The rat race: who needs it?
There’s a good post by Johann Hari over at the UK’s The Independent that you might like to take a look at: We Don’t Need This Culture of Overwork. I found out about it via Jonathon Hiskes at Grist.
Hari talks about how in Utah, the state government changed their office hours from 9 to 5, Monday to Friday to a new 8 to 6, Monday to Thursday. Employees worked 4 ten-hour days and got a 3-day weekend. Customers got to pop in to get business done on their way to or home from work, instead of having to take time off. And everyone seems to be living happily ever after.
It’s also good for the environment: the state government saved huge amounts of money on lighting and heating all their buildings, and fewer people were driving. This means less pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.
I can tell you from personal experience that a 4-day work week is awesome. I switched to part-time (4 x 7.5 hours) nearly a year ago and have been so happy with the decision.
I now have time to work on my own eco-projects at home, in my pyjamas. I get almost as much work done in the office as I did before – previously there was a lot of time spent hanging around waiting for things to happen, now I march up to people and demand my content/briefing/etc because I’ve got to get stuff done before COB Thursday.
I did have to re-work my budget to account for the reduction in pay – but since my bills were decreasing from our energy-saving changes and I’m trying to live a less-consumerist lifestyle, it’s worked out pretty well.
Going part-time or working an unusual set of office hours isn’t for everyone. But it’s more practical than people assume. If you employ staff, would you rather they worked quickly and efficiently, or made their work stretch out to fill the hours they have to have their bum on a seat? It can make as much impact on your bills as any other energy-efficiency measure.
I honestly believe that in the future we’ll have to re-think our economy, and how we treat our work lives. The rat-race doesn’t just make people unhappy, it’s damaging our environment. We don’t want it, and we don’t need it.
As always, the future is what we make of it – it might be worth doing the sums to see if you can switch your working times or even cut them back by a few hours. You never know, it could be the start of a whole new way of life for you!
5 Comments
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Here, here. Great post Julie.
I am always the first out the door at work come 5pm. I am still amazed that after 9 years at my employer, people still work 10 hour days.
I have far more important things to do than give my employer any of my time for free!
Gav
It’s just not worth it – and after about 8 hours my work isn’t much good anyway, it’s just seat-warming after that.
I will never go back to full-time work after working part-time and now *very* flexible hours. There is so much more to life ad it’s amazing how much my stress levels have reduced as a result. Life is not meant for rushing around so much. Even if people think they would miss the extra pay (if they cut back their hours) I think they’d soon find that the extra time is a better trade-off.
I was so worried about the pay cut at first, but as you say, when I actually had the free time I realised I valued it so much more than the dollars. You can’t buy time!
(Technically you can buy time – other people’s. That’s what gets us stuck in the rat race in the first place, selling our time to other people.)
I tried the 10-hour days x 4 days to get the 3-day weekend, years ago now, and it didn’t work out for me. I was so dead tired at the end of each of the 4 days that everything I would normally do in an evening ended up being crammed into my so-called long weekend.
I think you are far, far better off taking the pay cut and freeing up your hours. The pay cut never ends up as extreme as is assumed, and having extra time often means saving costs as well (eg if you enjoy cooking, having the time to cook a meal saves on take-away). People need to genuinely examine their budgets rather than assuming they can’t do it and carrying on the same old way.
It’s often assumed to be something that only the middle class can afford, but I believe the Australia Institute looked into it a while back and found it was prevalent across a range of income groups.
And another assumption is that people think employers will see them as not committed enough if they cut their hours, but I think flexible work is growing in acceptance. At least enough to talk to your manager about it, if you are thinking of doing it.