From Tim Ferris’ Four-Hour Workweek (which I’m currently re-reading) to more recent claims that AI will reduce our working time to just a handful of hours a week, we’ve been promised for a long time that technology will free us up from work. But instead of working less, we seem to be working more – faster, longer, and under a heavier cognitive and emotional load. It’s not that technology isn’t living up to its promise; it’s that we’re still operating in a system that doesn’t optimise for human beings.
The 15-hour workweek
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would reduce working hours dramatically within a century. In his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, he theorised that by 2030 (not far off), we’d be working a 15-hour workweek. So work would become a minor part of life, and the “economic problems” would be solved through productivity gains. His assumption was that those productivity gains would translate into more leisure time. Was he naive? Or did he simply underestimate the strength of social norms and power dynamics that were in play?
Keynes was right that productivity exploded – but working hours did not fall accordingly, especially for professionals. Since the 1970s, labour productivity in advanced economies has more than doubled, while real wages have stagnated relative to productivity. Average working hours fell slightly in the mid-20th century but have largely plateaued since the 1980s; and for professionals and knowledge workers, in fact, those hours have increased. Economist Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, explains that productivity gains were captured as income growth and consumption, not as time. So we didn’t get more time for leisure – rather, that time was reinvested back into work.
In fact, technology didn’t reduce work, instead, it dissolved the boundaries around it. So, thanks to laptops and smartphones, Slack and email, and globally distributed teams, work was no longer confined to the office, to office hours, and geographic limits. Suddenly we could work any time, anywhere. Tim Ferris saw this as an opportunity – but the reality that most professionals experience is the culture of being “always-on”. After-hours messaging has become normalised, and work continues to spill into evenings, weekends, and holidays. Lynda Gratton in The Shift calls this “temporal colonisation” – where work starts to consume non-work time. Instead of freeing us from work, technology actually made work omnipresent.
The new promise of AI
Now, with the advent of AI, we are being sold the next liberation. AI promises to automate admin, eliminate busy work, and give us time back for meaningful work – echoing that same familiar story that soon, we’ll finally be able to work less. Bill Gates has argued repeatedly that as AI takes over, we could choose to reduce working days as a 2-to-3-day workweek becomes possible. Elon Musk has gone even further to say that paid work will become mostly optional within the next decade or two.
But the truth is that the narrative hasn’t changed, nor has the underlying structure.
From Tim Ferris’ Four-Hour Workweek (which I’m currently re-reading) to more recent claims that AI will reduce our working time to just a handful of hours a week, we’ve been promised for a long time that technology will free us up from work. But instead of working less, we seem to be working more – faster, longer, and under a heavier cognitive and emotional load. It’s not that technology isn’t living up to its promise; it’s that we’re still operating in a system that doesn’t optimise for human beings.
The 15-hour workweek
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would reduce working hours dramatically within a century. In his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, he theorised that by 2030 (not far off), we’d be working a 15-hour workweek. So work would become a minor part of life, and the “economic problems” would be solved through productivity gains. His assumption was that those productivity gains would translate into more leisure time. Was he naive? Or did he simply underestimate the strength of social norms and power dynamics that were in play?
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Keynes was right that productivity exploded – but working hours did not fall accordingly, especially for professionals. Since the 1970s, labour productivity in advanced economies has more than doubled, while real wages have stagnated relative to productivity. Average working hours fell slightly in the mid-20th century but have largely plateaued since the 1980s; and for professionals and knowledge workers, in fact, those hours have increased. Economist Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, explains that productivity gains were captured as income growth and consumption, not as time. So we didn’t get more time for leisure – rather, that time was reinvested back into work.
In fact, technology didn’t reduce work, instead, it dissolved the boundaries around it. So, thanks to laptops and smartphones, Slack and email, and globally distributed teams, work was no longer confined to the office, to office hours, and geographic limits. Suddenly we could work any time, anywhere. Tim Ferris saw this as an opportunity – but the reality that most professionals experience is the culture of being “always-on”. After-hours messaging has become normalised, and work continues to spill into evenings, weekends, and holidays. Lynda Gratton in The Shift calls this “temporal colonisation” – where work starts to consume non-work time. Instead of freeing us from work, technology actually made work omnipresent.
The new promise of AI
Now, with the advent of AI, we are being sold the next liberation. AI promises to automate admin, eliminate busy work, and give us time back for meaningful work – echoing that same familiar story that soon, we’ll finally be able to work less. Bill Gates has argued repeatedly that as AI takes over, we could choose to reduce working days as a 2-to-3-day workweek becomes possible. Elon Musk has gone even further to say that paid work will become mostly optional within the next decade or two.
But the truth is that the narrative hasn’t changed, nor has the underlying structure.
