Quick link to Johann Hari's piece from a couple of days ago about the desire to change our workplace habits.
This is something which I feel quite passionately about. Personally, I work best in the morning and worst in the early to mid afternoon. If I could start my workday at, say 7.30 and finish at 3 I guarantee I would work much more effectively. From 2 to 4 I am pretty useless and listless and I find it really difficult to concentrate. Similarly, I would be more than happy to work from 7 to 5 four days a week as Friday afternoons are a notorious dead zone. I have never worked in an office which displayed much vigour in the final hours before the weekend break.
When I worked in a book store, I quite enjoyed working weekend days and having week days off – it was much more fun to go out and do stuff away from the weekend madness.
The notion of a nine to five job is disappearing. Smart phones, netbooks and other communications technology are already eroding the boundaries between people's work life and home life. I know most of my friends will now regularly check their work emails and messages at night when they should be relaxing or during their days off. This is just an accepted part of many jobs now. As our work hours become ever more fluid, it seems like there is very little give on the side of organisations but an increasing amount of take.
I agree with Hari in that there is a huge scope for more imagination and flexibility about how we work. But the opportunities being offered by technology at the moment seem largely to be a way for companies to gouge more time out of their workers without any corresponding benefits flowing the other way.
