6 ms·

The weekend is 100 years old

223 points by lentil_soup 1mo ago

AndrewKemendo 1mo ago
The lack of understanding about the change in day-to-day life over the last 200 years is truly unfathomable - I fully do not understand it but the little that I appreciate is absurdly profound in the differences It’s like we’re living on an entirely different planet than the people who existed prior to the industrial revolution Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was alive during napoleon’s rule and he speaks about the difference between 1950 and 1900: https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA
- stevecoalbear 1mo ago
  It once came up whether my grandmother went to music festivals in her youth. Of course not, she said, they hadn't been invented yet! They didn't have electronic music, because they didn't have electronics. And nobody was playing guitar on stage for 12 hours. You could hold a short small concert in a hall, but you couldn't hold a big rave.
  - dd8601fn 1mo ago
    My mom was around when different races couldn’t use the same water fountain and women couldn’t have bank accounts. I used to turn a wheel a bunch of times to call a friend. Her grandkids have never known a world without fortnite on ipads and real life dick tracy watches. It’s a weird world. Makes you wonder how things will look in thirty years.
  - tanjtanjtanj 1mo ago
    That's not quite right (other than the electronic part obviously). There were traveling coach shows, dance and performance halls, and at a minimum week-long performance events (religious ones too) before anyone here on earth was alive.
    - nunez 1mo ago
      There were medicine shows in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that drew insane crowds. William Kellogg (of Kellogg's fame) supposedly had legendary crowds.
ksec 1mo ago
Thank you for the submission. I have long wondered if in the old days we had weekend off, and did we just work continuously 365 days? It is not that working 365 days is hard. It is the job in today's world are very different, Muti tasking, context switching and anything but simple even in the lowest rank. This is mentally tiring and I have also wondered if it is a recent thing. My argument is that cutting cost over the past 20 - 30 years meant what used to be a 5 person's job is now a 1 to 2 person job.
- readthenotes1 1mo ago
  Jewish, Christian, and Islam have a Sabbath. Not sure what anyone else did.
  - dboreham 1mo ago
    Not really a day of rest since you have to go to <place of worship>
    - virtue3 1mo ago
      Considering what work looked like in even the 18th century it was indeed rest in comparison.
    - Jensson 1mo ago
      Going to church is equivalent to watching tv, its not work.
      - add-sub-mul-div 1mo ago
        Having to keep up social appearances within an accepted range and suppressing ideas and behavior that conflict with rules imposed by a religious organization does not sound relaxing to me like watching TV does. My white collar labor is less stressful to me than religious strictures would be.
        1mo ago
throw0101a 1mo ago
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_Unnatural_Rhythms_That_Made_Us_Who_We_Are 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 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: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week
- bobthepanda 1mo ago
  while the seven day week is arbitrary, it is also worth noting that the French Revolution had experimented with a metric ten day week, which ended up being a total bust because laborers only got one week in ten of rest rather than one in seven.
dboreham 1mo ago
Hence the dowager said "What's a weekend?"
- deleted 1mo ago
  [deleted]
ant6n 1mo ago
The two-day weekend is a 100 years old. The one-day weekend is ancient.
stevecoalbear 1mo ago
Other things that are surprisingly less than 100 years old include electronic music, Germany, Croatia, capitalism, the end of slavery, worker's rights, fiat currency, central banks, stock markets as more than a niche thing, and so on.
- mbil 1mo ago
  What year do you think it is
  - stevecoalbear 1mo ago
    2026
- imjonse 1mo ago
  While there was legal slavery in some countries well into the second half of the 20th century, capitalism and workers' rights movements are definitely older than 100 years.
- __MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
  Didn't the Dutch East India Company go public in 1602? Also, in ancient Rome, coinage with Caesar's face on it was traded above its bullion value. They'd kill 1/10th of your population repeatedly until you agreed to this (such was the origins of the word "decimation"), and then they'd buy their dinner from you with caesar-face coin and move on to the next village tomorrow. Now that you have some caesar-face coin, you have some incentive to continue upholding its inflated value, and the tax collectors will show up later and re-apply threats of violence to ensure that you continue to do so. That sounds like fiat currency to me. Also, the federal reserve was established in 1913. Dude, I'm all for framing the status quo as mutable, but maybe do a bit of research.
