In 1594 Philip the Prudent coined the 8 hour work day. It is quite hilarious that after all this time we still can't figure out how long a work day should be fo

In 1594 Philip the Prudent coined the 8 hour work day. It is quite hilarious that after all this time we still can't figure out how long a work day should be for different jobs. I do pretty grueling manual labor at night. The shift is 8, I think about 4 hours is reasonable (under 55), we do about 5. We have to carefully hide the other 3 hours. The shift starts with 20-40 min of planning and organizing which is maybe 4 minutes of work, we glue 10 min in front and behind the lunch break, we rest out of sight, we "finish" early. I often joke that a marathon is only 2 hours if you run really slowly. The culture is to expect us to do 5 marathons in 8 hours, every day! uhh.. i mean every night! Which is every bit as hilarious as it sounds. I calculate for the MBA types that if they cut the shifts in half and raise the pay by 50% people will be well over 25% more productive. Sleeping at night is not overrated. Both the pay raise and the reduced work day are of course culturally unthinkable. Their eyes just glaze over. I further joke that they don't have to understand. They can just join us and run these 25 marathons for a week. Only one week? When coding I prefer either ONE hour/day or 14 days straight 14 to 18 hours/day. That way everything fits in my head and I feel very productive. The endorphin milestones fly by. It's lovely. After that I don't want to see any code for two months. I don't want to even try to explain this to any employer. I probably wouldn't even want to understand it if I was hiring. Philip limited mine workers work days to seven hours! That was 430 years ago. </rant>