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!

Are you an environmental professional?

If you work in any environmental-related industry or non-profit, you might like to take a look at this survey from RMIT and the Environmental Jobs Network.

They’re researching the range of professional environmental jobs across Australia, to identify the types of skills, knowledge and experience associated with these jobs. This info will be used to create a 2010 Australian Guide to Environmental Careers.

The guide will be used to help people find out about the range of careers available where you get to care for the environment in some way. It sounds like it’d be very useful, and given how keen I am on expanding the green jobs industry, I’d love to see it become a success.

Obviously, though, the people making the guide want to make sure they’ve got as broad an overview as possible. This is where you can help if you already have an eco-job – let them know what it is, what kind of training it needs, etc.

It does take 25 minutes to complete, but you’ll be helping the next generation of eco-workers get started, so I hope you’ll make the time. Check it out: Environmental Career Survey.