Maybe You Just Need To Take a Nap Right Now
We work (almost) more than ever before. It’s time to take it easy.
It’s been less than 100 years since Henry Ford, founder of Ford Motor Company, famously instituted an eight-hour-a-day, five-day workweek — the 9–5 model — for his assembly line workers.
This was actually a groundbreaking change at the time.
After all, following the Industrial Revolution, workers in manufacturing often worked a six-day week for a total of 60 to 90 hours. It wasn’t until labour union groups started advocating for better working conditions around the mid-19th century that things began to change, slowly.
But with the introduction of the 9-to-5 working day by Ford — which wasn’t exactly driven by concern for the wellbeing of his workers, as it’s sometimes assumed — more large companies picked it up and, well, here we are today.
To some, the conclusion of that story is that we should be grateful for our current 40-hour workweeks and accept them as a pretty sweet deal by historical standards. We aren’t working 14 or 16-hour workdays and falling into whirring machines of heavy industry because of sheer exhaustion anymore, so what else could possibly be there to complain about?
