Why work five days if you can work four days? How we are getting four-day work week done? What does it mean to work four days a week at Nozbe? And how we do it? Today, let me explain to you the four-day work week solution at Nozbe, Mighty Fridays, and how we've been working like this since 2016 for the last eight years. And why and how I can't imagine working any different way. All right. So welcome to this new episode of No Office podcast. I'm Michael. I'm your host. And also I'm the founder of Nozbe. And we are about to celebrate 18th birthday of Nozbe. So lots of history lessons today. But the most important thing is today, I want to comprehensively answer your doubts, questions, and the whole history of the four-day work week movement at Nozbe, what triggered it, how we started, what we're doing now, and how it works. And also give you the best tips and tricks. And if you happen to be a business owner, make sure to watch it to the end to really learn about this. And if you're not a business owner, but you work for somebody, send them this podcast episode. So for those who are watching live on YouTube, you will see also a presentation that I did. So exactly a week ago, I was asked and I was to participate at a work show. It was a conference about four-day work week and about the future of work. And here I was the happy Fridays for the work week at Nozbe was one of the main keynotes of this conference, a conference organized by Tina. If you go to work show, the conference is done. But I encourage you to sign up to get all the videos. So not only my presentation, but also other presentations of other speakers. And today what I'm going to do for those who are watching on YouTube, you will see my presentation. And for those who are listening, well, we will not see the presentation. But I think it will be-- I mean, the presentation is just to help me convey the points. So just listen up. All right. So if you can see the slides, perfect and mighty Fridays in Nozbe. For eight years, so since 2016, we've been working only four days a week. And again, I did the presentation for the work show. It was 20 minutes long. Today I'm going to take my sweet time and dive a little bit deeper also in this presentation to explain, to give you more details, more tips and tricks. So hopefully you will-- even if you don't get convinced that this is the way to go, you might be more intrigued. But anyway, we actually believe that this is the way to go. And this is better than working five days a week. Let me explain why and how. All right. So as you know, Nozbe, my company, has been founded in 2007. And we are currently-- we are 14 people strong full-time, but we also have other co-workers or subcontractors that we work together with to give you a mobile application that's been helping thousands upon thousands of smart business owners and their teams get things done. Our productivity app is available on all the platforms. So it's on the web and also for Mac, Windows. You can get the Android app, iPhone, iPad app, and you can get things done from anywhere with anyone. And what stands out for Nozbe compared to other productivity apps or other project management apps is that we are very simple to use, very easy to use, so that your entire team can very quickly jump in and still we have cool and very powerful features behind. So once you get the hang of it, of the structure of projects, tasks, and comments, then later you will see all the other powerful features that we have that will help you get things done. Our goal designing Nozbe is that we don't want people to be intimidated by the app. We want people to quickly be able to get it, to start getting organized. And if they work in a team, to quickly add people to their team and for the team members to be convinced by the interface. That's our goal. And for the record, we use Nozbe to build Nozbe. So we organize all of our projects, the new features, everything. We work with our subcontractors through joint projects in Nozbe. So we use Nozbe all the time to build Nozbe. Thanks to Nozbe, you will also avoid sending emails. You will have emails from the outside world, but within the company, you will be just exchanging comments and tasks. All right. So let's get to the point of today's podcast, today's presentation. Why Mighty Fridays? The origins of our idea, of my idea to work less but better. So let me give you, I mean, let me set a stage. So back in 2016, it was our best year at Nozbe to date. We had lots of customers who were making really good revenue. Everything was working very, very well. It was one of these years where there was so much to do. There was so much to do, but everything was working. It was a great year. Our team was also a bit bigger, things were going on. It was like a whirlwind of things to do. And as you know, Nozbe, founded in 2007, was originally inspired by David Allen's book, Getting Things Done. And one of the concepts of getting things done is the concept of weekly review, so that every week you should have a meeting with yourself to review