The Naive Optimist, We work a 4-day week and just raised $4.75m: “We believe that smart folks can get five days of work done in four days. Simple as that.”

(Via. The Naive Optimist)

I applaud this mentality. We have such a skewed view of how to achieve success these days, especially in the U.S. I often think how disappointed our grandparents would be if they knew we traded the 40-hour work week they had to fight so hard to achieve for a couple of extra thousand dollars a year to spend on slightly bigger houses and cars.

More companies should really consider implementing the 4-day work week. I worked at a place that had this schedule once, and it was the biggest thing I missed when I left. And I talked recently with folks who are still there, and they won’t leave because they won’t give up their “day off” every week. Absolutely the best retention strategy ever invented. And productivity has been proven to go up, not down, in places where this has been instituted.

It’s easy to implement, too. Just stagger the days off. Have a lottery, or base it on seniority. Some people get Mondays, some Fridays, some Wednesdays. Some Thursdays. Save one day a week, such as Tuesday, as a day where everyone has to be in the office, so that you can always schedule all-hands meetings if necessary.

Believe me, even the people who get “stuck” with Thursday off will be grateful.

Teams will have no trouble finding time to meet when they have to. They will go to great lengths to make sure the work keeps getting done, because they won’t want to lose this awesome new thing you handed them.

Of course, before we can get people on the 4-day week, I guess we’d have to get most of them to stop working weekends, first. So sad.

If you don’t own a direct major stake in the company, if you’re not at least a part owner, you’re screwing yourself by working more than 40 hours a week anywhere, no matter how many promotions you get. Senior VPs might look like they have it made, but even the ones making several hundred thousand a year and up are still getting the shaft, because they have no real stake in the company’s future. Whatever they make is crap compared to what they should be making. There’s always a handful of people at the top taking the lion’s share of everything. And you can’t work your way into that group. You have to start your own thing to get that.

So why are you letting someone else take most of the value you generate? Save that for your personal passions, your family, your creativity, whatever you want. That’s yours, not theirs.

The Unofficial 5by5 Soundboard:

Fun.

[ ★ ](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2012/04/23/soundboard "Permanent")

(Via Daring Fireball)

If youre a fan of Dan Benjamin's 5by5 Network of podcasts, this is pretty funny.

Apple stock closes down 4.15% in largest point drop plunge:

Some reports attributed the drop to rumorsinitiatedby BITG Research analyst Walter Piecyk, who went against the grain last week in issuing a downgrade on the company based on fears that mobile carriers would begin refusing to pay top subsidies to carry the iPhone.

(Via www.appleinsider.com)

Sounds like another in a long series of Wall Street guys purposely making up nonsense to make a quick buck on Apple stock. Happens a few times a year. Make up anything that sounds vaguely possible and negative to people who aren’t paying attention, cause a panic, everyone sells, price goes down. Wall street guys buy like maniacs. A week later, Apple announces record sales again, and the price goes back up. Wall Street guys make millions.

And no one goes to jail.

Amazon Low Prices Disguise a High Cost – NYTimes.com:

““It is breathtaking to stand back and look at this and believe that this is in the public interest,” he said. “The only rationale is e-book prices will go down, for how long? What happens when there is no one left to compete with them?””

(Via The New York Times.)

This article sums up my feelings about this weird eBook DOJ case. Sure, in the short term prices may go down, but once Amazon has 100% of the market, where will the prices go? The short-sightedness of this whole thing is jaw-dropping.

This case has nothing to do with preserving competition. The government is guaranteeing the opposite by giving the already de facto monopolist Amazon an even bigger upper hand. When I read the official complaint, my first gut reaction was that someone at Amazon had actually written it and handed it over to the DOJ to copy verbatim. I guess Amazon has stronger lobbyists than Apple and the book publishers do.

BBC News – Women first rule ‘ignored in ship disasters’ – study:

The authors of the report, economists Mikael Elinder and Oscar Erixson, say the captain has the power to enforce the rule.

But they say their findings show that behaviour in real life-or-death situations is best captured by the expression “every man for himself”.

(Via www.bbc.co.uk)

I’m sure this will come as a shock to women everywhere. When push comes to shove, men save their own butts rather than following the codes of chivalry. In other news, water has been proven to be wet.