(Part 1)
In the old world, boundaries used to be imposed naturally, although they were not always welcome. Leaving for work was a sharp boundary. The start of the work day at the office was another. Then there was the lunch break. Your commute back. Your evening at a pub or a restaurant. And so on.
Those boundaries were almost always set by (or with) someone else. Typically the only one you truly set was your run or gym session.
In the absence of those boundaries, your time is up for grabs. This is a threat and an opportunity. If you’re passive about it, it’ll be claimed – all of it – by your boss, by your kids, by social media and online TV, and by a hundred parallel low-attention messaging threads.
I’ve seen this story before: back in 2009, I ran the consumer Internet division of a company. The flagship product was an SMS subscriptions store that promised to fill up the tiny free moments in your life: waiting for your train, taking the elevator, standing in line. It was designed on the premise that you had a finite number of such moments in your life, and therefore needed a finite (though renewing) amount of content to fill them. It was a great idea and took off immediately. Within weeks we had over a quarter of a million people try it out, and a significant number of them jump through hoops for paid content on the store.
But in just the next couple of years, most of the Indian middle class had smartphones, everyone had Facebook – and Twitter – on their phones. They had games from Zynga and from local studios. They discovered YouTube! And just like that, you had an infinite amount of content to fill those little moments.
But the tide shifted even further. Filling crevices of time wasn’t enough, this new content created new gaps for itself. You’d quickly scroll through Facebook at traffic stops until the car behind honked at you. You’d interrupt meals to post photos on Instagram. You’d check Twitter during conversations. You’d play games while putting off chores.
By the middle of the 2010s, we were already living fragmented lives. At the end of the decade, the pandemic has knocked down natural boundaries of time too. Everything is fluid.
What shape are we going to give it?
(Part 3 follows tomorrow)