Microsoft's 2023 data reveals that the average employee spends 57 percent of their time on communication activities, such as responding to emails, instant messages, and switching between meetings, and only dedicates 43 percent to creative or analytical focused work. In other words, more than half of the workday evaporates. This means the employee goes to work five days a week but practically invests only two days and a few hours of that in actual valuable work, while the rest dissolves between an urgent message and a meeting leading to no decision.

Imagine waking up on Thursday morning with a clear mind, knowing that this day marks the start of an extended weekend, without fear of salary deduction or task backlog.

It seems like a dreamy vision in our Arab world, where productivity is often measured by the hours one spends behind a desk. However, Iceland's experiment with a shorter workweek posed the question from a completely different angle, proving that reducing working hours to 36 hours per week without cutting pay maintained the same productivity level, while even boosting productivity in some sectors.

Melting hours

Microsoft's 2023 data reveals that the average employee spends 57 percent of their time on communication activities, such as responding to emails, instant messages, and switching between meetings, and only dedicates 43 percent to creative or analytical focused work. In other words, more than half of the workday evaporates. This means the employee goes to work five days a week but practically invests only two days and a few hours of that in actual valuable work, while the rest dissolves between an urgent message and a meeting leading to no decision.

McKinsey estimates that email alone consumes about 28 percent of the workweek, roughly 11 hours per week spent reading, writing, and sorting.

The question is: how do we reclaim this time without losing work quality? And can the modern employee, especially the Arab one burdened with a traditional work culture that glorifies long presence, redesign their week using technology's power and reclaim an entire day?

You work long hours and accomplish little

First and foremost, we must face the reality experienced by most Arab professionals, which lies not in weak skills, but in what specialists call the 'digital swamp'—the multitude of electronic platforms and being present on all of them simultaneously, stealing the employee's time, energy, and effort.

Think about your typical day; you'll find yourself in a whirlwind of nearly endless tasks, each one sinking you further instead of giving you a sense of achievement or easing your burdens. You arrive at the office and open your computer to find dozens of unread messages on email and messaging apps, so you start replying one after another. Suddenly, a notification interrupts you about an immediate meeting to discuss a topic that could have been summarized in a brief message. You leave the meeting exhausted after a full hour, and when you try to return to your main task, you search for your focus but cannot find it—it has evaporated as if it never existed.

The issue does not stop at the workplace but extends home. In the evening, as you are about to shut down your computer, you receive an urgent message on WhatsApp, forcing you to open the device again at home, concluding a workday that stretched 12 intermittent hours in which you barely accomplished what could be done in four focused hours.

Technology may be the ideal key to escaping this predicament (AFP)

This chaos of multiple applications and scattered information across sites and platforms, coupled with the culture of immediate response ingrained in Arab work environments, creates hidden working hours and leads to burnout and loss of passion.

Technology itself, though part of the problem, if used wisely, may be the key to escaping this predicament.

Delegating to artificial intelligence

Many still view AI tools as another technical addition that burdens the workday rather than lightening it. However, the fundamental difference between this technological wave and its predecessors is that it does not merely organize information but produces ready-to-use content, such as a draft email, meeting summary, data analysis, or even a full presentation, based on a simple request in natural human language.

In tasks where a specific pattern repeats weekly, such as updating data or sending a periodic report, app integration tools can automatically execute this sequence once the initial data is entered, without manual intervention in each step. Here, they do not just transfer data from one place to another; they understand the context and compose the content themselves, such as writing an analytical summary of the report rather than just transferring its numbers.

Tools can be used to draft formal emails and reports based on brief points written by the employee. Instead of spending half an hour drafting a sensitive client message, the first draft is written in seconds, and the employee's role is limited to proofreading and customization.

Regarding meetings, voice transcription and automatic summarization tools can be used, which handle documenting the meeting on behalf of the employee by recording the discussion, extracting decisions and tasks assigned to each person, and producing an organized minutes immediately after the meeting ends. This eliminates any need for manual note-taking while speaking and allows full focus on the discussion itself rather than dividing attention between listening and writing.

In the same context, other tools can condense a lengthy report or study that needs to be understood before an important meeting into key points within minutes, while retaining the document's overall context. This provides a quick alternative for prioritizing and determining which reports deserve full reading and which suffice with a five-point summary.

Restructuring the week

In reality, saving a few hours per day using AI does not mean that an entire day can be removed from the week immediately. The actual transition to a four-day workweek requires a well-studied restructuring, not just emptying the schedule.

The most globally adopted model, known as the '100-80-100' formula, is based on a clear principle: the employee receives full pay for working only 80 percent of their usual hours, equivalent to 32 hours per week instead of 40, provided they maintain full productivity at 100 percent.

The essential difference between this model and the compressed model, which distributes the same 40 hours over four longer days, is that the former actually reduces the volume of work, not just redistributes it.

Read more

Why have Americans become the biggest losers from the expansion of artificial intelligence?

Meta steps back and halts an AI image generation tool

Aid organizations bet on artificial intelligence to develop their field operations