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TEBI podcast 50: Charlotte Lockhart on a revolution in work-life balance
334 Plays9 months ago
In the 10th of a series of 12 TEBI episodes looking at meaning and money during later careers or second lives, Jonathan Hollow talks to one of the global founders of the 4-day week movement, Charlotte Lockhart.
What if we could continue in our current jobs, and have 50% more free time to pursue our other passions, every single week? That's Charlotte's vision.
She has a fascinating story. She more or less fell into the role of being a global spokesperson and influencer about the idea of a better work-life balance – because she and her partner tried this approach in the business they built and own: and it worked! The global interest was so immense, they felt they had a duty and an opportunity to spread the evidence and the methods they tried across the world. And businesses all over the world are now experimenting with the evidence and methods provided by her organisation, 4-Day Week Global.
Charlotte talks frankly about the generational change that she feels is driving this movement, and what it’s been like to face this moment of opportunity at the same time as as a diagnosis of cancer. Her energy is simply inspirational.
This podcast series has been developed with financial planning firm Mulberry Bow. Based in London, they offer a highly personalised service to around 150 individuals and families. Robin Powell and Jonathan Hollow are very grateful for their enthusiastic support for "Second Lives”.
Transcript: https://www.evidenceinvestor.com/charlotte-lockhart-work-life-balance/ --
Mulberry Bow financial planners: https://mulberrybow.com/ —
4-Day-Week Global: https://www.4dayweek.com/ —
4-Day-Week Global’s evidence base: https://www.4dayweek.com/research --
Jonathan Hollow and Robin Powell's book "How To Fund The Life You Want": http://tinyurl.com/how2fund --
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast Series
00:00:03
Speaker
I'm Jonathan Hollow and welcome back to Second Lives, a series of 12 podcasts for the evidence-based investor looking into how lives can take a new direction. This series has mostly interviewed experts on life changes or people who have made complete changes of their lives. But this episode is a little different.
Interview with Charlotte Lockhart
00:00:24
Speaker
Charlotte Lockhart is one of the world's leading advocates of the four-day week.
00:00:29
Speaker
Her passion is for making a regular working life meaningful by focusing on business goals and productivity to such an extent that wasteful work time drops away. The consequence, she says, is that people can work for four days and connect to their families, communities and passions in the other three while being paid just as much as before.
00:00:54
Speaker
This isn't an abstract theory. It arose from a business experiment she and her partner Andrew performed within their own business, the New Zealand-based Perpetual Guardian. This created enormous benefits for them and worldwide interest. As a result, Charlotte is one of the leaders of a not-for-profit campaign and research group, Four Day Week Global,
00:01:20
Speaker
Dividing her time between New Zealand, the UK and many other countries calling for her expertise, she is living a completely different life to the one she led a decade ago, and she's making the most of every moment. In this interview, you will hear her passion for the evidence behind the four-day-week idea, but also the sparkling big-picture vision that drives Charlotte.
00:01:44
Speaker
of how work connects us to or disconnects us from the things that really matter in our lives.
Sponsorship and Financial Planning
00:01:52
Speaker
But just before we roll this interview with Charlotte, I'd like to say a word about Mulberry Bowe. This podcast is brought to you in collaboration with them. They are a very different chartered financial planning boutique in the city of London, one that offers a highly personalized service to around 150 individuals and families. Robin Powell and I like the fact that the team at Mulberry Bowe do not have sales targets nor their own financial products to sell, as they like to say.
00:02:22
Speaker
they sit on your side of the table. For more information, just Google Mulberry Bow Wealth Planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast. So now to Charlotte Lockhart. Charlotte,
Understanding the Four-Day Week
00:02:37
Speaker
there are a lot of misapprehensions about the four-day week. What's the version of it that you advocate?
