Looking forward to a long weekend is a perk that doesn’t come up very often. You usually have a two-day break, which is barely enough to rest and get some personal errands done, and before you know it, it’s Monday again.
Finland’s new Prime Minister Sanna Marin wants to change that. She wants to implement a four-day workweek in order to promote a balanced life and help people spend more time with friends and family.
Born in 1985, Marin recently became the world’s youngest prime minister. A shorter workweek is one of her many progressive ideas. By that, she doesn’t mean spreading 40 working hours over four days. She’s actually advocating for 6-hour days, effectively shortening the workweek from 40 to 24 hours.
“I believe people deserve to spend more time with their families, loved ones, hobbies and other aspects of life, such as culture. This could be the next step for us in working life,” Marin said in a speech at the 120th anniversary of the Social Democratic Party.
Her political rivals currently call the idea “unrealistic,” but this is not the first time the idea of six-hour workdays has been explored. From 2015 to 2017, Sweden ran a similar trial, which showed that nurses who worked shorter hours used less sick leave and were a lot more productive.
