"Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
"Employ thy time well, if thou meanest to get leisure."

-- Dr. Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)

Before writing was invented, humans had already made some spectacularly odd choices in habitat. They migrated to damp, cold places with sparse, awful food. It is a mystery why anyone still lives in London or Seattle but clear that civilization and the ability to benefit from modern technology are unrelated. The proof is in the voluntary choice of habitat.

The battle to evolve beyond the need for rest was lost before there were humans. The one-sided solution is to favor young workers who can be convinced their seeming resistance to the unsustainable will last forever. This is not a good basis for Labor or Health Care Policy decisions, nonetheless it is often the default planning rationale.

For all workers, regardless of status or position, travel to and from work is a risk for accidents, with travel in the dark at a higher risk. Employees rarely have a choice of working hours, and this intertwines Labor and Health Care Policy.

A human adult requires about 8 hours of rest per day. Watches reckon time around Midnight. This gives rise to a standard central planning day frame centered around 12:00 o'clock noon (4am-8pm).

The Work Day

The Work Day is a 16 hour frame out of a 24 day.

The position of the frame is based upon user supplied values for both paid and unpaid activities. There is no guarantee that paid employment, work, will be centered around noon so as to fit the central planning standard day. Certain occupations, Baking, for example, are consistantly well outside the planning norm. In addition, Part-Time Workers can be added either to provide additional help at busy times of the day, or to pick up the slack at the extremes.

The Agricultural Day

The Agricultural Day is defined as sunrise on and around the Summer Solstice plus 16 hours.

This makes maximum use of a growing season. In the absense of rules, this is day to day planning. Since harvest time is most labor intensive, deviations from this schedule are on an as-needed basis. The reason for deviations is obvious, and need no further explanation.

The Industrial Day

The Industrial Day is defined as Solar Noon on and around the Winter Solstice plus and minus 8 hours.

This makes maximum use of sunlight as measured in winter, the season of minimum sunlight. The Industrial Day is reflects Community activity once a year. This is long term planning, but unsuitable for Policy Making since almost every day is a deviation from the basis. Nonetheless, once a year is the best tool a Policy Maker remote from a Community has.

License: Public Domain

Does not contain Personally Identifiable Information