28 Hours

What do you want?

Simple. The number of hours in a day moves from 24 to 28.

Instead of a day that goes from 12 midnight, to 12 noon and back again, the day would begin at 14 midnight and midday would be at 14-o-clock.

What do you mean?

Under this improved system, each day now has 28 hours. Midnight arrives four hours later than it did before. There are four more hours in each day for sleeping, working or playing.

As we all know, time is money and this plan puts four more hours into your wallet every day.

Why would you do that?

Haven't you ever felt that you could stay up later to get more done, but doing so will shrink the time you have to sleep? The problem isn't you, it's the outdated design of our time system.

Imagine having an extra four hours for work, or hobbies or just watching TV, yet you still get eight hours sleep!

What will happen to the week?

Something amazing. It will become a six day week. And the weekend will grow!

Let me lay it out. Each day has 28 hours. Currently seven 24-hour days gives us a 168-hour week, with 120 hours in the working week and 48 given over to the weekend.

With the 28-hour day, the week will be six 28-hour days: still 168 hours! The weekend will still take two days, but now it is 56 hours long. The working week will be cut to four days, though those of us used to forty-hour weeks will have to move from eight hours a day, to ten. The working week is now only 112 hours long, making the weekend a third of the week.

As for the day to be rid of, I think Tuesday. I'm sure many people would like to rid themselves of Mondays, but for good or bad, Monday has personality. Tuesday just sits there looking apologetic. Also it stops there being duplicate T's.

Give me those numbers again

Old: 7 x 24 = 168 hours per week.

New: 6 x 28 = 168 hours per week.

Old: 5 x 24 = 120 hours per working week.

New: 4 x 28 = 112 hours per working week.

Old: 2 x 24 = 48 hours per weekend.

New: 2 x 28 = 56 hours per weekend.

* The weekend gets longer,

* The working week gets shorter,

* Each workday gains two non-working hours,

An average week

Let's consider an average person's week.

* They sleep for eight hours.

* They work/commute for ten hours.

* They have a couple of hours of chores or housework each day.

* This leaves them with about four hours free time.

And now with 28 hour days:

* They still sleep for eight hours.

* They now work/commute an extra two hours a day, but one day less.

* They now have six hours of free time each workday evening.

* Plus weekends gain eight new hours.

That's two extra hours of free time each work evening, and four hours each weekend day.

What about sleep?

Of course, this change isn't completely magic. There are trade-offs.

Under the new system, you will be sleeping less. At first glance...

Because each day is longer, and the nightly sleep is the same, you're getting less sleep. Maybe...

The thing is:

Most people don't actually get eight hours sleep. They stay up late into the night, trying to do the evening things they want or need to do.

With the 28 hour day, they have extra hours for that. Allowing them to truly dedicate themselves to a rewarding night's sleep. After a full eight-hours, people will wake refreshed and keen to start the next day.

What about the sun? The day/night cycle?

Another effect that may appear an issue at first glance is the day/night cycle.

With our new 28 hour days, we will get out of synch with the sun. Sometimes we will be getting up at night, or going to bed when it's getting light.

Well, I'm sorry to say it, but with time-zones and people living at high latitudes, most of that is old news already. If our tracking of time was accurate, we would expect the sun to reach its zenith at 12.00 midday. But in Eastport, Maine the sun peaks and starts heading for the horizon at 11.28 am. Whereas in White Pine, Michigan the sun doesn't reach its height until 12.58 pm, 90 minutes later. In the same time-zone!

And if you live in northern latitudes you find that your days and nights expand and contract like a squeezebox. You don't even need to travel to Scandinavia. The good people of Hamburg, in Germany will see only 6 hours 57 minutes of night on 20th June 2020, and only 7 hours 27 minutes of daylight on the 21st December.

I, like many people often find myself going to work in the dark, working far from natural light and then going home, in the dark. Again.

Is continuing to pay lip service to the sun really that important?

It's tempting. But how will years be affected?

I'm glad you asked, I think you will like this.

We've already discussed how our 28-hour days make six-day weeks. Well, five of those weeks make a 30-day month and ten months make a year. Everything is so neatly arranged!

OK, I have to admit to a little fudging at this point. One solar year actually contains 8,765 hours 45 minutes and 36 seconds. There's no calendar that can swallow those numbers and create clean lines.

However...

Let's say we accept that with the other adjustments, we tinker - just a little - with the time of one second. If we add 4 hundredths to the time we define as a second (to be precise we make a new second = 1.04354285 in today's seconds) and then scale up a minute to be 60 of these new seconds and an hour to be 60 of the new minutes - then one solar year will equal exactly 8,400 hours, or 300 days.

We can now take those 300 days and divide them into ten 30-day (five week) months. Finally we can be rid of the dreary anomolous hole in the calendar that is ~~Feburary~~ February. The other month to go should be, October, I think. It's not a great month, the only day of note is Halloween, and Halloween actually means All Hallow's Eve, because All Hallow's Day is the 1st of November. This means we can dump October, move Halloween to 30th September and everyone is happy.

Could you state this all briefly, for my friends?

There's a lot of information here, so let's try and summarize it all in a couple of sentences:

If we lengthen the time of a second by four hundredths (or so) and lengthen the day to 28 hours, then people will gain more free-time, more sleep and inevitably more happiness. Also calendars will be much simpler and no one will ever again have to recite: "30 days hath September, April June and..."

Oh, and several annoying days and months can be expunged.