your past week and review your upcoming week and make sure that you plan what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, how it's going to work out. And this has been very helpful. I've been a weekly review proponent for many years. I've been doing this many years and I really like it. And this is something that I always try to do on a Friday to make sure that I am ready for the weekend and I'm ready for Monday. So when Monday comes, I can work on stuff. So that's great, but at that time, in 2016, we were so busy that we just didn't have time. I didn't have the time to do a proper weekly review. I think it's been like four weeks since I haven't done one. So I was like, oh man, I'm losing my focus. I don't know what I should focus on now. I'm just responding to everything quickly. I need to do a proper weekly review. So what I did was just that. On a Friday, I set out to do a proper weekly review and everybody knows that if you do a weekly review after you haven't done one for a while, it takes you not just one or two hours, it takes more like two or three hours or even four. So anyway, I was doing that. And while I was reviewing all of our projects and tasks, everything that I was setting out to do, I realized, whoa, that there are so many old projects in our Nozbe, so many projects that are just not advancing, that nothing is happening there. There's some feedback, but this feedback hasn't been actioned on. I mean, nothing was happening. I mean, many things were happening, but there were some really stopped projects, abandoned tasks, and they were all there. And I was like, oh, this is not good. I think I am not the only one in this team who's not doing a proper weekly review. So I asked my leadership team on our next meeting, OK, guys, when have you done your past weekly review? And then there was an awkward silence. People were looking at me, looking at each other, and they were like, yeah, so maybe a month ago, maybe two months ago, like they didn't know. So I was like, oh, this can't be. We can't be a shoemaker. We are making a productivity app. We should be showing people how to get things done. One of our values is fairness. It's not fair to our customers and to people who are using our app that we are not a productivity company doing productivity things. So I was like, come on, man, we cannot have our Nozbe with old projects, abandoned tasks, and all that stuff, all that junk. We have to really work as we say we do. But then I realized the problem is that by just telling yourself, I'm going to do better, doesn't make it so. So I decided, let's go ahead and do something else. And I decided to institute on Friday obligatory weekly review. I said, everyone, weekly review. But then as I thought about it, I was like, yeah, this is a good idea. Weekly review on Friday, make it official. Although maybe it already has been official, but people were still catching up on work. So then I was looking at many companies who were working differently at that time. And I realized, huh, there is Google. At that time, they were using this 20% rule for creative creative projects. They are not doing this anymore, by the way, so Google stopped doing that. But there are other companies who promote four day work weeks and other companies are doing something else. But then I thought, let's do an experiment with a four day work week. Because also while investigating the problem of weekly review, I also realized that my team was not developing themselves. They were not learning new things. And again, we are a cutting edge company. We have the iPad app, iPhone app, we have to know all these technologies. We have to be ahead of the curve. And we were not. I mean, we were, but we were slowing down. And we are a small company. We don't have venture capital, infinite money to spend. Our customers are our investors. We spend money from our customers. So I thought, we have to learn, we have to have time to learn. Because again, how do you make time for learning? Because if you tell your people, hey, you have to learn new things, when are they going to do it? If there is so much work, they will do it after hours or on weekends. But then again, they also want to have a life. In my company, we are a young team and many of us have children, especially many of my team, they are younger than me and they have smaller children. So no, on the weekends, they want to hang out with their family. They want to take care of the children. So I realized we needed something, we need the change. And so we need the change to really clean up our projects, our tasks, to make sure that we knew what we wanted to do, to clean up our desks also, for personal development, to get more creativity, to learn new things. So I decided, let's Institute Mighty Friday. So let's make Friday the day, Friday the day when you do a weekly review and then you can do whatever you want. So let me now dive deeper and explain to you exactly how we see that. So the idea is this, from Monday to Thursday, we work on day-to-day tasks. So we work four days