By Ethan Rhodes, Workplace Strategist & Productivity Coach

The headline that stopped my scroll

Last week, the ActivTrak Productivity Lab dropped its 2025 State of the Workplace report. Buried in the charts was a stat that made me sit up a little straighter: the average knowledge worker’s day is now 36 minutes shorter—but output is up 2 percent. In plain English: people are signing off earlier and getting more done.

I’ve coached hundreds of managers who dream of squeezing an extra hour of focus into their team’s calendars. Meanwhile, the data is shouting a different truth—less time at the desk can actually raise the ceiling on performance. Let’s unpack what the report found and, more importantly, spell out five practical moves you can swipe for your own workflow starting today.

What the numbers really say

In other words, we’re shaving 7 percent off the clock yet squeezing out longer stretches of deep, purposeful work. Note the jump from 20-minute to 24-minute focus sprints—that’s a 20 percent increase in uninterrupted concentration. It’s less about cramming; it’s about tightening the flow and protecting mental bandwidth.

Why shorter days often win

• Decision fatigue reverses sooner. When you cap the day, you eliminate those late-afternoon hours where quality nosedives.
• Parkinson’s Law works in your favor. Give a task less room to sprawl and it magically compresses.
• Clear edges force ruthless priority-setting. A 4:30 p.m. hard stop makes “sometime today” tasks suddenly binary: they’re either essential or noise.
• Recovery cycles accelerate. Clocking out earlier buys back personal time, which feeds energy reserves for tomorrow’s sprint.

5 action moves to capture the 36-minute advantage

1. Put a meeting curfew on your calendar

I recommend a visible “No-Meeting Zone” starting 90 minutes before your target sign-off. If the average finish line is 4:39 p.m., block 3:00–4:30 p.m. for pure execution. Your brain will thank you.

2. Adopt the 4×24 method

Structure the day into four 24-minute focus blocks (roughly one each in the morning and three post-lunch). After every block, take a quick reset: stretch, refill water, glance at Slack. Those micro-intervals mimic the productive rhythm highlighted in the ActivTrak data without leaving you fried.

3. Trim (don’t nuke) your to-do list

Start the morning with a top-five list, then immediately cross out the lowest-impact item. That ruthless 20 percent cut declutters your cognitive stage so the remaining tasks land inside your new, shorter runway.

4. Use “parking lot” Fridays

Any request that pops up after noon Wednesday goes straight to the “parking lot” doc unless it’s mission-critical. You’ll end the week lighter, and colleagues quickly learn that urgent actually means urgent.

5. Time-box the closeout ritual

Set a 15-minute alarm at 4:15 p.m. for inbox triage, quick Slack replies, and tomorrow’s game plan. When the timer dings, you’re done. Guard that ritual—consistency is what turns the 36-minute theory into muscle memory.

Keep an eye on well-being metrics

ActivTrak flagged a big rise in “healthy work patterns” alongside productivity gains. That’s not a coincidence. Shorter days tame burnout signals like chronic after-hours activity and marathon screen sessions. Track your own leading indicators—sleep quality, weekend recovery, and mood during Monday stand-ups. If any trend heads south, adjust the dials before “efficient” mutates into “exhausted.”

Bottom line: Time is a design variable

The great productivity myth is that output scales linearly with hours logged. The ActivTrak study busts that notion on a grand scale—218,900 employees, 777 companies, multiple industries. Yes, we still need grit and deep work, but the container matters as much as the content. Tighten the container by 36 minutes and you might liberate more cognitive firepower than an entire week of “hustle harder” pep talks.

The challenge (and opportunity) for leaders: shift from measuring presence to measuring progress. The challenge for individuals: trust that sharper boundaries cultivate, not constrain, achievement.

Give the 36-minute experiment a two-week trial. Log your start, stop, and throughput. I’m betting you’ll discover what thousands of workers just confirmed: quitting time might be the new growth hack.