00:02:43
Speaker
Yeah, is it interesting? Because a whole pile of people go, oh, no, you're just about giving people time off. But actually, no, we're not. So the whole concept has been described as that if you give people time off, they will be more productive. That's just not true. That's not what's been proven. What we have proven is that if you focus on productivity and be clear with your people as to what is expected and ask them to be able to do their jobs more efficiently and better, then they can have the time off.
00:03:13
Speaker
And they are very engaged with helping you improve your business because you're giving them the one employee benefit that they can spend in the way that best suits them. So what's the relationship between time and pay and hours and compressed hours? How does that all fit in
Principles of the Four-Day Week
00:03:34
Speaker
your vision?
00:03:34
Speaker
So despite the fact that we call ourselves four-day week, we're not really talking about having Fridays off, although that would be nice. But in this international global economy, it's just not realistic. But what we're talking about is how can you have a meaningful reduction in work time. So we talk about our 180-100 principle, which is 100% pay
00:03:57
Speaker
80% time 100% productivity. By using that simple mathematical formula, what you're saying is that if you can give me what you're contracted to do, which is the productivity bit,
00:04:13
Speaker
then I will pay you the same. And if you can do it in less time, let's work together to make it happen in less time. And what our research shows that this is entirely possible. And the great thing about the formula 100 or 8100 is it doesn't matter whether you're working 60 hours, 70 hours, 80 hours, or 30 hours, 20 hours. What we're looking at is how can we help you be more productive so you can reduce work time.
Benefits of a Four-Day Week
00:04:42
Speaker
Interesting. Well, look, we'll go on to talk about why this might be good for individuals, because the perspective of this podcast series is really mostly the individual's perspective. But if there are any kind of hard-nosed business leaders, what's the evidence about the productivity and about the bottom line that you think has come out as most compelling?
00:05:02
Speaker
Yeah, so there are so many little bits in our research that plug into that answer. Mainly, the companies that do the pilot programs and those who continue on find that their productivity continues to improve. Now, their whole culture within their business has changed to be a productivity-focused business because people are focused on being able to have their time at home.
00:05:30
Speaker
in our UK pilot program. I mean, how's this for a number, any business person that's out there? Absenteeism, so this is people ringing in going, oh boss, I can't come in today. Absenteeism went down 65%.
00:05:46
Speaker
Now, only you as the business owner will know the impact of absenteeism on your business. At best, it's inconvenient. At worst, it's costing you agency star. There is a direct impact and then there is impacts on the ability to recruit and retain good star.
00:06:09
Speaker
And you know what, there's a little side effect that here is that sometimes people who are just misaligned in their job, they go work for someone else. And you get the people that actually really want to help you build your business because it's a partnership. It's not a clashing. Your business, if you're the owner or a leader, your business exists because you need it.
00:06:33
Speaker
but it exists because your people follow you in it. And the two of you are in partnership, so they don't have a job without you having the business, and you don't have the business without them doing the job. And the reason why it works commercially is what I call the delicious circle of happiness.
00:06:50
Speaker
you can imagine. Your boss says, let's do this. And you go, okay, I'm going to give this a go. So you're immediately happier at work. You're immediately more engaged with what you're doing at work. And everyone is entitled to a life. As business leaders, we need to remember that we borrow our people from their lives. You go home.
00:07:12
Speaker
your partner says to you, hi honey, how was your day? You go, oh, I've had a really good day. So there you go, being nice to your partner. You might even be nice to the children, right? And then you drive through it. And what our research also shows is that you will sleep better. Fatigue, insomnia, burnout, all of those things that get in the way of us being able to sleep, you sleep better. Our research shows that. And so you wake up in the morning, your partner says to you, how did you sleep, honey?
