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Oh dear this is a tough one.
After raising kids with the suggestion “if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life”
… to then suggest… “work hard so that you can live the life you hope to” … and now I’m afraid just having a job would be enough for most people.
Like everything a balance is needed between education, experience, hard work – but also the well being of employees so they aren’t burnt out and getting sicker.
People seem to be ‘on call’ 24/7 and that’s not healthy. We need to switch off … Back to a simpler life.
That balance, Vicki Lee. It’s so hard. And of course, millions of us are not technically “employees.” If we do not work, there is no pay. Period. “Sick” isn’t possible, which of course is nonsense. As is – as you point out – being on call 24/7.
Great column today.
Thanks, Madge. I’m genuinely trying to figure it out. And I’m also hoping there’s still time to exert some small measure of influence on my sons, as they must face figuring it out as well. I wonder how others are working through this, and how we as a culture find alternatives to the direction in which we seem to be heading.
there are RULES?
gosh.
nobody tells us Anything
giggling and waving from inside a skyscraper in manhattan.
_tg xx
Rage against the machine and thunder in the darkness so I don’t go quietly in the night and then later collapse in bed wondering when life got so damn complicated.
And if that sounds like gibberish to you it means that I am indeed working far too hard and exhaustion is preventing me from speaking with the sort of coherence and clarity I should have.
I think people need to sit down and assess what it is they need in their lives to be happy. Once you know that it becomes easier to try to figure out what you need to obtain that life.
But there is no doubt that we are running at lightspeed with fear of what could happen if we stop to breathe.
I saw several dear younger cousins this weekend. Talk about constant reinvention! And moving. Not only do you not stay in the same job, you move cities (even countries!) with regularity. The only predictable in their lives right now is uncertain change.
Of my dearest working friends, many hold two or three jobs – cobbled together in the right balance. More or less.
And for my family – my husband’s work is (one of) his passion, but some bosses require more than others. Some give vacation time only to constantly call/email. Some break. It’s more stressful then being in the office. His current employer is good. Really good. But even so, his hours are never certain.
On 24/7. Yes.
I am completely convinced that our current situation of overwork on the part of those employed, coexisting with lack of work by virtually everyone else, is a direct result of the salaried wage system, which makes it possible for companies to force eight people to do the work of ten, leaving roughly 20% of our society unemployed.
If a per-hour or per-task wage systems were the only legal options, simple analysis would show that it would be no more costly not to force overwork onto an artifically shrunken number of employees. Slightly more thought would show that this would actually be advantageous because you would not have the decresead productivity of an overstressed workforce.
What an intriguing point you raise, Robert. I find a lot of value in what you suggest, though for some responsibilities that sort of pay scheme really wouldn’t fit. Then again, the whole concept of exempt / non-exempt as it is applied in organizations seems a bit askew as well.
You mention the possible productivity gains of a less stressed workforce. That would be something to measure, wouldn’t it? Not to mention the collective reduced health care costs.
It looks to me as though it’s all spinning out of control. I keep wondering how do people survive, the ones that didn’t get a university education, the ones that aren’t smart enough to get a high paying job, how do they live? That business about your work should also be your leisure is great if you are one of the high-flyers, the head of your own business, the professor with old fashioned tenure (do they exist anymore?)… I was lucky enough to work at a career that I thought mattered, doing things I mostly thought were interesting and fun and exciting, if sometimes a little scary. But being asked to do more and more, for less, for longer, for bigger areas, to travel more, chase more deadlines, after a while it didn’t matter any more to me and it wasn’t fun or exciting… I don’t think I ever got the hang of ‘reinventing myself’. I managed to go from being a secretary to a professional and I changed career focus mid-stream at one point, but then I couldn’t see the point any more. It all looks nuts to me now and I can’t tell you how glad I am to be out of it.
I hear you, Shelley. I wonder the same things. I imagine you have a particularly interesting perspective – with a foot in two cultures, but making your home in the U.K.
I know it sounds simple, but we simplified. It’s helped. Immensely. Once we’ve adjusted. Once we’ve changed our expectations. Once we’ve redefined what we “need.” I agree with Vicki Lee Johnston – simplify. One lifetime seems to be a very shortchanged allotment.
I know one couple who worked their butts off so they could take 18 months off and sail around the world. Other people are enjoying their retirement, and even more hope to have enough to retire and enjoy it. People like me, though, think retirement sounds awfully boring! Like you imply, I don’t think either answer is the only answer. The real “winning solution” would be one that provides everyone the choice to do what’s right for them.
If I may voice my opnion, I would say that this new world of « live to work » and “no place to hop off the hamster wheel” can effectively be related to the 80′s which is more or less the times when we can date the absolute victory of capitalism and of financial markets ruling the world under the merciless doxa of neo-liberalism. And from these times on, the consideration for workers human lives has shrunk to nothing while money making and unlimited profits became “all”.
So it’s surely not just by chance that Une étrange affaire (film by French Director Pierre Granier-Deferre) was shot in 1981. It tells the story of a young ad man whose boss will ask him so much work (including sacrificed weekends and such) that it will devour his whole life, finally making lose his wife and all what was making him a human outside of business world.
There were times in the past when it was still considered to think of keeping some sense for people in the work they were supposed to do, allowing them to embrace in some proportions the processes in which they were involved, giving them secure and clear perspectives on what would be coming next for them etc… All of that is over, and the crushing machine is now the rule.
Does France escapes this new trend? Not at all! Suicides in series at France Telecom, Renault, La Poste, and other big French companies in the recent years are here to say that this global evil definitely knows no frontiers.
Insightful article BLW. Good discussion in the comments.
For me, what I wanted drastically changed in my thirties. Experience, crisis, and stress forced me to reevaluate what “work” I value. Even before simplifying, I think all of us must have a conversation to define what we REALLY want. It’s a hard conversation, but definitely necessary.
I love coming to your space. Never know what I will find here, but always learning something to help me enhance my life. Thank you.
Rudri, That’s the highest of compliments. Thank you.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all.” Mario Savio, Berkeley, 1964.
I often think of Mario’s speech when I consider our jeopardy. Something’s got to give.