From The Globe & Mail:

The Nova Scotia government is looking at switching to a four-day work week in a bid to conserve energy.

Energy Minister Richard Hurlburt said Thursday the idea came up during a brainstorming session at Conserve Nova Scotia, a government agency that encourages people to use energy more efficiently.

Of all the reasons to consider a four day work week, I think energy savings is probably the weakest — especially in a more rural province like Nova Scotia, where people will likely spend their extra day off driving around.

But I do think the four-day work week is a great idea for a lot of industries. Working four 10-hour days as opposed to five eight-hour days means more ‘core time’ and less time winding up and winding down. Plus, three days gives people the chance to actually get away on the weekend and come back feeling refreshed.

I know it’s something 37signals has done to great success. I’d be interested to hear about other examples.

I’m just coming off a mini-vacation (more posts later this week, I promise) but I thought this was interesting. From the Something Awful forums, it’s a thread about how to avoid “getting in trouble” for reading web forums at work.

At my old job, I had my own office and there was zero IT oversight. My new job has me in a cubicle–at least my screen isn’t facing outwards, but I still have little warning when someone will walk up to me (but at least I’m fast with Alt-Tab). I made friends with the IT guys, who basically said, “Don’t give us a reason to check your browser activity, and we won’t do it. We have better things to do.” So for the time being, looks like things are safe.

There’s also discussion in the thread about writing a browser plug-in that will insert random “business-looking” graphs and buzzwords into internet pages to make everything look work-related.

I still struggle to understand why this seemingly never-ending game of cat-and-mouse is worth it.

My post last week on using Facebook at work generated quite a stir when it was made top story at Brazen Careerist. Apparently it’s a touchy subject. Who knew?

Great post from Ryan Healy over at Employee Evolution:

When you were an entry level worker, maybe you wouldn’t have dreamed of calling your girlfriend to say hello right after lunch or dialing up your mechanic to schedule a time to drop your car off for service. But work and life are no longer two distinct entities and this goes for both the office and at home.

Related: Older Generation needs to let go of rigid definitions of ‘work’