"An epidemic of overwork among ordinary Americans"?

Well, that's what I was referring to with "when I was working" -- when I was a director of an agency with limited funds and limited staff and a whole lot of people depending on us. It was very, very difficult to take time off because there were so many different issues and so few of them were controllable. I would do my best, and there were always some crises when I was gone, but the preparation and creating back-up plans for various scenarios was so labor-intensive that it made the "vacation" almost not worth it. There simply weren't any easy ways around it. The staff members I had were already maxed out and there was no way I could afford another staff position to take some of the pressure off of myself. Intensive preparation -- and intensive catch-up, and intensive emotional fallout from clients who felt abandoned for petty or very serious reasons when I was gone -- was the only way to go.

That kind of an agency wouldn't work for this kind of thing, anyway, though. (Hence my last sentence in the post you quoted.)

Previous to THAT, I was in a huge bureaucratic situation with terrible communication between departments and lots of "oh by the way huge meeting today at 3 sorry we didn't tell you earlier oops" sorts of things. It was very, very easy to get out of the loop in a way that was damaging to your own interests/ department. (I did indeed look for a new job to get out of that culture, but it was the best I could find for the year or two that I was there.) That's the kind of situation where I'd love the idea of the whole thing stopping.

But as I said, I'm undecided. I dislike the paternalistic aspect.

Oh and re: 300 emails, I'd do the out-of-office notification but it wasn't like it was 10 correspondents who sent 30 emails each (and would therefore stop at the first one) -- more like 150 separate one-time correspondents and about 30 of them who ignored the out-of-office notification and sent increasingly desperate and panicked "aren't you back yet???" emails.

I'm not saying it's easy and yes, I've been through it, too (the gazillion emails, etc. When I left one large insurance company, I had been there 5 years and was paid for almost a month's worth of vacation that I had never taken). And I hear you re the people who could not for the life of them figure out what "out of office" actually means (eep, you folks actually graduated from college? Where? In the land of no reading comprehension?).

Some industries are maxed out. And others are cheap to produce things, sell things, whatever because they're understaffed and everyone is overworked. Still other places are in the middle of hiring and not all slots are filled. Of course. Work isn't a wonderful place for a lot of people. Then again, employees can --- assuming the local economy isn't totally tanking --- vote with their feet.

The point I'm making, which I'm losing sight of, here, is that people going on vacation need to at least try to manage the time right before they leave, so that the return from break isn't a horrorshow. It's not possible to fix every single problem and prevent every single email from coming through, of course. But there's got to be at least some coverage, within reason, when people go on break, and employees have to be able to depend on that -- and reciprocate when their coworkers are out.

Yeah, some of that was just being the top person there. My employees could (and did) take time off with no particular problem -- it was different for me, though.

the bottom line is that downtime is important for physical and mental well-being. Finding time to do it is always going to be a challenge, but the world won't come to an end if we are not there for one, two or even three weeks. I need to make it a priority.

I actually don't like PwC's policy. It forces you to take vacation when they want to schedule it. Perhaps you are Jewish or non-Christian and don't want the Christmas time off. I would prefer to have more time in the summer than winter. Or I want to attend a family member's graduation across country and I can't because my vacation time is in December and July.

I prefer to choose my own time off that is convenient to me. But then again I don't have a problem not checking email or other work related items when I go on vacation. On a very rare occasion I may check something if it is a very unusual situation. When I go on vacation - I leave work behind. And yes I take every day I am entitled to. I realize as good as I am about my work that if I am out and something happens some one can take over. I do and have done the same for others. For example - they seemed to manage when I was out for over 3 months on maternity leave. And what would happen if you walk outside and got hit by a bus? Would everything at the office just stop? And I certainly had over a thousand emails when I returned from maternity leave. I didn't even check my email while I was out.

I am sure PwC has paid time off - I know many people who work there and although I don't know for 100% sure - in that industry paid vacation is the norm.

This year was the first time I'd taken off more than 4 work days in a row in over a decade.

It was an absolute treat.

I'm going to do it again - and next year I'm going to go for a full two weeks off in a clump. Feels heretical to even think it - but I know that I'll come back with more energy for the insanity that breaks out if I take a longer break.

I relate to that, ehBeth.

