New ask Hacker News story: Ask HN: Is the cultural practice of the weekend even necessary?

Ask HN: Is the cultural practice of the weekend even necessary?
3 by sph | 7 comments on Hacker News.
These days companies and people are discovering that more working hours does not equal more productivity, and in fact fewer hours might even create more work, along with better worker satisfaction. But apparently no one has stopped to analyse this paradoxical result. Because no system whatsoever creates more work the less it operates. So how do people break physics? The hilariously obvious reason people are more productive with fewer hours is because of sleep. Every 24 hours we start afresh and hopefully rested. Every 24 hours we top up in caffeine, affection, calories, and get a few more chores out of the way. So it makes no logical sense to cram as many hours of work in a single day if you can leverage the restful effects of sleep and having a circadian cycle. Taking this idea to its extreme, why do we even have weekends? Why do we cram all our creative efforts in 5 days and hope that we recover over two of them? This is not how our body works. I posit it's just a concept borne from modern employment structure and the Judeo-Christian idea of the Sabbath and Sunday, not an actual physiological need. I know many of you with families or salaried employment have good reasons why you might want to have some time for yourself over those two days but, assuming you are working for yourself and are free from the strict rules imposed by an employer, my question is: Would it not make more sense to spread your work over the full week, and have more free time for everything else every single day, rather than fit work into 5 days a week and then fit all your hobby and family time into the remaining two days? Would it not make more sense to work 8-1 every day, have time for your hobbies, the shopping and quality time with loved ones, than 8-4 (with 1h lunch break) Monday to Friday? Would one not prefer having one hour for their favourite hobby every day rather than binging on it only on weekends? Any search result for "work a little every day" or "work 7 days a week" is totally useless to explore this idea further.