Why we are a 4-day week employer

I’ve been staring at this blank document for the better part of an hour trying to explain the decision to become a 4-day week employer. Every time I start writing something about how the creative industries are full of precarious labour and terrible life-work balance, I feel my internal critics roll their eyes.

Speaking of critics, when I’ve told some folks that I was thinking of making Cooked Illustrations, a small startup company of two employees, into a 4-day a week employer, I was told “well, aren’t you being lazy”? As if I hadn’t considered that! Isn’t cutting off a whole day of labour essentially cutting me off that magic extra bit of productivity that would bring in future clients? Well, we all know that answer is fraught with distracting questions of specificity: are we managing our time properly, is our sales funnel optimes, “aRe yOu uSinG ai Yet?”, etc etc etc and, man, is that conversation draining. It stinks of hustle. And hustle is not healthy.

There’s the crux of the matter!

Took me a while to get those words out. But I ramble, both with feet and mouth.

It isn’t healthy to work like I used to. Me, personally. To my employees and associates and collaborators, I make a point keeping strong boundaries: never message outside of work hours; work emails are fairy tales after five-in-the-afternoon; you are NOT sniffling in my studio, take a day off. But what did I use to tell myself? Oh, yeah, do a 12-hour day and then find yourself unable to sleep because your brain is in full-on anxiety mode and then the next day you feel like absolute dirt. Perfect choice there, creative director, founder of a company person. Very responsible. Reminds me of a phrase coined by games journalist James Stephanie Stirling: “Crunch time is a failure of management, not a triumph of the workforce.” Any time the production artist part of me has to work long, hard hours is because the creative director part of me royally put their foot in a hole full of fireants.

My best work, and indeed the best work we as a company have created, can only happen when we have clarity of mission, clarity of purpose, and clarity of tasks. And, really, why are we doing all of this working-in-the-industry-we-love-thing, I say, gesturing broadly at the world around us, if not because we want to make the world a better place.

One of Cooked Illustrations’ foundational guiding vision is to improve learning outcomes and help people understand the world in a fun and engaging way. To make the world a kinder, better place. You cannot value what you do not know.

Last thing we want is to bring in that hustle culture toxicity that makes so many creative workers feel like they are being chased by a slasher monster in the woods every time they sit down for five minutes to stare at the wall like a goat that has seen its future as a Peruvian stew. Or like that picture of the busker playing twenty instruments, each instrument labelled with one of the hundred different tasks and jobs freelancers have to engage with just to get by.

Cooked Illustrations has a clarity of mission: to create a space where all workers feel respected, taken care of, able to relax and recharge, and where their time is absolutely respected. This, of course, is an ongoing conversation. I continue to learn, both as a person and a manager and a director. But we believe – and the evidence supports this – that becoming a 4-day week employer is not even a “people before profits” conversation. It is not just a “happier employees make for more productive companies”. We know that there is no such dichotomy.

So, yeah.

We are now a certified 4-day week employer.

Written 2022 (updated March 2025)

by Ian Cooke-Tapia

Founder and Creative Director