Friday's Fret - 5 day work week

fret

  [fret] (noun): an irritated state of mind; annoyance; vexation.

Friday's Frets are my little rants about something that annoys me, most often without reason. We all have them, those little peeves that you may or may not notice.

WHY? 

Why do we work 5 days and only leave 2 days for family, relaxation and ME? 

Why have we allowed this to become the standard?

Have you stopped to analyze how you spend your life?  

Let's take my life as example.

I'm a working mom, not that this applies to working moms anymore than anyone else. An average week for me is as follows.  

Monday thru Friday, I spend the majority of my day at my 8-5 day job, which I am happy to have to support my family.  The remainder of the other daytime hours are spent preparing myself and my kids for the work/school 8-5 hours. So in summary Monday thru Friday are consumed with work and school.

The bulk of Saturday is devoted to maintaining a household.  This includes cleaning, laundry, yard work and shopping.  I try to steal a few hours in the late evening to catch my breath.

Sundays - Sundays are the good days, church and maybe a few catch-up chores but on Sundays I enjoy my family.

Anyone else see the problem with this schedule. Too much of my life is monopolized with a day job. 

How would I propose we remedy this problem?

I would suggest small steps.  First, let's change the standard from a 5 day work week to a 4 day work week.  We can still give 40 hours, we just change the schedule. The work week becomes Monday thru Thursday 7-5:30, cut lunch breaks by 30 minutes and add an hour in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening, or vice-versa.  Then you are working 10 hour days but you gain an entire day for yourself.

This should apply to our children in school as well. I could easily get into a totally different "fret" on the working of our current school system here in the US...I'll save that for another day.

I wish I could develop a good plan to push this movement forward.  Maybe my fellow bloggers as you develop businesses and begin to hire employees you can be mindful of the 4 day work week, rested minds are much more creative.

I would love to hear your suggestions and opinions on this subject. Do you think a 4 day work week could be just as productive as a 5 day week?  Or maybe you have a better idea?