Sources:
Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America
Edited by John De Graaf
The (Even More) Overworked American
By Juliet Schor
An Issue For Everybody
By Barbara Brandt
The Incredible Shrinking Vacation
By Joe Robinson
Forced Overtime in The Land of the Free
By Lonnie Golden
The Speed Trap
By Robert Bernstein
On Time, Happiness, and Ecological Footprint
By Tim Kasser and Kirk Warren Brown
Synopsis: The trend in rising number of hours worked per year published 10 years ago has been born out with time. Technological advances predicted to put an end to work have been concurrent with this trend. Vacation time is shrinking, and Americans routinely work with fewer days of vacation than any other developed nation. In addition to the intuitive connections between hours worked and personal fulfillment or lack thereof, there is also a connection between overwork and non-sustainable behavior. Material wealth does not seem to be closely connected to life satisfaction.
Reflection: Once again, I feel I enjoy a unique perspective on this issue. I took my first job when I was 15, stocking shelves in the hardware store in my hometown. As an undergrad, I routinely worked 30-hour weeks in addition to being a full time student. I’ve been a bike mechanic, a preschool teacher, an orderly, the guy who runs the weed-eater at a state park, a nature interpreter, and since I was 15, I have never gone without a job. Until now.
Bikes are a seasonal industry, and most shops cut back as much as possible in order to stanch the hemorrhage of money during the winter. Turns out we needed to cut WAY back, so I was laid off in November and two months later it became apparent the shop was closing and my welcome, paid vacation on Uncle Sam’s dime became full-on, oh crap, what am I gonna do now? Until unemployment, I fully believed I needed a job to give my life a sense of purpose. I really like to work, and I love being productive, and I really love making money (for the security reasons mentioned in “Planned Obsolescence”). To compound the issue, my family has a tradition of being hard workers. My dad, not many years from retirement from owning his business, regularly works 50 or 60 hours a week, but feels good about it because he’s not working anywhere close to as many hours as he used to. So I went into unemployment not without trepidation.
Well, with free time, I decided to build a bed. Then I brewed a batch of beer (because the natural thing to do when unemployed is to make alcohol, right?). I read a couple of books that had been sitting on my nightstand. I rode my bike and I got back into running. And some days, I brewed some coffee and watched movies in my pajamas. Two months later, I still don’t have a job. I am looking, but I’m pretty sure I could go on like this forever. (As an indicator of the work ethic in my family, I deleted and retyped this paragraph three times because my dad might read it and I’m afraid of what he’ll think of his deadbeat kid) So yeah, I’ve got a few thoughts on the amount we work.
This is not such an easy topic, because it gets at what is arguably the Ultimate Question: what is the meaning of life? Why are we here? Most would agree we were not meant to work from when we were first able until we die, and most would agree to lead a life that in no way contributes to society (another potential PhD thesis; what do we mean by “contribute” and “society”?) is equally bad, but in between those extremes lies every shade of gray, and we are notoriously, horribly, ridiculously bad at interpreting gray with any sort of consensus.
How did we get into this race? Well, we studied that a bit in “Planned Obsolescence.” The alleged sense of security afforded by “stuff,” and the instinctual desire for more. Maybe further research by people smarter than me will bear that out; maybe it won’t. More to the point, how do we get out of this race?
It seems to me that, as a society, we want our cake and we want to eat it too. Studies cited in our resources show we don’t want to work as much, but we want more more more more more. Our culture of conspicuous consumption is at odds with our desire to work less. If everybody were willing to walk away from such excessively consumptive lifestyles, we wouldn’t be compelled to work as much. Our culture of consumption may be evidence that we value our material possessions more than free time.
I have nothing to back up this assertion other than my personal experience. Bike wrenches don’t make a lot of money. I’ve lived below the poverty line my entire life, and I love my life (I’ll grant you that I’m young, single, and without a mortgage). I own my car. I have more bikes than I know what to do with. I dress as well as I want to. I eat well. Even when employed, I’ve made time to indulge my passions. I don’t own a lot, but everything I do own was bought with hard work, a lot of research, and patience. I am walking evidence that income and material wealth are not connected to life satisfaction. One conclusion I’ve reached while embracing my existential crisis is that it would be great to have a career I love, but it is essential to have a life I love. We’ll see how much a wife, kids, and mortgage change this.
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Your post makes me wonder: if we didn't work, what would we do with our time? As it is now, all we have time to do is shop and sleep. What if we had so much time and so little money that shopping didn't take much of the extra time we had on our hands? What would we do? Sleep more? Probably some, but even sleeping gets old fast.
ReplyDeleteI hope we might go outside. Get reconnected with the earth by hiking and, of course, biking. Grow some of our own food. Tend a flower garden. Simple, natural things. And then we'd blog about how great it all is. After all, as Thoreau said, "if we're going to blog, we need to live so we have something to blog about." (That's a paraphrase, by the way.)
Reality check: TV. Of course we'd spend more time in front of the tube wishing we were working more so we could afford the things we see thereon.
Consumption is an addiction we are collectively engaged in. Like true addicts, we see the problem in our fellow junkies, but saying something would require us to fix ourselves and, well, we're not ready to do that. And so the work-spend cycle continues.
Paraphrase or no, Thoreau would've been a great blogger. I hear you, and I keep waiting to get bored, and it's not happening. A friend told me that was evidence I was living with purpose. My brother (lovingly - I don't want to paint an inaccurate picture of my family. They're as good as it gets) told me I was a bum.
ReplyDeleteI don't know if you've ever visited Powell's City of Books in Portland, OR, but it's a bookstore that spans an entire city block. When I lived there (Portland, not Powell's, although that line got blurry), I'd visit Powell's often, but never for more than 45 minutes or so. After that, I'd start to get very restless, almost like what I think a panic attack would be like. This puzzled me, so I spent some time on it.
In ten lifetimes, I could never read every tome in Powell's. So much knowledge I'll never possess. Think of the change that could occur if the right connections were made. I didn't like to contemplate how much I didn't know, and it made me uncomfortable. I wanted Powell's to put out t-shirts that said, "Powell's Books: a screaming monument to how much you'll never know."
Me, without work? I'd read. A lot.
Almost a month later, I've got a different take. Work or not, the activities we use to fill our days are a reflection of something very deep. I'm tempted to say something like the meaning of life as we see it. I wouldn't say I'm bored, but I am very anxious to get a job. For me, work is a means to making my mark on the world. I mean, we all want to die thinking the world was different for our having existed. Maybe that's just me, but anyway... We crave significance. I said I'd read, but behind the reading is the idea that, with that knowledge, I'd be better equipped to change the world. So, it's not about the work. It's about interacting with my coworkers to make their lives richer. It's about making money so I can afford to build furniture and bikes that will outlast me. It's about offering goods and services that maybe make the world a better place.
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