Tl;dr: our orientation as to what creates value is misguided.

I recently saw an article in the Wall Street Journal asking if “the Future of Work is a 4 day work week?”

I started to seethe a bit as the studies it cited and the terminology it used were all of the Industrial Age economies.

“9 to 5”

“Productivity”

“Efficiency”

This was the way of the world when we had large factories, requiring everyone to be at the same place at the same time and where the worlds of Deming and Taylor ruled.

As Seth Godin recently wrote in “Clocks”

“Either you’re using time. Or it’s using you.

You can watch the clock, but if you do, it’s watching you.

Clocks have an agenda. They aren’t a part of the human condition–they’re fairly recent. They enabled industrialism, and the very fact that they have an ‘alarm’ built in is a clue.

It’s definitely possible to put time to good use.

But if we’re without a compass and a goal, we can find it using us.”