[nhumrich]

While I really appreciate the conclusion and goals of the study, I wonder how accurate this test really is. Imagine your boss told you, "we are going to test out 4 hour work weeks". You are naturally going to be productive during the entire experiment because you want to keep the 4 day week. If left as a permanent perk for longer than a year, does productivity slink back down below the 5 day?

[seren]

This is called the Hawthorne Effect [0], which has also been criticized for not being rigorously measured.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect

[transitionnel]

Great question. No study is going to answer this sufficiently. But, remember history. The generation that goes through war remembers that hell and appreciates the following peace because they know the contrast. The following generations generally don't have this anchor. It makes intuitive sense when it's framed in basic mammal psychology, which is how we tend to act, despite attempts to ascribe higher meaning.

There's no reason to rely on imperfectly controlled-for studies when we can generally predict a compounding chain of essentially true things.

Furthermore, less work is more freedom and is preferable, whatever the rationalization of the era is.

We'll probably all be better off when we see tenacious belief in "work ethic" as Stockholm Syndrome's cousin, and realize we're still getting things done because we want to be creative and useful.

[isaacgreyed]

Also novelty could play into it, but then again also people don't like change.