Could 30 Be The New 40?
A.I. is automating repetitive parts of our jobs. Aren't we ripe for more time autonomy by the 2030's?
The Future of Life, Time, and Work Must Change
You are one of us, aren’t you?
One of the people who might give a lot to your family and community, but always doesn’t get paid for that work.
You are a caregiver, a parent, a friend, a community member. You might be a mom, a dad, a chauffeur, the family accountant, the one who makes sure the kids have clothes that fit. Or maybe you’re an Auntie who is doing your part.
You are the sister that makes sure to show up for the elderly parents when her sibling gets a new job. You are the neighbor who shovels the driveway of the elderly neighbor who might not be able to wait for the snow removal company. You are the friend who takes soup to a friend who just lost a parent, or is waiting to see if their spouse can soon come back from the hospital.
These efforts are usually unpaid. They make us feel good (mostly) and they help us feel connected to community. They are what makes the world go around, actually. Even though capitalism has convinced us that it’s money’s job to make us happy.
But if you’ve just finished your 7-10 hour day, not counting commute time, sometimes you just don’t have the energy for ONE MORE THING.
You are getting tired of the grind.
Maybe you have just spent time having to cater to a boss that might appreciate your work, or might not.
You might wish you felt more inspired to start “your own thing” that felt more fulfilling. But that would require taking time away from your family members, or friends, to get the traction to get it started. While working 40+ hours a week, with the expenses of life in 2025, that probably feels impossible. If you have a disability, it probably IS impossible.
Dreamstorming A More Humane Life, Time, and Work Future
This is a space for us to “dreamstorm” a more sane and humane workplace. It’s a place where we can share ideas, inspirations, and local efforts going on all around the world toward valuing what is truly important, our time.
It’s a place to reflect on how to better care for our bodies, our souls, our families, communities, and ultimately our planet. Because we are all deeply connected. And we all matter.
This is a place where we can envision and share futures where we live to love, not live to work. This is a place where we can experiment, play, laugh, cry, and hopefully support each other.
What’s in it for you?
Expect two to five monthly posts, some companion podcast episodes (currently at Somatic Wisdom) and hopefully active discussion. We are relying on you for that though. 🙋🏻♀️
Free subscribers get all of the content, and will be able to share their thoughts in the ideas comment space. In order to reduce trolls or those who may not respect the brave and generative space we aim to provide here, we may decide to paywall some content if it feels right to do so. However, at this time, we want to spread the message and are not planning to restrict access. Ideas are free, but movements take action.
If you want opportunities to gather in person to organize, please let us know what feels like a reasonable amount to contribute to that sort of thing, or other ways you want to support it. If this is a need and desire, we will figure out what makes sense and learn as we go.
Who is Cristy?
The founder of 30 Is The New 40 is an author, the creator of the Somatic Wisdom podcast and writer of Our Somatic Wisdom Substack.
She worked for 11+ years as a clinical research professional for a large medical device company before she left a leadership role in 2018 to pursue writing, coaching, and teaching soma yoga.
Then, after a year-long stint at a University, she clearly saw that the problem of overwork was not limited to the corporate world. Though she seen this prior to her medical device career, while working in philathropy, she was ready to be done with personal burnout episodes every ~7 years.
She refused to go back to the grind and is still finding ways to make this work. Thankfully, she didn’t take her generous pay in the corporate world for granted. She saved well in those years, understanding that someday there would be storms that would affect us all.
Right now we are in the middle of these storms: Climate change. Resurgences of misogyny and racism. Rise of White Nationalism. Increased pressure on families to make ends meet.
I hope you’ll join us here as we help each other weather the storm of transition.
Angela Garbes’ book Essential Labor: Mothering As Social Change could be required reading for this movement.
I don’t believe in required reading. However, I do love syllabi! Please suggest your favorite books and references that support living in a more care-based and community-centered world along the way, and we can gather them on a page here.
Why 30 and not 20? (or some other number)
I have chosen 30 because it is a nice round number, and because there’s research to suggest that 30 hours is the maximum capacity for knowledge workers. I also think we need to expand the definition of knowledge work to include EVERYONE. Emotional intelligence is a skill set required by 97% of jobs and people skills are anything but soft. Care work IS knowledge work.
Many anthropologists estimate that most people (before the church-agricultural-babymaking complex started) worked about 4 hours per day. I’m not sure if they took a sabbath or not. But estimating a range of 3-5 hours, and a seven day week (what mother do you know who truly has a full day off each week?!?), this would be 21-35 hours a week.
During the 1930’s in the United States, a movement toward “work sharing” to spread out the effect of many people out of work after the market crash meant that the average hours were reduced to around 30 per week. Trust me on this. Juliet Schorr wrote “The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure.” Another for our recommended reading - monthly book club anyone? 📚 🎉
Futurists like Jane McGonigal have suggested a 24 hour work week might not be out of the question in her book, Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything--Even Things That Seem Impossible.
30 hours also breaks down easily into shifts. 5 days of 6 hours per day, 4 days of 7.5 hours per day, or even 6 days of 5 hours per day (my personal favorite). If companies need to have shifts, these are units they can work with. I’m thinking of hospitals, that rely on shift workers to stay staffed 24x7.
If we get to 15-20 h.p.w. someday, and we are loving life and not slaves to the robots that own us, then giddyup! 🐴 I’m with you! Until then, 30 feels like a reasonable number, not a radical one.
Yes! Let's use the gifts of automation to soothe the culture of busy-ness, to reconnect with each other in the ways that our heart feels, to change the paradigm around work now and forever.