00:07:39
Speaker
And I've had a great night's sleep. There you are being nice to them again. And you might even be nice to the children. And then you take that person that's had a happier home life back to work and you are happier at work. However, also what tends to happen is that when people that they've got the time
00:07:59
Speaker
how they start to look for other things to do with the time. At first, they turn into Mr. or Mrs. Schindler because they've got a list of things that need to get done. But then after you've fixed all those squeaking hinges or whatever it is that you want to run, you actually start to look to do something meaningful. And so you engage with something outside of work and home. And so when that starts to circle around,
00:08:24
Speaker
then the positive impact in the work environment with people who are motivated, healthy, happier, more engaged, they are just better productive units. It's psychology 101. You don't need to have a PhD in human behaviour to understand that if you can give people a life where they can feel settled and happy,
00:08:48
Speaker
They will be better units in your workplace, especially in the workplace if you've given them true, meaningful, clear direction as to what's expected.
00:08:58
Speaker
Well, let's dwell on that last point for a moment, because you said a very interesting thing a couple of minutes ago, which is people are contracted to be productive, rather than to do a job. But of course, in many organizations, that's just not true. The organizations presumably have to rethink what they're actually telling people to do and how they're telling them to do it.
00:09:20
Speaker
It is not about time. It's about being clear. And so what happens when businesses go through? Each of the staff members looks at how they fit in with their job role and their team and their division. And the managers sort of all kind of looked at it. And it's not overly complicated, but it's just like, am I paying you to keep a chairwalk?
00:09:43
Speaker
No, I'm paying you for a certain amount that comes in. It's not just about you clocking in and clocking out as what you do when you're there. Ultimately, it's a business improvement strategy. But the spin-off is that people just have much better lives. Isn't that the society that we want?
00:10:04
Speaker
It was a 40-hour week. It's been around for a while. It's a much more constructive post-Second World War. And we had a society that was still very engaged in its community. And children were brought up by their parents, not in care. We still engaged with charitable or community things.
00:10:25
Speaker
We cared for our aged parents. We grew our own vegetables. We did so much more of the things that keep us healthy and sane. So there are elements of that. Now, there are elements of that we don't want to go back to. For example, women not getting equal pay.
00:10:47
Speaker
and women not being welcome in the workforce and so there's there are you know there is a whole part of society that has moved forward to a much better place but we've left behind some of the gold.
Negotiating a Four-Day Week Arrangement
00:11:02
Speaker
This is Jonathan Hollow in your listening to Second Lives. I'm interviewing Charlotte Lockhart about the evidence for working four days a week, but still being paid for five. There might be some listeners thinking, this is really attractive. I wonder if I could make this work as an individual negotiated arrangement with my employer.
00:11:24
Speaker
It's much better if everybody's on the gig. But actually, if you can negotiate with your employer, say, right, OK, so what is it that you want from me in a week or a month or a year or whatever, a time frame? What is the output that you're looking for? Let's work out what that is and then leave me to determine the hours that are dedicated to it.
00:11:47
Speaker
And so I think that's a really key element. And so I recommend this to so many, mostly returning mothers, but we're getting more and more fathers taking parental leave too, where they come back to a four-day work being paid 80%.
00:12:04
Speaker
But we all know that they do the full job role, right? And they're clearing emails. So the key thing to say is, if I'm going to be in an 80% role, what am I not doing? So what is the 100% role? What is the 80% role? What is the 20% that's not being done? And then you negotiate that, OK, well, if I can do that 20%,
00:12:27
Speaker
without putting in the hours, will you pay me the money? And it's a boss, and you'll get bosses that will probably say no and then go work for someone else.
00:12:38
Speaker
Honestly, I mean, realistically, that's not. Again, no, I'm only going to pay you 80%, but I expect 100% out of you. That's wrong. It's wrong on so many levels. It's just unbelievable. So just walk away. And in the current employment market, that is your choice, right? So this is one of the interesting things is that post pandemic, we have
00:13:02
Speaker
As people, we really looked at what are our choices for the way we want to work. We've become far more aware of what we want and less driven by it. The classic example of that is in the summer of 2021, Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple, said to his people, hey guys, when we get back to work after summer, we're going to come in three days a week. His people wrote to him and said, no. The reason for that was because he didn't ask them.
