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In my case, three days seems like the bare minimum a person would need: one day to recover physically, one to recover mentally, and one more to work on your own personal projects. Assuming the job itself is not a stressful, toxic experience, three days seems like long enough for someone to refresh from the stresses of their job.

I ask because I wonder if that minimum is a defineable human average. Minimum time off seems like something that should be considered a human right to me.

I guess it depends on the job, but a workschedule above a 40 hour per week regime is a very dated way to manage people's time exclusively for work.

I'm aware (at least where I live) about discutions and debates among experts about dividing the week in 4 days of work and 3 days of leisure for the modern workplace, so your assesment about needing 3 days off seems to be very much on point with what's seriously being considered nowadays.

I think an ideal workplace would have 5 day weeks at 7-8 hours per day and also gives one day of pto for every month worked. It'd also be great if the business had off for holidays. These days, most places that offer full time days around here make people work for 6 days at 9-11 hours and pay from 17$ to 20$.

My personal ideal work schedule would be 7-8 hour work days 4 days a week because I don't really see the value in working 40 hours or more a week. I like having my own personal time off and I think I would go insane working 60 hours a week for an entire year.

Three days for me too
and I think we need to go to 32 hour workweeks

I currently work a shift pattern when I'm five on, four off for the first two weeks; followed by a five on, three off and finishing on a six on, three off.

I actually really like this current set-up, as it means I get a lot more time to work on my own personal projects and actually have the time I need to actually achieve the jobs I need to get done around the house.

Before, I was working in a call centre when I'd get two separate days off randomly scattered throughout the week or a single day off as I'd be forced to take compulsory over-time and work one day of the weekend at least two or three times a month.

I fucking hated that, as I was always tired and was unable to plan anything, as I only knew three weeks in advance what days I'd have off and the bastards could change the date on a whim.

After working through that, I'd be quite reluctant to go back to a job with a smaller gap between shifts; as three days off definitely feels like a good middle ground between having time to yourself, but not spending so much time-off that you forget new procedures or miss important information.

In my case, I'm actually okay with a 40 hour week, but my three days off are non-negotiable. Obviously an 8-day work week would get a touch confusing, so I understand my place as the minority.

I don't

I don't recover shrug

I'd say 3 is optimal, though 2 is ok if you have nothing else going on.

Me? I have 1 day off a week right now because we're severely understaffed and the company refuses to do anything to entice more people to work for said company, so yay…

So I don't know where you live but your "ideal workplace" is the legal requirement here (Quebec). Anything more and you start running into legal restrictions on overtime (and only some specific industries are exempt/have different legal baselines i.e. police and firefighters, or electric plants and far north lugging…). As for holidays, that depends on the companies(and especially the industry, like malls and restaurants basically don't close) but where I'm at does the 2 week off.

As for the question, 2-3 days seems to be the ideal consensus and I'd agree with that. I think for me personally, what affects me the most is not really the number of work days or hours but the schedule. I was feeling so much better when i was on evening or night shifts than right now on an office shift.

you should join r/antiwork

I work at minimum slightly over 40 hours a week, last pay cycle i managed 100 hours and a 6 day shift. and generally i'm fine with this, the pay is alright, the benefits are good and i have a nice clean consistent schedule and i cannot undercut the psychological value of consistency.

My job is physical and i operate heavy machinery
Now this is a matter of temperament and how much strain the work puts on you. if you love your work you don't really need any downtime. for personal use, i prefer two days because I'm an evening shift guy and i can't do anything during the day more or less. I managed to subsist on about 1-2 hours for myself during the day but I'm made of stern stuff.
As for rest that depends on your body too, after i injured myself i NEED more, the healing didn't quite go quite right, and the scar-tissue formed in my back.

I know some dudes who do 80 hour weeks and are coked up on like some sort of stimulant drug by overdosing on an antihestimine, no really. the dude goes in a couple months and then crashes for like 3 days.
I think you need to just take refuge where you can, enjoy those quiet moments,