retains clunky 7-day week that doesn’t interact will with decimal counting system
I like it, but I got an even better proposal. Weeks should have ten day weeks, and each month should have 3 weeks. summer/winter solstice and the spring/autumn equinox as well as new years day are special holidays that fall between months and interrupt the week cycle. In leap years, new years is two days.
The 1st, 11th and 21st of each month are now Mondays, so you can tell the weekday of any date. Months are the same length just like in Jesse’s proposal, but an even 30 instead of a clunky 28.
What names shall we give the new weekdays? Because I was thinking maybe we should rename a few existing ones, so no weekdays start with the same letters. Then they can be abbreviated to their respective first letters.
Congratulations, you’ve successfully reinvented the Egyptian civil calendar, complete with the intercalary holidays and all. Literally the only change is to add weeks. And yes, it did work really well, especially since the feast could add or lose a day to adjust to a known reference (the rise and fall of the Nile in their case). I second this proposal to go back.
Weeks should have ten day weeks, and each month should have 3 weeks.
Here’s why I’m going to say no. It’s because businesses would just rip us off by turning the working week into 8 days and just retaining the 2 day weekend.
Businesses don’t have the power to do that if we collectively tell them no. But that being said, how DO you split up a 10-day week keeping the same basic ratio of “weekend” days?
Three weekdays, followed by a single “weekend” day or mid-week break, then four weekdays followed by a two-day weekend?
That’s very pessimistic. It assumes that there is a corporate led reform. Which is unlikely. If it was a grass roots campaign, the call for change would include a weekend proposal from the start. By the time businesses come around to supporting it, the weekend will alredy be defined as 3-work-2-off, or 7-work-3-off.
They had 5 or 6 intercalary holidays to celebrate the new year and adjust to the rise of the Nile (and we’d adjust it to astronomical time with leap years). It actually worked really well, and kept the people happy with a 5-day rest and celebration each year (something this world could definitely use).
They didn’t have software though and you don’t know if it either worked well (since the ppl who kept this system going were the same people who wrote about it) nor of it kept ppl happy. Besides: you can do that without the “not counting those” part, couldn’t you?
Current workforce is schedule around a 7day centric week. It’s far easier to reorganize where the weeks fall in the year than changing the structure of a week. Suddenly the workforce would have segment of work overlapping between weeks, it’s an organizational nightmare.
The international fixed calendar did propose a solution for the 365 days and leap year but it’s basically out-of-the-week holidays.
And instead of calling them “weeks”, we could call them by the much more self-explanatory term “tendays”.
summer/winter solstice and the spring/autumn equinox as well as new years day are special holidays that fall between months and interrupt the week cycle
You can simplify it a little bit by putting the intercalary days between months, rather than using them for the solstices. We can put Midwinter between January 30 and February 1 and Midsummer between July 30 and August 1, in the northern hemisphere.
For the sake of putting it in a more user-friendly location, our leap day should be in the summer for the northern hemisphere (where most of the population is). So put it the day after Midsummer.
The only thing I would do differently from the Calendar of Harptos is that, like you, I would use New Year’s Day as the 5th annual intercalary day.
I don’t see why 7 day weeks are bad in regard to the number system. We rarely need to divide the days of the week into equal portions. Remembering 1, 8, 15 and 22 as mondays would be trivial after a while.
You also claim that failure to address the 365th day and leap years is an issue, but your proposal also includes several cycle-breaking days. So the same issue would persist.
Moon deviation isn’t something I really worry about, but having a period which almost align with the cycle seems useful. It would be easy to just examine the initial phase within the month to chart out the rest of the month.
However, I think the biggest flaw is that the calendar would be divided into 13 equal parts, which sucks to divide into typical use cases, i.e. into 2 parts. You could split the 7th month, but it’s not really elegant. Dividing the year into 3 or 4 parts would be a mess.
Flaws:
I like it, but I got an even better proposal. Weeks should have ten day weeks, and each month should have 3 weeks. summer/winter solstice and the spring/autumn equinox as well as new years day are special holidays that fall between months and interrupt the week cycle. In leap years, new years is two days.