00:13:29
Speaker
Having said that, prior to the pandemic, I thought he was a genius. So there is this requirement now for businesses to actually consult you on what it is. But then my premise is, well, you're going to work together for a better. When you do it together to work out what the better option is, better life for you and a better business. When you work together, that's where the gold is.
00:13:59
Speaker
Have you got stories that have come out of the trials that you've observed yourself or heard about, about how it's changed lives for individuals?
00:14:07
Speaker
Yeah, look, I mean, there was one woman in a trial early on who had always wanted a dog. But her work hours meant that she just didn't feel that she could do it. So she got a dog. You know, so she had that. People are taking so that the number one thing that people do is take out new hobbies, seems to be the thing. I had one chap do a four day week because he
00:14:33
Speaker
He was a pianist in his life, but he worked for, I don't know, in IT, I think. And he'd found that he was working so hard and that he just got too engaged. He'd lost the desire to play.
00:14:49
Speaker
So he stopped working so hard so that he could bring back his sense of play. Another business leader said to me that, but she spent most of her day at work with her open desk policy because we don't have doors anymore, but you know where people could always come and talk to it.
00:15:05
Speaker
She spent most of her day managing people and their problems, because let's face it, when someone comes to you it's generally because they've got a problem or they need validation. She found that when she went through them with them and worked out what productivity was and empowered them to do their jobs,
00:15:23
Speaker
She got her job done during the day. She was doing her job previously on the train to and fro from work and at home because the rest of her day was not like, man, I've got this problem. And then once she empowered her people and they got their juju bag, she said, where is everybody? Oh, I'll do my own job then. Do you see a generational divide about the four day week?
00:15:50
Speaker
the millennials and the Gen Z's are our children. And they watched us over value work. Over value work over them, over our health, over our communities, just over everything. And burned out. And they're going, I don't understand why you would do that. I don't want that in life. And they are choosing a different way of engaging with work. They want meaningful work. Our research shows that. We know that. There's heaps of research and thesis.
00:16:17
Speaker
It's meaningful work. They want what they do to measure and they want to get me counted for what they do. And so what we want to be able to do is give our children and by extension, our grandchildren better.
00:16:33
Speaker
And so from the 21st century perspective, what does better look like? And my contention is that better is about having more time, meaningful work, but more time to do all of the things that enable us to be engaged people in our families and our communities, engage with saving the planet, because let's face it, we've done a pretty good job of not doing that so far. And balancing gender.
00:17:04
Speaker
We've done so much to pull women up in the workforce. We're not done enough to help men out. We haven't
Charlotte's Journey and Global Impact
00:17:11
Speaker
normalised that I'm off to look after my child because my child is sick from a man's dispenser. We expect that women will do and women don't necessarily want to do it, we just do it.
00:17:25
Speaker
Now for a word from Mulberry Bowe who have collaborated with us to develop this series. I spoke to Simon Bullock of Mulberry Bowe. Does he find that some of his clients struggle to accept that they already have enough? Yes, we do Jonathan. It's more common than I think I would guess if I didn't do what I do for a living. A lot of clients don't know how much they need and they overshoot.
00:17:51
Speaker
Others have good habits drilled into them growing up around being cautious with money and so on. But those habits can become a harm that I help in encouraging them to hold on to too much for too long. They might underfund causes they're passionate about or forego once in a lifetime experiences because of the cost. Or they might pass less value down to their mature children than maybe make sense because they're doing it too late for it to help much.
00:18:19
Speaker
Often there's a fear of running out of money, even where the cash flow model we've built for them shows that's very unlikely.
00:18:27
Speaker
caused any kind of issue this side of, say, turning 100. Thank you. That was Simon Bullock, the founder of Mulberry Bow. And now back to Charlotte Lockhart and the new work paradigm she wants to see established all over the world, a four day working week. So what's your own story about getting involved in this movement, which clearly fires you up
00:18:52
Speaker
Well, we introduced a four-day week at our company, Perpetual Guardian, back in 2018. Andrew, my partner, read some research that said that people in the UK were productive for less than two and a half hours a day. And he went, fricy. And why is that? Is it because that things are happening in our lives that get in the way?
