It can be grinding to do the same job day after day, year after year, especially in places like the U.S. where vacation time is hard to come by. The result? Worker burnout, which can have serious health consequences, including depression, insomnia, and even musculoskeletal pain. Up to 40% of the global workplace feels burned out, according to one recent survey.

I recently discovered one appealing solution that's catching on in some industries, including medicine, where levels of burnout are especially high. It’s called job sharing, and it essentially allows you to split your job with someone else, giving you more time for stuff outside of work. People who do it say that they’re more productive at work, since they have time off between intense days.

Before she started job sharing, “I was so stressed out," says Mimi Su, a senior marketing director at Unilever. "I was doing a really intense full-time job, I was in charge of errands, I was in charge of food for our household, I was super super stressed, and I was unpleasant to be around.” Now that she splits a 65-hour a week job with her colleague Sarah Hammer, she says, “there’s just a lot less stress on our household.”

Of course, job sharing isn’t for everyone; both Su and Hammer get 60% salary, but they say it’s more than worth the trade-off of those never-ending weeks of work. They schedule their doctor’s appointments and childcare duties on the days that they’re not working, allowing them to completely focus on the task at hand the other days.

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