Stop trying to make the 4-day workweek happen Summary List Placement "The short work week, once a fad, has become a way of life," the New York Times reported not in 2021, but in 1971. Search The Times archives and you''ll find thousands of such articles, going back decades, on the imminent value of the four-day workweek. Opening sentences proclaim , "The trend toward a four day week is accelerating." Headlines tout , "A 4-Day Week Is Long Overdue." Some five decades later, the four-day workweek remains what it supposedly used to be: a fad. With the exception of round-the-clock service jobs, such as manufacturing or nursing, and a handful of daring startups, a shortened week remains a tantalizing thought experiment for most of the American workforce. (However, it does seem to be working well in Iceland.) At the marketing company Scroll, CEO Shane Hickenlooper says the 15-person firm has already reported improvements to mental health and profitability since it began trialing a four-day week in May. And the crowdfunding site Kickstarter will reportedly move to a four-day week in 2022 for its 90 employees, in part as a call to larger companies to take the idea more seriously.