In Free Agent Nation, Dan
Pink talks about the days when most people worked at home.
They were farmers and
blacksmiths and bakers, and they had everything they needed at home to make a
living.
There weren’t work/life
balance issues. Work was life and life
was work. The family was there and they all
worked together.
Then something happened: The
Industrial Age.
We no longer had
everything we needed at home to make a living.
There were suddenly
“barriers to entry”.
So someone with money
provided the building and the tools and we showed up, as did hundreds of others,
to make the car, or print the advertisement, or do whatever our employer needed
us to do.
Most of us got used to
going out of our homes to make a living. Even if we weren’t on the assembly line, for decades we still left every
morning to go do our jobs.
Companies had scale. They could produce, sell, market, and
distribute better than we could alone. We needed them and they needed us.
Because we weren’t home,
we started to feel guilty. We missed our
kids, our spouses, and our dog.
We felt
stressed.
No matter how hard we
worked we couldn’t make everyone happy or fit everything into our day. Something always had to give.
up on ourselves: our health, our leisure time, or even our sleep.
We felt more stressed.
Then something else
happened: The Information Age.
Technology advanced quickly
and dramatically. As it did, its cost
declined. Barriers to entry began to
disappear.
We could be small
again. In fact, being too big was a
problem. Being too big slowed down innovation
and decision making and made us less competitive.
We could be small. We could even be one person. We could work in our homes and cheaply
connect with anyone we needed – anywhere in the world.
But, we forgot how to work
from home. We forgot how to set our own
schedule. We forgot how to blend our
family with our business.
Luckily, we’re learning it
all over again!
Happy Friday!
Blending or Balance?
Balance: a state of equilibrium or equipoise; equal distribution of weight, amount, etc. When people discuss work-life balance, I always envision a two-sided scale with the time and effort devoted to “work” on one side and “life” (everything else) on…
Yes – Dan Pink actually talks about the Concept Age as well. Certainly the emphasis (biotech, etc.) of our economy and technological advancement is changing and growing.
My point here was that we’ve gone from working out of our homes (before industrialization), to working in factories and companies, to working out of our homes again (at least many of us have – and the number is increasing).
In the process we lost the ability (we once had pre-industrialization?) to balance or blend our lives and our work (blending is another post!).
But I believe we’re figuring it out again!
Thanks for this post…. Well said Ann and what a pathway we’ve created! Hopefully we can catch ourselves before it’s too late to change in ways that work. Some say we have already left the information age, and have now entered the biotech age. What do you think?