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xiaoyu2006today at 1:47 AM4 repliesview on HN

Human had all the industrialization and stuff, yet we work 5 days / week now.


Replies

polisaeztoday at 3:42 AM

I was looking for facts to disprove your point, but it seems we actually work more than our ancestors.

Medieval folks and hunter-gatherers had plenty of time off. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that we started extending our workweek.

Here's a nice summary of how the workweek looked like, from the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rf0lb/comme...

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hellojeanpierretoday at 7:21 AM

We worked 6 days a week before, Germany got to 5 days only in 1967 after years of strikes.

dyauspitrtoday at 2:22 AM

People waited around a lot before, and since the baseline speed for everything was slower, no one had an edge. Now everything is fast and instantaneous and that’s available to everyone. It’s part of the reason why our lives are so stressful now. I remember my parents working and their work had significantly less stress on a day-to-day basis. Everything was at a nice relaxed human pace. They would be responsible for one excel sheet’s worth of work per week, which we can now do in an hour or two.

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krapptoday at 1:50 AM

People work 5 days a week because of protracted violent strikes by unions and socialist revolutionaries forcing governments to recognize labor rights. Prior to that the norm was working 7 days a week, sunup to sundown, with only Christmas off, from adolescence until you died.

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