I just can't help but think about how so many people could be working less hours of their lives. 40+hr. workweeks seem so oppressive and it just saddens me to think of how many people have to and have been sacrificing so much of their time to jobs and losing out on precious time to spend doing things that may mean much more to them. It already doesn't feel too great seeing it here in America, it's horrifying to me to see how it has manifested in other places like China with their 996 culture and Japan where I've heard salarymen work 80+hr. workweeks and they have a word dedicated to committing suicide due to overwork.
I come from a position of relative privilege in this regard. My workhours are a bit less than 40 hours a week. I get to work remotely. I'm being compensated pretty well relative to the average person in my country. But even with all of that I feel like I and the people I work with shouldn't necessarily have to work to that extent, and for sure people with a less nice setup than me shouldn't have to either. At times I almost feel like something's wrong with me, like I've been too spoiled that I find a work setup as relatively good as this to be so souring, but at the same time I feel like it's justified and just because the world around me has accepted or continued to enforce this doesn't necessarily make it correct. After all the 40hr. week used to be more than that like 80yrs ago, I bet there were people back then who thought that should stay because it was the norm, things don't have to stay how they are.
I've heard some companies today have experimented with <40hr. weeks and saw good results and implemented it. I do have the feeling even with that a lot of companies will avoid even trying it because they're so used to the 40 hour week, but aside from that, are there enough good reasons to keep work hours so high compared to lowering them?