I spotted this ad in a car park the other week. It raises an interesting and important question regarding the amount of time our children spend on their devices.
Interestingly though this ad actually brought to my mind the issue we adults have with screen time. Then as I explored this further, the related issue of how our work lives are designed came to the fore. We really need to redesign our working life.
There are many problems with the way we work, and each working environment would require its own analysis. But when discussing work in the broader sense, there are two problems that concern me the most.
1) The time of day.
If you are spending your work life in the 9–5 gig, you are wasting the best part of the day, ie. the DAY time. You leave your house to go to work just as the sun is coming up, and you leave work just as it’s coming down. This is bad design. It is bad design today because today we have electricity. Back when we didn’t have electricity it was good design. Actually we didn’t have a choice. But now we do. We have electricity, we have lights, we have transport, we have hot water, we have food, etc etc. There is no reason why we couldn’t redesign our work schedule to take advantage of the day. And I won’t even go into the negative effects no sun exposure has on our health….even more reasons to re-design.
2) The amount of sedentary time….(or screen time).
Whenever I finish a 9–5 shift, the first thing that comes to my mind is
Man, I could have flown to Singapore today.
8 hours, that’s how long it takes to fly from Sydney to Singapore.
How many of you like flying for 8 hours?
Now how many of you would like to fly for 8 hours…. EVERYDAY ?
This is the reality of it, and it’s killing us. It’s bad design.
Have a think about the number of hours YOU spend in front of the computer screen. Seriously, go ahead and count them up.
I myself will do an approx. 8hr shift in front of the computer, then go home and work on my projects, which happen to be on the computer as well, then if I have time, I’ll jump on the crypto market, again, on the computer (yes, I have crypto-mania). I could be on the computer 16 hours on some days….16!!! There are people that do less, and there are people that do more.
I have always loved this image, but it’s the sad truth.
Work is designed badly. We need to fix it, asap!
Citizenrod | art | design | think