Time Is The New Luxury

Since the 1900s there have been many predictions about what the future of the workplace will look like. One of the most prevalent, supported by everyone from economist John Maynard Keynes to philosopher Bertrand Russell, was that by the turn of the century we’d have a four or even three-day working week.

But while, thanks to major advances in technology, we produce more food than anytime in human history and many of the tasks industrialisation first demanded of us can now be roboticised, somehow, this utopian ideal hasn’t materialised. Instead, the vision of the future workplace seems to be rather more dystopian. Take The New York Times report on online retail giant Amazon, which included accounts of people repeatedly crying at their desks due to data-driven management that valued their worth at cost per minute.

For a long time the alternative, a Slow lifestyle, has been seen as the preserve of hippies. But more recently high profile CEOs like Arianna Huffington have campaigned to bring terms like the Third Metric into our common vocabulary. In short, putting personal growth and wellbeing over building a CV or earning a higher income is becoming the norm.