Now that I’m a responsible adult I’m no longer drinking to excess ever, and drinking at all rarely. It’s been a good transition into a new lifestyle for me. I’m more wealthy and a lot healthier for starters. The extra energy is of course getting channelled towards the ever-growing bundle of joy we have around here.
And no, this isn’t a baby blog.
What I’ve ben thinking about lately is Deborah’s series on work-life balance. It’s an interesting piece of thought underway, and I recommend you go and read it. This post isn’t a reply hers, but is, rather, prompted by it.
I’ve also spent the day caring for the youngster while Second Chef has been out hanging with friends, so I’m enjoying a beer to spoil myself. And it’s making me want to wax lyrical.
The thing that irks me about Western societies is this constant want to convert more and more time to relaxation. Like the fabled grasshopper, we demand to be able to relax and enjoy the sun. And personally I’m all for it. There’s nothing I like better that personal time away from the stresses of work. If my work was stressful that is. While I can be extremely busy, stress is a state of mind. No-one dies in my line of work. If a deadline isn’t reached, children won’t go hungry. I might not get that big bonus next year, but… who gives a stuff. It’s only money, right?
This also means I won’t work for people who are stress-causing, or who treat their employees or colleagues as vehicles to the aforementioned bonus.
However, I work pretty much non-stop all day, every day. When I’m not at paid employment I’m working at home with chores like cooking (and sometimes cleaning. I hate cleaning… I’d rather pay a maid, despite my frugal ways). I also pursue hobbies like blogging.
Then, at the end of the night, I take time to myself, and read for an hour or so (sometimes more if the day allows).
What’s important about this rest time though, is that it is something I can enjoy for two reasons.
The first is mechanisation. Lots of little jobs that used to have to be done by hand can now be done automatically, like dishwashing. And, lots of big jobs that used to be done by hand, like harvesting food, are also mechanised. This means we’ve changed the sort of work I do from harvesting, to “organising”.
The second is international commerce. Half of the stuff I can enjoy, and which makes my life easier, is produced by someone in a country somewhere who earns substantially less than I do. This means that I can, if I chose, work less hours than all those god gave, and still be comfortable.
And that’s what annoys me about the Western demand for more time off in relaxation. You and I can afford to be idle from time to time because a lot of our work has been sent to someone else, who we pay a pittance to work for us. While some of the time off we take is just salary-sacrifice, a lot of our relaxation is actually a form of exploitation. Furthermore, much of our time off is time we could be using productively, potentially for the benefit of everyone.
Now I’m not one to question this. It has delivered a great standard of living for us, after all. But, I’m acutely aware that my holiday time has a cost greater than what I outlay in petrol or dining out. But I do wonder about people who want to not make the most of their productive time and years, and often I arrive at laziness.
25 January, 2009 at 8:37 pm
Justify your assertion that demand for more time off is a Western thing.
How’s it different from the Chinese peasant who moves to a city for a higher wage? Is everyone who can earn more than the poorest person exploiting others? Should the guy who can mows lawns in half the time of someone else, work the same hours mowing lawns as the slow guy for some moral reason? Or for that matter should the person with the petrol lawnmower mow as long as the guy using a push mower and is he lazy and exploitative if he doesn’t?
25 January, 2009 at 8:50 pm
no
26 January, 2009 at 6:57 am
A while ago, during a period of very hectic activity, I remarked “If only there were more hours in the day” which made me note two things:
1. If there were more hours those hours would be taken up by work
2. That is exactly what I had been planning to do should I be given more hours.
This didn’t help my situation but did depress me a little.
26 January, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Haydn, I’ve squeezed eight weeks of work out of four before now. You just have to be prepared to sacrifice health, happiness and (probably) sanity. Relationships are also at risk unless your partner is (a) very understanding and (b) knows there is a definite end point to the period of hectic activity.
I agree with your final sentence Che. Just as long as people are allowed long-ish periods of apparent unproductivity, otherwise known as re-charging their batteries, or thinking.
Reminds me of an anecdote told by Larry Prusak. He started work at IBM’s N.Y. labs at some point, in the days when IBM employees were still pretty smartly dressed and behaved relatively formally towards each other.
Sitting in a corner office with his feet up on the desk was a guy dressed casually. He was in this position pretty much every day.
Eventually the curiosity about this guy was killing Prusak so he asked a colleague about why this guy was allowed to behave so casually, and apparently do no work. The response was that the previous year, he’d come up with an idea that saved IBM quite a few millions. So now they gave him time and space to think, in case he came up with any other good ideas.
Will ponder more on holidays (and other benefits) resting on the comparative advantage ‘enjoyed’ by other countries having lower labour costs.
26 January, 2009 at 3:41 pm
the interesting thing is that that dude probably won’t come up with another pearler, because he’s not being *driven* to think.
there has to be a middle ground between working like a slave, and daydreaming.
26 January, 2009 at 3:47 pm
“much of our time off is time we could be using productively, potentially for the benefit of everyone.”
All together now: THE DEVIL MAKES WORK FOR IDLE HANDS.
That was the conclusion of “Stakhanov and the Protestant Work ethic: mass production and mass conscription from Manchester to Moscow.”
26 January, 2009 at 4:28 pm
oh, music and art counts as productive.
getting loaded doesn’t
27 January, 2009 at 8:09 am
Sometimes I really miss the devil making work for my idle hands.
27 January, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Thanks for the link, Che.
Re increased leisure time, isn’t there some research that suggests that when we got all those wonderful mechanised devices, instead of creating more time for ourselves, we simply upped our standards of housekeeping (e.g. vacuuming all the carpets at least once a week instead of beating the carpets once a year)? Also, I wonder if what has happened is that housekeeping and leisure have become increasing done by / available to all people, given that we can no longer (usually) hire cheap servants to do the work for us?
I agree with the point about our increased leisure (if there is some) coming at the cost of underpaid workers in other countries. I no longer make clothes, because it costs about the same to just buy them.
27 January, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Furthermore, much of our time off is time we could be using productively, potentially for the benefit of everyone.
Sure. But why should we?
Serious question. Is Stakhanovism morally obligatory?
28 January, 2009 at 5:53 am
it is a good question. i don’t know if it’s morally obligatory, but within my own moral guidelines the willingness to work hard is a virtue.
the ends could be selfish, or altruistic, but the means should centre on maximising the time you have available, sensibly.
i/s, you’ll be glad to know that blogging counts.
@deborah. all those “labour-saving devices” just means there’s less drudgery and ‘muck’. alas the actual hard work continues.
but only if your demands of cleanliness (for example), escalate with your ability to sterilise your immediate environment. something largely unnecessary when we already have perfectly useful immune systems.