I've been doing a 4 day work week since early 2019 and it this has had a tremendous positive effect on my mental and physical wellbeing. Despite being in a 4 day work week just over 4 years now I can confidently say that I'm not thinking now that 4 days are too many and I need to go down to 3 days. Actually I am very content with 4 days. I am a lot more productive than I was during 5 day work weeks. I feel so much fresher on Mondays and ready to tackle some programming tasks that I even get up early on Mondays nowadays and enjoy to have an early start. I WFH (something I already did before Covid) and when I wake up I normally make myself a coffee and then I'm straight at my laptop. The hours between 7:30 AM and 11:00 AM are my most productive hours of the day. Often I have some late meetings which can drag until 6PM so I tend to take a longer lunch break which allows me to hit the tennis court during sunlight hours and have a hit at my local club or go to the gym. By 6PM I have had a super productive work day and got a good 1.5-2h sport session in as well. In the evening I am completely free for my family which is a big bonus point.
The biggest benefit of the 4 day work week is that I never get to the point where I run low on energy as the week progresses. A lot of my friends who work 5 days never have enough time to recover over the weekend so they enter work on Monday still not fully recharged and then deplete their energy even more, so as weeks go on they get more tired until they have a holiday or fall ill for a few days. This never happens to me, so not only do I feel more focused and energetic for work, family and hobbies but also it means that when my weekend starts on Friday I don't actually waste my Friday to mostly sleep and recover. I honestly can't see myself to ever go back to 5 days a week, unless I was really desperate for a short term income boost where someone pays me an unreasonable high amount to slave myself off for a few months but otherwise there is no way I will sacrifice my health for something where I don't even arguably achieve more than in my current 4 day work week.
The biggest benefit of the 4 day work week is that I never get to the point where I run low on energy as the week progresses. A lot of my friends who work 5 days never have enough time to recover over the weekend so they enter work on Monday still not fully recharged and then deplete their energy even more, so as weeks go on they get more tired until they have a holiday or fall ill for a few days. This never happens to me, so not only do I feel more focused and energetic for work, family and hobbies but also it means that when my weekend starts on Friday I don't actually waste my Friday to mostly sleep and recover. I honestly can't see myself to ever go back to 5 days a week, unless I was really desperate for a short term income boost where someone pays me an unreasonable high amount to slave myself off for a few months but otherwise there is no way I will sacrifice my health for something where I don't even arguably achieve more than in my current 4 day work week.