  - Kon5ole 1mo ago
    >Also, in ancient Rome, coinage with Caesar's face on it was traded above its bullion value. They'd kill 1/10th of your population repeatedly until you agreed to this (such was the origins of the word "decimation") Decimation has it's origin in a military punishment for insubordination or cowardice. Where did you get the fiat currency idea from?
deadbabe 1mo ago
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.
- jasonvorhe 1mo ago
  And work all 3 weeks? Nah, I'll keep my Friday's off.
  - throw1234567891 1mo ago
    Your Fridays.
- b112 1mo ago
  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.
- toasty228 1mo ago
  > 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_oQGyAlDJ2-mM86I4FBj2OshqyZmWa8DWkYwBMN9XKr1JY631WLB_ep&s=10 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGj_oQ...
  - deadbabe 1mo ago
    Do they? With AI agents, I work less, not more. The difference is it's off the books. On paper I seem to work the same but not in practice. I've gone from 40 hour work weeks to maybe 2 or 3 hours a day pushing some prompts. Someday, it might be 2 or 3 hours a week.
    - meibo 1mo ago
      That only works until they realize what's going on. Then you will be expected to output so much that you will have to prompt for 40 hours a week.
nivertech 1mo ago
[flagged]
- blitzrk 1mo ago
  Anti-Jewish hate should not be welcome here.
  - bradrn 1mo ago
    Speaking as a Jew, I don’t read GP as being ‘anti-Jewish hate’ — it seems to be at least vaguely positive in claiming the weekend as a Jewish invention, albeit with very muddled phrasing. (For one thing, Zionism didn’t exist 2000 years ago…)
    - nivertech 1mo ago
      [flagged]
      - bigyabai 1mo ago
        > For them Jews/Israelis/Zionists/Genociders are fully interchangeable synonyms You are the only person here conflating those groups. Cui bono, from this type of brinkmanship?
        nivertech 1mo ago
        [flagged]
        bigyabai 1mo ago
        It's not wrong to use any of those words. It's just wrong to deliberately conflate them, which I did not do.
  - slowin 1mo ago
    It's not anti-Jewish hate, it's actually Zionist propaganda (the claim that Zionism is older than Hertzl).
__MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
Let's celebrate its 100th birthday by moving labor day to Friday! Every Friday.
- b40d-48b2-979e 1mo ago
  Oh is that not how you're living already?
  - __MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
    Oh it is, but the job won't be done until we have solidarity across sectors. I'm looking to shut services off if companies ask too much of their workers.
Despegar 1mo ago
[flagged]
Transformanshen 1mo ago
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?
- danangReader 1mo ago
  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.
  - edoceo 1mo ago
    Just call in sick/PTO. I see that all the time with multi-timezone/country teams. Gotta have a manager/supervisor/CO that has your back though.
- MotoriX 1mo ago
  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.
andai 1mo ago
“It is not just about rest, but about reclaiming autonomy from the industrial clock.” That phrasing sounds a bit strong for temporary symptom relief.
Gecko4072 1mo ago
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.
- huflungdung 1mo ago
  [dead]
- toasty228 1mo ago
  > 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.
  - Gecko4072 1mo ago
    Interesting. Do you feel constrained at all? That does sound nice and much more peaceful. I think it’s hard to imagine the change when many have been sold the story of moving to the big city becoming successful, living an exciting life in your 20s, 30s.
    - toasty228 1mo ago
      It really depends on what you want from life. If you value gadgets, convenience, going for an impromptu beer with friends on a thursday evening then it's a net negative. If you value peace, space, slowing down, nature then it's very nice. Less pollution, less noise, etc. I couldn't afford to buy a two bedrooms flat where I lived, now I own a 3 floor house, a garden big enough to feed my family and neighbours during peak season, life is good, can't complain
AtlasBarfed 1mo ago
It, like democracy and world trade, is probably a temporary blip. Once the "elite"realize that drones, AI, and total information awareness provide the tools for complete totalitarian rule, we will pray for 1984
jmyeet 1mo ago
