T.G.I.T.

Thank God it’s Thursday – an initialism which may supplant T.G.I.F. if Utah’s four-day working week prevails.

A year after Utah introduced its four-day working week for the majority of state employees, Bryan Walsh reported for Time:

After 12 months, Utah’s experiment has been deemed so successful that a new acronym could catch on: T.G.I.T. (thank God it’s Thursday). The state found that its compressed workweek resulted in a 13% reduction in energy use and estimated that employees saved as much as $6 million in gasoline costs. Altogether, the initiative will cut the state’s greenhouse-gas emissions by more than 12,000 metric tons a year. And perhaps not surprisingly, 82% of state workers say they want to keep the new schedule. “It’s beneficial for the environment and beneficial for workers,” says Lori Wadsworth, a professor at Brigham Young University who helped survey state employees. “People loved it.” Those who didn’t tended to have young children and difficulty finding extended day care.

Managers from around the world have gotten in touch with Utah officials, and cities and towns including El Paso, Texas, and Melbourne Beach, Fla., are following the state’s lead. Private industry is interested as well – General Motors has just instituted a workweek of four 10-hour days at several of its plants. “There is a sense that this is ready to take off,” says R. Michael Fischl, an associate dean at the University of Connecticut’s law school, which is organizing a symposium on four-day weeks.