We’re witnessing a categorical shift in how people sell their time.
Once upon a time, maybe a hundred years ago, people worked “days”. This was a product of the available technology at the time. The average labourer didn’t have a pocket watch to know exactly what hour it was to clock in and out. If someone worked Tuesday, they worked from sun up to sun down. They got paid “a day’s wage”.
As time-keeping technology became more prevalent, people started working hours, not days. People started to work “8 a.m. to 5 p.m.” In this period, the constraint was now commuting. The average person lives approximately 30 minutes travel from their work and this has held roughly true for most of history. If you need to travel to work, you’d better earn enough hours’ wage to make it worth it.
Now we’re seeing something new as commuting evaporates. People are working on the order of minutes. E.g., “I have a 30-minute meeting at 2 p.m., then I’m making lunch for the kids. After that, I’ll put 60 minutes into project X before the repair guy comes by to fix the oven.”
To get the same work done, people are starting to distribute it across a full waking day (even if subconsciously). Our systems and ideas haven’t caught up to this new world yet. We aren’t earning “a minute’s wage”. But it’s hard to not see the progression now that I’ve noticed it.
Once upon a time, maybe a hundred years ago, people worked “days”. This was a product of the available technology at the time. The average labourer didn’t have a pocket watch to know exactly what hour it was to clock in and out. If someone worked Tuesday, they worked from sun up to sun down. They got paid “a day’s wage”.
As time-keeping technology became more prevalent, people started working hours, not days. People started to work “8 a.m. to 5 p.m.” In this period, the constraint was now commuting. The average person lives approximately 30 minutes travel from their work and this has held roughly true for most of history. If you need to travel to work, you’d better earn enough hours’ wage to make it worth it.
Now we’re seeing something new as commuting evaporates. People are working on the order of minutes. E.g., “I have a 30-minute meeting at 2 p.m., then I’m making lunch for the kids. After that, I’ll put 60 minutes into project X before the repair guy comes by to fix the oven.”
To get the same work done, people are starting to distribute it across a full waking day (even if subconsciously). Our systems and ideas haven’t caught up to this new world yet. We aren’t earning “a minute’s wage”. But it’s hard to not see the progression now that I’ve noticed it.