Whenever I hear someone in a privileged job, such as a software engineer, complain about unions or collective bargaining or in fact any form of collectivism, I have to suppress my rage because every concession to the working class, such as weekends, safety standards, overtime pay, PTO, sick leave and so on was paid for in blood by your forebears. The biggest changes came shortly after Henry Ford conceded the weekend when the ultra-wealthy wrecked the economy (ie the Great Depression) and FDR was elected and, despite being a capitalist, realized he needed to address the very real issues to stave off the perceived threat of Communism. That's where Social Security, the right to join a union and a bunch of other things came from. There was even an attempted coup by the wealthy to avoid all this (ie the Business Plot [1]). After WW2, the US (in particular) saw this as an opportunity to claw back these concessions. The Soviet Union became the Great Enemy. Former Naxis were recruited to fight Communism, both inside and outside the US. NASA, the FBI, the CIA, NATO, etc all filled with former Nazis despite their "morale lapses" [2] under the Third Reich. Domestically, we got the Red Scare and McCarthyism. This really went into overdrive in the 1980s when Baby Boomers, whose fears of crime were fuelled by intentional propaganda as well as CIA efforts such as the crack epidemic, voted for Reagan in record numbers. Reagan won 49 states in 1984 (all but Wyoming). One of the things I respect about Mad Men is how it pointed to the rising cult around Ayn Rand in the 1960s [3]. The 1950s, that tends to be romanticizied by so many hyper-individualists and right-wingers, had a top marginal tax rate of 91% and the CEO to median pay gap hadn't exploded yet [4]. By the way, that idea that CEOs were underpaid came from the Patton studies at McKinsey in this time [5]. My point is that this hyper-individualism is entirely manufactured by decades of spending to undermine any form of collectivism. And as a privileged worker, you owe those less fortunate to you some form of solidarity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/28/during-cold-war-cia-fbi-hired-over-1000-nazis-as-spies-limited-investigations-those-nazis/ https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/28/during-cold-war-cia-fbi-... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKX8C6qKuac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKX8C6qKuac [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1na8fww/the_typical_ceo_makes_about_400x_the_salary_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1na8fww/the_typical... [5]: https://ritholtz.com/2013/08/is-mckinsey-to-blame-for-skyrocketing-ceo-pay/ https://ritholtz.com/2013/08/is-mckinsey-to-blame-for-skyroc...
- 1mo ago
gedy 1mo ago
No, he's 36. /s
Invictus0 1mo ago
does the guardian ever actually write anything worth reading?
heikkilevanto 1mo ago
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?"
- zeroonetwothree 1mo ago
  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.
Almondsetat 1mo ago
A surprising amount of apparently long standing traditions are actually anglo-adjacent inventions from the last 150 years
- weaksauce 1mo ago
  it wasn't much more than 50 years ago before being able to go to the ER to be saved in an emergency in the us was a right without having to show proof of payment/insurance. a lot of what we take for granted are very recent things.
  - ViktorRay 1mo ago
    Also the American Board of Medical Specialties didn’t officially approve Emergency Medicine as its own speciality until 1979. Emergency Medicine is a fairly new speciality. Many people are surprised by this but it’s true.
colsandurz 1mo ago
Can I have a 4 day work week?
angrydev 1mo ago
If you enjoy learning about the history of labor and free time, I highly recommend the book Free Time by Gary Cross.
hamper653 1mo ago
We should have a 5-days week: A, B, C, D, E. Weekend would be E and A. 12 months of 6 weeks each, except "February" with an extra week. A would always the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, 26th or 31st (in "February"). B would always be the 2nd, 7th, etc. Leap years would have a day F inserted between E and A at the end of "February" (of which it would be the 36th), keeping this new calendar consistent with the current one.
- vander_elst 1mo ago
  Very curious to understand the thinking behind this, why should the weekend be E and A? My first approach would be to have the weekend on D and E which would seem to be the end of the week.
  - edoceo 1mo ago
    Right. WeekEND. It's the end of the week. Not one day at the start and one at the end. It's why, currently, the week starts on Monday.
    - ars 1mo ago
      In Hebrew Sunday doesn't have a name, it's simply called "Day one", this is also true in Portuguese, Arabic, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, and others. So no, the week does not start on Monday, it starts on Sunday. The name "Weekend" came long long long after Sunday was considered the first day of the week.
