Constable: What can be done in a Sweden-style 6-hour workday

We eat Swedish meatballs and Swedish Fish. We drive Volvos and Saabs. Our movies are better because of Swedish actresses Ann-Margret and Greta Garbo, and director Ingmar Bergman. Sweden gave us dynamite-inventor Alfred Nobel and Nobel Peace Prize-winner Dag Hammarskjöld. Engineer Gideon Sundbäck, credited with perfecting the modern zipper, and scientist Anders Celsius were born in Sweden. Tennis star Björn Borg, soccer star Zlatan Ibrahimovic, golfer Annika Sorenstam, and Elin Nordegren, former wife of golfing legend Tiger Woods, are all Swedish. Swedish musical group ABBA has built an empire in our nation, as has Ikea. The Chicago Blackhawks imported players Niklas Hjalmarsson, Marcus Kruger, Johnny Oduya, Dennis Rasmussen, Erik Gustafsson and Gustav Forsling from Sweden.

And our own Geneva is getting ready for its annual Swedish Days Festival, June 20 through 25.

These are all noteworthy contributions to our culture and our quality of life. So, when researchers in Sweden offer insights from their field and suggest there are benefits to working a six-hour workday, we should pay attention. The study, done during 23 months with nurses at a care facility for older people, showed that nurses who worked a six-hour day, instead of the traditional eight-hour day or longer, were more productive, took fewer sick days, felt better, reported being more energetic and were happier.

The extra money spent to hire additional workers to fill in the extra hours each week made the program too expensive in the short term, but some researchers said the program would save money in the long run by reducing health costs.

For many American workers, a six-hour work day is what folks spend at night and on their days off answering emails and returning phone calls. In Beijing, a typical white-collar worker who lives outside the expensive Chinese city spends six hours a day just commuting to and from work. UNICEF and the World Health Organization say some women and girls in many parts of Africa spend six hours a day just fetching drinkable water.

But it is amazing how much can be accomplished in a six-hour workday.

In six hours, Boston Marathon winner Geoffrey Kirui of Kenya could run a couple of marathons and still have time to watch Ann-Margret in the movie "Going in Style."

Six hours is long enough for a robin to build an entire nest on the light fixture above our back door, establishing a perch from which to divebomb me by the time I got home from work.

Twenty-three-year-old New York bowler Ben Ketola, who broke a world record last week by recording the fastest perfect game with 12 strikes in a row in 86.9 seconds, theoretically could bowl 248 perfect games in six hours.

In six hours, the fastest race car driver could complete next month's Indianapolis 500 twice.

In six hours, you could watch every Kentucky Derby race since the first one in 1875, and still have an hour left to shop for a fashionable hat and make a mint julep.

In six hours, a good surgeon could perform a heart-transplant and still have time to kick back and watch Wednesday's Chicago Bulls vs. Boston Celtics NBA playoff game.

Fortunately, six hours was long enough for reporters to watch the thrilling, extra-inning Game 7 of the 2016 World Series and write about the Chicago Cubs' victory.

Unfortunately, six hours is more than enough time to watch the entire 2017 Stanley Cup playoff run of the Chicago Blackhawks and their Swedish players.

As much as a six-hour workday appeals to a newspaper columnist, who can look through many photos of Ann-Margret, do the math on 142 years of Kentucky Derby times, watch a Swedish video, make a phone call and write a column in six hours, don't expect it to catch on in the suburbs.

Jean Gaines, president of the Geneva Chamber of Commerce, says none of the agency's six employees can fit their duties into a normal eight-hour day and 40-hour week during the town's festivals.

"The week of Swedish Days, we put in 80 hours," Gaines says. "They (the Swedes) must have some sort of secret. We're not into six-hour workdays. The work still has to be done. You have to be willing to empty the garbage and introduce someone on stage. But we still love it, because we're still here."