Why do we still get up at cockcrow and when the cows moo,
when only 5% of the population work within agriculture or fishing?
Why does everything have to take place in the same rhythm and pace,
resulting in a huge problem with our infrastructure?
Why has the societal framework primarily been arranged to suit
people working from 8 am to 4 pm?
Let the tyranny of A-time end. Let us create a B-society.
Let us create B-patterns in our work and in our families.
Let us have quiet mornings and active evenings.
Life is too short for traffic jams. Let us have more all-night shops!
There is a general consensus that, in the future, Denmark and many other
countries will have to make a living from the inner processes of thought,
i.e. ideas, creativity, innovation and design. In the innovation society we
will be paid for thinking – and this work of thought is an inner process best
stimulated when working rhythms and working hours are individual.
It therefore becomes important to work when one is most productive.
B-society has good social economics as it generates quality of life as well
as productivity if B-persons work when they are at their mental peak.
B-Science
Science has shown that our biological rythms through ”a day” (i.e.
”Nychthemeron” = ” a day and a night”) are regulated by so called
”clock-genes”.
B-persons has an inner day-and-night lasting 25-27 hours, whereas A-persons
has one that runs through approximately 23 hours.
Any individual has it´s own inner rythm throgh one day-and-night (”Circadian
rythm”) and it´s own sense of time for time and planning of time. There are
lots of different kinds of circadian rythms. Most people are B-persons, which
means that their circadian rythm has a cycle that runs through 25 hours.
Therfore these persons has a tendency to stretch their ”nychthemeron”.
B-persons finds it easy to stay awake in the evening; but has difficulties
waking up in the morning – the time where the A-persons are most active.
Every human has a so called inner clock, which is regulated by the earlier
mentioned clock-genes.
A B-person has a strive for staying awake untill late at night – for instance,
to go to bed at 1 or 2 a.m. and then sleep a little longer in the morning.
If a B-person and an A-person goes to sleep at the same time, and rise at the
same time early, the morning wil be experienced differently as the body-temperature
of the A-person is higher than that of the B-person at this point. The
B-person therefore has a very good reason for feeling drowsy, as it is still
”night” (”time for sleep”) for the B-person.
Further, one family has been followed and tested for several years in
the USA. They have “FASPS”, familial advanced sleep phase syndrome.
See, for example, http://www.hhmi.org/news/ptacek2.html.
A group of scientists has found out that humans that are extremely
A-persons has a genetic flaw or disturbance.
15 – 25 percent of the population are B-persons, 10 -15 percent are A-persons.
The rest of the population are more or less either one or the other, or
something in between.
B-work
B-Society’s is working towards a more flexible labour market.
B-Work is flexible and gives you the possibility to work in accord
to your own rhythm.
There are both good bottom line and higher life quality in B-Work.
B-Society is convinced that it is necessary to force a showdown
over the industrial society’s centralized time discipline, according
to which everybody must come at a particular moment and leave
at a particular moment, and where life is compartmentalized into
time for work, time for family, time for leisure and time for vacations.
There is enormous waste of resources in the society organized
according to the ‘larks’ with rigid office hours and misunderstandings
around efficiency of working time. For today much work is carried
out independently of time and place. More and more people can work
anywhere and at any time, and more and more work is invisible in
the process of production. We should therefore move from Chronos
designating the mechanical and apportioned clock to Kairos
designating the most opportune times for work. Hence, it is about
working at those times when one is being at his or her most productive
instead of being parked at work from one particular moment to
another particular moment in order to demonstrate one’s involvement,
yet then perform the most productive work at home in front of a
computer in the evening hours. It is a fact that it is unproductive for
the ‘owls’ dealing with knowledge, creativity and innovation to be at
work at 8:00 without being present mentally since their productivity is
peaking in the afternoon and in the evening. It is different rhythms of
people that generate good bottom line in the innovation-driven society.
B-Certification
B-Society is working with B-Certification of employers that accept
and respect the working rhythm of the ‘owls’. B-Certification will enable
the ‘owls’ to navigate in the labour market and find those workplaces
that have actually implemented flexible working hours as well as show
respect to and accept of life and work rhythm of the ‘owls’.
B-Society
B-Society will create a new daily rhythm in schools and other
institutions as an alternative to the current rhythm of “early at work
and early at home”.
The society’s time structures based on habits of the early riser’s
are not untouchable natural laws even though it can easily seem so
from looking at the ways in which we have organized our lives. No.
The ‘owl’ has got the right to say: “Give me the late riser’s rhythm at
work, at home and in society. Let me come to work at 11:00 and go
home at 20:00. Let me have quiet mornings to read my newspaper and
ease into the day gently and peacefully”.
B-Politics
B-Society will create a more flexible society that supports the way of life
of the ‘owls’ as well. A society which accepts and respects a later start of
the working day because it suits a person’s individual rhythm and lifestyle.
For it is persons’ different rhythms that underpin the growth of social wealth.
When a person works in accord to his or her rhythm, it will furthermore
result in higher life quality and hence less stress.
It is the widely held opinion that Denmark’s prosperous future will depend
on the inner mental processes: ideas, creativity, innovation and design.
In the innovation-driven society we are paid to think, and mental work is
an inner process that is stimulated most successfully through individual
work rhythms and working hours. It is therefore a matter of working at the
time of the day when an individual’s productivity is at its highest.
There are good social and economical benefits in the acceptance of the
‘owls’ as it creates both life quality and productivity because these persons
can work when they are peaking mentally.