00:19:14
Speaker
And so he had this thesis that if we gave our people more time, they would actually be more productive at work because they could come forward and then they had time to get all of that other stuff. So he was doing it from a business improvement perspective, from a productivity perspective. All of this wellness happiness stuff, it just came. It was a byproduct of what he was trying to prove.
00:19:44
Speaker
So it is one of those interesting things. So Annette got a lot of media attention. Everybody loved the idea of it. And Andrew was in the New York Times, the second story after the Trump-Putin summit. And so it grew legs. And so through that, we established 4-Day Week Global because we partnered with one of the VPs from Kickstarter to do an awareness
00:20:13
Speaker
campaign just as the pandemic was hitting, but we sort of said to him, well, we need to be, if we do this, we need to be careful what we wish for, because if we create a whole bunch of awareness, then what do we do to help businesses do it? So now, Four Day Week Global runs pilot programs around the world.
00:20:34
Speaker
There is one in pretty much every place that you can think of or you can have access to it digitally and yeah, we're helping to change the world. So you're both involved still in Perpetual Guardian and the four-day week as an organisation?
00:20:51
Speaker
Yes, so we still own Perpetual Guardian. We don't have an awful lot to do with Andrew's on the board. We don't have a lot to do with the day-to-day running of it. And we are both still very much involved with Four Day Week Global, but we are stepping back a little bit.
00:21:09
Speaker
We have worked more than an hour, 40 hours a week for a little while, and so we've got an excellent CEO, Dale, who is doing a stellar job driving the whole conversation and has grown us from being a six-person organization to being 12 people in the last year. And it's the work that he's done. We were named in the Time magazine's top 100 most influential organizations.
00:21:37
Speaker
this year prior to that Andrew and I were in Forbes top 50 most influential people in work and so it's just it's you know all of this sort of thing is great because we're getting recognition but more importantly we are making a difference. How would you describe the state of play of the four-day week movement around the world then?
00:22:00
Speaker
It's really interesting, actually. It's a good question. So as we went into 2023, we were running our programs and they were busy. We released our UK data at the end of January, and it got a lot of international attention.
00:22:20
Speaker
2023 has been the year of governments connecting in with us and actually starting to ask questions. It is the year of governments going, we need to be looking at what this looks like. We're running a pilot program for the Portuguese government. We've got some work that we're doing with the Australians and various other, whether they be local, regional or national, are all asking questions.
00:22:46
Speaker
But if you think about it, what are the macroeconomic benefits of a healthier, happier society? The UK loses 18 million worker days. ONS data says 18 million worker days to workplace stress and mental health issues.
00:23:04
Speaker
43 billion is what that costs, according to Deloitte's. It's massive. It's a huge impact on the economy. What if we could take 10% down or 20% or 50%? What if we could actually be healthier? If we could repair some of that,
00:23:21
Speaker
by having more time to look after ourselves, more time to be healthy and more time to be connected, then we're actually going to have an impact on the NHS. We're actually going to have an impact on business and the economy. And we're going to have an impact on society because there will be, I mean, our divorce rates are reflective of the stress that we put ourselves under.
00:23:46
Speaker
And yet in Britain, the idea of a four-day week has come under political attack. Those who do not favour it are not focusing on the productivity focus you'd need at the beginning.
00:24:01
Speaker
And when you've done that, then you actually are building your economy at the same time. And you know what? It takes work. So the interesting thing is you can have governments that are going macro problem, not sure I'm interested, but as an organization, so 4-day week global, and the 4-day week campaign here in the UK do an amazing job with creating awareness. But we're going to fix it in the micro. We're just going to bring all these businesses along.