per week on day-to-day tasks. And then Friday is different, Friday is special. On Friday, you are supposed, at Nozbe, to do a weekly review. So to do your review and review your calendar, your projects, your tasks, and plan stuff for next week. And then after that, after you've done your weekly review, which takes you, again, two or three hours if you're new to this, one, two hours if you are doing it regularly. After your weekly review, what you are supposed to do is do whatever you want. Maybe you want to explore a project. Maybe you want to catch up, like on this conference that I was just part of, to watch other speakers. Maybe you signed up for a different conference. Or maybe you want to watch a Nozbe tutorial, or a different tutorial of-- I mean, if you're using Photoshop, maybe some Photoshop tutorials, something to learn new things. So again, Friday is for you. Friday is not the day when your boss tells you what to do. Your boss-- I mean, your founder, me, tells you only or asks you only to do your weekly review. After that, you're on your own. You can do or pursue whatever you want. Even if you want to skip work a little bit and start weekend earlier sometimes, no problem. If you maybe want to go on a longer bike ride or run, go for it. Like Friday is for you as this day that you work the way you want to work. And the best part is that on Friday, you can really explore the projects that you really wanted. And they don't have to be related to your work at Nozbe. They can be whatever you want. And I'll give you at the end of this presentation some very cool examples of what people have done on Fridays. So this is how we at Nozbe see four-day work week. You work four days, like full-time, eight hours a day from Monday to Thursday. And on Friday, you do a weekly review. And of course, later, you are focused on your personal development or whatever you want. And the payment-- I mean, the wage doesn't change. Everything is paid the same. So you are being paid full-time. So it's not to save money for our company. It's quite the contrary. You want Friday for you to invest in yourself and to invest in your knowledge, in your skillset, and to be able to just be better. So the idea is that you work very efficiently. Four days a week, you're using Nozbe. So you're very efficient. And then on Friday, you clean up your Nozbe. You make sure that you plan everything. And then you upgrade your skills. So next week, you're a better person, basically. All right. So once we started that, once I announced this plan after many back and forth exchanges with the team, things didn't go so well. Because people felt the duty to work. They felt like, yeah, on Friday, I can catch up with some things. Because I just did a weekly review, and I see that I need to do this, and that, and that. And people were like, no, you did your weekly review, great. Now you know these things are missing. So plan them for Monday, not now, not today. So we really had to have several conversations with our team to get them on the right track, to explain to them that Friday is not for that. Friday is for your personal development. Friday is for you. You decide what you're going to do on Friday. So don't work on day-to-day stuff on Friday, please. But again, just by saying please doesn't make it so. So we tried to kind of change some things in the company. So first of all, we decided that on Thursday we'll be kind of closing the week. So on Thursday afternoon, Kamil, who's responsible for shipping our app, because we shipped Nozbe a new version of Nozbe almost every week. But there are some weeks where we don't have enough features or enough things, or we are halfway done, and then Kamil decides on Thursday, OK, everyone, we are not shipping the app next Monday. So that's it. Or we are shipping. I mean, he decides, and he lets us know. So this announcement by Kamil is kind of a trigger for us that we are finishing the work quick for this week. And then just a side note for everyone who is in software development, do not ship a new version of your app on a Friday. Even if it's done, even if it's ready, even if you really want it, stop, take a breath, ship it on a Monday. I mean, two more days, nothing will happen. It's going to be fine, because we have been burned many times where we shipped something on Friday in a hurry. And then there were some bugs, some problems, some mistakes, and some glitches. And we had to work on weekends to fix them, because Nozbe is an app where people put their projects, tasks, their hopes and dreams, and they want to be able to access it 24/7. They want to be able to just open the app and use the app and check what they have to do. So we cannot afford not to be up, not to be ready, not to be working 100%. That's why we are so cautious that we never ship on a Friday, we always ship a new version of the app. I mean, let's say the only time I remember we did break this rule was when the version that we had had a very serious bug and we needed to fix it now. But these situations almost never happened. I