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- Hacker News
- I wonder if someday we’ll have a “monthend”, where most of society takes a whole week off at the end of a month. I think I’d like this better than a 4 day work week. People could come back truly rested.
With the shift to AI, it could happen.
by deadbabe - We could all work 5 day/2day off, 4 weeks, and whatever was left at the end of the month? Time off.
The variability would be fun. Sometimes it would be a 5 day weekend even.
by b112 - And work all 3 weeks?
Nah, I'll keep my Friday's off.
by jasonvorhe - I'd be inclined to agree with you if every vacation I've ever taken hasn't left me less excited to come back to work.by camd32
- > With the shift to AI, it could happen.
You'll work more and they'll pocket the difference, as it's been the case for every advances in the last 50 years.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGj_oQ...
by toasty228 - Other Western or global societal norms that started in America:
- female body hair removal[0]
- diamond engagement rings[1]
- to-go beverages in disposable paper cups[2]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_removal_of_leg_and_...
by debo_ - Ancient Egyptian women, above a certain socioeconomic threshold, also removed their body hair. (So did the men.)
Hair traps odors (ever smell your hair after a campfire, or going to a Korean BBQ?), but it's kind of a bitch to constantly remove. People with the means and the time to remove their body hair have done it at various periods throughout history.
Women in ancient Egypt also wore makeup, could own property, could divorce men without social repercussions, etc.
Many aspects of society that we think are new are actually things that just kind of arise given a couple hundred years of peacetime and abundance, and/or things that wealthy people have been doing on and off at various periods throughout history.
- We should just switch to the only calendar that makes sense:
Why fives? The Law of Fives states that all things happen in fives, or are divisible by or are multiples of five, or are somehow directly or indirectly related to five. “The Law of Fives is never wrong.” — Principia Discordia5 seasons of 73 days each (5 × 73 = 365 days) 5 days in each week (73 ÷ 5 = exactly no remainder!) 5 Apostle Holydays (one per season, on the 5th day) 5 Season Holydays (one per season, on the 50th day)by ndsipa_pomu - I prefer the law of evens — every thing that can be counted is an even number, or one away from an even number. Ergo, each year should be two days, and however many rotations of the earth it takes to get there is the only answer that makes sense.by grayclhn
- Hence the dowager said "What's a weekend?"by dboreham
- I remember seeing a calendar on my first school year, 1971 in Finland, that marked which Saturdays were school days and which were off. Around the same time, I saw a cartoon about the future labor congress, where a dissatisfied worker asks "Mr President, do we have to every Wednesday?"
- From 1965 issue of Time:
> Union-shop steward, emerging from a meeting with management to face a group of workers: “Brothers, we’ve got it made. From now on, we will work only on Wednesdays.”
> Irritated voice from the crowd: “You mean EVERY Wednesday?”
I suspect it’s significantly older than that though.
- Interesting article. I never thought about how important it is not just how many days off you have, but also when exactly you have them. It's really bad when you have days off, but you can't see your family. I actually like the concept of a four-day workweek. I wonder if it will ultimately prove successful, and if the whole world will adopt it?
- Ultimately, it’ll be up to individual companies. For most of them, though, a four-day workweek probably won’t make much sense if they have to pay the same salaries - it’s just not that profitable for the employer. That said, I’d personally love to have more time for the people close to me and, honestly, just live life a little more fully.by MotoriX
- My company picks up holiday policy from one of its dev center and applies to all other engineers who live in different cities. On my "vacation" I am the only one in myfamily who has day off; and when my kids have some holiday I have to work.
It is impossible to explain this to HR team. Sic.
by danangReader - Saudi Arabia changed the weekend from Thursday-Friday to Friday-Saturday about 10 years ago. The existing week only had 3 days' overlap with western businesses, and the smaller Gulf states had already changed.
The weekend discussion had been percolating quietly inside the Shura Council (royal advisors) for several years, but when the King decided, it was only announced with about 10 days advance notice!
Now UAE has now moved to Saturday-Sunday weekend, but practically it is 2.5 days, starting at noon prayers on Friday.
- The two-day weekend is a 100 years old.
The one-day weekend is ancient.
by ant6n - Let's celebrate its 100th birthday by moving labor day to Friday! Every Friday.
- Oh is that not how you're living already?
- For the elders here, what are the actual ways to not live under the rule of an industrial clock?