On the place closing at christmas and July 4th - phooey. I much preferred any vacation to be in spring or autumn, and it would drive me nuts to have to take a week at christmas. We were supposed to at my last biggish landarch firm, but I was independent, had my own clients, and worked through most of the week (not paid in any case, except by my client billing). I can see where people who have children in school and celebrate christmas might find it helpful... but when you do celebrate it, it is pretty much more work than vacation, with the religious observances, the present buying, and wrapping, and relative visiting or housecleaning and cooking. So, I see it as paternalistic, and a way of taking vacation days out of office holiday party time, if paid.

I always had trouble getting outta there, with a lot of project wrap up before I left, and buzzing around after I'd get back, but .. I was always able to fuggedabout it when I walked out the door.

Pretty much. Its amazing how things dont actually fall apart if youre gone for two or three weeks - they just get done a little less well. Or get delayed. And perhaps an opportunity might be missed, and a customer have gotten impatient, and you know what? The world still doesnt come to an end. Hill of beans and all that.

I think the problem is a kind of cognitive dissonance (if I'm at all using that term right).

On the one hand we need to be able to switch off regularly, for our mental and physical well-being.

On the other hand, many of us do jobs with long hours, hard work. Work you have to make a real effort for. And one of the ways our psyches make us able to take that up again, to go that length, every day is by imbuing ourselves with the sense that what we're doing is Really Important.

Check around how many people are convinced that their job is of the utmost importance, that they have enormous responsibility, etc. Not just firemen and emergency service workers at the psychiatric centre. Also people who work for some PR agency, or do sales.

And in a way thats a beautiful thing; everyone should consider themselves important. (Though there is something deceptive, and precarious, about finding that sense of self-value through your job).

Its beautiful - but its also just a coping mechanism. Its a way we psych ourselves up in order to do the next 10 (or whatever) hour day.

But that coping mechanism bites you in the ass when it comes to holidays. Because once you have fully internalised this sense of It Being Your Utmost Responsibility Not To Fail The Company - something your boss will all too happily reinforce, positively ("what would we do without you?") or negatively ("if he doesnt do it someone else in the team will have to pick up what he dropped, he's failing the team") - once you lose your sense of relativation about that - then how can you honestly believe you can leave without it leading to big harm?

In extremis, admitting that you can leave for two three weeks like that can almost, I'm guessing, become a threatening thought - threatening to your self-image - once you really bought into this ethic.

At least I'm guessing that this is the kind of psychological development - again, one that corporate employers especially will encourage and actively promote at every turn - that might underlie this weird phenomenon of people actually, seemingly voluntarily, foregoing on free time.

Not talking about those Europeans in the survey who say they'd like to work extra in return for higher wages - when the answer is to that hypothetical question, I guess its just the desire for mo'money that drives them. But talking about apparently increasing numbers of people who seem to almost pathologically forego on their free time, preferring to offer them to their boss instead? They cant all be idealistic or artistically driven lone wolfs, who have made their passion their work, after all?

Its almost history now, but I do remember the head-scratching, slightly hilarioused reaction in Holland - in the 80s I guess, at the advent of the yuppie age? - when the corporate culture of teambuilding, spiritbuilding etc first came waving in from America. Multinationals holding these teamspirit meetings, the silly excesses of a hundred employees in shirt and tie shouting, "We can do it!". It seemed so weird - no longer was a job just a job, it was supposed to be some sort of higher mission. Or the equivalent of a sports game - can our team do it?? Do it better (than them, than ever before)?

McDonals arrived, when, in the early 80s? With their "employee of the month" celebrations, which still strike me as the almost-deliberately sarcastic, neat capitalistic mirror image of those Soviet celebrations of the "worker of the month". I mean, how big is the difference between "he has helped our collective outproduce the 5-year-plan by 120%" and "this star employee has surpassed his targets by 120%"? Capitalists, communists - they are both well versed in the means of mass psychology to get people to spontaneously offer their hard labour - its much more effective than direct force.

Now, all that is fully incorporated in Dutch work culture too, in some way or another. Not always in the silly "Chakkah!!" ways of motivational business guru Emile Ratelband, but some degree. Anyone openly considering his job as "just a job" will now get disapproving looks from colleagues pretty much any white-collar workplace.

What we need, perhaps, in the West, is a bit more sense of self-relativation? A bit more Buddhism? When all we see is just a fragment of reality, just a fragment of the existing color and sound range, then how much of a dust particle is an email, a missed meeting?

Theres nothing wrong with choosing to make your work important. With committing to doing the job you have, whatever job you have, or ended up in, the best you can; not because its really of life-or-death importance, but because if we are here on earth, why not give it the best we have? But perhaps it's important to always be aware that it is just a choice we make - that we make it important, fundamentally out of the whim of, why shouldnt we, rather than any intrinsic importance involved in that extra sale made, that additional paper published, etc.