00:24:30
Speaker
So as much as it would be nice for government to go, yep, let's back a four-day week, business is doing it anyway. The UK has the most number of businesses doing this than anywhere else in the world. And it's no longer this crazy idea out there that it was back in 2018, you know, where people walked in the room, she's the crazy lady.
00:24:55
Speaker
This is Jonathan Holloway and you're listening to Second Lives. I'm talking to Charlotte Lockhart about how she has become a global voice advocating a four-day week. Do you think it'll be easier to introduce it more widely in the public sector after it's become a more accepted feature of commercial business life?
00:25:17
Speaker
It's really a person. What's quite interesting is people go, oh, I'm just not sure it'll work in the civil service. The civil service is any different from the rest of us, right? Yes, there are certain differences. But on the whole, the workplace, if you're a civil servant, is not terribly different from the workplace if you're a commercial business. It all comes down to be clear while you're there, have meaningful work and then go home.
00:25:44
Speaker
And as I said, I feel that there was this huge opportunity missed by the Civil Service and the unions by not getting on board with this idea. I get the impression that for some people, perhaps a minority, the transition to a four-day week has raised some profound questions about the role work plays in their lives, or maybe what's left of their lives once you take a big chunk of work days out of it.
00:26:14
Speaker
Yeah, well, let's face it. So a lot of us come to work because we're avoiding everything else. And I don't know, that's not a very healthy way to live. And yes, for some people, it's a little bit confrontational. They have to work that out and create a better space for themselves.
00:26:31
Speaker
But if we look at our responsibility to engage with society and contribute not just to work in ourselves but into society, then you've got to look at what does me hiding at work do in terms of impact on society?
00:26:52
Speaker
And some people have needed to also find other meaningful ways of filling the three days. It might be three days off, or it might be that you just work five days and you just home by 3.30 in the afternoon. Not all businesses give their people the choice around how that works. But not all businesses can just close their doors on the Fridays. I'm a big fan of the Wednesday. How is this? If you're a Wednesday's off, you can always say, I had yesterday off, or I've got tomorrow off.
00:27:22
Speaker
It is perfect. And for a lot of people with health issues, working two days at a time and then having a day where they can recoup and rest and having another two days off actually makes them, they're working four days, but they can be far more productive because they can get the rest that they need.
00:27:43
Speaker
You are clearly having what people would call a moment. I can't believe that it all started only five years ago. You've had your validation from Forbes and Time as a global influencer. And I got a King's birthday honour as well. Tell me how you manage the ebb and flow of all this, or maybe just the flow.
00:28:04
Speaker
I'm fortunate that we have a life which enables us to not have to work full time in our businesses to make a crust. And we always felt, Andrew and I always felt that because we had that gift, which we worked very hard for, let's face it, but we were in a position that most of the other advocates in the 4-day workspace are not.
00:28:34
Speaker
They have to earn a living. And so therefore they have to find ways to either engage with it in their voluntary hours or monetize what they're doing. And we were able to create this voice. We were able to put money into it. And that was, you know, we had a responsibility to do that. We could have done nothing.
00:28:54
Speaker
We could have just gone, oh yeah, that was cool, and then just gone off and retired into nothingness. But because we had been given this voice, we felt that it was important to do something with it. And do you feel like this is work?
00:29:13
Speaker
I mean, it's quite interesting. I'm lucky. I spend my life having really interesting conversations with interesting people and being able to sort of feel like, as Andrew often says, you don't get many chances to change the world.
00:29:30
Speaker
And do you have to reign yourself in or say, well, maybe I've done enough of that for now. We do, we do. I mean, we are now only doing the things that matter to us most. But look, we've got a team of 12 people around the world. I've got, no matter what time zone you're in, I can give you someone to talk to who's equally as passionate about it. And they've got energy for
00:29:58
Speaker
for these things. I unfortunately have secondary breast cancer, so I'm really making an effort to not spend too much time being busy. Well, I feel very lucky to be able to speak to you under those circumstances. Thank you, Jill. I appreciate it.