mean, it happened several times in 18 years. So we make sure that this doesn't happen. Because when we ship on a Monday, if there are some problems or glitches, we can fix them on Tuesday, and then everything is going to be fine. And then the second thing, our customer support, I mean, we are famous, we are world famous for our customer support that whenever you ask a question at questions@nozbe.com, a very kind person, Ivona, Ola, Emilia, will reply very quickly to your email and help you out in any way they can. And compare that to other companies that use AI or automated messages. We don't do that. We believe in person to person connection. So our customer support said that, come on, like on Fridays, people are still sending us emails and we have to reply to them. So we really don't have Fridays. Everyone else at the company has them, has the mighty Fridays. We don't because we have to do the review and then we have to answer so many emails. So we started treating Fridays as weekend. So normally at Nozbe, also we have customer support on weekends, so on Saturday and Sunday. But it's like a slower customer support because it's like just once somebody is on call, one person is for each day is on call for the emails and they only reply to the most urgent ones. So the others, they reply as well, but they delegate them for Monday to deal with if possible. So we decided that we're going to treat Friday as the weekend. So we will also have just one person on call for Friday so that everyone else can have their mighty Friday. And then also the idea is that everything that we do, like if we send, if we see a new documentation and new announcement or whatever, we delegate it to Friday so that we can push it to Friday so we can watch it on Friday. Also, as you know, I talk to my customers, I talk to Nozbe customers, I dedicate six hours a week talking to customers. If you want to talk to me and you're a Nozbe customer and you would like to meet me personally, I'll be happy to do that. Just write to questions@nozbe.com and schedule a time at your convenience to talk to me. And because of that, whenever I talk to customers, I also record these conversations. I mean, I ask if I can record them and usually I get this granted. So this way we save it in our internal video pool and then people can watch these videos, they can watch me talk to customers, they can get to know our customers better. Because Nozbe is a popular app all over the world. It's a global app used by thousands upon thousands of small business and smart business owners. So we have customers from all the industries. So I'm always curious about all these industries. I'm curious how people are using Nozbe, which people are using Nozbe. So that's why we also move it to Friday. But we decided to go one extra mile and I'll tell you about it now after a break. And during this break, you will hear from one of our customers that are happy to use Nozbe. Once I started using Nozbe, that's when we started to really think beyond like a freelance mindset to more of a team mindset. And the beauty of it is that we can have a remote team so we can hire people based on their credentials or based on, you know, relationships that we had and people that we knew would be really good and didn't have to hire based on location and somebody that's within, you know, a mile radius, you know, something close to where we were. It also Nozbe is very intuitive and easy for a team to use. So as we add new people, whether it's a contractor or an employee to the team, we can get them set up with Nozbe and within really an hour they can see projects and tasks that are assigned to them and start working. So most of our teams really take it pretty easily. All right. So what we have also done is to make sure that things go to Monday, to Friday, sorry, to Friday. We added in Nozbe in reminders, we added remind on Friday, or if it's Thursday, then remind next Friday. So this way, if we have a task that we want to read longer, we want to enjoy, maybe there is a video there or something to watch, we can just remind on Friday and that's it. We know on Friday Nozbe will tell us, hey, you have all these things that you wanted to watch or read or get to know, enjoy them. And that's, again, our way of not only telling people, hey, do it on Friday, but just making it also a part of our user interface of Nozbe, that something can be easily moved, there can be a reminder set very easily with just one click on a Friday so we don't forget about it. So make sure to check it out. This is how we do it at Nozbe. All right. So now the result after so many years of doing that, well, it's been great. People are really satisfied. They are really less stressed. As I mentioned in the beginning, Friday is kind of a buffer for us. It's like this buffer day. In our current world where everything goes so fast, people are just chasing their tails basically, we're just running all the time. We need a buffer. We need the time to slow down. We need time to just look back at our calendar, plan our week, and then