By Glover T.
Ferguson
Outlook Journal, October 2004
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PDF Help I can remember news stories from the 1960s that offered bold predictions about the future of work. The gist was that, given the relentless rise in productivity, the 40-hour week would soon be dramatically reduced. This worried the pundits of the day: How on earth would we fill all of our spare time? To this schoolboy, it seemed like a pretty serious problem; after all, I'd been taught that "idle hands are the devil's workshop."
Now, 44 years later, the question seems moot: Technology critics question the source and magnitude of any alleged productivity gains, organized labor has stopped lobbying for a four-day workweek and professionals complain about the number of hours they're putting in—both in and out of the office. What the heck happened?
The first time I gave any serious thought to the Incredible Shrinking Workweek was in 1987, when I was asked to review a proposal from Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry to build a "Multi-Function Polis" on the north-central coast of Australia and offer suggestions about how Accenture might participate. According to the sponsors, the aim of the project was "for Japan and Australia…to cooperate in
the construction of a multifunctional ‘City of the Future,' which would present new ideas for new industry and life in the 21st century."
In the late 1980s, of course, it made all kinds of sense for Japan to be behind such an initiative. The country's highly productive, high-quality manufacturing economy appeared poised to dominate the world; its leadership in robotics would enable low-labor, highly automated operations. If any society was going to need to find a way to while away
its spare time, it was Japan's.
But the promise of leisure courtesy
of technologically driven productivity proved to be as illusory then as it seems to be now. The Japanese economic bubble burst, and as much of Japan's once-vaunted economy continues to struggle to sustain recovery, the Japanese have identified a growing crisis they call karoshi: "death by overwork." (Meanwhile, the "Polis" eventually emerged—as an Aussie-underwritten traditional industrial park on the south coast of Australia.)
It was slowly dawning on me that
the short workweek might well be the figment of someone's imagination.
By the late '90s, I was earnestly preaching the wonders of e-commerce and the Internet and opportunities for large gains in productivity. Occasionally, I would ask if (older) members of the congregation recalled the predictions of a short workweek; they would confirm that their real challenge was finding time to spend with their families. Amen. We'd all have a good laugh.
Then one day recently, I was lunching with some dour labor economists; not only did they fail to laugh at all this silliness about a shorter workweek, they contradicted me. Flatly. The working population is, they said, on average, working fewer hours per week. Not more.
  Sure enough, the truth is captured in the accompanying table: At the current rate of workweek decline, we'll soon achieve the zenith
of leisure time once enjoyed by 13th-century male peasants. Indeed, current labor statistics and other data suggest at least two paradoxes.
- Statistics show that in developed economies, we are, in fact, slowly reducing the number of hours per week we work. Yet everyone I know claims they are working longer and longer hours.
- If we had frozen our standard
of living in 1950 and applied all subsequent productivity gains to reducing our workweek rather than increasing our consumption, today we would work two days and then we'd split for our five-day weekend. Even if we waited until 1975 to freeze the standard of living, productivity gains since then would allow us to have a three-day workweek today.
I care about this because I believe information technology can improve our standard of living and the
quality of our lives. But I periodically get pelted with vegetables by
executives who feel that through Paradox 1, technology has steadily stolen their personal lives, and
by analysts who use Paradox 2 to question the value of investments
in information technologies.
Judging from the amount of ink that's been spilled on this subject, as with most complex issues, there is no single answer. But as an advocate for technology, I wish to offer a defense.
First, I will stipulate that there
is some truth to the charge "Technology Stole My Life!" No question that some of the same technologies that have increased productivity have also fanned the flames of global competition. This increased competition has forced
us to run faster and faster to stay
in one place.
But do we really have to run? How much of our frenetic activity is
really productive?
As usual, statistics are only one part of the real story. In most situations, executive work hours are not formally or fully reported, so it's not surprising that my colleagues are exhausted while the numbers suggest we're losing our minds.
Meanwhile, mobile phones, instant messages, e-mail, teleconferencing, laptops and PDAs have conspired to allow us to conduct bits and pieces of business at practically any time, anywhere. We even use these technologies to allow one mode of business to interfere with the other: How many times have you been caught multitasking during a conference call? "Uh, could you repeat that question?" Translation: "I was checking my
e-mail while you all blathered on."
For me, these are largely personal and process problems more than they are technological problems. If the meeting is important, then pay attention—better still, participate! If it's not important, don't attend—better still, don't have the meeting. If you want to leave work behind you for a while, listen to MP3s on your train ride—you could even read a book!—but leave the laptop closed.
In answer to the second charge—"The Productivity Claims Must Have Been a Lie!"—I will again concede partial validity. First of all, productivity has been unequally applied in the economy. In the United States, the manufacturing sector produces about half of our GDP with only 25 percent of the employed population. Meanwhile, services produce the other half of the GDP with the remaining 75 percent of the workers. This represents a huge opportunity to improve productivity in the service sector. That said, total GDP divided by total number of workers has grown dramatically and yet has not been realized in a sense of expanding leisure time. So where did it go?
For one thing, we buy more stuff.
To philosophize for just a moment, would we be happier if we had less stuff and more time to use what we already have? And there's a political/ social policy dimension to the dilemma as well, because the growing gap between those in the top echelons of the economy and those at the bottom suggests that the benefits of productivity have not been shared equally.
Professionally, I hope to contribute to closing the productivity gap between services and manufacturing (and, with some innovative thinking and the application of technology
to the reinvention of management, help improve the quality of life of harried executives).
Personally, I plan to use technology more wisely: I promise to do a better job of focusing on one activity at a time and on maintaining a stricter separation between my home life and my office. Philosophically, I will strive to reduce work hours in favor of a more contemplative lifestyle…well, right after we get HDTV and
my home entertainment server.
Glover T. Ferguson is based in Chicago.
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