From Tim Ferris’ Four-Hour Workweek (which I’m currently re-reading) to more recent claims that AI will reduce our working time to just a handful of hours a week, we’ve been promised for a long time that technology will free us up from work. But instead of working less, we seem to be working more – faster, longer, and under a heavier cognitive and emotional load. It’s not that technology isn’t living up to its promise; it’s that we’re still operating in a system that doesn’t optimise for human beings.
The 15-hour workweek
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would reduce working hours dramatically within a century. In his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, he theorised that by 2030 (not far off), we’d be working a 15-hour workweek. So work would become a minor part of life, and the “economic problems” would be solved through productivity gains. His assumption was that those productivity gains would translate into more leisure time. Was he naive? Or did he simply underestimate the strength of social norms and power dynamics that were in play?
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Keynes was right that productivity exploded – but working hours did not fall accordingly, especially for professionals. Since the 1970s, labour productivity in advanced economies has more than doubled, while real wages have stagnated relative to productivity. Average working hours fell slightly in the mid-20th century but have largely plateaued since the 1980s; and for professionals and knowledge workers, in fact, those hours have increased. Economist Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, explains that productivity gains were captured as income growth and consumption, not as time. So we didn’t get more time for leisure – rather, that time was reinvested back into work.
In fact, technology didn’t reduce work, instead, it dissolved the boundaries around it. So, thanks to laptops and smartphones, Slack and email, and globally distributed teams, work was no longer confined to the office, to office hours, and geographic limits. Suddenly we could work any time, anywhere. Tim Ferris saw this as an opportunity – but the reality that most professionals experience is the culture of being “always-on”. After-hours messaging has become normalised, and work continues to spill into evenings, weekends, and holidays. Lynda Gratton in The Shift calls this “temporal colonisation” – where work starts to consume non-work time. Instead of freeing us from work, technology actually made work omnipresent.
The new promise of AI
Now, with the advent of AI, we are being sold the next liberation. AI promises to automate admin, eliminate busy work, and give us time back for meaningful work – echoing that same familiar story that soon, we’ll finally be able to work less. Bill Gates has argued repeatedly that as AI takes over, we could choose to reduce working days as a 2-to-3-day workweek becomes possible. Elon Musk has gone even further to say that paid work will become mostly optional within the next decade or two.
But the truth is that the narrative hasn’t changed, nor has the underlying structure.
From Tim Ferris’ Four-Hour Workweek (which I’m currently re-reading) to more recent claims that AI will reduce our working time to just a handful of hours a week, we’ve been promised for a long time that technology will free us up from work. But instead of working less, we seem to be working more – faster, longer, and under a heavier cognitive and emotional load. It’s not that technology isn’t living up to its promise; it’s that we’re still operating in a system that doesn’t optimise for human beings.
The 15-hour workweek
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that technological progress would reduce working hours dramatically within a century. In his essay Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren, he theorised that by 2030 (not far off), we’d be working a 15-hour workweek. So work would become a minor part of life, and the “economic problems” would be solved through productivity gains. His assumption was that those productivity gains would translate into more leisure time. Was he naive? Or did he simply underestimate the strength of social norms and power dynamics that were in play?
Thanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.
Keynes was right that productivity exploded – but working hours did not fall accordingly, especially for professionals. Since the 1970s, labour productivity in advanced economies has more than doubled, while real wages have stagnated relative to productivity. Average working hours fell slightly in the mid-20th century but have largely plateaued since the 1980s; and for professionals and knowledge workers, in fact, those hours have increased. Economist Juliet Schor, author of The Overworked American, explains that productivity gains were captured as income growth and consumption, not as time. So we didn’t get more time for leisure – rather, that time was reinvested back into work.
In fact, technology didn’t reduce work, instead, it dissolved the boundaries around it. So, thanks to laptops and smartphones, Slack and email, and globally distributed teams, work was no longer confined to the office, to office hours, and geographic limits. Suddenly we could work any time, anywhere. Tim Ferris saw this as an opportunity – but the reality that most professionals experience is the culture of being “always-on”. After-hours messaging has become normalised, and work continues to spill into evenings, weekends, and holidays. Lynda Gratton in The Shift calls this “temporal colonisation” – where work starts to consume non-work time. Instead of freeing us from work, technology actually made work omnipresent.
The new promise of AI
Now, with the advent of AI, we are being sold the next liberation. AI promises to automate admin, eliminate busy work, and give us time back for meaningful work – echoing that same familiar story that soon, we’ll finally be able to work less. Bill Gates has argued repeatedly that as AI takes over, we could choose to reduce working days as a 2-to-3-day workweek becomes possible. Elon Musk has gone even further to say that paid work will become mostly optional within the next decade or two.
But the truth is that the narrative hasn’t changed, nor has the underlying structure.
The rest of the essay unpacks why AI won’t automatically give us our time back – and why redefining success matters more than ever if we don’t want the same cycle to repeat.