      - edoceo 1mo ago
        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date ISO says Monday
        bentley 1mo ago
        That’s a late 20th century invention, and not universally followed. Consider Unix time functions, which predate the ISO standard and follow what’s common practice in America even today, that Sunday is the first day of the week. Of course, Sunday was the first day of the week in Europe for over a thousand years and that practice has not fully been extinguished.
unselect5917 1mo ago
The 7 day week is completely artificial. Days exist, defined by the rotation of the Earth. Months exist, defined by the orbit of the moon. Seasons exist, defined by the solstices and equinoxes. Years exist, defined by the orbit of the Earth. Pretty much everything else is an invention of man.
- debo_ 1mo ago
  May I refer you to timecube? https://www.timecube.net/ https://www.timecube.net/
- a3w 1mo ago
  If we are being even more pedantically correct about this: 1. The statement about months is kinda wrong. Solar months just happen because of the earths orbit around the sun, too, and the division by 12 is how many knuckles you can count on one hand by using your thumb. Moon months exist, and there are 13 of them, from January to Undecember [Footnote: 1], or whatever you want to call them. But by happenstance if we talk about having a moon-month, we will probably be in a culture that uses a calendar that does not have a two-day weekend. 2. Seasons could be argued to be more complex than just sun-based on fixed yearly cycle. Whether four seasons for everyday life exist seems to depend on latitude, and is a bit counter-intuitive at the equator: Based on solstices you would expect warm/cold/warm/cold, so twice as many seasons, per year, not half that many. Yet Quito or other cities seem to have rain dependent on yearly circulation effects, but constant temperatures. El Niño/La Niña would probably have at least as much of an effect and are of course not on strictest schedules in such areas, and perhaps make more sense for crop or disaster planning than solar years might. But Southern Hemisphere does not use a reverse "Christmas is in summer" calendar[2] --------------- Footnotes: 1: 11th month by name, but some Pope's birthdays reforms happened until we ended up with February at 28 days and no spring's start is the new year, etc. 2: Even if that was Christmas before the popes changed it and/or Christians like to feast when heathens brethren/converts did, simultaneously. And historically more plausible for a time of travel to do a census.
  - unselect5917 1mo ago
    >The statement about months is kinda wrong. No it isn't. >Moon months exist, and there are 13 of them I said the months are defined by the moon. You said it was wrong, then agreed with me. Note that I never said there are 12 months. I said: >Months exist, defined by the orbit of the moon. >1: 11th month by name, but some Pope's birthdays reforms happened until we ended up with February at 28 days and no spring's start is the new year, etc. This refers to calendars, which are an inventions by man. >2: Even if that was Christmas before the popes changed it and/or Christians like to feast when heathens brethren/converts did, simultaneously. And historically more plausible for a time of travel to do a census. This is more calendar stuff. I'm not talking about calendars, but periods defined in nature by things that exist independent of mankind. The ones I listed are all very clearly defined by mostly celestial events. Weeks are an arbitrary invention and so are calendars.
debo_ 1mo ago
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_underarm_hair_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_removal_of_leg_and_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 1mo ago
  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.
  - debo_ 1mo ago
    From what I recall of pre-Nubian ancient Egypt, Egyptians also bathed by coating themselves in oil and then scraping it off.
ndsipa_pomu 1mo ago
We should just switch to the only calendar that makes sense: 5 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) 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 Discordia
- grayclhn 1mo ago
  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.
beredon 1mo ago
[dead]
mikhailfranco 1mo ago
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.
blini-kot 1mo ago
"Ford did not invent the weekend – the idea had been bubbling under for a century, in campaigns by trade unions, religious groups and progressive employers – but by putting his considerable industrial weight behind it, the two-day chunk of freedom was born." I have not seen a passage more ignorant of the history of class struggle in a long while You know, "the idea was bubbling", wonder why it never got implemented until 1926? Maybe the work day was not always 8 hours too? What a marvel!

