As the 5-day workweek turns 100, it’s time for an AI era upgrade
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TIME — May 1, 2026, marks the 100th anniversary of Henry Ford’s adoption of the five-day workweek.
This standard workweek is now so ingrained in our society that it almost feels timeless. But the five-day rotation doesn’t claim roots in any historic text or religious practice. It wasn’t developed by the ancient Romans, Greeks, or Egyptians.
Nobody sat down to conduct an objective analysis for the optimal number of days for humanity to rest and work and determined that our current schedule was ideal, or fair, or necessary.
Our conventional workweek was instead forged by the Industrial Revolution, a period of rapid economic and technological change.
As we enter another period of disruption driven by AI, we are once again in a unique position to reimagine how we work in ways that better suit the needs of our modern economy.
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