As the four-day week, hybrid workdays and summer working hours become more popular, Friday has become the de facto get off work day. Even media mogul Simon Cowell gave up on the last day of the work week because “it was pointless”.
The 66-year-old multi-millionaire revealed that he gave up the traditional working week and hectic lifestyle of working nearly 20 hours a day while hosting shows such as this one. X factor——Cowell enjoyed his newfound work-life balance so much that he persuaded others to switch to a four-day work week as well.
“Realistically, rest first thing on Friday. Don’t work on Friday because you don’t have to,” the “America’s Got Talent” creator told the British newspaper the sun——Reiterated recently this CEO Diary podcast.
“I’m not kidding,” the British entrepreneur doubled down. “I don’t think anyone should have to work five days a week. It makes no sense.”
Now, his Fridays are filled with entertaining his son Eric, such as driving “25 miles to buy a Pokemon card.”
Cowell also revealed that after decades of being busy, he has developed some unchangeable habits to maintain a work-life balance.
“Eat dinner at five. Don’t answer the phone after 5:30. Don’t read emails after 5:30. Watch a happy movie. Stay outside,” he added.
While Cowell didn’t reveal why he thinks working on Fridays is “pointless” – as opposed to working on Mondays – research shows that most people either work from home or avoid work altogether on the last working day of the traditional work week.
After the pandemic, millions of employees were asked to return to the office, and even the most staunch remote work advocates like Meta and Zoom mandated in-person work. But Friday is rarely included in these RTO orders.
Placer.ai’s National Office Building Index has been analyzing foot traffic in U.S. office buildings since 2019 and found that most workers are at their desks from Tuesday to Thursday. But staff were noticeably absent Friday. Despite the added five-day office requirement, only 12.4% of weekday office visits last year occurred on the last working day of the week.
Likewise, Steven Roth, chairman of New York real estate giant Vornado Realty Trust and one of New York’s largest office building owners, announced that Fridays in the office are officially “gone forever.”
Meanwhile, billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg even claims remote workers are playing golf every Friday — and he might have a point. A study from Stanford University showed that golf courses are packed as early as 4 p.m. on weekdays. Research shows that employees appear to be less productive on Fridays, with some estimating that task completion rates drop by 20% to 35% compared to Monday or Tuesday.
If you can’t beat ’em, you might as well join ’em: For those who actually work, the lack of teammates around them means it’s impossible to schedule a meeting on Friday, and emails are less likely to be read — so as Cowell points out, working on a Friday can feel pointless.
Cowell isn’t the only proponent of the four-day work week: many other employers, including Samsung, are adopting shorter workweeks.
The shift to three-day weekends comes amid a pilot of the “100:80:100” working model – 100% paid 80% of the time in exchange for 100% productivity – which has proven to be a huge success around the world.
The UK has followed in the footsteps of Iceland, New Zealand and Japan and completed the world’s largest experiment with a four-day working day. Sick days were reduced by 65%, productivity was maintained or improved, employees were 57% less likely to quit, and job retention rates improved significantly.
The results even found that reducing employees’ working hours had a positive impact on the bottom line: compared to the same period in 2021, company revenue increased by 35%.
Meanwhile, in Iceland, where a four-day working week was trialled between 2015 and 2019, workers represented by unions (nearly 90% of the workforce) have now won the right to demand a shorter working week.
Likewise, in 2021, the Japanese government’s annual economic policy guidelines include a recommendation that companies give employees the option of a four-day work week.
A version of this story was originally published on wealth network November 20, 2023.
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This story originally appeared on Fortune.com