9 to 5? Try 5 to 9.

The greatest geniuses sometimes accomplish more when they work less.

Leonardo Da Vinci is credited with this statement. After being asked to work harder during work on his masterpiece “The Last Supper,” he replied with what I feel to be a great reflection on modern work in our society.

Fast forward to today and we see that unfortunately not many people agree with the laid-back lifestyle of Da Vinci.

The House of Representatives recently passed a bill that states that under Obamacare, a “full-time” job is now defined as a 40-hour work week (as opposed to the previous definition set at 30 hours). While this might seem like an arbitrary change to some, it brings to light a big issue: employees getting their hours cut so that they don’t qualify for health care. I’ll touch on this topic another time.

The bigger question should be why in the world are we working 40-hour weeks? How many of those 40 hours are actually spent working? Why don’t we have the 15-hour work week that famous economist John Maynard Keynes predicted would be the norm by the year 2000?

There are lots of questions and unfortunately not many answers. A 15-hour work week (3-4 hours a day) seems like some futuristic utopia that you might see in a science fiction novel. But with all of our technological advances and breakthroughs in labor efficiency, why does the average American work 46.7 hours per week?

To help begin to tackle these questions, let’s take a quick look back at the most American invention since burgers and fries: the 40-hour work week. In the roaring ‘20s, factory owners pushed their employees to the brink of exhaustion with 10-16 hour work days.

Enter Henry Ford who sees overworked employees as a liability not for their safety but for his sales. His rationale was that if there were a 5 day work week, people would have more time off and in turn more time to — you’ll never believe this — realize they needed to go out and buy stuff. In Ford’s own words, “Leisure is an indispensable ingredient in a growing consumer market because working people need to have enough free time to find uses for consumer products, including automobiles.”

So in some strange turn of deceptively dastardly events, the work week as we know it was invented to give us more time to go consume and spend the money we worked all week to earn. And that’s exactly what we do! But that’s yet another topic on personal finance and delayed gratification for another time, my friends. We’ve got issues at hand!

The 40-hour work week has been commonplace since its inception, but I’m here to tell you it doesn’t have to stay that way! Studies have shown that we all have a 24-hour sleep cycle and some are more “night owls” and some are “early risers.” While everyone assumes night owls just need to get over it and work a 9-5 job, tests prove some workers are more efficient and produce more when working a later work schedule.

A University of Brussels study showed that participants who woke up at noon opposed to the early birds at 6 a.m. had less mental fatigue and higher attention spans 10 hours after waking up. So we have a little science to help denounce the 40-hour work week, but it’s more than just feeling alert or not — there’s a lot of emotional and mental fatigue of being overworked week in and week out.

But there’s hope yet. A web company named Quirky has begun to shut down their company for a four week block during the year. In an e-mail to employees, CEO Ben Kaufman wanted his employees to have time to just unplug for a while. “Time for us to explore other creative interests. Relax without worrying about what we’re missing.”

Or take Cristian Rennella, the owner of a Latin American search engine, who grew his company over 200 percent after allowing all employees to take fridays off. I love ideas like these and I hope other companies try other experiments with the work week in the future.

While I know drastic changes won’t happen anytime soon, I am in full support of any and all small businesses who are taking unique approaches to the work week. Many entrepreneurs are realizing that the best way to productive, alert, happy employees is through alternative work weeks and unique vacation plans.

Hopefully more and more will get on board in the years to come. Until then, as the great Dolly Parton once said, “Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a living. Barely getting by, it’s all taking and no giving.”