focus on ourselves, on our personal development, on what we want to do or what we are curious about. Here on this slide, I'm explaining that growth, ideas, innovation, curiosity, and organization, everything happened thanks to Mighty Fridays. Growth, because we could all grow personally, ideas. We had lots of cool ideas coming from Fridays to Mondays where people were like, "Hey, I thought about this and I saw that." Then people were exploring new things and learning new things and then their curiosity was satisfied and everything was well organized. Suddenly all these zombie tasks are gone. We have only current projects, only current tasks. People are replying to comments. It's just so much better. So satisfaction, less stress. Tasks are more organized. The whole thing is better organized. People have more agency about things. Now people don't have a problem to tell me, "Michael, this project that you created here, nothing is happening here. Are we supposed to close this project or do you want to continue?" So it gives me motivation to decide also what to do with that. We work more or less partners thanks to that. My team has become really great experts in what they do. Our main designer, for example, he's using the Photoshop Suite for his stuff and then Figma to design many parts of Nozbe. He always waits for Fridays when he gets a new update of his favorite apps and he goes through the release notes to get to know the new features, what's going on so that he might use these features in the future to be a better designer. Again, as I mentioned, curiosity. And I think as a parent of three daughters, I know how curiosity is important to cultivate in the children, but curiosity is also important for us adults. And I think thanks to Fridays, we got that covered. So let me give you some examples because they're really good. So one of our support members, Dominika, she learned programming. She learned very basic programming, but enough, for example, for her to start improving our internal support system. We have a support, customer support panel. And she was, it was always like kind of, I mean, our programmers were always busy with other things. So what she decided to do is she decided to just take matters in her own hands and start improving it on her own. And then the programmers were just supervising her work. Amazing. And then Vadek, he chose the new technology for Nozbe. He was exploring React Native in his free time on a Friday, I mean, his free time and his mighty Friday time on a Friday. And he, I remember he designed the whole like, he planned it out for months to come to do the whole course on this, to really dive deep into Fridays, I mean, into this new technology on Fridays. And thanks to that, he later created a proof of concept of how Nozbe could work in this new technology. And he convinced us that this should be our new technology for Nozbe. And the new Nozbe is built on that, thanks to his curiosity, thanks to Mighty Fridays. Jarek, our backend design developer, he always wanted to use Nozbe with Gmail. And we always wanted this, too, but there were always other priorities, other features that were more pressing. But on a Friday, he just wanted to see how it is to create a plugin for Gmail, how to create an add-on, and he just did it. He just, again, he explored, he let his curiosity get better of him, and then he just learned how to do it, and he created something, a feature that we always wanted to do, but never had the time. Also, as I mentioned, my team members very often are watching the videos that we record, that I record when I talk to the customers, when Magda talks to our demo meetings. We watch these videos on Fridays as kind of a video podcast or video series. And myself, I learned to do short videos. I have this new YouTube channel, the Team Productivity channel, and I learned to use CapCut to use the short video content, how to create quick, gripping videos for myself and to talk about productivity. So this is really what happened on a Friday, and this is amazing. I mean, I'm so happy that we got to reinvent how we work and to work differently, and that we were not afraid to try to work differently. So again, when I talk to people and people talk to me about working four days a week, I think that if we would just cut down our work week to just four days, and then after that we had a three-day weekend, it would be very nice, it would have a very nice weekend. But I think we would be much more stressed during these four days, because all of our work would be cramped into these four days, we would really not have the time to plan ahead, to make a proper weekly review, to be better, to get better. And I think what we have discovered at Nozbe, the four days of day-to-day work, four days of current work from Monday to Thursday, and then Fridays, still a workday, but completely different with weekly review and time for you as the team member, however you want to use it. I think it's much better. I see how people appreciate it. I see how people use it and how I use it, how I