Evolve The 8 Hour Work Day
The 8-hour workday spawned from the Industrial Revolution in early 19th century Britain. The idea of “eight hours’ labor, eight hours’ recreation, eight hours’ sleep” is a 200-year-old concept stemming from utopian-socialist Robert Owen. The Welsh social reformer was one of the first to challenge the harsh conditions of factory work and the abuses of child labor. To stakeholders’ chagrin, the 8-hour workday arose as the accepted norm. In contrast to the 12–16 hour workday, production decreased. The opportunistic exploitation of human labor led to less profit. Endeavors had to be stretched out over longer periods of time to accommodate the now shorter-standing work. Decades later in the U.S., Congress passed an eight-hour federal law in 1868. From then on, our country’s standard has been the eight-hour work week.
It’s positive that our culture has accepted this. It means, collectively, we (mostly, I hope) value humans over money. However, we’re no longer dotted on assembly lines constructing industrial parts en masse. We are mobile and connected. Think about industry in 1868. The telephone wasn’t even invented until 8 years later. Practical use of electricity didn’t come about until 1882. We used perishable paper filing. Large and heavy machines were used to execute now simple tasks. Communication was only possible by telegram or through speech. In 2016, cloud storage is accessible from anywhere in the world, we have the nimble laptop and can communicate with any human anywhere in seconds. In 1868, we were subjected to the waning light of the sun. It was normal to exploit as much of it as we could since we’d be without it until the next day. Now, take a look at satellite imagery from the dark side of the planet and you’ll see amoebic-like sprawls glowing brightly across the Earth’s surface. We conquered the dark.
So, with this contrast, why does a system setup for such an archaic form of work apply to today?
In software, product isn’t even tangible. Email and chat apps take the place of long-delayed telegrams and phone calls. Technology has reduced routine daily processes from meticulous to immediate and simple. This allows us to finish our work faster. Designers, for example, used to have to hand-set type on posters. They had to actually cut out–by hand–letterforms and organize them on a page with proper tracking and leading. That sounds horrible. Now, we just key in a type family and a type size and quickly arrow through tracking and leading and, boom, I’m done. My headline is set. What once took hours now takes less than 20 seconds now.
The facilitating of work benefits something called The Pareto Principle (TPP). TPP declares that 80% of work can be done in 20% of the time. This is good news for us who seek balance in life. No one has an endless gas tank. We fade during the day. We get distracted. We smear our focus over 40+ hours a week instead of powering it to maximum for 8. We are able to do better and more work in less time. If this is true, and we’re executing better than ever before, then why continue a 148 year-old practice? We should refactor for 2016. The difficulty lies in the ingrained nature of the eight hour day to American labor and cultural norms. Companies don’t just want to own their employees work, but also their time. It’s understandable. Employees are investments. They’re just like printers, or computers or desks–they’re acquired to increase productivity and drive revenue. However, printers, computers and desks don’t have souls or families or hobbies. Humans are not just simple capital. Employees don’t want to be lazy. We want to produce valuable work. We want to spend our time on something we deem worthwhile. We can do so more effectively. Employees are the most important assets of any company. Period.
I propose we let people work at their best. Fixed increments of time do not ensure quality of work. Focus, attention and execution do. If tasks are delegated and completed in under eight hours, why not allow and end to work that day? Or if someone has a ton of work to do one day, why not let them work 10–12 hours at home comfortably? You’ve probably felt yourself gas out at 3pm on Tuesday and sludge through a few more hours of feigned productivity. Where’s the virtue in that? The hard-headed and gung-ho will say just work harder. They’ll tell you to burn out and exhaust yourself because that’s how you should work. You should go home in a daze of fatigue and depletion and do it all again tomorrow. Additionally, if each of us are unique in temperament and method, why assume we all perform best at the same time in the same sequence? If there are clear morning folks and night owls, why not allow them to use their peak hours for work?
Examine any other species on earth. None of them have regimented, ardent schedules based on grandfathered labor systems. Their cycles are completely natural and never input by a governing entity trying to use them for gain. Of course, we’re homo sapiens, so we’re exempt from thinking we’re a part of the natural world. However, the eight hour workday completely dismisses hundreds of thousands of years of human development and heroes a system invented in the last 150.
I believe my generation will ratify this obsolete culture of work. Technology will expedite the change. We don’t have to work less, but we can certainly work smarter. Evolve the eight hour workday.