Like - if we're all here on a flight of fancy, happened out into the world through one of eight million births, we might as well give it as good a ride as we can - but perhaps all the real fun in doing so is the awareness that it is, in the end, all but a flight of fancy? And really, we can step out of it any time - dont let them make you think you cant?



And with those words, my dear congregation, I end, and I hope you will have a wonderful walk home tonight, do kiss your wife or husband and your dog when you reach your safe abode, peace on earth and amen.

and I recall when it arrived in North America from Japan in the 1960's/1970's. It all just spins around.

I worry about people getting stuck in hospital if I'm not there to wave the magic chequebook, but I'm going to learn to suck it up.

That's a nice analysis, nimh.

I maintain a definitely stubborn and perhaps deluded conviction that my job -- as the director of my agency, just that one, no others -- really was quite difficult to leave. I mean, have you been following Roberta's saga? Imagine that in looking for resources she eventually found me, and I had contacts with all the right people and was in the middle of solving her problem and then all the sudden, oops, bye, vacation, sorry if you have zero cash for the next two weeks, tootaloo. And then add that she was Deaf and functionally illiterate in English. And was a single mother with three small children and no other family in the country.

That's what I dealt with ALL the time.

I do think it's very important to have some time out of work, for both selfish (fun) and altruistic (more productive worker) reasons. I've always had a hard time with that, but have been able to do that with most jobs. Had to recalibrate when I quit and got involved with volunteering and became way overburdened -- it can be real work even if you're not getting paid. I recently become much better about saying no and taking time that I need. I'm on a new committee, and am resisting hither and yon, and it's so great. They're thinking of becoming a non-profit and I've been through that process before and agreed to do some research for them and bring some materials to the next meeting. Then of course they wanted me to lead the process to become a non-profit/ 501 (c) 3 (horribly complicated) and I said no. Nope. Happy to help with the process, but lead it, nope, sorry. They took it just fine, big sigh of relief.

I was going to say the same thing re: Japan.

I worry, too that the work I do won't get done while I'm gone. Bad things could happen. But I need to make sure that someone else can step in and handle the emergencies.

Wellllllll.

As it happens, in an unrelated event, I searched today to find out some of what happened on what we were researching back in the early seventies. I was never the main author but sometimes one of them, probably through largesse, and often thanked on a bunch of papers - on immunological matters we thought vital at the time. We had our share of exciting results, and I enjoyed being part of it, though not the person that thought up what we were doing.

I can't find the original articles so far but find pages and pages and pages of citations of further work citing those. I thought of all this both because I've been unpacking stuff and ran across an old copy of a paper, and because of the articles in the last day or two on Google about the method by which the aids virus basically castrates the T cells. So, let's say we were cogs in some wheels. They could get along without me given planning, especially after we hired more people, and I did take vacations, but still left with vacation days amassed.

My first job though was to set up a clinical lab for our research tests, and I was the only person in that lab for probably a year and a half until I got some help. No rest for the wicked then.

OK, later on, I worked possibly harder in landscape architecture in a relatively higher position as a professional. I am less sanguine about extra hours there, as for a lot of beginning years I did some design work I grew to be against for ecological reasons, city mandated or not, at the time. So despite my necessariness for getting the work out, I began to switch from big projects our firm did to simple residential gardens where I had more of a relationship to the client. But in the beginning, I thought my efforts were crucial, and, yeah, they were, as far as meeting deadlines for developers and their funding. We are used to all-nighters in our school years and found ourselves doing that in a crunch in our work lives.

My mentor was very good at staying all night drawing up a complex residential project and all the details himself. And that stressed design exhilaration filtered down to the rest of us. Plus, we always needed money, it was a constant strife to get enough to pay the bills.

With my last business partnership, we had our design sense down, our working the plans out down, and our priorities set so that we gave ourselves enough room to breathe. On the other hand, we didn't do housing tracts and I didn't have the density of detail to do fast fast fast. We each took trips whenever they made sense and we could afford it.

Now I'm old and sort of graying. Pretty damn glad for those vacations I did take. They helped me get a sense of self in space. I only wish I'd taken more.

To blather some more -

Part of why I wish I'd taken more time off is not only because of what I intimated in earlier posts, that one gets a sense of self outside of a work self image, in connection to the world around and also within us...

but that I got interested, through either just years going by or my landscape arch classes... in the lay of the land. Man and the land and the land without man, or much of man's hand. The look of the land, the breakdown of it in some situations, and the many kinds of beauty, and within this I include built environment. I got interested in art and painting and photography more than lab medicine and landscape architecture. They are more personal to me at the same time they are more outreaching from me.
I now treasure the looking and rue time flying by re my chance to look.







