I had a roommate for a semester in college who essentially lived on a 40 hour schedule. He'd stay awake for 24 hours straight, then sleep for 16 hours. Not sure if he managed to pass any of his classes that year.
I'd like to find a way to sync the lunar cycle and solar cycles since the earth's, moon's, and revolutions around the sun are soooo close (5 days off) plus it'd make sense to keep in theme with the Babylonian-esque base-60 system (where 60 is readily divided and a factor of 360 days, 12 months, 30 days, etc).
I'd personally prefer 12 months with 30 days each, a 6-day week (makes for even rotations in shifts, 4 on 2 off), and an inter-calary week of 5 to 6 days at the new year.
If we're going for broke on this I'd also want to convert to the dozenal system over decimal, as 12 is more easily divisible by smaller numbers which means easier division for numbers we use more often (like 3 or 4), which means that ¼ would be 0.3 and ⅓ would be 0.4.
you can still use your fingers. it's how we got our standard of time. Back then they counted the joints in our fingers minus thumb. 4 sets of 3 for our four fingers and 3 joints per finger. Then 5 sets of 12 to make 60. as they would use the fingers on the other hand to track how many times they counted to 12.
You still get to count on your fingers. You use your thumb to count each bone in your 4 fingers to get up to 12. ("10" in the new system). Then you have the option to either continue with your other hand up to 24, or use it as an abacus, keeping your place while you count up to 144 ("100").
I would say that at the very least we could adjust February by taking a day from July and August and the extra day every four years could be added inbetween them as a "monthless" day in the middle of the summer.
A dozenal system is more difficult in multiplication. Decimal: 10^7 =10000000, 10^8=100000000, 10^9=1000000000, etc.
Dozenal: 12^7= 35831808, 12^8=429981696, 12^9=5159780352.
Gets very messy very quick.
Since we can count to "10" (12) on one hand, we can use the other hand to count sets of "10", bringing us up to "100" (144). With decimal, we're stuck at 20, and that's only if we're wearing sandals.
If you're pointing to the last phalange on both hands, that would be "110" (156) though wouldn't it. Since it would be "10" x "10" + "10".
We could also use this method to count to 100 in base-10 using only the first 10 phalanges of the hand.
In dozenal (duodecimal), 6+6= a dozen, but we write "dozen" as "10". A dozen dozen is not 144; it is "100". 3 dozen is not 36; 3 dozen is "30".
We would have two additional digits between 9 and "10".
We would have to rewrite our multiplication table entirely. 2 * 6=10. 3 * 6=16. 4 * 6=20. But, when we do memorize the new table, it is just as consistent and functional as our decimal system.