Who Decided the Week?

The strange origins of our schedule, and why it doesn’t fit real life

Hello, how are you today? I hope this finds you well, and Happy Friday to you. Though I’ll admit, I began writing this early this morning and knowing how these things go, we’re probably going to be closer to Saturday by the time I press send. Never mind.

If you’d like to listen, rather than read, today’s Daily Ramble, you can click below:

Sometimes, it matters that it’s Friday, doesn’t it? Maybe when we’ve got a weekend off or have plans ahead and get that sense of rest and relief, a little dopamine hit of anticipation. And other times, when things are tricky or downright impossible or we don’t feel we have any idea of what’s coming next, it really doesn’t matter what day of the week it is. Every hour feels interminable, every day a painful slog.

I’ve been considering the constraints of the 5 day week through the lens of burnout and whether containers of expectation and time can be a helpful remedy. Who knows why, but welcome to my brain! More on that in another Ramble (the 5 day work week and burnout, not my brain!)

But it got me thinking about time and how we perceive it.

Unlike some cycles designed to maximise light or conditions, the 5 day week doesn’t make sense. It’s not like Monday itself is a better day for starting something than Thursday, or that you couldn’t rest on Tuesday. The constructs around time influence how we see it and can often direct our lives. But when we can’t comply with the expected norms, it can lead us to wonder if they actually tally up at all.

Before the 5 day work week was conceived, there was another standardisation - of time itself, the actual telling of the time. Before this, time was local and fluid. There was no hard and fast on what o’clock it was, except for the placement of the sun. The sun was the clock. When it was highest in the sky, that was noon - but that depended on where you were. Each village was a few minutes ahead or behind the other, depending on the position of the sun. But in many ways, it didn’t matter because work began at sunrise and ended at dusk. Noon was a handy pause in a day of service and it didn’t matter if it was 7 minutes fast or slow, because it made sense to the people you were with. There was an innate acceptance of the pace (although I do wonder if Mary in one village moaned constantly about Elizabeth in another for always being late…)

Standardised time came when the railways were laid in the 19th century. You couldn’t have multiple Noons when there was a departure at stake. So, Sir Sandford Fleming (such an epic name! I can almost reach back in time and twist his moustache! ) who was a Canadian railway planner and engineer came up with a plan for worldwide standard time and, in 1884, delegates from 27 countries met in Washington D.C. and agreed on a system pretty much the same as the one we use today.

Following that standardisation and with the advent of the industrial revolution, the days worked shifted too. Industrialised factories demanded long, gruelling hours, often 6 days a week of 10 to16 hours a day.

In the USA, Jewish factory workers who observed Saturday as their Sabbath clashed with the Christian tradition of Sunday rest so employers began experimenting with the idea of a two-day break. In 1926, Henry Ford introduced the 5-day, 40-hour week for his workers. While this may seem like a kind compromise, it was also because he believed more leisure would increase consumerism because people would have more time to buy things. The U.S. Labor Law (1938): The Fair Labor Standards Act made the 40-hour, 5-day week the standard. And how we delineated time, our week, and our focus was mandated. Five days on. Two days off. Repeat. Forever.

Unlike using the sun to tell the time, the 5 day work week was never a sacred rhythm or something that served the lives of the people and their environment. It was a strategy and a structure designed by factories and financiers. It was based on control, coordination, and commerce - and yet we shape our entire lives around it. We measure our productivity, our worth, our rest, and even our connection and parenting around a clock that was never designed for us. It does lead me to ask what else have we inherited without questioning?

But just because something was built without us in mind doesn’t mean we can’t live differently within it or beside it. Because while we may not be able to burn the calendar or opt out of every demand, we can begin to notice what doesn’t serve us. We can resist the urge to force ourselves into rhythms that betray our reality, our capacity and our needs, especially when they don’t serve the ultimate that we serve: our family.

We can ask: Is this way of being sustainable? Is this helpful?

Why am I complying with this? And what happens when I don’t?

And beliefs about standardised time and working patterns can challenge us back - “but this is how we do things for the benefit of all”. But if it is at our expense, not everyone is benefitting.

But maybe, it's not about revolution, but evolution. Maybe it’s about escaping the unconscious compliance with the structure, and softening our expectations. Could we allow a little space in?

A pause at noon wherever the sun is in the sky - because we need it, not because the clock says so.
A Tuesday morning that begins slowly. A Wednesday where we don’t allow autopilot to rule the day. A Friday where rest isn’t a reward but a right.

And, no, a week like that may not look “productive.” But that isn’t actually the goal.
Maybe this week you’ve kept someone safe, even saved their life.
Maybe you’ve made space for silence and been able to make a choice.
Maybe you’ve unlearned something or simply stayed when you wanted to run.

They’re our new kind of productive. Compassionate, connected, and immeasurable.

So perhaps, it’s time to stop measuring life by the same clocks that were never set for us or the challenges and experiences we face. Because when we meet adversity, or grief walks beside us, or healing asks for more understanding than the world has time for, it’s important to remember that we don’t live inside a 5-day week, because that was set up to serve a different time and a specific outcome. And it doesn’t necessarily serve us.

The standards set back in the day are still being used to define us as humans. And despite the adversity, the challenge, the harsh reality and the fear of different, we get a say in how we are defined. We can forego the 5 day 'Pretend Productivity Week’ and create a cadence for ourselves and our souls that embraces what we need, even if it’s in bitesized chunks of change. Because it’s generally not a wholesale change we make, it’s a moment of choice that leads to a threshold of something different.

I’ll leave you today with some questions to ponder…

What if your time looked different?

If you designed time from scratch - what would your week look like?

If you didn’t know what day it was today… how would you spend it?

What does your body’s rhythm ask of you that your calendar doesn’t allow?

And as I finish writing this, a song called Golden Hour by Kacey Musgraves has come on to the John Mayer radio on Spotify. Maybe what she is warbling so beautifully about is in part what I’ve been trying to wrestle with in today’s Ramble - that we all have space for a ‘golden hour.’

What might a golden hour look like to you today or tomorrow or the next day? What might you fill it with? What does it make you feel?

I’ll be replying to comments over the weekend so I’d love to read your thoughts. Thanks for being here and I hope you find your own Golden Hour this weekend.

I’ll be back on Monday with another Daily Ramble.