During one of my workshops this week, one founder shared how she didn’t start working until 10am, and would sleep until 11am if she could. Another shared how she gets up at 5am every day. It seems pretty obvious that we each have a different rhythm and energy cycle. It also seems pretty obvious that a 20-year-old graduate has a different number and quality of hours than a parent with young children (who are still not sleeping through the night and/or who are at school 9 to 3), who in turn has a different capacity and motivation than an empty nester nearing retirement. And yet, despite these common-sense differences, we are all expected to work the same Monday-to-Friday, 9-to-5 (usually more) hours.
The fact is that we’re still organising our work, and our self-worth, around a system designed over a century ago – for a world with single-breadwinner households, predictable production lines, and no concept of knowledge work. The modern world has outgrown the 9 to 5 – and forgotten to update the operating system.
So where did this schedule, today so normalised, come from?
We can trace the origins of the 9 to 5 back to the early 19th century, when Robert Owen – a Welsh textile manufacturer and social reformer – started campaigning for what was first a 10-hour day and ultimately an 8-hour day. This was in the context of a working day that could last as long as 16 hours, 6 days a week. Owen coined the original work-life balance concept: 8 hours of work, 8 hours of recreation, and 8 hours of rest. Factory reforms started to reduce extreme hours while restricting women’s and child labour, but the 6-day week remained the norm.
By the late 19th century, labour movements in Britain, the US, and elsewhere had made the 8-hour day their central demand, with French workers wearing a red triangle to symbolise this 8-8-8 balance, on what became International Worker’s Day, on 1st May.
In parallel, the push for the two-day weekend came largely from religious and cultural pressures, with Jewish workers, for example, needing Saturdays off for the Sabbath.
And it was Henry Ford’s introduction of the five-day, 40-hour week at his factories that was especially influential in demonstrating that productivity could coexist with Saturdays off, while also creating more leisure time during which consumers could spend more money. The US Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 established the 40-hour workweek with overtime pay after 40 hours, which effectively anchored the idea of the standard full-time week. With schools, banks, government offices, and most factories synchronising around a two-day weekend, Monday to Friday became the default schedule.
The specific hours of 9 to 5 evolved for office and clerical work to allow for a combination of daylight hours, commuting, and coordination with schools and public services.
While we’re at it, why did we end up with the school schedule of today?
In fact, early schools in Europe and North America had more school days than we do today, but attendance was irregular because farm and housework took priority. With schooling becoming compulsory in the 19th century, terms were shortened to allow time off for the autumn harvest, while the fixed daily hours again came about because of natural daylight and the match with adult working hours.
But, of course, school hours do not correspond to expected office hours and, of course, this is because it was born from an era when only 1 in 5 women worked outside of the home. One adult earned money in a full-time job at the office, while the other did unpaid labour in a full-time job at home.
Why does the old way persist?
So, after that history lesson, the question becomes: why does this system – designed for factory and farmwork, one-earner households, and a world where work was linear, predictable, and required synchronised time – persist today? In a world of dual-earner households, cognitive and creative work that requires focus, space, and autonomy, and digital technology that allows us to work from anywhere? Why is a ‘full-time job’ still assumed to be 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, and mostly still in the office?
That raises the real question… why does this outdated system still persist today?
I explore the deeper structural and cultural reasons – plus what a redesigned work rhythm could look like – in the full version on Substack.
