Other shapes
Other shapes of week
Compressed hours, a nine-day fortnight, staggered cover and annualised time each force a different set of removals. What each one takes out, and where its own lag sits.
The Friday clean-down of the workshopThe removal a compressed week cannot make
week 9 · crept back after 22 weeks
A named person on the phone until sixThe removal staggered cover is designed to avoid
week 7 · crept back after 5 weeks
Visits to the two furthest sitesThe removal a nine-day fortnight makes instead
week 7 · asked back after 12 weeks
Crept back 2Asked back 1
Three removals were written down with the week each of them stopped. Every one of them produced an event inside the 78 weeks watched. Of these, one was asked back and two crept back. Three removals that a different shape of week would have handled differently.
Four shapes of a shorter week
A four-day week is one of several arrangements, and each one forces a different set of removals.
Compressed hours is not a shorter week
Four ten-hour days removes no work at all, which makes it the safest of the arrangements and the one that produces none of the benefits this record is about.
The nine-day fortnight
Half the reduction, half the removals, and one structural advantage over a four-day week: with staggered days off, nothing ever goes uncovered.
Staggered cover, and who pays for it
Every shorter week with fixed obligations ends up with somebody covering them.
Annualised hours, and the deferral problem
An arrangement that moves hours rather than removing them produces no list of removals, and on the evidence of this record that is a disadvantage rather than.
What each shape forces you to remove
The arrangement determines which removals are available, and the three entries on this record that a different shape would have handled differently show how.
Where each shape hides its lag
Every arrangement produces slow consequences. What differs is whether they are attached to anything that can be found afterwards.
Choosing a shape by what you cannot remove
The arrangement that fits is determined by two counts made before any of this starts: what cannot stop, and how many things could.