In Free Agent Nation, Dan
Pink talks about the days when most people worked at home.
They were farmers and
blacksmiths and bakers, and they had everything they needed at home to make a
living.
There weren’t work/life
balance issues. Work was life and life
was work. The family was there and they all
worked together.
Then something happened: The
Industrial Age.
We no longer had
everything we needed at home to make a living.
There were suddenly
“barriers to entry”.
So someone with money
provided the building and the tools and we showed up, as did hundreds of others,
to make the car, or print the advertisement, or do whatever our employer needed
us to do.
Most of us got used to going out of our homes to make a living. Even if we weren’t on the assembly line, for decades we still left every morning to go do our jobs.
Companies had scale. They could produce, sell, market, and
distribute better than we could alone. We needed them and they needed us.
Because we weren’t home,
we started to feel guilty. We missed our
kids, our spouses, and our dog.
We felt stressed.
No matter how hard we
worked we couldn’t make everyone happy or fit everything into our day. Something always had to give.
We felt more stressed.
Then something else
happened: The Information Age.
Technology advanced quickly
and dramatically. As it did, its cost
declined. Barriers to entry began to
disappear.
We could be small
again. In fact, being too big was a
problem. Being too big slowed down innovation
and decision making and made us less competitive.
We could be small. We could even be one person. We could work in our homes and cheaply
connect with anyone we needed - anywhere in the world.
But, we forgot how to work
from home. We forgot how to set our own
schedule. We forgot how to blend our
family with our business.
Luckily, we’re learning it
all over again!
Happy Friday!












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