&quot;The intuitive finding was that people’s feelings of well-being closely tracked the workweek. As measured by things such as anxiety, stress, laughter and enjoyment, our well-being is lowest Monday through Thursday. The workweek is a slog. Well-being edges up on Friday, and really peaks on Saturday and Sunday. We are, in a real sense, living for the weekend.&quot;<p>Great, another person admitting that American work culture is slowly killing people, even the people who aren&#x27;t actively working. This is an impetus for change.<p>&quot;This conclusion points to a key feature of the work-life problem: You cannot get more “weekend” simply by taking an extra day off work yourself. If we were to take more time off as individuals, we would be likely to spend that time, as the jobless do, waiting for other people to finish work. We are stuck “at work,” in a sense, by the work schedules of our family and friends.&quot;<p>Yes, I found this to be true during my times of unemployment, but only if I assumed that my daytime hours had to be waiting... there are many ways to be useful during the day without a job, however that time period will not be relaxing. Sounds like &quot;more free time&quot; and less &quot;time spent filling a seat&quot; would lead to more general wellbeing in both employed and unemployed people because people would have more shared time together and less time in the stressful and mentally detrimental work environment.<p>My solution: make all weekends three day weekends and don&#x27;t alter the amount that people are paid. Remove the outdated and harmful protestant work ethic and replace it with the German work ethic: do the work that is requested of you at maximum efficiency, then leave immediately afterward, and do not answer the phone or emails. Gutting the idiotic and nigh-suicidal affinity that people have for wasting time at work without actually doing anything would also help.<p>So yeah, we do need more free time, because time spent at work is typically wasted time as well as mentally unhealthy time. If everyone gets more free time on the same day, I assume better mental health would result. To be clear, we&#x27;ve reached the point in our technological development that this goal is eminently possible if there were political will or popular revolt.