Go Home.

There has always been a factory mindset about what constitutes a work day. Australia often leads world bench marks in hours worked per week and we pride ourselves on time put in to do the job. Still is this where we want to be after 200 hundred years of social change in the work place? The factory act of 1802 deemed it unfair for children 9 to13 working more than 8 hours, while 14 to18 year olds were only allowed a maximum of 12 hours, all the while not mentioning the 15 hour days their parents put in 7 days a week. How far have we come? Sixty hour weeks are still common in many sectors even though most contracts have 45 hour working weeks.

Is there so much work that we can't go home? Is there a shortage of capable workers that the work can't get done? Do we still have a factory mind set about clocking in and clocking off! Is it a case of being seen at work for requisite hours to show time put in, regardless of results? Or are we just afraid to go home before the boss?

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer for Facebook, was recently applauded and congratulated for leaving work at 5.30, so that she could spend time with her family. The fact that applause follows what should be de rigueur for work days is the concern. The expectations for employees today does not leave much room for sympathy when it comes to what is important outside of work. For many it feels like we have saved the children from the pits but we have gladly taken their place.

The blurring of lines between work and life outside of work have now been mostly obliterated by technology and there seems no going back to normalcy or to what our forefathers fought for when lowering the work hours. I see no normalcy in my friends and colleagues who find fewer opportunities to work less and who are reticent to take too much time away from work. The hours still mount up, especially in the sales oriented areas where the expectation is a day of meetings and a night of back up into the CRM.

It all ends with the "how productive am I and when am I most productive" question and "what tools are available to make me more productive" question? So analysis like simple time and motion studies along with figuring out what works best for you, within the constraints of your employer is an obvious start but the big buy in will always have to come from upper management if you want to go home on time.

Could be, the trick is you don't go to work one day a week and then you don't have to worry about the stares when you pack up at 5.30. This of course will only work if your employer has moved beyond the industrial revolution and is not stuck on seeing you sit at a desk every day. The changes don't have to be that drastic if you can make technology work for you and don't let it override the need for constant massaging and interruption.

The applause for Sheryl Sandberg has died down but it should continue, so that outmoded work practices come to light, 200 years after we started working on them.