After Work: Human Time When Machines Do the Jobs
When machines do the work, an hour of human time loses its price. Our task is to give it a value.
This page is never finished. Below the foundation you will find ideas for how we could live when machines do the jobs, and new ones are added as we develop them.
The hour loses its price
For two centuries we have measured time in two ways: by how much of it there is, and by what it pays. Hours times wage. Every working life, every pension, every economic statistic rests on that formula.
When machines do the jobs, the market price of a human hour falls toward zero. With it disappears the only yardstick we ever used to tell a valuable hour from a wasted one. A society after work needs a new currency for time. It can only be a measure of quality.
Free time is not yet a resource
Research on unemployment and retirement points in one direction. Work quietly supplies more than income: a structure for the day, contact with others, a shared purpose, standing and activity. People in retirement lose almost as much of this as people without a job, even though their income continues. And more free time does not by itself lead people into public life. Retirement alone does not raise volunteering.
Freed hours flow into private life by default. That is no failure. But it leaves the deeper needs that work once covered without a new home.
Five dimensions of a good hour
We propose to judge an hour by five qualities.
1. Choice. Was the hour chosen, or did someone else fill it?
2. Depth. Did attention stay whole, or did the hour break into fragments?
3. Connection. With whom was it shared?
4. Trace. Did it leave something that outlasts it: a skill, a work, a person who is better off?
5. Horizon. How far into the future does the purpose reach for which it was spent?
Choice, depth and connection have been explored by thinkers on personal time and resonance. Trace and horizon are what we add. Horizon matters most to us. A civilization whose free hours reach further ahead will also think further ahead.
Who owns the freed hours
The machines that free our time also compete for it. Platforms are designed to fill free hours with little choice, little depth and no trace. They are good at it.
The central question after work is therefore not whether we will have enough time. It is who will own it.
A new quality of life
A rich life will not be measured by the number of hours a person has free. It will be measured by the quality of the hours a person lives.
This shifts what a good society provides. Income keeps people secure. Places, communities and long-term tasks give their hours choice, depth, connection, trace and horizon. Public libraries, workshops, research stations, councils and expeditions become the infrastructure of a life after work, in the way factories and offices were the infrastructure of a working life.
The Human Time Index
What gets measured gets built. We are developing the Human Time Index, a measure of how much of a society's free time is chosen, deep, shared, lasting and far-reaching. It is meant to stand next to economic output as an account of what a society does with the time its machines give back.
Ideas for Life After Work
Each idea describes one way a society could give its freed hours value. Every idea shows a day lived with it, the qualities of time it strengthens, what it would take to build, and where it already begins today.
After Work Idea #01: The Citizens' Hour
Added 21 October 2026 · Connection · Horizon
A day with it. On a Tuesday afternoon, Miriam sits in her town hall with 23 neighbours drawn by lot. For six weekends they have been deciding what should happen to a hospital site the city no longer needs. Miriam spent twenty years processing insurance claims until software took over the work. Now she spends her afternoons weighing what her town will look like in thirty years. Her hours are recorded and recognised, the way working hours once were.
What it gives human time. It turns free hours into a share of public decisions. It connects people who would never have met at work. And it lets ordinary citizens think on a horizon that elections rarely reach.
What it would take. Being drawn by lot for a citizens' council would become as normal as jury duty. Every town would keep a standing council with trained facilitators. The hours given would count in a public record of contribution.
Where it already begins. In Ostbelgien, a permanent Citizens' Council of 24 members chosen by lot has set the agenda for citizens' panels since 2019. Parliament must debate their recommendations twice within a year.
After Work Idea #02: Workshops Instead of Offices
Added 21 October 2026 · Depth · Trace
A day with it. An office tower once held two thousand desks. Today its twelfth floor is a bicycle repair hall and its eighteenth a sewing studio. On the twenty-third floor a retired engineer teaches three teenagers to build a walking robot. Nobody is paid to be there. The building is full anyway.
What it gives human time. Making something with your hands takes all of your attention. What you build is still there next week, and so is what you learned.
What it would take. Office space emptied by automation would be converted into public workshops and run like libraries. Tools would be free to use. Their staff would teach rather than supervise.
Where it already begins. The Urban Workshop in Helsinki's Oodi library offers 3D printers, sewing machines, electronics workstations and a large format printer. The equipment is free to use and open to everyone, and visitors pay only for the materials.
After Work Idea #03: The Generation Task
Added 21 October 2026 · Horizon · Trace · Connection
A day with it. Jonas joined the restoration of his river when he was 34. Now he is 51. He has seen concrete channels broken out and banks widened, and he has watched the first kingfishers return. His daughter works on the same project today. Neither of them is employed by it. Both belong to it.
What it gives human time. A task longer than a career gives each hour a place in something larger. People who share such a task across decades become a community without needing a workplace.
What it would take. Regions would define tasks with a horizon of one generation and open them to anyone who wants to join. Membership would carry the standing a job once did. Some of these tasks will lead far beyond Earth, because carrying life to other worlds is the longest generation task of all.
Where it already begins. In Germany's Ruhr region, the Emscher carried sewage in concrete channels for a century. Its conversion began in 1992 and has cost about 5.5 billion euros so far. The river has been free of sewage since 2020, and its banks are still being returned to nature.
More ideas follow. Every new idea is numbered and added to this section.
What planet-futures.org does
planet-futures.org develops the measure of human time in public and tests it with everyone willing to take part. We publish what we learn and take it to those who shape cities, education and public budgets. A future for human time should not be designed without the people whose time it is.