Real Reason of the forty-hour workweek

Day 358 / 365

Sometimes these blogs are about some interesting concepts that I learned on a day or some personal insight. But sometimes it’s just about a single moment of realization that I might have had. Today’s blog is another little one of the latter kind.

I was reading this post on Reddit titled “Your lifestyle has already been decided for you”. The point of it was that, why is it that companies insist on 8-hour workdays? You would say that they want some structure, and they want to get as much work as possible from their employees. But what if there was another reason?

Why is it that people in cities like Mumbai would happily pay more money for cabs, while people in smaller cities would much prefer just to walk to places. After having a tiring day at work, you want to waste as little energy as possible, physically or mentally. Which is why you go with the comfortable, be it more expensive, way.

This might be the reason why corporates would love to promote a 40-hour workweek culture. It keeps people’s free time scarce so that they would spend more on comforts, which in turn would profit the big corporates!

“We buy things we don’t need, with money we don’t have, to impress people we don’t like!”

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — There’s always another way