The 1st, 11th and 21st of each month are now Mondays, so you can tell the weekday of any date. Months are the same length just like in Jesse’s proposal, but an even 30 instead of a clunky 28.
I’ve thought about this a lot
It actually does account for keep years. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
Leap years and keep years
What names shall we give the new weekdays? Because I was thinking maybe we should rename a few existing ones, so no weekdays start with the same letters. Then they can be abbreviated to their respective first letters.
Congratulations, you’ve successfully reinvented the Egyptian civil calendar, complete with the intercalary holidays and all. Literally the only change is to add weeks. And yes, it did work really well, especially since the feast could add or lose a day to adjust to a known reference (the rise and fall of the Nile in their case). I second this proposal to go back.
Here’s why I’m going to say no. It’s because businesses would just rip us off by turning the working week into 8 days and just retaining the 2 day weekend.
No, and double no.
Businesses don’t have the power to do that if we collectively tell them no. But that being said, how DO you split up a 10-day week keeping the same basic ratio of “weekend” days?
Three weekdays, followed by a single “weekend” day or mid-week break, then four weekdays followed by a two-day weekend?
That’s very pessimistic. It assumes that there is a corporate led reform. Which is unlikely. If it was a grass roots campaign, the call for change would include a weekend proposal from the start. By the time businesses come around to supporting it, the weekend will alredy be defined as 3-work-2-off, or 7-work-3-off.
Any solution that has some form of “oh those days? Nah, we don’t count those” is disqualified immediately in my book.
laughs in Egyptian…
They had 5 or 6 intercalary holidays to celebrate the new year and adjust to the rise of the Nile (and we’d adjust it to astronomical time with leap years). It actually worked really well, and kept the people happy with a 5-day rest and celebration each year (something this world could definitely use).
They didn’t have software though and you don’t know if it either worked well (since the ppl who kept this system going were the same people who wrote about it) nor of it kept ppl happy. Besides: you can do that without the “not counting those” part, couldn’t you?
Current workforce is schedule around a 7day centric week. It’s far easier to reorganize where the weeks fall in the year than changing the structure of a week. Suddenly the workforce would have segment of work overlapping between weeks, it’s an organizational nightmare.
The international fixed calendar did propose a solution for the 365 days and leap year but it’s basically out-of-the-week holidays.
And instead of calling them “weeks”, we could call them by the much more self-explanatory term “tendays”.
You can simplify it a little bit by putting the intercalary days between months, rather than using them for the solstices. We can put Midwinter between January 30 and February 1 and Midsummer between July 30 and August 1, in the northern hemisphere.
For the sake of putting it in a more user-friendly location, our leap day should be in the summer for the northern hemisphere (where most of the population is). So put it the day after Midsummer.
The only thing I would do differently from the Calendar of Harptos is that, like you, I would use New Year’s Day as the 5th annual intercalary day.
Intercalary is one of those words I never expect to hear outside of the https://app.fantasy-calendar.com userbase
Ok, I’ve never heard of that site before, but I am definitely in its target market. Thanks for sharing!
the equinoxes and solstices are roughly 90 days apart anyway so we can do both :)
Calendar of Harptos actually influenced my post hehe
Sounds a lot like the French Revolutionary Calendar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar#Months
What’s the work schedule
3-1-4-2 would work and give 70% work to 30% off - currently we have 71.4% work in a 7 day week so it’s pretty similar with less friday burnout
Should just be 3 2 3 2
The 365th day is new years day… duh.
I don’t see why 7 day weeks are bad in regard to the number system. We rarely need to divide the days of the week into equal portions. Remembering 1, 8, 15 and 22 as mondays would be trivial after a while.
You also claim that failure to address the 365th day and leap years is an issue, but your proposal also includes several cycle-breaking days. So the same issue would persist.
Moon deviation isn’t something I really worry about, but having a period which almost align with the cycle seems useful. It would be easy to just examine the initial phase within the month to chart out the rest of the month.
However, I think the biggest flaw is that the calendar would be divided into 13 equal parts, which sucks to divide into typical use cases, i.e. into 2 parts. You could split the 7th month, but it’s not really elegant. Dividing the year into 3 or 4 parts would be a mess.
Weeks should have a prime number of days. It’s not wise to be dividing weeks up.