If you controlled the calendar, what would it look like?

[meggiewes]

I was having a random thought this morning when I got up and made my coffee. Part of my brain views Saturday as the beginning of a new week and I have to keep reminding myself that a week (that is set up in my one tracking app I use) starts on Sunday. If I controlled the calendar, you bet that I would have the days start on a Saturday and end on a Friday.

I thought it would be interesting to see how other people felt too! How about you? Would your calendar look different than mine?

 

[Imbri]

Not splitting the weekend would work for me, especially since, because we are open 7 days at my work, taking a week off (and having the weekend on both sides) costs me 6 days instead of 5 because I'm effectively taking 1 day for the following week. My counterparts in other departments only lose 5, because they are closed on the weekends. </gripe>

 

[Mick]

For me, the week would just start on Monday. This is the international standard, but it's also just what it feels like to me personally! The week starts when the relaxing part of it is over, haha.

I also like the concept of entirely different calendars, since the one we use now is kinda weird. For example, the "international fixed calendar" which has 13 months of 28 days each. One extra day at the end of December brings the total to 365, and if this day (and the leap day) is not considered part of the week (just an 'extra' day), then suddenly we have 4 weeks per month with every date having a set, unchanging weekday. (which is not necessarily a good thing, certain holidays always being in the weekend would suck...)

Of course, we can't just change the calendar we use.
- Having 13 months would make it require recalculating of holidays and birthdays.
- It would upset some religions, because for a lot of them the 7th day is the resting day and inserting an 8th day would mess that up sometimes.
- Planning quarterly/biannual events would be hard with 13 months.
- Also, as someone who works software development/operations, trying to adjust all the systems that currently work with dates would be a technological nightmare. Not just for me, but for basically every company ever. It won't happen. But I think it's fun to consider the alternatives.

 

[cornimer]

Where I live Sunday is the first day of the week, but in my head it's Saturday because that's the start of the pay-week where I work (any hours you work Friday count towards your current paycheque and any hours you work Saturday count towards your next paycheque)

 

[chawwee]

Go full French Republic and have 10 day week, with seasons dependant on the weather:

 

[Red Cat]

If I could blow up the calendar and start over, I'd go full metric with it.

• Instead of 12 months with 28-31 days, I'd just have 4 seasons (spring, summer, fall/autumn, and winter) with 91-92 days each. Spring and fall would have 91 days, summer would have 92 days, and winter would have 91 or 92 depending on if it's a leap year.
• New Year's Day would fall on what is now March 20 because that's around the spring equinox for most of the world's population which seems like a better start date for the year than after the start of winter as it currently is.
• There would be 10 hours per day, 100 minutes per hour, and 100 seconds per minute. This means there would be 100000 seconds per day instead of 86400, so a second would be slightly faster than what it currently is.
• I don't know what I'd do for days of the week. 365 is an awkward number as it can only be evenly divided by 5 and 73, but I suppose people would be unhappy having their birthday and other holidays fall on the same day of the week 4 years in a row. I think a 6 day week would make sense as any holiday with a fixed date would move back a weekday on every non leap year and stay on the same day of the week as the previous year on a leap year. Hours worked per week would need to be adjusted for the shorter week. Working 3.5 hours per day (about 8.5 hours per day current time) for 4/6 days a week would result in approximately the same amount of time working per year as 40 hours per week currently. I'd start the week on the first business day of the week (i.e. Monday) instead of Sunday.

 

[Stella-Io]

In school I was taught that Sunday is the beginning of the week cause the way calenders are set up, it by technicality is. But also many places like busineses consider Monday to be the start of the week.

If I could change the entire way the calender works, it would be more 'even'.
•Each month has the same amounts of days as every other month. No more months having only 28, 29, 30 or 31 days. All the same amount of days.
•Each month would begin on Sunday, so every month also gets a Friday the 13th, just to be more e v e n. Not for the Friday reason. So every month would have an ending number divisible by 7. Idk what that would be.
•I also do like the idea of basing calenders/months off of season, but where I live there really isn't season. There's rainy season, dry, the time where it isn't unberibly hot, hot, summer hot and hurricane. That's kinds it for 'seasons' here.