Chetan Bhagat says 4 focused work hours a day can be enough

The comment also adds another voice to India's ongoing debate over working hours.

For many employees, the workday is measured by the time spent in the office. Popular author Chetan Bhagat has suggested looking at it differently. It is not by counting every hour at the desk, but by asking how much genuinely focused work gets done.

Speaking at the 18th Project Management South Asia Conference (PMSAC26) in Bengaluru recently, the writer said four hours of dedicated work can be enough.

“I work 4 hours a day and that is enough if you do it with full dedication,” Bhagat said at the event. He was also clear about what he meant by a four-hour workday. The four hours, according to Bhagat, should refer to actual work and not the time employees spend dealing with meetings, breaks, technical problems or other interruptions.

“If you genuinely do work for 4 hours in a day, that is enough, good enough,” he said.

What Bhagat said about the 4-hour workday

Bhagat’s argument was not that employees should simply spend four hours at work and stop. His focus was on what happens during those hours. “It doesn't mean you have to include meetings, breaks, Wi-Fi issues, and other hunky-dory stuff that the offices often witness,” he said. Instead, he suggested that employees should concentrate on the work that actually needs to be done.

“In those 4 hours, you have to prioritise everything you put on the table,” Bhagat said.

The difference is particularly relevant in corporate workplaces, where a working day can include meetings, calls, messages, administrative tasks and other interruptions alongside the work an employee is expected to complete.Bhagat’s remarks come at a time when the idea of long working hours is being debated in India, while artificial intelligence is also changing the way companies think about productivity and jobs.

Bhagat also spoke about work-life balance

Photo: Canva

Bhagat was also asked about maintaining work-life balance. His response was linked to the ideas he discusses in his book 11 Rules for Life. “No one cares for you unless you are, do what makes you feel happy, follow 11 rules of life,” he said. The book discusses areas including health, sleep, priorities and taking action rather than continuously waiting for the right time. For Bhagat, the idea of productivity appears to be connected to deciding what deserves attention and then giving it that attention rather than simply extending the number of hours spent working.

Four hours versus long workweeks

The comment also adds another voice to India's ongoing debate over working hours. Infosys co-founder NR Narayana Murthy has previously argued that India's young workforce should work longer hours, including his widely discussed call for a 70-hour working week. That position has become part of a broader debate over whether longer working hours necessarily translate into higher productivity. Bhagat's argument points in the opposite direction: that the time spent working should not automatically be treated as a measure of output.

His four-hour figure is his personal view on focused work, rather than a proposal that every workplace should legally or formally adopt a four-hour working day. The larger question remains whether productivity should be judged by how long someone stays at a desk or by what they actually accomplish.