Thank you for clarification, the idea seems really good.
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So no specific day off, we can wish 
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I find for my technical work having break days itâs important, particularly if Iâve been thinking deeply which I need to do during complex design. Less so when coding, unless that to is particular âdeep thoughtâ. Debugging a tricky problem also benefits from breaks.
I often come up with ideas during those breaks, and the moreso the less of that time I spend thinking - best just to dip into thought and see what âbitesâ, and if it doesnât, no worries enjoy the space.
Is an odd game. Sometimes I need days of intense thought, then step away from the thinking and wait a bit.
I think it is hard to measure the benefits of this, but I know it works because I get better quality output, which will be easier to understand, debug, and probably less buggy.
I donât always have to stop thinking, it can also work just to move to a different low effort problem for a while. But I think a complete break may be best in the long run.
It used to bother me that I wasnât working when I took these breaks, like I was bunking off even though intuitively it felt the right thing. Now if I lay back on the sofa I take pleasure in knowing that Iâm still working, working even more effectively 
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I tend to agree, currently I am doing a lot of cashflow etc. work and business stuff in the background, but if I was coding (oh I would love that) then I feel breaks are very important. Some of the guys are really flexible and jump into slack to say, not today, I cannot code I need a break, then we find them a few hours later committing a big PR or asking more questions. so that works really well.
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I often find that I spend around 80% of my time thinking about code and only around 20% actually writing it anyway. At its core, software development is a creative endeavour (unless youâre just smashing out CRUD APIs or something which has been done so much as to be repeatable ad infinitum).
The Maidsafe team are creating something new and what a lot of people fail to understand when they pressure for exact timescales or updates is this: for the most part, itâs not possible to estimate how long it will take to create something new - research and all.
That being said, I do feel empathy for those who just want their investment to pay off and for a finished product to be delivered. Itâs a difficult tightrope Maidsafe are walking, and a very unenviable position. Creating SAFE is more akin to creating a research paper than paid-for software development: research, trial and error, learning, research, trial and error, learning, ad nauseam.
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Yeah, thatâs totally it. Itâs not all about throughput, but making the right decisions, and for me, they mainly come out of left field, usually not in the moment of grinding through a problem, but usually when my brain gets a chance to defrag.
I drive my family nuts on holiday as after few days, when the day to day has melted away, I have to rush out and buy a note book and get pages and pages of ideas out.
Everyone works differently, and no week is the same, so the idea here is to give people the flexibility to get the most out of their body and mindâs natural patterns of focus.
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On a week long visit to Rio some years ago I spent a good part of each day lounging next to the pool with an A4 pad, full of excitement designing a meta-genetic algorithm.
Thereâs a very good book called The Blackwinged Night about creativity and why this âvoidâ is important to facilitate.
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A few months before starting at MaidSafe, I was thinking loads about the Network, and trying to fathom the implications of it all for the webâs UX, we went on a family holiday. My youngest was about 6 months at the time, and rarely slept⌠so Iâd climb out of our apartment window with him so as not to wake anyone, and just walk carrying him around the swimming pool or along the beach through the night, and just plan it all out in my head. Then when heâd finally fall asleep, usually about 5am, Iâd sneaky back in, and usually have enough time to make some intelligible notes before crashing out myself.
The other folk in the resort thought I was mental. 
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How many times do we have to observe the âeccentricâ (inventor, scientist, artist etc) before we can recognise those activities which are essential to creativity, and realise that our attitude to creative techniques dulls and suppresses us?!
@JimCollinson and well done for blending being such a great dad with your own creative impulse - truly creative stuff. I used to hold my son in the night when he was four and sing him a little song (just a couplet) that I made up in that blissful contact. Heâs a man now but I still sing it to myself.
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Potentially unpopular perspective incoming on this particular topic. Several factors to consider:
-
Culture
In the US, we generally work a lot. Here, a 4-day work week is not optimal for a fledgling company in an uber competitive/elite space. But I know American work life is seen as crazy by many in Europe (just as Japanese and Indian work hours can seem a bit much to us). -
Age
Young people can sustain levels of effort that are tough to keep up with as one gets older. A mentor intimated as much years ago, and I didnât entirely believe him at the time. Now, I fully see what he meant, and I find myself trying to work even more now because I know in another 5 to 10 years, I probably wonât be able to work this much. -
Productivity
More than anything else, the focus should be on productivity. There shouldnât be a prescription as to how much one should work or take time off. Rather, the focus should be on output that is time-bound. If the target output is met, then it doesnât matter how many work hours it took to get there (1, 4, or 7 days) as long as the target output and deadline were met. -
Learning from others
It helps to look at some of the most productive/successful outfits in similar industries and try to draw inspiration from how they go about maintaining motivation, productivity, and happiness within their teams at various stages of their existence. Many companies have spent a lot of money doing research on the best set up to achieve these. These arenât always popular findings/conclusions, but the outfits that make it by and large took these paths.
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Judging by the volume and quality of info shared by the devs in this update, Iâd say the new remote team structure is working nicely 
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I have no complaints with the pace of work or the need for timelines, etc. I am.more concerned with feature creep and the desire for perfection. It is an awful long time since alpha 3 launched and I donât want to see Fleming move further away, due to adding more features, etc.
If 4 day weeks work, why not try it? I know I am more creative after long sleeps with lucid dreams, for example.
Just please focus on delivery of something we can use this year, warts and all.
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My thoughts exactly.
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When did Alpha 3 launch? I thought Alpha 3 is whatâs now called Fleming and weâre still technically in Alpha 2âŚ
Generally, I agree that scoping is more important than timing. However, scoping directly impacts timing too.
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The man is ahead of his time. The way heâs going, in a couple of weeks/months at most, @Traktion will be fed up with Beta too and already uploading truckloads of family pics on live network 
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Itâs important you get some downtime too, David.
Itâs not so easy for you to go a long walk on the beach now but try to get out and enjoy the lovely valley you live in now, maybe take some pics of the trees you were so concerned about the last time we met.
Please please donât burn out.
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Was it alpha 2? Meh, I canât remember! Ha! Either way, it was released a long time ago!
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Couldnât agree more - I donât care if itâs slow as a drunken duck - but we already lost so many believers on this path ⌠Please donât optimize anything that doesnât need to be optimized for a very basic network that has the features Fleming was said to haveâŚ
September 2017 it was I think⌠We are approaching the third yearâŚ
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After loan, there are too many people say only âwhen it launch?â
And the answer is clear.
The launching is close because the research is done(The uncertainty is almost gone), and only the god know the exact launching date because the human cant predict every runtime error.
No matter how you ask the same question as a parrot, this answer can not change.
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We donâ wanâ no steenking optimisationsâŚ
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