The 4-day workweek stat that made me question my whole setup

I read a study last month from a university in Sweden that tracked freelancers who cut their hours to 80% for 6 months. They found stress levels dropped by a lot, but income only dropped by about 9% on average. I expected a bigger hit, honestly. I'm a designer in Austin and I've been doing 10 hour days to keep up with three clients. After seeing that number, I'm thinking about scaling back to 32 hours a week and just telling clients my availability changed. Has anyone actually tried dropping hours without raising rates? How did the first quarter look on paper?

2 comments

2 Comments

jennybailey1d ago

Ha, my "income drop" was just me buying more coffee to fill the extra time.

blake_kelly191d ago

Coffee was the first thing I cut back on when my own income dipped, so I get why you're laughing, but it's not really about the coffee. The drop meant I had to sit down and actually look at every single thing I was spending on, and that's uncomfortable. It forced me to face some dumb choices I'd been making for months, like subscriptions I never touched. When you have less, you notice things you ignored when money was just flowing. So yeah, the extra time might feel nice now, but the real change is you start respecting what comes in more. That's the part nobody jokes about.