Checking in, checking out

A short story about the future of work

I logged on and checked meeting notes for the last day. There were a few action items that I might need to deal with later if they were assigned to me, but mostly these were policy decisions that I needed to know about. I checked in with my goals for the day and an update on what happened yesterday — just a few sentences, but enough to let everyone know what I was up to and how I was doing — and took another sip of my coffee.

Somewhere, something beeped. I smelled the coffee for a moment and gazed out the window. Fog was beginning to burn off the river: another beautiful day. Later I’d finish my work under blue skies and go for a brisk walk; maybe a run.

The work / life balance law took effect just a few weeks ago and I was already enjoying its effects. Once it became clear that overwork was putting an extra strain on the healthcare system — it had literally been killing people for decades, but data analysis had only recently made this irrefutable — pressure groups, and then politicians, had moved into action. It had taken eight years of hard work, but the new administration was receptive, and the new single-payer healthcare system aligned everyone’s interests. The old system was adversarial: sicker people made people more money, so while doctors tried their best, the funders at the…