223 points by lentil_soup 1mo ago

The lack of understanding about the change in day-to-day life over the last 200 years is truly unfathomable - I fully do not understand it but the little that I appreciate is absurdly profound in the differences It’s like we’re living on an entirely different planet than the people who existed prior to the industrial revolution Bertrand Russell’s grandfather was alive during napoleon’s rule and he speaks about the difference between 1950 and 1900: https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA https://youtu.be/xL_sMXfzzyA

stevecoalbear 1mo ago
It once came up whether my grandmother went to music festivals in her youth. Of course not, she said, they hadn't been invented yet! They didn't have electronic music, because they didn't have electronics. And nobody was playing guitar on stage for 12 hours. You could hold a short small concert in a hall, but you couldn't hold a big rave.
- dd8601fn 1mo ago
  My mom was around when different races couldn’t use the same water fountain and women couldn’t have bank accounts. I used to turn a wheel a bunch of times to call a friend. Her grandkids have never known a world without fortnite on ipads and real life dick tracy watches. It’s a weird world. Makes you wonder how things will look in thirty years.
- tanjtanjtanj 1mo ago
  That's not quite right (other than the electronic part obviously). There were traveling coach shows, dance and performance halls, and at a minimum week-long performance events (religious ones too) before anyone here on earth was alive.
  - nunez 1mo ago
    There were medicine shows in the late 19th and early 20th centuries that drew insane crowds. William Kellogg (of Kellogg's fame) supposedly had legendary crowds.

ksec 1mo ago

Thank you for the submission. I have long wondered if in the old days we had weekend off, and did we just work continuously 365 days? It is not that working 365 days is hard. It is the job in today's world are very different, Muti tasking, context switching and anything but simple even in the lowest rank. This is mentally tiring and I have also wondered if it is a recent thing. My argument is that cutting cost over the past 20 - 30 years meant what used to be a 5 person's job is now a 1 to 2 person job.

readthenotes1 1mo ago
Jewish, Christian, and Islam have a Sabbath. Not sure what anyone else did.
- dboreham 1mo ago
  Not really a day of rest since you have to go to <place of worship>
  - virtue3 1mo ago
    Considering what work looked like in even the 18th century it was indeed rest in comparison.
  - Jensson 1mo ago
    Going to church is equivalent to watching tv, its not work.
    - add-sub-mul-div 1mo ago
      Having to keep up social appearances within an accepted range and suppressing ideas and behavior that conflict with rules imposed by a religious organization does not sound relaxing to me like watching TV does. My white collar labor is less stressful to me than religious strictures would be.
      - 1mo ago

throw0101a 1mo ago

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_Unnatural_Rhythms_That_Made_Us_Who_We_Are 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 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: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seven-day_week

bobthepanda 1mo ago
while the seven day week is arbitrary, it is also worth noting that the French Revolution had experimented with a metric ten day week, which ended up being a total bust because laborers only got one week in ten of rest rather than one in seven.

dboreham 1mo ago

Hence the dowager said "What's a weekend?"

deleted 1mo ago
[deleted]

ant6n 1mo ago

The two-day weekend is a 100 years old. The one-day weekend is ancient.

stevecoalbear 1mo ago

Other things that are surprisingly less than 100 years old include electronic music, Germany, Croatia, capitalism, the end of slavery, worker's rights, fiat currency, central banks, stock markets as more than a niche thing, and so on.

mbil 1mo ago
What year do you think it is
- stevecoalbear 1mo ago
  2026
imjonse 1mo ago
While there was legal slavery in some countries well into the second half of the 20th century, capitalism and workers' rights movements are definitely older than 100 years.
__MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
Didn't the Dutch East India Company go public in 1602? Also, in ancient Rome, coinage with Caesar's face on it was traded above its bullion value. They'd kill 1/10th of your population repeatedly until you agreed to this (such was the origins of the word "decimation"), and then they'd buy their dinner from you with caesar-face coin and move on to the next village tomorrow. Now that you have some caesar-face coin, you have some incentive to continue upholding its inflated value, and the tax collectors will show up later and re-apply threats of violence to ensure that you continue to do so. That sounds like fiat currency to me. Also, the federal reserve was established in 1913. Dude, I'm all for framing the status quo as mutable, but maybe do a bit of research.
- Kon5ole 1mo ago
  >Also, in ancient Rome, coinage with Caesar's face on it was traded above its bullion value. They'd kill 1/10th of your population repeatedly until you agreed to this (such was the origins of the word "decimation") Decimation has it's origin in a military punishment for insubordination or cowardice. Where did you get the fiat currency idea from?

