Rethinking the Weekend

Could redesigning our work week result in better lives for all?

Google Maps said four hours. Four hours was how long the drive from Virginia City, Nevada to San Francisco was supposed to be, the day after July Fourth, 2010. Nine hours later, we pulled into San Francisco, extremely frustrated after spending the entire day in stop-and-go traffic. This happened because other holiday travelers wanted to do the same thing, at the same time an effect of many of us trying to travel on the same days of the week.

There are other ways the structure of our week causes us grief: rush-hour traffic five hours a day, even for the people not driving to or from work; fully-reserved picnic spots in Golden Gate Park months in advance; full campgrounds on weekends that are mostly empty during the week.

These problems are not limited to just the West: rush hour is universal.

Doing the same thing at the same time limits our flexibility to do the things we want, when we want to.

For example, many of us must work from nine to five, Monday through Friday. Plenty more of us work these same days but at different hours of the day, and then the vast majority of us take the weekends off.

What if we totally started from scratch and redesigned our week? No more cases-of-the-Mondays. No more griping about our jobs or saying things like Thank God It’s Friday.

What if, instead of five on, two off, five on, two off… we worked three on, one off, three on, three off? Everyone loves three day weekends! Let’s have more of those. Let’s also have fewer people burned out from not sleeping enough during the week after four days of work. Let’s have fewer people distracted from work on that fifth and final Friday of work, and have three days as the maximum number of days until we get to rest, leaving us refreshed and focused when we return.

Here is another way we could redesign our week: have three more-or-less mandatory work days. Put the meetings and conferences in there. And then, for the remaining four days of the week, we can all take off when we want to; we can work when we want, hopefully from where we want, because that’s possible now. We can get the thoughtful, creative work done on our own without interruptions from our co-workers, and without spending an hour each day commuting. And best of all, we would have twice as many days to choose from for travel, doctors appointments and fun (because at least twice as many because some could choose days other than Monday-Wednesday as their mandatory work days). That’s half as many people struggling to get to work on Thursdays and Fridays.

I know, the thought of potentially working on Saturdays or Sundays is frightening. But we’d get used to it; and after a few years, we’d all be wondering how we ever worked the old way.

If we made changes like these, we would have twice as much space. Everywhere, for everyone. People could still choose to go to church on Sunday, or sit in the dark — or the light on Saturdays — two of the original reasons our weekends are the way they are.

The world would be a better place.