Greenlights

Always online, never productive.

Today’s piece is about greenlights.

No, not traffic lights or McConaughey sound bites.

I’m talking about the ones that hold us back, keep us online, and steal our time.

Remote work has completely changed the game. Want to live in Wyoming but work for a budding startup based out of Boston? You got it. Feeling ill? Stay at home so the rest of the office doesn’t get sick. Want to attend a staff meeting in your PJs? Why not.

But not all change is good. Remote work has brought along the same issues in-person employees face everyday.

Specifically, the tiny green dot.

The tiny green dot that says you are online and available in a seconds notice.

The one that when lit up, you better be working. You better respond to that slack message quickly. You better be able to jump on a last-minute zoom call. You better be busy doing something.

Yeah, that’s the one.

Whether we realize it or not, that tiny green dot holds tremendous power over us. It makes us do weird things like waking up at 6am just to open our laptop before getting back in bed. It encourages us to clack on our keyboards to look busy in our in-person office.

But the worst part about that tiny green dot? It steals hours from us each day because we are pretending to be ‘busy’.

Just because you are online does not mean that you are ‘busy’ or even working. Remote work is the same as in-person work — people get maybe 3–4 hours of good work done each day and spend the rest pretending to be busy. We are just too afraid to say it aloud.

So why do we waste so many hours of our life pretending to be busy? Because of what that tiny green dot represents. Because we are afraid of someone saying that we are offline or unavailable. Because we want to be the last person in the office and climb the ladder.

Let’s face it — the always-online model doesn’t work.

People cannot be productive 24 hours a day. People need a break, they need to unplug, and they need clear boundaries between life and work.

This system doesn’t just rob the employee, it robs the company too.

Humans are at their best when they have a routine in place. When they have the freedom to optimize their day with physical and mental breaks. When they are not constantly barraged by Slack messages. When productivity is prioritized and not thrown to the wayside.

Great work is still great work whether during the normal 9–5 business hours or in more sporadic 1–2 hour sprints. So why are we encouraged to always be online and available?

Because, “that’s just how the world works”.

The working world has changed dramatically since 2020, but it still has a long way to go.

Imagine a world where you can live wherever you are happiest, do things you love everyday (not just on the weekends), not be stuck behind a computer from 9–5, and still perform at your highest level. Or, if working from the office, a world where you can take long and healthy breaks between projects.

That is a world we should be striving for.

So let’s prioritize productivity and put work boundaries in place. Let’s let people be people and recognize great work for what it is: great work.

How do we do this?

We need to completely rethink the 9–5 model. Instead, we need a model that prioritizes quality work and allows individuals the freedom to optimize in whatever way they see fit. Instead of putting people through a system that turns them into a machine, let them create their own system that allows them to BE a machine.

Let’s take sprints throughout our workday, not walks. Chase our flow state and learn when we are the most creative and productive, and then optimize our schedule accordingly.

By doing so, we will become masters of our greenlights. Not the other way around.

A working culture driven by greenlights is not sustainable nor productive. How many emails you sent or how late you stayed online or in the office is irrelevant. The results are ultimately what matters most.

By focusing on producing high quality work instead of logging the most hours, we will build towards a more productive, sustainable, and creative future.

But the future waits for no one. So let’s get to work.