“4, 5, or 0? You Tell Me!”

Are you living to work or working to live?

Picture this — your typical Sunday evening. Whatcha doin’? What do those evenings look like for you?

For me, they usually look like cooking dinner for the upcoming week and planning my workout days. The workouts I’ll have to get in during the wee early morning hours before I have to make it into the office.

And for many people they look like mentally preparing for the upcoming work week. The previous Friday they got off of work at 5pm, maybe 4:30pm if their superiors were feeling generous. Or maybe even 6pm because they had a deadline to meet. Some people may hit an office happy hour. But during that happy hour their mind isn’t on the present moment or the current Jack and Diet they’re sipping (yes that’s one of my go-tos). Their minds are on the dinner they have to get home to make, and then the workout they have to wake up to do Saturday morning, followed by laundry and grocery shopping. Might catch a movie, or may allow Netflix to watch us on the couch Saturday night. Wake up Sunday. Church. Check emails. Cook. Set alarm for 6am Monday. And there we have it — we’re already into another work week. (Oh and don’t forget about the after-work extracurriculars we may be required to be present at. Or the activities and sports our children are involved in on the weekends!)

Don’t get it twisted, when Sunday comes, I am also thinking about the upcoming work week. I can also think about how I didn’t accomplish what I wanted to that weekend. How I didn’t get to sit poolside with my friends and have a careless afternoon under the sun. Or how I traded sitting 2 hours in the barbershop for a 2-hour nap because I was exhausted from the previous 5-day work week.

5-day work weeks. What are those about anyway?! Where did they come from? Where did the minimum 40-hour workweek come from?? I literally have NO IDEA. So where do I turn? Well, Google of course:

In 1908, the first five-day workweek in the United States was instituted by a New England cotton mill so that Jewish workers would not have to work on the Sabbath from sundown Friday to sundown Saturday. In 1926, Henry Ford began shutting down his automotive factories for all of Saturday and Sunday.

Trusty Wikipedia

Many people know that the 9 to 5 workday was actually introduced by the Ford Motor Company back in the 1920s, and became standardized by the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938 as a way of trying to curb the exploitation of factory workers.

Best Life Online

In 1940, the 40 hour work week ultimately became a law in the US. The entire concept of a 40 hour work week revolved around reducing the working hours. The revolution forced employers to think beyond the hours on paper and look into the amount of work that is being done. Lesser number of hours led to rested and healthy employees, further increasing productivity.

AttendanceBot, emphasis added.

What are your thoughts on a 5-day work week? What are your thoughts on having to work a minimum of 40 hours a week? Is that mainly a thing in America these days??

I think a lot of us Americans who are working the traditional 9-5 or something similar feel that we can be as productive in 4 days a week or even 6-7 hours a day. And that’s how I feel. Some days I put in more effort and am more productive when I am in court and having to accomplish something or submit something by a specific deadline. But if I’m not in court, and I am in the office, I can think back on days where I probably did about 4 hours of “true work” and the remainder of the day I was sitting at my desk, scrolling on my phone, chatting with co-workers, or just ready to be in “response mode” if my phone rang or I received an email.

It’s expected for us to be “at work” from 9am to 5pm Monday through Friday. Some professions like medical, education, or construction have different hours of operation, but yet they still clock about 40 hours a week. Maybe it comes from how long we were required to be in school growing up?? Unsure.

I know we don’t always think of anything positive when we think about the pandemic, but I will say that the pandemic has shown some organizations, as well as workers, that our work can be done just as effectively at home in our sweatpants as it can be sitting dressed in the office. When we work from home, it offers the workers more flexibility. Some workers are more productive, effective, and efficient (not me lol). Some of them feel they have more creative freedom working from home and *here’s a biggy* they are free from the unnecessary micromanagement! Not every profession can thrive when their workers work from home, but if the pandemic forced us to realize that some can…why isn’t that becoming more of the “norm?”

Some of yall already know that I chose to take a month off from work. Taking time off was necessary for me, but I confess that I didn’t need a full month off. This was a lesson I needed to learn that I need to utilize my PTO throughout the year, even if it’s a day off from work each month. Nothing extravagant. But again, that leads me back to — why do we feel we are working too much? Why is it expected that we be present and at work for 40+ hours a week, when we are feeling drained or just need a second to breathe? Or a second to watch a movie with our family? I can only speak from my experience, and I have no kids and no spouse. Just imagine this post being written by someone who does have kids/spouse/a family to tend to when they get home from work?!

I’ll end this post with a thought from a friend. I asked him what his thoughts were on 5-day work weeks. He said one of these two options should occur:

1. Mondays should be a preparation day for the rest of the week, or
2. Fridays should always be a half day becase there’s no reason for us to work a full day on Friday.

Thoughts??

Are you living to work or working to live? I am striving to work to LIVE!

“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord your God. In it you shall do no work: you, nor your son, nor your daughter, nor your male servant, nor your female servant, nor your cattle, nor your stranger who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore, the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.” — Exodus 20:8-11, NKJV.

Moni Jay, Off the Record