I&#x27;d love to work 4 days. I currently work 5 and work in an industry (finance) where 4 earns you more than enough.<p>When I work 4 days with wednesday off, I don&#x27;t even feel like I work... it&#x27;s just a nice part of my life. On monday I think &#x27;man it&#x27;s been days since I did anything productive, I&#x27;m ready to get busy&#x27;. The next day I&#x27;m still in that flow, and the day after I&#x27;ve already got a day off. The same for thursday-friday, and then I&#x27;ve got two days off again.<p>When I work 5 days, on monday I feel glad to get busy again but I&#x27;m also dreading the fact that my immediate future is 5 days of work. By thursday I&#x27;m feeling like I could be productive working fewer hours, and on friday I&#x27;m really glad it&#x27;s over. Further, my weekends and evenings are mostly busy with unwinding from work and preparing for the next working day. Whereas when I work 4 days, my free time is actually time for fun things.<p>I&#x27;m not a big spender, still on a 2010 iPhone 4 for example to give you a sense of where my priorities are at :p My money is slowly piling up.<p>So I could do without the money of the 5th day... but here&#x27;s my issue... While my employer would probably allow 4 days work (which is not standard in and of itself, particularly not in certain industries), I KNOW that I&#x27;d be bottom rank when it comes to promotions. There&#x27;s absolutely no way in hell I&#x27;d ever get a managing position working 4 days, at this company. And in a company of 5k, only the assisting&#x2F;supporting roles have people working part-time. Supervisors or team leaders etc, all work full-time (or more).<p>I could stay in my current role forever, but it&#x27;d stop being interesting and intellectually challenging fairly soon, and I may develop some bitterness when I get to my 30s or 40s and start getting managed by people younger than me, just because they have a different vision on work-life balance.<p>So I&#x27;m pretty much stuck working 5 days, without being 20% more productive, earning money I don&#x27;t need, because it&#x27;s made abundantly clear that if you ask to work part-time, you can&#x27;t ever work in a function of influence or leadership, at this company. And at most company&#x27;s it&#x27;s a similar story.<p>And I sort of get it... in a world of 5-days a week business and lots of people working 5 days, you wan&#x27;t the manager to be present and available. Whereas assisting&#x2F;supporting roles can be done by multiple people working part-time. It feels the only thing is left is either to be an entrepreneur or do something special (e.g. lots of jobs as &#x27;special project officer&#x27; that&#x27;s not tied to a m-f 9 to 5), but there&#x27;s no standard path for regular salarymen to work part-time and still have a solid career in line with their productivity &amp; competencies.<p>May I ask where you work?