Reduce days at work? Best way to structure it?

[ThePartyArtist]

I'm considering going down to 4 days a week at work instead of 5, for the following reasons. I'm just looking for advice about a) whether to do it and b) the best way to structure it.

These are my reasons :

• I am currently recovering from a virus and have been off work sick for 8 weeks so far. It's given me a wake up call about my health and how it's been affected by basically having no down time. I'll be doing a phased return at work so the idea of reducing days is not to allow recovery from illness, but more to protect myself against health problems caused by over exertion.

• Currently I have pretty much zero 'me time'. Because of DH's work pattern, I do solo childcare every other weekend. Evenings are extremely hectic - either I do all the childcare and DH is home when I'm going to bed; or he's home in time to do bath & bedtime and we're both squeezing in other chores / life admin / things that need discussion before we go to bed exhausted. This adds up to very little quality time together or for ourselves. Only chance for 'me time' eats into our extremely limited 'together time' so it's a dilemma which to choose.

• We could afford for me to reduce my hours. It would reduce what we can save for our son or pensions.

My concerns are:

• I may be expected to squeeze 5 days' work into 4. However I'm reasonably confident in my manager that this could be guarded against.

• Not sure of best way to structure it. Do I take a day off when my DH and DS are off, to increase family time? Or do I take a day when they're in work / nursery so I can spend the day doing stuff for me (eg. Yoga) and jobs that need doing (housework / life admin / batch cooking etc). Or a mix of the 2?

• Will it be to the detriment of my career? Hard to answer, I know!

I've always been very principled about working full time. However beginning to think it's not good for my health and wellbeing which in turn has a huge effect on the family.

I may be expected to squeeze 5 days' work into 4. However I'm reasonably confident in my manager that this could be guarded against.

I'd be concerned about this too. I went down to 3 days (pre-kids when I was doing IVF) as it gave me the clear ability to say 'No'. In my role, had I just gone to 4 I think people's expectations wouldn't change.

How much would you really lose by going to 4 or even 3 days? because of personal tax allowances you effectively earn more for your first couple of days than you do for the last 1.

Would it need to be the same day every week, or would you have flexibility dependent on work and your own wishes? A mix of family and 'you' time sounds good to me.

I do a FT job in 4 days - not sure what your line of work is, but generally I can and do manage to make the 4 days work.

I take a day off in the week (often a Wednesday beacuse it breaks up the week) and find that I can get a lot of life admin/ housework/chores done and still have time for myself. once a month or so I have a proper day off, go into London (live relatively close), meet friends, visit a gallery.

It has helped my mental and physical health enormously and I am more prodictive on my 4 days in becuase I have some time off. Financially there was relatively little difference because of the drop in tax.