The work week is a contextual joke

I’ve written about the standard western world work week a few dozen times by this point. I’ll sprinkle some of those links later on in this post.

Here’s the basic deal with the work week: it makes absolutely no sense. In July 2016, about 125.51 million people in the United States were employed on a full-time basis. There is no way for 125.51 million people to all be the same. Some will be smart, some dumb. Others will be very good at their jobs, and many will be middling. A few can complete tasks quickly without error, and others rush and do everything wrong. People are different. We’re all unique somehow. Give me a trophy. I’m a millennial! (That was a joke, by the way.)

Because you’ve got 125.51 million people chasing the cheddar full-time — and that’s just U.S. — you need to think real seriously about how the work week is organized. Let’s do a little bit of that now.

How did we get here on the 40-hour work week?

There are a bunch of different factors that created our current understanding of the work week. Most of the whole deal is attributed to Henry Ford. In fact:

Eight-hour days became rallying cries in the latter half of the 19th century, as workers in the building trades and similar industries marched together for better conditions. The Ford…