Turn It Off | Balancing Work and Life Essay

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The following essay was written by Stephen Finlay, a telecommunications technology planner and marketer with TELUS in Canada. He wrote it in response to my initial announcement about this book, and I found his observations intriguing, troubling, and gratifying - quite a combination of reactions, but see if you don't respond similarly.

Steve has BA and MA degrees in Linguistics from the University of Toronto, an MBA from Simon Fraser University, fifteen years in telecommunications, and before that five years at Procter & Gamble. He and his wife (a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature who teaches piano) have two kids and various Macs, and live in a house full of assorted musical instruments. Steve's hobby is trying to sing barbershop music.

Balancing Work and Life: More Than Meets the Eye

The balance between work and the rest of life, is a subject that matters a great deal - and should matter a great deal - to almost all of us in the modern economy. This book is important, because the problem is very deeply rooted in our culture, and in the fundamental dynamics of our economy.

Contrary to what many people believe, technology is not the problem. New technology does create new possibilities, of course. For instance, if Gil wanted to do it, he could work all day Friday in New Jersey, come to my house in Vancouver for dinner on Saturday, and be back in New Jersey in time to get a full night's sleep before starting work on Monday. This wasn't possible before modern airliners existed.

Similarly, almost any office worker in North America can compose a letter and have it received by someone 5,000 miles away less than 10 seconds after composition is finished: This was impossible before e-mail. And as Gil and others are pointing out, our entire information technology infrastructure is what makes it possible to work everywhere, all the time. Thirty years ago, people could not have worked this way even if they had wanted to.

What We CAN Do vs. What We WILL Do

And there's the heart of the issue - "if they had wanted to". Right now, the technology allows the possibility of not working all the time just as easily as it allows working all the time. The machines do in fact have OFF switches. Some sections of Gil's book show people how they can "create some islands of quiet time." That is good, but I suspect that it is not the point. People actually know already how to do this: Just switch off the computer and the phone! The important question is "Why?", or rather: "Why don't people switch them off?"

Just because technology makes something possible does not cause people to do it. For example, it is possible for me to drive my car at close to 200 km per hour (120 mph in American numbers), but I have never done it. In terms of its technical capabilities, I consistently underutilize my car. People could just as easily underutilize the "always and everywhere" information infrastructure, and they would be better off. So - why don't they?

To find the answer, we must look again at the fundamental dynamics of our economy. We work longer and longer, harder and harder, because we believe that we will suffer intolerable consequences if we do not. We think we will be fired, demoted, deprived of bonuses or promotions, or otherwise penalized. In short, we expect that unless we continually increase our efforts, our incomes will be reduced. And we expect that any reduction in income (or even a failure to increase income) would be intolerable, because we would be unable to obtain services or things that we "need" to have.

I think that most North American knowledge workers would say that the preceding paragraph is so obviously true that there is no need for me to bother writing it. In reality, however, the last step in the chain of reasoning is entirely wrong. If a "need" is something that is necessary for survival or for mental and physical health, we do not in any way "need" most of what we spend our incomes on. Our grandparents did not have most of these things 50 years ago, and they were, on average, no less alive and healthy than we are today. This implies that most of us ought to find lower incomes quite tolerable, since we would still be able to afford everything that earlier generations needed. We are still the same human animal as they were.

Are We Afraid Of Having Less If We Do Less?

Why, then, is the thought of a lower income so terrifying that we will choose to work everywhere, all the time, rather than risk it? Here is where the foundation of our economy comes in: We have built a society where economic growth depends almost entirely upon discontent. Ultimately, all growth in production depends on growth in demand, and more specifically upon growth in end customers' demand for end products. Without that demand, there is no demand for any components or services (including all of what is called "E-business") along the chain leading to those end products.

And the way that our economy increases this end customer demand is simply to make the end customer discontented with what he already has, no matter what that is. To prove this, just watch television for an hour and look carefully at all the commercials. One way or the other, virtually every single one will be saying, "You aren't really happy; buy our product, and then you will be." This is the science of taking a consumer desire and turning it into a necessity, something which various leading advertising people have identified, in so many words, as being their prime objective.

That is why we choose to overwork ourselves: We have been convinced (without even knowing that the lesson was being taught) that a vast array of products and services which might be "nice to have" (or, in some cases, actually aren't!) are necessities. Once this lesson is learned, we continually apply it to new products, with the result that the list of necessities never stops growing. Hence, the need to increase our income never ends, and the implied threat of lost income is enough to make working all the time seem like the only possible choice.

If this is true, then suggestions about habits, schedules, physical separation and so on will not, by themselves, be enough to enable people to balance work and home life. They will never be able to achieve the balance until they can look at a wide range of the consumer goods that they have believed to be necessities, and honestly say, "You know, I don't actually need that at all." Until that happens, they cannot make the choice that we may think they "want" to make.

If this is true, "turning it off" requires a fundamental psychological change, not just better knowledge of time management techniques and other useful tools. Not only that, but it implies that "turning it off"is a fundamental threat to our entire economic system. Why? Because since population is no longer growing, the only way to increase total GDP is to get the same number of people to spend their money FASTER. And if "turning it off" can only happen when people decide that some of their "needs" are not needs any more, and that they can live happily with lower incomes, then "turning it off" necessarily means that people spend money SLOWER.

Should it happen? I personally think it would be good. Will it? Frankly, the odds are awful.

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