Three theories for why you have no

Three theories for why you have no timeOne of the truisms of modern life is that nobody has any time. Everybody is busy, burned out, swamped, overwhelmed. So let’s try a simple thought experiment. Imagine that you came into possession of a magical new set of technologies that could automate or expedite every single part of your job.What would you do with the extra time? Maybe you’d pick up a hobby, or have more children, or learn to luxuriate in the additional leisure. But what if I told you that you wouldn’t do any of those things: You would just work the exact same amount of time as before.This might seem impossible. But there are three simple reasons for this.Better technology means higher expectations — and higher expectations create more work.For most of history, humans blithely languished in their own filth. Most families’ clothes were washed on a semi-annual basis, and body odor was inescapable. The fleet of housework technologies that sprang into the world between the late-19th and mid-20th century created new norms of cleanliness — for our floors, our clothes, ourselves.New norms meant more work. Automatic washers and dryers raised our expectations for clean clothes and encouraged people to go out and buy new shirts and pants; housewives therefore had more loads of laundry to wash, dry, and fold.In short, technology made it much easier to clean a house to 1890s standards. But by mid-century, Americans didn’t want that old house. They wanted a modern home — with dustless windowsills and glistening floors — and this dustless glisten required a 40-to-50-hour workweek, even with the assistance of modern tools.