The weekend

Ever thought about what it means? The end of the week, what is “a week”?

It’s not real… the way a day is real: a single spin of our planet or the way a year is real. One lap
of the earth around the sun. The week is a symbol of fixedness. A brute fact. But it shouldn’t
be like that at all! Because the week was invented by us and different cultures made different
weeks. The egypciants had a 10 day week, the Aztecs 13 days, Romans eight five (?) day
working week. That was invented just 75 years ago because people demanded more time for
themselves. Recent times have forced our ingrained work culture to adapt. Should we just go
back to the way it was?

Say office workers went in for four, worked one from home wouldn’t be less productivity. It’s
the opposite! Research shows remote workers put in 1. 4 extra days a month, three more
weeks of work every year. Then there´s the effect of life quality or take home pay. What if we
make the week cheaper? American adults spend up 5.000 dollars per year on work travel. A
day working from home puts a fifth of that back on their wallets. And when they commute it
will be on a less congested road or a quieter train. But why stop changing habits when we
could change the week?

What if its time the word week mean four days? The state of Utah tried it for 10 months. The
project saved 1.8 million dollars in energy bills and 6000 tons of CO2 emitions.

Take a breath, picture the impact on cities, Los Angeles with vastly less workday traffic, the sky
a little bluer,. And those aren’t the only benefits. The Harvard bussines review surveyed
companies with workers on fourdays , they found improved employee satisfaction , reduced
employees sickness and savings of over 160 billion dolars. It starts to sound like a better world.
And it is.

GDP per capital in the nethrlands is higher than in Germany, Australia or Japan, yet the
average weekly work time there is just 29 hours, the lowest of any industrialized country,
proving that more hours doesn’t always mean more productivity .

We are unique individuals, a one size fits all systems goes against that the five day work week
is just a recent cultural construct . Time is what we make it and we’re only just realizing what
we can do. Let’s change the week!

Read this and compare:

https://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/business-english/business-magazine/flexible-working