My big realization over the years working from home (both pre and post pandemic), with teams in differen time zones and with different types of workdays is that there just isn't a single best answer. Things change person to person as well as over time.

But yeah, working fewer hours a week honestly didn't impact productivity much at all, and moving the hours from a single chunk to mostly working at the right times for each type of task made things more sustainable. You can't always be flexible about this on every position, but when you can I genuinely think it can get you to where you want to go faster and more reliably to be loose and align with specific needs.

When covid hit they cut my hours to 32 a week. They wouldn't let us do a four day work week which was kind of lame, but instead we got four 7-hour days then a 4-hour half-day on Friday. It doesn't sound like a lot but even an extra hour in the evenings and an early start to the weekend turned out to be really refreshing. When things went back to normal, I asked if I could keep that schedule even with the 20% pay cut, but they said no.

Unfortunately, it seems that there simply aren't a lot of white collar type office jobs where you can work for less than the standard 40 hours a week while keeping the same hourly rate and similar benefits.