A Kickstarter employee chronicles her four-day workweek

Finding work-life balance in the face of burnout, mounting work responsibilities and economic stress is no small task. To help their employees out, some companies are making a drastic change to the workplace calendar — and telling their employees to simply work less. 

Global fundraising resource Kickstarter is among 200 companies in the U.S., Canada, Australia and New Zealand that have joined 4 Day Week Global, a nonprofit dedicated to helping companies reduce their workweeks down to 32 hours. Kickstarter launched its four-day workweek pilot in April of 2022, and nine months later, it has decided to permanently embrace the abbreviated schedule.

Yes, this means that Kickstarter’s employees now enjoy a three-day weekend every weekend — but their entire structure of working has transformed as well, explains Terry VanDuyn, director of product management at Kickstarter. 

Read more:Kickstarter is officially on a 4-day workweek after a successful pilot

“I’m working fewer hours than I was before,” she says. “But the intensity of the days that I work has increased. Still, having Fridays completely off has been a great trade-off for that.”

As director of product management, VanDuyn’s position hinders on her ability to meet and collaborate with several other teams remotely, whether it’s engineering, design or product. A reduced workweek meant squeezing necessary meetings and check-ins into four days, while still carving out time to independently work on feedback and strategize how to test new features her teams develop for Kickstarter’s platform. 

“I am responsible for the outcomes, from setting the strategy on how to get there to measuring our success,” says VanDuyn, “My days look very different, and I appreciate that about my job.”

To gain a better understanding of a reduced workweek in practice, VanDuyn shared a week in her life with EBN, chronicling what time management and work-life balance look like when Thursday becomes the new Friday. 

Starting off with a bang
For VanDuyn, Monday and Tuesday are her busiest days. While VanDuyn typically starts her morning at 9:30 and ends at six, she finds that the beginning of the week is the best time for her to work a little further into the evening. 

Read more: The case for the four-day workweek

“I would prefer to work into the evenings than push that work to Friday,” she says. “Even if no one is preventing us from working on Fridays.”

Notably, employees are discouraged from scheduling meetings on Fridays, since it’s officially a part of the weekend. And while VanDuyn could technically use Friday to catch up on independent work when needed, she has restructured her week around that Friday off — even if that means working a few hours longer than she normally would at the start of her week. 

Meetings galore
VanDuyn’s weeks are a mix of recurring meetings and spontaneous check-ins, totaling up to 30 meetings a week. Beyond connecting with her own product management team every Monday, VanDuyn also makes time to meet with teams outside of tech and design, such as the brand marketing team, the customer success team and the legal team. 

“Even with the four-day workweek, my work is still fairly similar,” she says. “Ideally, my days are split between a couple of hours of focus time, so I can do work that requires working alone and a set of meetings.”

Read more:4-day workweeks may not be as flexible as companies think they are

Given that VanDuyn, who’s based on the East Coast, works three hours ahead of many of her West-Coast colleagues, she can easily find structured time that is for her alone. However, she tries to remain flexible to ensure that colleagues can reach her. To that point, VanDuyn doesn’t set a lunchtime for herself, since 12:00 to 3:00 p.m. tends to be primetime for meetings. 

“I usually grab food at some point, but I don’t set that on my calendar,” says VanDuyn. “Certainly there are people who prefer to have a set break for lunch, but I don’t.”

The new Friday
On Thursdays, VanDuyn prepares herself for the next week, finishing as much as she can and writing a to-do list for the following week. Since Thursdays generally have few meetings, she also gets more alone time to focus on tasks. VanDuyn notes that her Thursdays feel lighter than her Fridays did before the four-day pilot. 

“I don’t smash all my work into Thursdays like I previously did with Fridays,” says VanDuyn. “I reallocate my workload throughout the week so my Thursdays don’t feel particularly different.”

Taking advantage of the weekend
With her workweek already over, VanDuyn does her best not to take Friday for granted. 

“I try not to treat Friday like another day on the weekend,” she says. “Here’s an extra day a lot of people don’t have, so how can I do things I want or need to do?”

Read more:3 critical steps to implementing a 4-day workweek

For Van Duyn, this may mean running errands at spots that are typically busier on weekends or closed in the evenings, like the grocery store and post office. It may mean practicing her Spanish lessons, spending time with her family or traveling for a few days. Crucially, the three-weekend recently allowed her to complete physical therapy and eliminate the chronic discomfort she was feeling in her body. As for Saturdays, VanDuyn takes the chance to relax without feeling rushed to complete a barrage of errands and chores before the weekend is up.

“I feel like I can spend Sunday preparing for the week without feeling like I’m losing my entire weekend,” she says. “I get more sleep, and I come back to work a bit more rested.”

VanDuyn underlines the four-day workweek as a wellness benefit and business strategy rolled into one. A reduced workweek not only motivates leaders to eliminate non-essential tasks and meetings but boosts employee morale. In fact, Andrew Barnes, the founder of Four Day Week Global, saw a 20% increase in employee productivity and a 45% increase in work-life balance at his own company, Perpetual Guardian, when it switched to a 32-hour workweek. 

VanDuyn can personally vouch for that trend. 

“The impetus for having Friday off keeps me more focused,” she says. “Knowing that I can get it done by Thursday is a helpful motivator for sure.