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I was looking for facts to disprove your point, but it seems we actually work more than our ancestors.

Medieval folks and hunter-gatherers had plenty of time off. It wasn't until the industrial revolution that we started extending our workweek.

Here's a nice summary of how the workweek looked like, from the AskHistorians subreddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/1rf0lb/comme...

I think the FIRE movement is a response to how absurd this is, but it feels kind of wrong that you have to front load all of the saving for your whole life in the first 30 years.

I'd love to work 3 days a week now and be paid a livable amount, rather than grind 5 days a week, getting paid more than I need so I can retire fast. But tech companies don't want you for 3 days a week, its 5 or nothing for most of them.

Well many places allow you to do 80% time (at least in the UK)... but you get 80% pay, 80% bonus, 80% holiday accrual etc too.

And from experience it seems that 80% people need to try damn hard to actually keep it at 80% and not get sucked into doing more to "keep up".

IDK about UK but in Germany it’s the law that employees can request 80% work at 80% pay and can’t be denied except for significant operational reasons and such.

As you said, it can be a double edged sword to be the 80% worker in the otherwise 100% team.

> it seems we actually work more than our ancestors.

Only if you count the hours worked for the local lord and forget about all other mandatory work like:

- growing your own food

- cooking/prepping said food (44 hours per week)

- maintenance

- spinning, weaving and sewing clothes

https://acoup.blog/2025/09/05/collections-life-work-death-an...

https://acoup.blog/2025/10/10/collections-life-work-death-an...

I get your point, but people still have chores to do today. Ultimately, there is a big difference between doing work for yourself, and doing work for someone else for a wage.

In one instance you keep the value you are creating, in the other it goes to your employer.

Given the choice between the two I would much prefer to work for myself, as a matter of dignity.

I don't think this is an accurate picture for a number of reasons, first and foremost that these people regularly died from trivially preventable reasons. That luxury today takes a lot of effort from a lot of people.

I'm pretty sure most of white collar HN crowd isn't being ground into dust. It'd be cool to work less though!

Well yeah we didn’t have antibiotics and other knowledge we have now. But that doesn’t change the fact people worked less in the past.
But we have iPhone.
People waited around a lot before, and since the baseline speed for everything was slower, no one had an edge. Now everything is fast and instantaneous and that’s available to everyone. It’s part of the reason why our lives are so stressful now. I remember my parents working and their work had significantly less stress on a day-to-day basis. Everything was at a nice relaxed human pace. They would be responsible for one excel sheet’s worth of work per week, which we can now do in an hour or two.
Environment doesn't impose stress on us. Our reaction to it does. Learn to control that response, can use it to your advantage when you choose to let it in.
I’m pretty certain there are physiological limits that you can’t just muscle through and stress _can_ be an indicator that you’re reaching said limits.
Yeah, didn't mean it as just need to "muscle through". Just sharing the framing that has helped me.
There are certainly some environments that do. The data is clear that things like loud traffic noise increases stress.
That’s all well and good, but I kind of live for things outside of my career (even though I have a good one).
We worked 6 days a week before, Germany got to 5 days only in 1967 after years of strikes.
Is there any English source for more information about the years of strikes you mentioned?
People work 5 days a week because of protracted violent strikes by unions and socialist revolutionaries forcing governments to recognize labor rights. Prior to that the norm was working 7 days a week, sunup to sundown, with only Christmas off, from adolescence until you died.
SEs would rather play many player versions of the prisoner's dilemma than unionize.
You're right. We need to bring back protracted violent strikes by unions and socialists!
When rights are equal, force wins. This is true for either the worker or the employer. Hence why employers frequently employed private firms to commit said violence on unions.
You know the ones bringing most of the violence were the state and private goons hired by capitalists, right?
Not really true but it’s a nice story
It's a nice story and it's true.

Weekends, sick days, vacation days, being paid in legal tender and not company scrip, maternity leave, safety regulations, disabled affordance, banning child labor, civil rights and womens' rights (while they lasted) and the minimum wage. All due to socialist activism and a non-zero amount of violence.

Hold your socialist jihad propaganda a bit off, sundays were definitely off days for festivities, visiting church etc. Definitely all over Europe, its still frowned upon in many places to do any amount of ie house work during sundays.
Banning child labor is literally the "I'm helping" meme but for government.

Child went away mostly on its own (as did labor by the disabled) because industrialization made all that non-competitive compared to a normal adult operating some machine. Then, once child labor was relegated to a few niches of limited overall economic importance the government showed up and banned it to win a few brownie points from some jerks.

Child labor isn't a success of some socialists 100yr ago. It's a success of some propagandists 100yr ago.