deadbabe 1mo ago

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.

jasonvorhe 1mo ago
And work all 3 weeks? Nah, I'll keep my Friday's off.
- throw1234567891 1mo ago
  Your Fridays.
b112 1mo ago
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.
toasty228 1mo ago
> 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_oQGyAlDJ2-mM86I4FBj2OshqyZmWa8DWkYwBMN9XKr1JY631WLB_ep&s=10 https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQGj_oQ...
- deadbabe 1mo ago
  Do they? With AI agents, I work less, not more. The difference is it's off the books. On paper I seem to work the same but not in practice. I've gone from 40 hour work weeks to maybe 2 or 3 hours a day pushing some prompts. Someday, it might be 2 or 3 hours a week.
  - meibo 1mo ago
    That only works until they realize what's going on. Then you will be expected to output so much that you will have to prompt for 40 hours a week.

nivertech 1mo ago

[flagged]

blitzrk 1mo ago
Anti-Jewish hate should not be welcome here.
- bradrn 1mo ago
  Speaking as a Jew, I don’t read GP as being ‘anti-Jewish hate’ — it seems to be at least vaguely positive in claiming the weekend as a Jewish invention, albeit with very muddled phrasing. (For one thing, Zionism didn’t exist 2000 years ago…)
  - nivertech 1mo ago
    [flagged]
    - bigyabai 1mo ago
      > For them Jews/Israelis/Zionists/Genociders are fully interchangeable synonyms You are the only person here conflating those groups. Cui bono, from this type of brinkmanship?
      - nivertech 1mo ago
        [flagged]
        bigyabai 1mo ago
        It's not wrong to use any of those words. It's just wrong to deliberately conflate them, which I did not do.
- slowin 1mo ago
  It's not anti-Jewish hate, it's actually Zionist propaganda (the claim that Zionism is older than Hertzl).

__MatrixMan__ 1mo ago

Let's celebrate its 100th birthday by moving labor day to Friday! Every Friday.

b40d-48b2-979e 1mo ago
Oh is that not how you're living already?
- __MatrixMan__ 1mo ago
  Oh it is, but the job won't be done until we have solidarity across sectors. I'm looking to shut services off if companies ask too much of their workers.

Despegar 1mo ago

[flagged]

Transformanshen 1mo ago

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?

danangReader 1mo ago
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.
- edoceo 1mo ago
  Just call in sick/PTO. I see that all the time with multi-timezone/country teams. Gotta have a manager/supervisor/CO that has your back though.
MotoriX 1mo ago
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.

andai 1mo ago

“It is not just about rest, but about reclaiming autonomy from the industrial clock.” That phrasing sounds a bit strong for temporary symptom relief.

Gecko4072 1mo ago

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.

huflungdung 1mo ago
[dead]
toasty228 1mo ago
> 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.
- Gecko4072 1mo ago
  Interesting. Do you feel constrained at all? That does sound nice and much more peaceful. I think it’s hard to imagine the change when many have been sold the story of moving to the big city becoming successful, living an exciting life in your 20s, 30s.
  - toasty228 1mo ago
    It really depends on what you want from life. If you value gadgets, convenience, going for an impromptu beer with friends on a thursday evening then it's a net negative. If you value peace, space, slowing down, nature then it's very nice. Less pollution, less noise, etc. I couldn't afford to buy a two bedrooms flat where I lived, now I own a 3 floor house, a garden big enough to feed my family and neighbours during peak season, life is good, can't complain

