Because, whatever its merits, the world is a pretty grim and existentially terrifying place once you think about it?
Wow. Has anyone informed the people getting killed in conflicts all over the world of this?
If you do, best case, the world might be a beautiful place for you specifically. But thinking about it makes you realize just how rare it is and just how lucky you are. And just how fucked it is for most everybody else.
And if you keep thinking, then you realize that any luck can run out and you can join said everybody else in an instant.
Take bread.
You start the oven at 4am. By 5am it is hot enough for your meats. By 7am extinguish, by 8am start your bread and go until 6-7pm. Now you get to start your dough for tomorrow, typically working until 11pm.
Historically bakers were known to sleep in flour hoppers as they were spared some of the heat of the ovens.
Ancient people _always_ worked. There was no leisure weekends, no afternoons off.
Ancient Rome worked on an 8 day workweek, and traditionally the 8th day was a rest day.
Ancient Greeks didn't have weekly days off... but they had up to 120 festivals a year where shops and businesses would be shut down.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nundinae
So sorry, you still get to bake bread all day.
And Greek festival days involved.. lots of food, baths had to be hot, etc. So someone has to run the event. It wasn't the common people getting a day off.
Their hours away from home may be similar in many cases, but that doesn't mean they had as high of a workload or had to work as fast as the modern equivalent. Most of them were working for themselves, and set their own pace and rules. And working for yourself is a HUGE perk and often many people's dream scenario. Want to drink beer all day while you chop wood? Sure. Want to sing baudy ballads while you patch your roof? Go ahead. Hurt your wrist while pulling weeds or managing your copice? Go take an immediate break or maybe just come back the next day. And because 90% of the population did that, those expectations carried over into many other jobs because anyone could walk away and find some farm they could work on instead if they really wanted.
You're telling me, in a SF-based startup community, nobody has ever slept over-night at the office?
Just for a modern example like painting a room, if im working as a painter as a job, paint is flying off my roller as fast as it can. But if im painting a room for myself, im likely working significantly slower and sedately and not wearing myself out over it. The same for doing other self-sufficient tasks like chopping wood, or washing or mending clothes, maintaining your home and property, or cooking a meal. As a modern job its super fast paced, for someone doing it for themselves without a clock or boss standing over their back they are going to go at a more leisured pace, and likely also enjoying the task far more which could partially count as leisure time. And even if you aren't a farmer and have a boss in those times, if your job was that much harder than a farmer you would likely just leave and find a farm to work on instead.
And of course some tasks are highly seasonal and can't be done at a real leisured pace, certain harvest and planting tasks. Of course those are only for short spurts, and we also have to consider the physical limitations of humans with poorer nutrition who literally could not do the same workload as a modern person. So even the rush at harvest time might be considered a slower pace than many modern jobs. Like a not very healthy by modern standards construction worker today likely has 8 inches height and significantly more muscle mass than the average farmer laborer from 1000 AD, just thanks to the diversity of their diet.