The new ideal worker is a super navigator

Abstract

This chapter presents a general reflection about how we can learn to navigate work and private life in new ways in the twenty-first century. Historically, the ideal worker was a man with a stay-at-home wife, and the ideal worker devoted long hours to their jobs. Our clinging to the ideal worker norms of industrial society when we talk about “going to work” is therefore paradoxical, as more and more work is now an activity that takes place all the time for many people. The Life Navigation concept punctures the idea that work is something that only can take place at the office during regular business hours. The employees are set free from their own and colleagues’ confining expectations, and are given the opportunity to design their own schedule and work location. The time battle in the industrial society was about work time and free time. The new time battle requires that we find new ways to break with the old concept of “9 to 5” work. The new time battle is about working in sync with your inner, biological clock. It’s a call for a new ideal worker: a super navigator.