One of the three legs of Rutger Bregman’s “Utopia for Realists” stool is
a 15-hour work week. You can be financially wealthy and still be time
impoverished. There are good ideas, and there are good business ideas. I like
the concept of ring-fencing the time and energy we allocate to problems. To well-articulated
and communicated ask-offer exchanges that are put in supply-controlled
containers. Usain Bolt “charges for 10 seconds”. 15 hours may not seem like a
lot, but it changes the way we view how we count. Time is a lazy supply-controlled
container. A catch-all bucket that becomes the default. Thinking how we can
construct a world that only requires a 15-hour workweek requires creativity. Building
Capital to supplement our income. Shifting from charging for time. Snapping the
definition of ourselves and our specific skill sets from the problems we work
on. Freeing ourselves to work on things that aren’t problems. I don’t think
time and financial poverty are things we just have to accept as the way life
is. We can tweak reality.
