Several years ago, Don Durrett, a virtuoso jazz guitarist, decided to see what he could do on the bass. He took lessons. He practiced. He struggled. Even as an accomplished musician, becoming proficient on the bass was not easy. After months, he became good enough to perform in jazz trios as a bassist.
“Learning the bass allowed me to hear familiar recordings differently,” he concluded. “Now, I can listen through the ears of a bass player, not just a guitarist.”
Sheltering in place could help us tune in to rhythms to which we have become deaf in our contemporary lives. In effect, we are involuntarily experiencing life patterns our ancestors helped create.
The hours spent with family members in recent weeks is not unfamiliar to our DNA. For tens of thousands of years prior to the Industrial Revolution, humans worked from home.
“The Industrial Revolution, for all its benefits, decoupled the work-life balance and established the soloist as the primary model. ”
Blacksmiths’ forges were attached to their house or barn. The fields tended by farmers were outside their back doors. Tailors and seamstresses worked from their own living rooms or a storefront that was attached to their house. And frequently, the lives of their children were integrated into the family business. Work together, eat together, play together.
As far back as we have records, from ancient Greece to the Middle Ages to the dawn of exploration, people around the world relied on workspaces in or attached to their homes.
But at one point, things changed.
In the middle of the 18th Century, the first factories were constructed to make textiles. Fabric became the first product to be mass-produced and was followed on by a capitalistic wildfire that coursed its way from industry to industry.
The economic implications were vast, but so were the impacts on social norms. Household incomes rose because the workers earned regular daily wages, but it pulled huge numbers away from their families. It was as if communities of people accustomed to performing in orchestras were now told to become soloists.
The Industrial Revolution, for all its benefits, decoupled the work-life balance and established the soloist as the primary model. It amplified the already head-strong individualism that sparked new countries, and mass production became the foundation for vast individual empires. Over a few short decades, we lost our ability to hear the other instruments.
But it might be different today. Shelter-in-place orders offer us an opportunity to stitch together what was torn apart almost two centuries ago. Our DNA is hearing a song we’ve been missing and, from the ways people have reacted across the globe, many of them like the tune. According to The Economist, violent crimes including murder, rape and assault, have fallen sharply during the lockdown.
Rather than looking at shelter-in-place as time in the slammer, many people who only a few weeks ago left their homes all day to work are discovering unfamiliar sounds in their homes.
Employees are unintentionally opening their lives to what they’ve missed for the past two hundred years: work together, eat together, play together.
This is not a reactionary call for returning to life before the Industrial Revolution. Electricity, transportation, communication, technology and mass-produced goods available at commodity prices are all benefits to living the good life in this millennium. And regrettably, The Economist reports an increase in domestic violence during the pandemic.
However, working from home could offer us the sound of an unfamiliar yet pleasing instrument.
The current crisis offers a chance to tune our ears to something we’ve been missing for the last 200 years: the family parts of the work-life balance song.
About the Author
Tim Houlihan is the founder and chief behavioral strategist of BehaviorAlchemy, LLC, a consultancy using a behavioral lens for improving the actions of workers, customers and policymakers. He co-founded Behavioral Grooves, a meetup and podcast with listeners in more than 80 countries. Previously, Tim was Vice President of Reward Systems at BI WORLDWIDE where he was responsible for a $300 million global portfolio of reward systems, acted as the firm's thought leader in behavioral sciences and was the chief liaison to research partners around the world. Tim believes people underestimate the role of the unconscious in our behaviors. The application of good behavioral science can remedy that.
@thoulihan