AtlasBarfed 1mo ago

It, like democracy and world trade, is probably a temporary blip. Once the "elite"realize that drones, AI, and total information awareness provide the tools for complete totalitarian rule, we will pray for 1984

jmyeet 1mo ago

Whenever I hear someone in a privileged job, such as a software engineer, complain about unions or collective bargaining or in fact any form of collectivism, I have to suppress my rage because every concession to the working class, such as weekends, safety standards, overtime pay, PTO, sick leave and so on was paid for in blood by your forebears. The biggest changes came shortly after Henry Ford conceded the weekend when the ultra-wealthy wrecked the economy (ie the Great Depression) and FDR was elected and, despite being a capitalist, realized he needed to address the very real issues to stave off the perceived threat of Communism. That's where Social Security, the right to join a union and a bunch of other things came from. There was even an attempted coup by the wealthy to avoid all this (ie the Business Plot [1]). After WW2, the US (in particular) saw this as an opportunity to claw back these concessions. The Soviet Union became the Great Enemy. Former Naxis were recruited to fight Communism, both inside and outside the US. NASA, the FBI, the CIA, NATO, etc all filled with former Nazis despite their "morale lapses" [2] under the Third Reich. Domestically, we got the Red Scare and McCarthyism. This really went into overdrive in the 1980s when Baby Boomers, whose fears of crime were fuelled by intentional propaganda as well as CIA efforts such as the crack epidemic, voted for Reagan in record numbers. Reagan won 49 states in 1984 (all but Wyoming). One of the things I respect about Mad Men is how it pointed to the rising cult around Ayn Rand in the 1960s [3]. The 1950s, that tends to be romanticizied by so many hyper-individualists and right-wingers, had a top marginal tax rate of 91% and the CEO to median pay gap hadn't exploded yet [4]. By the way, that idea that CEOs were underpaid came from the Patton studies at McKinsey in this time [5]. My point is that this hyper-individualism is entirely manufactured by decades of spending to undermine any form of collectivism. And as a privileged worker, you owe those less fortunate to you some form of solidarity. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot [2]: https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/28/during-cold-war-cia-fbi-hired-over-1000-nazis-as-spies-limited-investigations-those-nazis/ https://www.techdirt.com/2014/10/28/during-cold-war-cia-fbi-... [3]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKX8C6qKuac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKX8C6qKuac [4]: https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1na8fww/the_typical_ceo_makes_about_400x_the_salary_of/ https://www.reddit.com/r/charts/comments/1na8fww/the_typical... [5]: https://ritholtz.com/2013/08/is-mckinsey-to-blame-for-skyrocketing-ceo-pay/ https://ritholtz.com/2013/08/is-mckinsey-to-blame-for-skyroc...

1mo ago

gedy 1mo ago

No, he's 36. /s

Invictus0 1mo ago

does the guardian ever actually write anything worth reading?

heikkilevanto 1mo ago

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?"

zeroonetwothree 1mo ago
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.

Almondsetat 1mo ago

A surprising amount of apparently long standing traditions are actually anglo-adjacent inventions from the last 150 years

weaksauce 1mo ago
it wasn't much more than 50 years ago before being able to go to the ER to be saved in an emergency in the us was a right without having to show proof of payment/insurance. a lot of what we take for granted are very recent things.
- ViktorRay 1mo ago
  Also the American Board of Medical Specialties didn’t officially approve Emergency Medicine as its own speciality until 1979. Emergency Medicine is a fairly new speciality. Many people are surprised by this but it’s true.

colsandurz 1mo ago

Can I have a 4 day work week?

angrydev 1mo ago

If you enjoy learning about the history of labor and free time, I highly recommend the book Free Time by Gary Cross.

hamper653 1mo ago

We should have a 5-days week: A, B, C, D, E. Weekend would be E and A. 12 months of 6 weeks each, except "February" with an extra week. A would always the 1st, 6th, 11th, 16th, 21st, 26th or 31st (in "February"). B would always be the 2nd, 7th, etc. Leap years would have a day F inserted between E and A at the end of "February" (of which it would be the 36th), keeping this new calendar consistent with the current one.