I’m not talking about starting your own company get rich quick scheme or moving into the woods (unless..), but really, I don’t see many ways about it. You could move somewhere rural, lower expenses, but then you are socially isolated to an extent. So, move to where people are, oh but then the only way to support the lifestyle is a standard job with security. Having a family is a whole different requirement almost making it “irresponsible” to not have stable income, hence time restrictions. Then again there seem to be a small population of explorers who live radically different lives or simply try to enjoy their work or switch jobs. Really struggling with this question.
by Gecko4072 - > I’m not talking about starting your own company get rich quick scheme
You will be better off staying under the yoke and obeying your masters. If you think starting your own company is some "get rich quick scheme", it means they have trained you well in what are your proper limits.
by carlosjobim - Society and your past decisions will put you on rails. You can get off them, but there will be sacrifices.
I will always gladly post this. Not because I think it's good advice or because I think Ran is a person to emulate, but because I think it encourages one to think differently about life, wants, needs, and responsibilities.
by snovymgodym - Have a look at ERE. Don't get fooled by the snake oil sounding url. I ignored it for years because of that, but it's a sound framework to help you answer the question you are asking.by markvdb
- Don't live for the weekend. Why 2 out of 7 days when you have another 5. Don't put off til the weekend. Don't put off til annual vacation. Don't put off til retirement. Live life every day.
As for each day, organize around living your life. For me, that means working a schedule from the other coast so I sleep when my body craves it, and not fighting it to be productive when I simply am running on reserves
by sethammons - It’s called society and it’s really hard to fight against. I’d suggest you look for a way to fit in that suits you.by letmetweakit
- "Really struggling with this question."
Many do, but there are also many unique solutions. Work part time. Home office. Live rural, but close to a railwail station that brings you to the city quickly. Limit your expenses, check what you really need. Do freelancing, where you often can decide when you will do the work, ..
by lukan - > You could move somewhere rural, lower expenses, but then you are socially isolated to an extent.
I got more social interactions the first week I moved to my house built in the middle of nowhere eastern europe than in my 10 years in a western EU capital. Small communities are much more alive than gigantic ones. You do lose some convenience, but it's not as bad is it used to be, for exemple there is a 24/7 automated supermarket 10min from my middle of nowhere village, 5g everywhere, etc.
by toasty228 - You'd have to go back nearly 2000 years, at the very least, to find a time when civilizations weren't living under the tyranny of time keeping devices. Here's a poem from 195AD Rome satirizing the tyranny of the sun dial: https://www.laphamsquarterly.org/time/hacked-days
Leaving civilization is probably your only option. Other than joining a handful of remote tribes, or living as a recluse, I don't think there's anyway to completely shield oneself from the tyranny.
by wahern - Also, the week itself as a 'hard' delineator of time also appears to be fairly recent:
> Henkin treats the seven-day week as a social and cultural institution, focusing primarily on the nineteenth-century United States. Unlike years, months, and days, which have astronomical foundations, the week is an entirely historical and social construct with no scientific basis. The study argues that the early American republic was an unusually week-oriented society, in part because American colonists abandoned most of the annual feast days common in Europe, leaving the weekly Sabbath as the primary calendrical anchor. The influence of Puritan settlers, who rejected the Church of England's abundance of saints' days as redolent of Catholicism, contributed to this dominical orientation. Through industrialization, urbanization, and mass education during the nineteenth century, weekly consciousness became increasingly entrenched in American life.
> He identifies several factors that strengthened Americans' associations between specific weekdays and particular activities. Weekly wage payments, which became more common during the antebellum period, tightened the relationship between money and time; workers paid on Saturdays often spent much of their earnings quickly, creating what one passage describes as a financial hourglass pattern across the week. Standardized housework routines assigned specific tasks to particular days, with Monday widely recognized as washing day. Common schools organized curricula around weekly schedules […]
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Week:_A_History_of_the_Unn...
While Christianity's seven day period would make you think it was 'obvious', it tended to be broken up in more Catholic cultures (i.e., not Protestant, perhaps more Puritan), and so was a bit of a 'softer' delineation:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_day
In pre-industrial times a large portion of the population was agriculture, and you may go to church, but you still have to take care of animals and such even on the seventh day; it was only in a more 'mechanized culture' (e.g., with factories) that time itself could perhaps be treated more mechanically.
Also also:
by throw0101a - Have this professor Henkin heard of the moon?by carlosjobim