I want you to imagine the following scenario with me.
Imagine that one day your boss comes up to you and tells you that he has good news. He says that the company has decided to implement a daring new plan to increase productivity. In this plan, every staff member will be required to work less hours than they currently do. They will remain on their current salaries, but will simply have to work less hours. Same amount of money, less hours.
Much less hours. One hour a day, in fact. Staff will not only be required to work only one hour a day they will be allowed to only work one hour a day. Working over the one hour is forbidden.
Great news, right?
However, before you get too excited, the boss tells you that the new productivity move comes with one simple caveat: the company may not record a drop in profitability. The senior management will simply compare the bottom line before the plan with the bottom line after the plan. If there is even the slightest drop in profitability, the plan is scrapped and everyone goes back to their 8.5 hour days. Simple.
The plan will start on Monday with all staff required to start work at 9:00am and finish work at 10:00am
Now - think carefully - what do you think would happen?
How many people do you think would turn up to work late? How many irrelevant emails do you think would be sent? How much time do you think staff would spend playing office politics, or gossiping at the water cooler? How many meetings would go over time? How long do you think people who weren’t willing to pull their weight would last?
That hour would be, without a doubt, the most productive hour those workers had ever lived in their lives. The office would be a hive of the most impassioned, focused and dedicated activity ever witnessed.
But why?
The answer is simple: reactive neurotransmission within the reticular activating system.
Let me explain. All functions of the human body can be categorised within systems. One of the most interesting of these is the arousal system. Without the arousal system, you’d do nothing but sleep. Very deeply. It’s your arousal system that decides when your heart needs to beat a little quicker. Sometimes it decides that you might need something a little harder, such as a good dose of adrenaline.
At higher levels, the arousal system is reactive. An example of this is the popular ‘fight or flight’ instinct. You see the rhino, the rhino sees you, followed by a surge of adrenaline. For those of us in non-rhinoceros environments, you see the deadline, the deadline sees you, you see the sales manager, the sales manager sees you... you get the point.
Whether you decide to fight or flee the rhino (or the deadline, or the sales manager), your arousal system has got you to that point as a reaction to a stimulus. But specifically, what kind of stimulus is your arousal system reacting to?
A threat.
Threats initiate arousal. It’s what we commonly called the ‘pull granny from under the tractor’ instinct.
Understanding this is extremely helpful for gaining deeper insight into the mysteries of human motivation. If you want someone to strongly react, just threaten them. Human beings are able to do amazing things when faced with a threat. They will jump when you say jump, work when you say work, produce when you say produce.
And after jumping, working, and producing, they’ll leave. And that day will be the happiest day of their lives. They’ll be popping the cork while you’re wondering who the heck is going to pull granny out from under the tractor now.
So threats are effective to a point. Threats work the first time, perhaps the second time, maybe the third time if you’re lucky. The problem is that the threats people use (“You’ll lose your job!”) begin to look attractive when compared with the unpleasant prospect of spending the rest of your life in an place where you are constantly threatened.
This begs the question, is it possible to activate the arousal system without threats?
It certainly is. All you have to do is turn a threat on it’s head. A threat is the prospect of something bad happening, an opportunity is the prospect of something good happening.
That’s the good news, that opportunities cause arousal just as quickly as threats do. The big difference being that people don’t quit in disgust at constantly being given opportunities.
Can you see the connection with the one hour work day? The reason that people would be able to work so effectively in the one hour work day is that they would be in an extremely high state of arousal. But what is it that is causing that arousal - threats or opportunities? In the one hour work day the worst thing that could happen would be that the staff would lose their opportunity to work five hours a week. Their arousal would be the result of positive opportunities, not negative threats. The worst that could happen would be that they would go back to their old work schedule.
Just knowing that the results of the following hour would be the difference between a 40 hour and a 5 hour work week would be more than enough to induce very high levels of arousal.
Imagine it! If someone told you to stop wasting time and start working, you’d thank them. People would be begging their boss to let them take work home with them. The average employee would be more concerned about the bottom line than the CEO!
Amazing, isn’t it? The one hour work day would pressure people to work harder than they ever had worked in the life, and they would love every minute of it.
The one hour work day powerfully demonstrates an essential principle of extreme productivity: aliveness. Aliveness - as the word suggests - is about where how alive (or awake) the individual is. Are they extremely alive, simply alive, or barely alive? Are they fully awake, half awake, or half asleep?
Aliveness can be the result of burdensome threats or boundless opportunities. It can come from the dragon, or the treasure.
Of course, the big question with regards to the one hour work day remains unanswered... do you think they could do it?
Could you do it?