WHO’S IN CONTROL OF YOU?

200 years ago, 98% of the British population worked on farms. Today, it’s less than 1%. The industrialisation of the nation.

field
My dad tells me stories of how everyone in the village worked in the fields at this time of year. Manually harvesting and threshing the crops from dawn to dusk – literally. Everyone was involved. It was a real community.
That’s all over now of course. Large conglomerates have replaced the small independent farm owners, robots and automation have replaced humans, and the farmer himself is a dying breed. The Industrial Revolution was the catalyst for much of this, but we’re now living through a technological revolution that was supposed to make us all rich and lead us to a life of easy work and lots of leisure. But, of course, it’s doing the exact opposite.
According to government figures, the average white collar worker now works between 10 to 20 hours more each week than they were doing in 1990 – the majority of this brought about by the constant connectivity so that we work everywhere, all the time.
You know, as business owners, that the complexities that we have to deal with have increased massively over the last 10 years and our working hours per week have got more, not less. The truth is that for most, income has not risen meaningfully in real terms and we’re all paying a hefty price for being “on” all the time.
I’m aware that I treat my (frequent) holidays as compensation periods to my family, especially my children, to make up for the time that I’m not spending with them during your average working week. I’m getting better at being ‘in the present’.
Of course, all this technology and the internet has been an amazing wealth generator for some of us, me included, and, just like the industrialisation of the farms, there’s little we can do to control “it”.
However, you can control you.
I took the decision over 12 months ago now to completely opt out of social media. You won’t find a single tweet or Facebook post from me in the last year and that’s not about to change anytime soon. I’ve chosen to not let it into my life.
One of my senior team recently broke their mobile phone and it meant for an entire week she was unable to access their email on the go. They were liberated. Their performance didn’t diminish but their thinking time improved, as did their relationships with their loved ones.
You have dominion over you.
You don’t have to be checking your status 23 times a day, tweeting ad infinitum and replying to emails within 10 minutes of them coming into your inbox just because everyone else is.
Our lives, for each of us, are a reflection of all the decisions that we make.
Sure, sometimes things happen to us, but we have a lot more control than we realise. We get to make choices. The decisions are ours.
Think about this: a hammer can be a very useful tool or a very dangerous weapon. It’s not up to the hammer.
You get the analogy.
You know what I’m talking about.
That’s the final word.