The death of the 'working week' as we know it

No one predicted that the often touted flexible work schedule would become the daily norm. Its time to reexamine what a working week should be.

In March, the world as we knew it, went into lock-down. An unprecedented event which laid bare the cracks in our work-life ecosystem. Except for the fortunate few, who already worked from 'anywhere' to begin with, the rest of the 9 to 5 workforce was scrambling for faster WiFi at home, office server connectivity and figuring out how meetings would now be conducted.

A few days into our Work From Home experience, we all had some form of video chat system installed. Be it Zoom, Teams, Webex or even Houseparty (to replace those after work happy hours). Once lighting and background noise reduction were figured out, we moved on to designing cool wallpaper backgrounds and attempted to emulate the office desk at home. Funnily enough, even that wasn't enough to get some of us into 'work mode'. By week two we had pretty much figured out that working from home may be for a while longer than initially thought. We posted pictures of our home office on social networking sites, albeit in most cases having three or more screens running at the same time seems overkill even for the most dedicated office jockeys among us! This, despite the 2nd grader in the next room trying to get a word in over the cacophony of his classmates.

But the penny did eventually drop for many. If you were an office worker in a non-essential role (which makes up for about 99% of us), was this the new reality? Would we never be able to have a water cooler chat at 11am? Or share a weekend escapade with a colleague over lunch? Yikes! That's a complete breakdown of the social support network we had taken years to build outside the home! How will we ever survive? And don't get me wrong, such anxiety is very real and needs to be addressed through professional help. For many living alone, the workplace was the one constant that offered a social safety net.

But instead of a need to return to the workplace, I pose a different hypothesis - there never was a need for the office for many of us. And there is no such thing as a weekend - bookends with a five day slog slotted in between. Now, before the market traders, stock analysts and fund managers start rolling their eyes, I would like to offer an explanation. The concept of a five day 40 hour working week is less than a hundred years old. It was signed into law through the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 by Roosevelt thereby promoting a more egalitarian working week for American workers. Other countries have taken on a 45 hour, 40 hour or 35 hour week as a standard. But these common standards were based on industrial production times where productivity was easily measured. It's an outdated concept for people in the services industry, yet we still cling on to it for no reason. Well, why can't we have a 21 hour week or another iteration of the same? 3 to 4 hours a day of your most productive time to earn a living, while the rest is spent on pursuing growth and fulfillment. And there is no such thing as a weekend. If you need time to worship during the week, take a day off. Hey, take two days if you think it will help make the world a better place. But why put off a sleep-in until Saturday morning when you could have a siesta on a Tuesday afternoon and get back on the dreaded laptop after dinner? Why not have that 10K run Thursday morning rather than waiting until Sunday to shake off the cobwebs?

Working from home has revealed the flawed concept of office-based work we have clung on to for decades. We live in an age now where we can direct what our day looks like. After all, a zoom call is equally (un)comfortable wearing pajama bottoms or slacks at 7am or 7pm. Hundreds of unnecessary meetings held in conference rooms over the years seem so silly now. If only we could get that time back! While that's not a possibility, the ability to direct how we use every hour of our day is an unprecedented power we now hold. The concept may be easier for my millennial friends to grasp than the rest of us. But do give it a shot. I promise you it will be worth it.

To embrace the new normal, we must grasp the concept of alone-time as a blessing and not a curse. Trying to fill up a day with video calls to give the appearance of a full calendar is exactly that - keeping up an appearance. Most calls should not last more than 30 minutes, underpinned by a strict agenda and timekeeping. Any more than 3 calls a day and the law of declining productivity kicks in automatically. Use more time during the day to finish tasks that underpin an ultimate goal. And once you're done, don't try to do more. Take a break, read a book, have a kitkat if you must. Just make sure you always keep your eye on the prize. Spoiler alert: it isn't impressing the boss by being the first one to log in and the last one to log out on the office server. An 'always online' light against your Teams chat profile isn't going to get you ahead in life. I promise you. Finish what you need to finish, and get on with life. The pursuit of achievement and significance in times of uncertainty need to make room for the pursuit of growth and fulfillment.

And when the dust settles on the pandemic, and I promise you it will, we will look back at this time and see it as the catalyst for change we needed. A reset button, if you will. We will come out of this smarter, more versatile and better connected to our purpose than ever before. So take some time out after you've read this piece and spend it on something that truly makes you happy. Stay safe, stay healthy and most importantly, stay positive.