Working 9-5….
It’s probably one of the most common phrases you hear. “Oh I can’t do that I will be at work” or “Sorry I’m late I had some work to get done”. The thing is though, no one ever seems to have any time nowadays and a lot of this is attributable to “work”. Speaking to those of an older generation than myself I’ve discovered that it didn’t always used to be this way.
Back in the mid 20th century, your average middle class blue collar worker would go to work at 9am and finish at 5pm having taken the 1 hour lunch break. No one was ever seemingly in much of a hurry and yet all the work got done. Coupled to this communication took longer. There were no computers, emails, internet, mobile phones twitter or any of the other “communication” means we take for granted today. Ok there was the telephone but other than that everything had to be typed and posted. Based on this, it could be assumed that everything will have taken longer. To send a purchase order, it would have to be typed, sealed in an envelope and sent by post to a supplier for example. Nowadays a quick email is usually all it takes.
So if we can do everything so much faster today, then how come we don’t all have buckets of time available to do things other than “work”? I often debate this when I reflect on the day and consider how much time I have given over to “working”. I suppose one obvious reason is because everything is faster then you can do more in a day. So where before you would send a letter and then have to wait a few days for a response, now you can send an email and even if that person is on holiday the chances are they will get it on their Blackberry or iPhone and then respond within a few minutes.
In my opinion it comes down to knowing when to stop. Going back 50 years, it was accepted that office hours were typically 9-5. I realise there are still some companies who adopt this policy but it is less widespread. Because there was no other means of communication then once you had left the office that was it. Which meant everyone could enjoy their leisure time.
The danger now is that even when you finish work at 5pm and leave the office you have so many opportunities to communicate. Get in the car to drive home and you find your hands free car phone available to you. Arrive home and there’s most likely a “web enabled” computer which will enable you to check emails. If you cant get to your home pc, then that’s ok because all your emails will be delivered to your phone. Therefore many people never stop “working”.
Obviously it would be easy for me to say, just turn your phone off when you get home and instead of switching your computer on go out into the garden or go for a walk. I’m sure many people do this, but the danger is what everyone else choose to be doing. What concerns me is that currently I believe we still have the choice to “switch off”, but I think in the not to distant future it will be normal practice for everyone to always be connected to everyone else. I personally think that would be a shame.
And on that note, at 10.32pm I am going to switch my computer off and go and do something which is not “work” related!