Brain-Friendly Friday: Why the 5-hour workday makes sense

Did you know that trimming your workday to 5 hours may increase your concentration?

It’s a hypothesis Stephan Aarstol explored at his company Tower Paddle Boards. The company, one of Shark Tan ABC’s biggest success stories, went from $100,000 in annual sales in 2012 to a total of more than $30 million in revenue in 2018. What’s more impressive? In 2015, Aarstol shifted to a 5-hour workday for the entire company.

In a desire to give his team their lives back and pay them better for more focused effort, the gauntlet was thrown: their per-hour earnings were set to nearly double overnight. To motivate this drastic switch, a five percent profit-sharing plan was released at the same time. Aarstol thought his company’s productivity might decline until employees figured out how to be nearly twice as efficient.

The reality?

They didn’t take a hit at all, and their annual revenues that introductory year were up by over 40 percent. How could this be? As behavioural economist Sendhil Mullainathan, and psychologist Edlar Shafir, explain, having less time creates heightened productivity periods called “focus dividends.”

Has your company implemented any brain-friendly workweek or workday changes?