human beings. The famous Ed Diener Harvard study showed that the only thing that truly makes us happy is the strength of our social connections. Think about what you could do with an extra day a week in terms of connecting with your family, with your friends, with your loved ones. I know I would love that. And I know odds are you would too. So let's start pushing for a four day work week. Globally and governments need to take this seriously. It's not just about gdp. We need to stop looking at that as the sole measure of a nation's success. We need to look at the happiness index, wellness index, and even possibly a community index, which measures how human beings come together in a nation for support, for peace, for connection, and so on. If we enact the concept of a four day work week and give people recuperation time, three days on a weekend to spend with family, to rejuvenate, with friends, to invest in their health and wellness, when they show up on Monday, they had a whole different level of performance. And this is why so many experiments on four day work weeks actually show an increase in productivity. It's counterintuitive, but it's true. Microsoft tested this in Japan for example, and output actually went up. So kudos to Microsoft at Mindvalley. I'm the CEO and founder of a company that employs about 300 people. And one of the things that I've come to notice is that the more time people have to take care of themselves, to engage in wellness, to invest in their own personal growth, to spend time taking care of their kids or their family, the better they perform at work. And so the question is, why can't we just switch to a four day work week? Well, I wish I could, but here's the problem. Right now, companies, including my company, we are beholden to market forces, we are beholden to investors. Let's say I wanted to raise capital. Now I may believe in a four day work week, my employees may believe in it. But an investor who's trying to deploy capital in company A or company B and sees that one company has its workers working four days a week and one has its workers working five days a week. They're probably going to invest in company B. And so it's harder for individuals like myself to just change this, but governments can do it. Government mandates can often be used for incredible good. Think about government mandates that limited pollution or that supported worker rights. If you work for government, please, please, please take this idea seriously. Start launching experiments on it as many European countries have and isolated populations prove to companies that this idea can work. And as this idea takes off, this has the potential to really change connection, health, well being, peace of mind, and an end to business culture for people all around the world. Support a four day work week.
