Today you enter the Boott Cotton Mill at the Lowell National Historical Park the same way that the thousands who worked there from 1835 through the early twentieth century did—through the white wood Gothic-arched doorway leading to a five-story spiral staircase enclosed in a vertical brick tower.
Although the stairs are made of stone, they are worn by the steps of the countless men, women and children who passed up and down them for almost a century.
They went to work when the bell rang at first light and left twelve to fourteen hours later, depending on the season, when the bell rang again to mark the end of the day. It was grueling work, and many died.
There is value in being clearer about when we are working and when we are not. To do this, we need to recognize where we let work bleed over into the non-working part of our lives. It’s about being conscious of the line, not about never crossing it. Without consciousness, it all gets so blurry we don’t see any line at all.
We mark it as progress, hard won by a courageous labor movement, that the working conditions these people endured now seem like something out of the Dark Ages.
Yet those workers had something those of us in the Information Age do not have—a clear beginning and end to their working day.
TAKE THE BEST, LEAVE THE REST
Just as the harnessing of the power of the Merrimack and Concord rivers which converge in Lowell made the cotton mills possible, the power of the microchip has made it possible for us to work anytime, anywhere. I’m writing this at an Au Bon Pain in Boston, and it’s a wonderful thing. It is also Saturday!
The key here is to make good use of the portability, flexibility and convenience electronic devices offer us without losing the renewal space we need to live balanced lives. Just because we can make our commute or our leisure activities a continuation of our work day does not mean we have to, nor that it’s in our own best interest.
For example, I find it very convenient when I have been traveling to use my cell phone to make calls on the way back so that when I come home tired and hungry I’m done for the day. On the other hand, I choose not to use my cell phone coming and going from local meetings. Instead I use the time in the car as a break to enjoy the view or listen to the news.
There is value in being clearer about when we are working and when we are not. To do this, we need to recognize where we let work bleed over into the non-working part of our lives. It’s about being conscious of the line, not about never crossing it. Without consciousness, it all gets so blurry we don’t see any line at all.
VOLUNTARY SERVITUDE
There’s a story about a farmer who needs his workers to be more productive, so each day he extends the hours they work in the field. At first the size of the harvest increases, but as he pushes them harder and takes away the time set aside for rest and recreation, the yield becomes lower. Soon a point of diminishing returns is reached.
I know a marketing executive who has a high profile account, aggressive deadlines and a two-hour commute. She leaves home every day at 6:15 and pulls back into her driveway again at 8:00, if she’s lucky. Though she would love to exercise more regularly and enjoys preparing nutritious, fresh meals, most nights she and her husband settle for something from the freezer. Both in her car and from her laptop at home she maintains a constant dialogue with the constituents of her professional life.
Unlike the farm laborers, she makes a very good living, yet when we look closely at her life we begin to see a subtler form of the same kind of diminishing returns. In responding to the incessant demands of her role by being available every waking hour of her day, she is creating for herself a high-end version of voluntary servitude and running the risk of burnout.
ALL SYSTEMS OFF
The labor of farmers and mill workers, as back-breaking as it was, came to an end when the sun went down. No such limitation exists for the mind-numbing labor of Information Age workers in a 24/7 work environment. Here the individual worker has to determine when he or she is done for the day.
Turning work off is a discipline just as much as returning messages, preparing for a meeting, and all the other professional best practices of our business life. Here are some suggestions:
- Block out sacred spaces. Designate a few parts of your day, a mid-morning break, 15 minutes after lunch, the first 30 minutes after you get home, that belong only to you. Use these sacred spaces for renewing activity. For me that is reading a poem, looking at art, stepping outside for a little while, doing a little yoga, taking a nap.
- Create no-phone zones. If phone companies can “roam”, so can you. Pick designated locations and routes where you do not answer your phone because you know that it interrupts the enjoyment of a walk, a bike ride, time alone with yourself, etc.
- Practice the art of controlled availability. By letting people know when you are available, you can protect the time you choose not to be. When I tell clients exactly when I will be in the office or will be responding to messages, I am also telling them that I am not available on the days and times not mentioned. I am setting a limit in a way that respects both their needs and my own.
- Utilize transition rituals. The bell, the rooster, the sun, marked the daily rituals of going to and leaving work in an earlier age. We can create our own symbols to sharpen our sense of the beginning and the ending of our work day. Since I work and live in the same place, changing from work to “play” clothes has become an important symbol of transition for me. For people who commute, it might be a landmark on the way home, a house, a tree, a stop sign, which indicates the place where they mentally leave the office and start thinking how they are going to spend the evening.
Unless we are vigilant, work will bleed us dry. We need to keep our working selves and our living selves separate so that each can be strong enough to support the other. Like St Louis, which straddles two states, Missouri and Illinois, we need to build an arch that symbolizes the fact that we have an identity on both sides of the river.