vander_elst 1mo ago
Very curious to understand the thinking behind this, why should the weekend be E and A? My first approach would be to have the weekend on D and E which would seem to be the end of the week.
- edoceo 1mo ago
  Right. WeekEND. It's the end of the week. Not one day at the start and one at the end. It's why, currently, the week starts on Monday.
  - ars 1mo ago
    In Hebrew Sunday doesn't have a name, it's simply called "Day one", this is also true in Portuguese, Arabic, Greek, Chinese, Vietnamese, and others. So no, the week does not start on Monday, it starts on Sunday. The name "Weekend" came long long long after Sunday was considered the first day of the week.
    - edoceo 1mo ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date ISO says Monday
      - bentley 1mo ago
        That’s a late 20th century invention, and not universally followed. Consider Unix time functions, which predate the ISO standard and follow what’s common practice in America even today, that Sunday is the first day of the week. Of course, Sunday was the first day of the week in Europe for over a thousand years and that practice has not fully been extinguished.

unselect5917 1mo ago

The 7 day week is completely artificial. Days exist, defined by the rotation of the Earth. Months exist, defined by the orbit of the moon. Seasons exist, defined by the solstices and equinoxes. Years exist, defined by the orbit of the Earth. Pretty much everything else is an invention of man.

debo_ 1mo ago
May I refer you to timecube? https://www.timecube.net/ https://www.timecube.net/
a3w 1mo ago
If we are being even more pedantically correct about this: 1. The statement about months is kinda wrong. Solar months just happen because of the earths orbit around the sun, too, and the division by 12 is how many knuckles you can count on one hand by using your thumb. Moon months exist, and there are 13 of them, from January to Undecember [Footnote: 1], or whatever you want to call them. But by happenstance if we talk about having a moon-month, we will probably be in a culture that uses a calendar that does not have a two-day weekend. 2. Seasons could be argued to be more complex than just sun-based on fixed yearly cycle. Whether four seasons for everyday life exist seems to depend on latitude, and is a bit counter-intuitive at the equator: Based on solstices you would expect warm/cold/warm/cold, so twice as many seasons, per year, not half that many. Yet Quito or other cities seem to have rain dependent on yearly circulation effects, but constant temperatures. El Niño/La Niña would probably have at least as much of an effect and are of course not on strictest schedules in such areas, and perhaps make more sense for crop or disaster planning than solar years might. But Southern Hemisphere does not use a reverse "Christmas is in summer" calendar[2] --------------- Footnotes: 1: 11th month by name, but some Pope's birthdays reforms happened until we ended up with February at 28 days and no spring's start is the new year, etc. 2: Even if that was Christmas before the popes changed it and/or Christians like to feast when heathens brethren/converts did, simultaneously. And historically more plausible for a time of travel to do a census.
- unselect5917 1mo ago
  >The statement about months is kinda wrong. No it isn't. >Moon months exist, and there are 13 of them I said the months are defined by the moon. You said it was wrong, then agreed with me. Note that I never said there are 12 months. I said: >Months exist, defined by the orbit of the moon. >1: 11th month by name, but some Pope's birthdays reforms happened until we ended up with February at 28 days and no spring's start is the new year, etc. This refers to calendars, which are an inventions by man. >2: Even if that was Christmas before the popes changed it and/or Christians like to feast when heathens brethren/converts did, simultaneously. And historically more plausible for a time of travel to do a census. This is more calendar stuff. I'm not talking about calendars, but periods defined in nature by things that exist independent of mankind. The ones I listed are all very clearly defined by mostly celestial events. Weeks are an arbitrary invention and so are calendars.

debo_ 1mo ago

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_underarm_hair_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_removal_of_leg_and_... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engagement_ring [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_cup

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 1mo ago
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.
- debo_ 1mo ago
  From what I recall of pre-Nubian ancient Egypt, Egyptians also bathed by coating themselves in oil and then scraping it off.

ndsipa_pomu 1mo ago

We should just switch to the only calendar that makes sense: 5 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) 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 Discordia

grayclhn 1mo ago
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.

beredon 1mo ago

[dead]

mikhailfranco 1mo ago

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.

blini-kot 1mo ago

"Ford did not invent the weekend – the idea had been bubbling under for a century, in campaigns by trade unions, religious groups and progressive employers – but by putting his considerable industrial weight behind it, the two-day chunk of freedom was born." I have not seen a passage more ignorant of the history of class struggle in a long while You know, "the idea was bubbling", wonder why it never got implemented until 1926? Maybe the work day was not always 8 hours too? What a marvel!