love doing my Fridays when I can do different things, I can explore different things. I don't have to be the CEO of Nozbe. I can be just like a tech geek who's doing something, who's learning something. I can work, as everybody knows, listening to this, I work on my iPad a lot, #ipadonly, so I create all my shortcuts in the meantime on Fridays. Very often I dedicate hours to these shortcuts just so that later, next week, I have a shortcut that already helps me be more effective, helps me get things done. So I believe this kind of structure of four days of work week and then a Friday for the team member, for the employee to use however they want, provided they do a weekly review, I think is the best solution. And we've been doing this for the last eight years and I cannot think of getting back to the usual way of doing business, not in my company. So that's that. Thank you so much for listening. Here Robert, who's listening, he wrote that, "Good day, Michael. I am using Nozbe for managing incoming quote requests, triage loads to be booked and checklists as required. Go up tasks if any issues. Nothing gets missed because of Nozbe." Thanks Robert. Thanks for sharing. Exactly. So we also love Nozbe. We use Nozbe to build Nozbe and internally, we don't send any emails at all. We never send emails to each other. We just create a task for somebody. We mention them. We delegate tasks to them. We write something in the comment. This is how we work. This is how we roll. If you're curious about this, make sure to book a demo with Magda at Nozbe.com/demo. It's a free 30-minute demo and on this demo, it's not just like you're going to watch a tutorial. Magda will actually listen to you, to your industry, to how you get things done and will help you, will show you how you can do that in Nozbe, how this can be accomplished in Nozbe. So she will give you a shortcut to get up running very quickly. So make sure to book a demo with Magda. So anyway, if you are considering Mighty Fridays, if you're considering or Happy Fridays, if you're considering changing the way you work, I really encourage you to try. We have a whole website, Nozbe.com/Friday, where you can learn more about this, about this concept. Make sure to send this podcast episode to your boss or if you're a boss, listen closely or if you have any questions and would like to talk to me personally about this, make sure to write to our customer support and schedule a time to talk to me. And this way, I think we can work better. And I think, again, next month in February, we will be celebrating 18 years of Nozbe and 18 years of running my business. As you can see, this is not a sprint, it's a marathon. It takes lots of time to run a business. And I still feel like we're getting started. I can't imagine working on anything else. I have great team, I have great four-day work week with my Mighty Fridays, and I have great customers that I'm serving. So just like Robert said, serving Robert and everyone else is a privilege. And I love it. And as you can see, it's a long time, 18 years, and I'm still young and I'm hoping to be running this for many, many years to come. So to do that, we have to pace ourselves. We cannot just be doing 12-hour work weeks. We cannot be working 120 hours a week. We have to get better at being more efficient, more productive. So that you have Nozbe, and then you can have Mighty Fridays as your buffer to also upgrade your skill set, learn something new, follow up on the conferences that you're attending. Do that on Fridays. So that next week, not only on a Monday, not only you will come with a plan, you will also be a better person, a more skilled person because of these Fridays. So that was that for today's episode. Magda is on holidays. That's why it's a solo episode this time. I'm hoping she will rest and have a great time. And meanwhile, if you haven't tried Nozbe, make sure to book a demo with Magda. When she comes back, she will be happy to show Nozbe to you. And if you haven't signed up at all, I encourage you to use our special code to get additional bonus. Thank you for being an amazing listener of the No Office Podcast. Every other Wednesday we meet to talk about productivity and hybrid lifestyle, because we believe that work is not a place to go. It's a thing to do. It's a special gift only to No Office Podcast listeners. When you sign up for Nozbe using this link, Nozbe.com/podcast, you'll get 30 bucks of credits which you can use to upgrade to Nozbe Premium. Nozbe helps thousands of smart business owners and their teams get their professional and private life organized in a single app, in a simple way. And Nozbe is free for up to three active projects and three people on your team. So start today and claim your free bonus credits, which you will later need to upgrade to unlimited projects. Once again, thank you for being an amazing listener. Thanks for your support and for spreading the word about our No Office Podcast and Nozbe. See you and hear you in the next episode and in the meantime, claim your bonus credits here.