> then returning to work but just working 4 days a week for a while (and not very long hours).
Kinda depends on the structure of your job and whether you're able to shift a proportional amount of work to other people.
When I've worked 4-day weeks, people have 'helpfully' rescheduled all the meetings from that day over to days when I'm working, giving me just as much work to do but less time to do it.
It seems that you are saying your rescheduled meetings were taking time away from work: if you are a manager, meetings are, usually, the work you need to be doing.
What you probably wanted to say is that you were part of a bunch of useless meetings: you should have solved this in a different way even before switching to 4-day weeks: stop attending them (if they were useless for you) or stop the team from having them (if they were useless for everybody else too)
Eh, it's not unusual for a manager to have some meetings where their attendance is appreciated but not critical - and a wealth of important non-meeting work.
The site safety group needs the imprimatur of a senior leader as important safety matters deserve to be taken seriously - but half their time is spent on carpark speed limits and toasters setting the fire alarm off.
Less experienced managers need a forum where, if there's a part of the management role they're not familiar with, they can get advice. That forum needs some veteran managers - but it needn't be me every week.
Meanwhile, plenty of non-meeting work is very important - a manager also needs to chase up resources their subordinates need. Explain corporate policies and procedures. Approve holidays and expense claims. Review resumes and perform interviews. Evaluate and improve operating procedures. Gather data to support prioritisation decisions. Plan for promotions and raises. And be available for ad-hoc consultation on technical and workplace questions. Make sure employees are filling out their timesheets and doing their mandatory training. And of course answer whatever chat messages or e-mails come in from the guy who signs my raise letters.
And that's for a nontechnical manager - if the manager also wants to be making architectural decisions, doing code reviews, approving production change requests and planning the future roadmap for the product? Well, that's all more non-meeting work.
I am not saying non-meeting work is not important, but that meetings (or rather, communication) is equally important, but that there are usually meetings where we should be more considerate of everybody's time.
As I said, I think you just phrased it awkwardly, since I doubt all your non-critical meetings were exactly on the day you stopped working in your workweek.
Kinda depends on the structure of your job and whether you're able to shift a proportional amount of work to other people.
When I've worked 4-day weeks, people have 'helpfully' rescheduled all the meetings from that day over to days when I'm working, giving me just as much work to do but less time to do it.