On June 5th of 1883, at the house that stood on 6 Harvey Road in Cambridge, England, John and Florence Keynes gave birth to their very first child. A son they would name John, after his father. Young John, was bright and happy and had the advantage of being raised by a prominent English family that highly valued formal education.
A few years passed and shortly after John’s brother Geoffrey was born, John was enrolled in the Perse School Kindergarten — but was absent a great deal due to illness and was almost held back. And by the time his sister Margaret was born, Keynes was a student at Saint Faith’s Preparatory School, where he excelled in mathematics and algebra and was recognized for the breadth of his vocabulary.
In 1894, at the age of eleven, John Maynard Keynes rose to the top of his class. It was a place that he would stay for the remainder of his education.
1897 came and Keynes won a scholarship to Eton College where he continued to excel in mathematics, and in 1902 he left Eton for King’s College, Cambridge, where he was given another scholarship as well as began to specialize in economics.
Now, if you’ve studied economics, you know the basics of Keynes. He would end up changing the standard economic views of the time; as well alter the way we look at governmental roles. He created in depth theories of business cycles — all of which would be later called Keynesian Economics — and in the 1930’s, he began to seriously challenge world economic concepts. He disagreed that free markets would always provide full employment, as well as the idea of demand leading to periods of high unemployment and argued that governmental regulation would need to closely monitor boom and bust cycles.
Then came World War II and Keynes’s ideas began to be adopted by the leading Western economies, which lead to the creation of The World Bank. And even though Keynes died in 1946, he actually became more influential after his death — as the governments and economic systems that had adopted Keynesian practiced were now booming — which created real life success to support his theories. Time Magazine listed John Maynard Keynes as one of the top 100 most influential people of the 20th century.
Now there is no doubt of the intelligence and vision of John Maynard Keynes. It’s clear that he was absolutely correct in many of his theories of economics and financial projection, and his understanding of business and world market trends is probably better than anyone’s ever. But — there was one area that Keynes was incorrect about.
In fact — he was dead wrong.
Keynes began to map the growth of technology in the 1930’s. He saw that with the rate of the development of useful tools and innovations being created, that this would eventually affect society as a whole. He factored in the advances he was seeing in communications, manufacturing, transportation, all areas, across all industries, and in an essay entitled Economic Possibilities For Our Grandchildren, Keynes made a statement that would be tied to his name from that moment on.
“By the time my grandchildren are adults,” Keynes had said. “They would be working a 15 hour work week.”
Technology would free us. New machinery and modernization would be the tools to take on most of the burden of our average work week.
Keynes stated that over time, with the help of machines, technology and new concepts, people would become more productive. Machinery and the modernization of the work place would be able to take on the burden of most of our work week and an hour of labor would produce more and more stuff as time moved on. So we would be able to work less and less. Technology would free us.
And Keynes was —- so wrong.
Well — that’s not true. He was right about the development of technology.
Since his death in 1946, mechanical and computer innovation has changed every aspect of our lives. We can now send information around the globe, in seconds. We can communicate with anyone we want to in a written, video or text format. We have access to information on any possible subject instantaneously and can bounce signals off satellites to track our location and get us where we need to go faster and more efficiently. We can sort, organize or trend data. And we have successfully made the world a much smaller place by opening access to every part of it.
But Keynes was wrong about how this would affect us. It didn’t free us. Not at all. It only lead to the bar being raised.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, an average individual needs to work 51 hours per week today, in order to produce as much as someone who was working 40 hours a week in 1950 — so a team with email, spreadsheets and cell phones, needs to work more than the team with typewriters, carbon paper and messenger services. And in 1990, MIT completed a study that predicting that with the current rate of technology growth, mixed in with the productivity rates; we will need to increase our work by 120% more in the next 50 years to capture the same current production rate. So we will need to work 15 hours more each week in fifty years, in order to be as productive as we are today.
The technology that is available now is not creating less work. It’s creating more, by constantly raising the competitive need. So we end up doing more because we need to do more.
And not only has technology simply raised the minimum standard of work production, it is completely altered how we think and react. We need to be wired, to be connected — all the time. If we hear that ding or buzz of our phone, we have the Pavlovian need to see what it is — no matter what we are doing or where we are.
Here are some interesting facts.
84% of people use their cellphones as alarm clocks, so their phones are right there with them, even when they sleep.
A Health Club chain recently had to post signs asking members not to use cell phones — in the shower.
Lifeline and Link-Up provides free smart phones to those on state welfare programs, as texting capabilities and wireless internet access is now seen as a basic human need.
We are 34% more likely to misplace our car keys, than we are our cell phones, because we are on average away from the less.
Municipalities are now adding signs on rural roads that have limited cell phone coverage to prepare drivers for the fact that their phones will not work for several miles.
Phones, tablets, smart watches and whatever is next in the technology line, are deeply embedded into our lives. So how do we use these tools — as tools and not leashes? How do we take back our lives and unhook the electronic collars?
Well, there are a few ways.
- When is it ego and when is it priority? Yes, there are times when that phone needs to be glued to your hand — if you’re on call, working out a customer emergency, someone in your family is ill. Yes. You need to work the phone. But those are rare. Most of the times that we respond to an email during dinner, is so we can be the first one on the email chain to do it. To save our place. To let our customers, or co-workers, or the guys on The Little League Committee know that we are on this. And this is just ego. If you are not getting further information or adding information to the conversation, then you are just electronically thumping your chest to show others that you soon will.
- Respond with data — anytime you send a work email, text, voicemail without new information, you are wasting time. Especially on long email chains where the world is being copied. Determine what the goal is and work towards that.
- Batch tasks. The most productive people out there, batch there electronic chores. The answer emails in the morning or late afternoon. They respond to texts at lunch and return voicemails only in the car. They get more done in a shorter period of time and actually get real work done, offline, with real people, face to face.
- Turn off notifications. Just because your aunt posted a video on Facebook or your neighbor put her goulash recipe on Pintrist, this doesn’t make it news. Those notifications are only distractions. So turn them off and look at them later.
- Leave it in the car. If you look at an organization’s highest ranking individuals, thye almost always never arrive at a meeting, presentation, lunch or discussion, with their cell phone. They almost always leave it in the car. These are the people that want to be focused and want you to know that they are. The reverse side of that is, when you are meeting with high ranking people from other companies, they won’t have their’s either. And they will respect those that give them the same respect.
The simple rule is you want walk around all day with your hammer or a spatula. You use these things when needed then put them back. The same thing is true for your phone, tablet watch or whatever other magical electronic gadget you have. Use the tool and master it. Then put it away.
Confidence is found when you can distance yourself until needed.