00:30:19
Speaker
I mean, you talk about how interesting it all is. And I suppose when I looked at your role from afar, it looks like you're pushing ahead in kind of three different areas at once. You've got kind of advocacy and persuasion, you've got academia, and then you've got the practical challenges of an organization in demand all over the globe. Has that combination come to you as a surprise or do you think it's a natural fit from what you've done previously in your working career?
00:30:46
Speaker
Oh, look, I think, you know, yeah, I mean, everything in life gives you, you know, sets you up for the next part in your life. And we're fortunate now that while Andrew and I drove all of that in the beginning, we now have Dale and the rest of the team to be able to. So the pilot program
00:31:07
Speaker
The day-to-day running of that is dealt with by Dale. Our academic team deal with the research side of things and we feed the beast as they say. Largely what Andrew and I do now is we just talk about it. We're in the advocacy space and as your listeners have heard of,
00:31:32
Speaker
I'm quite passionate about that step. I've gone from being very, you know, I'm clear about the productivity side of things, but I actually, for me, this is what is the world that we're trying to create? What are we offering our 21st century grandchildren? And, you know, when I was a young mother, I said, oh, being a mother so I can be a grandmother. And now I find myself in a situation that I might not meet my grandchildren.
00:32:01
Speaker
because of this cancer bug thing. And there's a part of me that just sort of looks at it and going, well, I wasted all that time with that attitude. And so it is about making sure that people actually start to, and we know this, right? Every living wellness instructor encourages you to be mindful and live in the moment and enjoy what you've got. But our lives are so varied that we often
00:32:29
Speaker
don't feel like we've got the time to be mindful. We're just rushing from one thing to another and the millennials and the Gen Z's are going, yeah, I haven't had that. What have you learnt about planning and looking forward maybe over the last five years compared to, I don't know, the previous 15 or 20 years before that?
00:32:50
Speaker
I think perhaps one of the things that we didn't do, because we were kind of accidental tourists on this whole journey, we didn't really come at it from a purely business planning strategic perspective. It just grew by osmosis. And I think that actually, and this is one of the great things that Dale is doing, he's putting all of that structure and strategy and planning in place now, so therefore we can derive in
00:33:18
Speaker
and be more impactful in a more targeted way. And I encourage anyone who's listening that is still doubtful, go onto our website, 4dayweek.com. It's number 4dayweek.com. There's all sorts of stuff, including our research
00:33:42
Speaker
which will show you the impact that reducing work time has had both on business and on our people. And actually take a chance to dream. And if you're an A personality who loves going to work, I'm not saying don't work, but I'm saying be careful what you're working on.
00:34:03
Speaker
You know, work on your house, work on your relationships, work on your families, work for a charity. You know, you're all one diagnosis away from being me. I'm only 56, you know, and I'm probably not going to make 66, but we all believe that we will. And so you just, you've got to make sure that you give yourself that time to be the human that you need to be.
00:34:33
Speaker
Look, Shala, I'm in awe of what you've achieved over the last five years, and I'm so grateful for you giving time for this interview. Thank you. And I hope to hear from you for a very long time to come. Absolutely. Pfizer are making great drums, and they continue to do so, so we'll see how we get on.
00:34:55
Speaker
So that was Charlotte Lockhart. She's still doing well and long may her voice influence this debate. And if you've enjoyed this episode, please bookmark this podcast in your app so that you don't miss the next episode of Second Lives. I'll be talking to Helen Arthur, an artist living on the Welsh borders who gave up on her metropolitan lifestyle to develop her own remarkable vision of nature and beauty in art.
00:35:24
Speaker
And I'd like to thank again, Mulberry Bow, the Chartered Financial Planning Boutique in the City of London that has worked with us to develop this series. For more information, just Google Mulberry Bow Wealth Planning or follow the links in the notes for this podcast.