More Humane Work With Joe O’Connor – This Week’s Thinking With Mitch Joel Conversation

Episode #1018 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast) is now live and ready for you to listen to:

At a moment when burnout is normalized and productivity is still measured by hours rather than impact, the five-day workweek is starting to look less like a foundation of modern life and more like an outdated design choice. Joe O’Connor is the CEO of Work Time Revolution and one of the world’s leading architects of the four-day workweek, having designed and led large-scale pilots across multiple countries, industries and organizational types. His work sits at the intersection of labor economics, organizational culture and performance design, helping companies rethink how work actually gets done in a knowledge-based, AI-accelerated economy. Joe has advised governments, nonprofits and private-sector leaders on how to redesign work in ways that improve employee well-being while maintaining (or increasing) organizational performance, challenging deeply held assumptions about time, output and commitment. His new book, Do More In Four – Why It’s Time For A Shorter Workweek (with co-author Jared Lindzon), brings together research, real-world case studies and global experimentation to argue that the five-day workweek is neither inevitable nor optimal. Joe shows how reducing work time can sharpen focus, improve equity and force organizations to confront outdated productivity metrics built for an industrial era. He also examines how AI is accelerating the need for new work models, exposing the inefficiencies of activity-based measurement and pushing leaders to define productivity in terms of outcomes, not presence. Grounded in data yet pragmatic about cultural resistance, Joe’s perspective positions the four-day workweek not as an employee concession, but as a competitive advantage for organizations willing to rethink the rules of work before the market forces them to. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Thinking With Mitch Joel here (or feel free to subscribe via Apple Podcast or whatever platform you may choose): #1018 of Thinking With Mitch Joel (formerly Six Pixels of Separation – The ThinkersOne Podcast).

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