I reread this and it seems I don't care about people. Not so, that is a big part of the looking around.

Are you still painting, Osso?

Well, I just got my easel, and I've found my paints, and I have a few canvasses. I don't have any original photos of new mexico by me or others, to riff off of.

Have a backlog of stuff to paint, packed still, and a few photos at hand. I don't do scene replicas.... I just use photos as triggers. Sometimes my paintings look like the place and often they don't at all. I am more about the act of painting...

Trouble is, I don't like to just pick up photos on line as that is iffy to me re use....

I did ask Kara if I could paint from her photos that she had sent me and she said yes, and those two sold for 2600 each, which, trust me, saved my ass that month. I prefer to work from my own photos or people who let me use theirs.

Sooo... here I am in a city with a surprisingly small art gallery action and a lot of, er, ah, er..... local iconic crappo.
This area is home to a priceless heritage of native american arts.
I'm not doing native art lookalikes.

Re local crappo, maybe I'm too quick to judge. If I had the moolah, I'd open a gallery. Probably to no avail.

Dys has some neat photos of Chaco Canyon and a few other places, but when I print them out they look like cartoons. I hope to shape up and paint soon, as I need to earn some dollars, and I have no gallery here, land of few galleries as it is, and need to get a grip to approach Santa Fe.

I don't have a show ready for Santa Fe. Part of the thing is that I am in California tharn. Processing my trip through.

Mumble. Grump. Mumble.

To answer your question, not yet, but getting there.

Sozobe - you remind me so much of our VP. She acts the same way. A lot of it she brings on herself. When you offer to help and try to take something from her - she resists and says oh, I'll just do it. Really other people can take things off her lap and do so successfully if only she could let go.

Honestly, what happened when you left your job? Did they go belly up? If not, then you really could have taken time off. I am not saying that it wouldn't be difficult for to leave or for others to take up the additional work, but it could have happened. You simply have to let go and if things didn't work as well, well so be it. Basically you have to let go physically and mentally.

And also I am not saying that sometimes you have to leave everything when you go on vacation, but couldn't you have arranged that situation while on vacation? I am all for following up on vacation if you really need to and to keep it at a minimum. It is rare that I do, but on a few occasions I have. What if during that saga, you got hit by a bus or was so ill that you couldn't move? What would happen then?

In most cases, I have found it is the individual that holds them back - they simply can't let go and believe some one else in the office is capable of handling their work.

When I was first pregnant, I found out my co-worker was also - we would be out at the same time. We were the only two at this particular level and position in our job. Well you know what - we took our 3+ months off for maternity within just a few weeks of each other. We were both off and it was difficult for those left in the office, but the work still got done and we work in a highly regulated industry where deadlines, and accuracy are strict.

And might I add in - I was a bit like this before having children. Now I think I have a different perspective on things and different priorities.

Yep.

Interesting thread. I like it. I particularly like it as someone who is a profound slacker at work unless there is something concrete, physical, demonstrable, completable to be done. A lot of jobs to me have been like the death by a thousand cuts -- do this, do that, no reason or end in sight.

Okay. So. Seems to me that the ability to even worry about this -- am I working too hard? -- is a sign of enormous privelege. Certainly somebody puttering along at a subsistence level in any society isn't going to worry about whether or not they should take a long summer break. (What "subsistence level" actually means varies widely between societies, but whatcha gonna do? Sure, you can sleep under the stars, never bathe, and live on 1200 calories a day, but people who do that in my town have a rough time of it. Which is a shame. It really doesn't sound too bad.)

There's also a threshold issue at work here: if you take a certain job, you've got to perform at a certain level in order to keep it. In some cases, that means working 60 hour weeks for months on end while this or that project or case gets sorted out. Whether or not you pursue such a career is a matter of self-determination, but once you're in it you aren't always free to say, "I'm working too hard and too long. I'm going to take a break." That break will turn into looking for another job.

For this to change, the people at the top of the ladder and/or the vast majority of the people on the ladder have to agree that things should change. As long as there are enough, say, young lawyers willing to step up and work 6 day, 80 hour weeks, big firms are going to keep demanding that young lawyers do so. And I've known to many bona fide workaholic stress-junkies to expect a cultural shift toward laxity in the near future.