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Time is an arbitrary concept in most developed nations.
For some people, 8 hours can feel like minutes, wizzing by to generous helpings of caffeine throughout the day.
For others, 8 hours can feel like weeks of boring work everyday with just a bitter coffee at the 4 hour mark, an unpaid hour that makes the work schedule last 9 hours instead of 8. Plus the commute in each direction to work.
While the spin of the Earth orbiting around the sun measures an Earth day, and is rather unarbitrary. The perception of how much time has passed varies from person to person. Therefore, time is arbitrary in most developed nations.
Perceptions and context of time aren't limited to only hours or days. Months, years, intervals and spans can have different meaning and significance that varies by culture, geography, society, and civilizations.
Some people have careers that last very many years. They can take as long as 16 to 85 to complete with a wishlist of things to do on the last day of work before retirement. For others, a career like this, is a never ending job role, that can probably be done by a computer or robot.
A career might be closer to 5-6 years including job training for many people, and a college degree like a bachelor degree might take 6 months to 2 years to complete depending on quality and availability of peer review.
Currently, the US has made many changes to its workplaces, academics, housing requirements, and monetary policy to address perceptions of time. Many job training programs now last 6 months, a second bachelor or a masters degree can be completed in 1 to 1.6 years. People are also encouraged to switch employers or even completely change industries and job roles every 2-3 years or 5-6 years.
People that are working and paying taxes today don't like the long, drawn out policies of just a few years ago. It shows in the economy when those policies are retried for a renewed interest and vote.
A modern work schedule with work life balance looks like this:
With older policy makers, who are now 60 to 90 years old and transitioning the government to 25 to 40 year olds as a permanent policy, the time commitments required to gain basic neccesities were based on the following:
This led to national policies like the 40 hour work week, the 30 year mortgage, and recruitment efforts through television shows based on cool looking detective work.
Realistically, the statistics show that humans need the following approximate time schedule to function normally:
This creates atmospheres with more mental health stability than environments with:
This most often leads to dysfunctional brain activity in large geographic areas.
Many of the observations, experiments, results, and findings were obtained through consensual examination and evaluation of context to traditional long term living conditions. Some archives containing historical data several hundred years old.
Currently, there is a lot of effort to make life on Earth sustainable long term for the majority of humans. This requires building an awareness of healthy living conditions and humane work environments for humans in developed nations, in addition to following policy for humans that have been set by a majority vote.
This means 30 hour work weeks are the goal, with 60 days time off, and a process to switch jobs that does not punish people for doing something else instead.
Many people have already gone beyond that with their economies to 15-25 hour work weeks that pay for a 1 bedroom apartment with rent, food, and utilities. A 25 to 35 hour work week pays for more amenities and expenses, and provides 5 hours of overtime pay in addition to the 60 days time off. This leaves more time for activities outside of work and allows a transition to shorter work weeks if desired.
Time can be perceived differently by various groups of people, its important to get a fair representation of various time perceptions so that workplaces and the economies are representative of different lifestyles, abilities, requirements, and desirements. Workplace requirements are ongoing conversations that usually start with a grievance or an improvement request. This then gets converted to a proposal for vote on a periodic basis like quarterly, semi-annually, or yearly.
Besides work, the time spent in relaxation varies from person to person. For some people its 15 to 20 minutes every few hours and a long restful sleep. For others, its 4-6 hours every day playing video games or streaming content with no other distractions. Very few people can function for a prolonged period of time like 10 years, 20 years, or 40 years with only 1-2 hours a day to themselves and most of the weekends filled up with activities for other people.
All of this requires time management which goes well with a budget. Many people have budgets for their activities, time with family, gifts, and equipment they may need to have fun. This is in addition to a time schedule for when they are not at work or school that may include things like phone calls, television, radio with no distractions, notes, drawing, writing, visiting people, and fun activities.
With only 24 hours in a day, and 30 days per month. People make personal schedules that go out 3-5 years. They may spend a season watching a broadcast show, and the winter learning a new style or reading up on an activity they may want to try. Then they may estimate a concert for a summer, a different summer watching sports game, a winter to hibernate, maybe more than one, and some time to search for a new job or find a different school program.
These short cycles last much longer than a few days to a few weeks, and its not necessary to try to do everything all at once or be the first person to try something new. A lot of times, things will still be there for several years.
Making a good time schedule is important because people need to be rested, alert, interested, and curious before trying to be successful at a new activity.