As Aristotle once said, “We work to have leisure, which happiness depends on.” (Delistraty). This quote means that happiness is found in our free time, not at work. As Delistraty tells us in “To Work Better, Work Less”, overworking has become very common in our culture for many reasons. As well as that time off is important to better everyone’s physical and psychological health. Delistraty is correct in saying that working less allows for better, more efficient work. In his article, Delistraty discusses how both companies and individuals overwork. Delistraty cites several sources and discusses their take on overwork. The results suggest that our culture as a whole overwork, and there are negative consequences for these actions. He also proves …show more content…
At some point, the more time one spends working, the less productive they become, as Delistraty states. Delistraty tells us that the French are required to take at least 30 days off each year. This should not just be mandatory for French workers, but for every full-time worker. Too many people in our culture overwork causing them to miss out on important milestones in their loved ones’ lives. Working over 50 hours a week not only stresses one’s body but also limits time spent with friends and family, which is one of my top priorities. Delistraty mentions Menlo Innovations and how they see people who work overtime as “inefficient workers, not dedicated.” I think that every company should view overtime this way, they recognize that overwork is inefficient. If companies have this mentality it might help people to focus more on themselves and not neglect their physical and psychological health and lead them to more efficient work. The motivation for employees to work hard, and overwork, is to allow themselves a comfortable retirement as Delistraty states. By overworking, people tend to miss out on milestones and important events, in their lives and family. As Delistraty tells us, people “are too busy fitting their lives into work, rather than fitting work into their lives”
Marks, L. (2006). The Loss of Leisure in a Culture of Overwork. Spirit of Change Magazine.
Previous generations have a strong belief of keeping work and home life separate; that work is for work and home is for play (Rampell, 2011, para 21). Today’s professionals do not seem to abide by similar beliefs, constantly crossing the borders of one into the other. While many recognize this as an issue that could result in employees being less productive, it has actually resulted in them accepting that their work may run late into the evening or even into the weekend. I agree with this completely in that I grew up being taught that business is business and personal is personal; you leave your home life at the door. But now times have changed, and my weekends are no longer dedicated to my home life, but for work, because I attend classes during the week. Also, in my line of work in the Allied Health industry, it is a requirement to work off hours. Long gone are the days of working nine to five, Monday through Friday; technology and the demand of wanting affairs done and done as soon as possible, has made it so the “work week” is now 24-7. “Jon Della Volpe, the director of polling at Harvard Institute of Politics, said, ‘Some experts also believe that today’s young people are better at quickly switching from one task to another, given their exposure to so many stimuli during their childhood and adolescence’” (Rampbell,
“In the last twenty years the amount of time Americans have spent at their jobs has risen steadily. Each year the change is small, amounting to about nine hours, or slightly more than one additional day of work (Schor, 1). Juliet B. Schor’s The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure explores the decline of leisure time in American professionals and laborers as a result of an increase in working time. In comparison to our European counterparts, American workers are now working close to 320 more hours yearly. Schor highlights the fact that American workers are choosing to work multiple jobs contributing to less leisure time due to longer working hours. In conclusion the book depicts the idea that the materialistic nature of Americans results in them choosing to work more so that they can spend more.
In Alexandra Robbins’ book The Overachievers, she makes the astute claim that high school students today are incredibly overworked, leading to severe detriments to their quality of life. As a student in highschool, I am inclined to agree with this claim, especially since Robbins uses clear evidence and ideas to support her assertion. Three of Robbins’ most important ideas regarding this subject matter are as follows. First, she claims that testing has become a business that doesn’t genuinely help the modern student. Next, she claims that chronic sleep deprivation is a huge health concern that affects even the best students. Finally, she claims that the high pressure schooling system has created damaging binaries amongst students. These reasons
Americans have little to no time off each week. According to the article, “Overworked America: 12 Charts That Will Make Your Blood Boil”,some countries give workers 37-48 hours off each week. Other countries give workers 24-36 hours off each week.Americans in comparison have barely any hours off(Gilson).Even on the weekends , Americans find their lives consumed by work. A survey given to employed email users showed that 50% of them checked their work email on the weekends and 34% check work email while on vacation(Gilson).Americans cannot find a medium between their work lives and their personal lives.
Currently, human beings are thinking more on the line of they need work in order to make a living. For that reason, work has become meaningless, disagreeable, and unnatural. Many view work as a way to obtain money and not a meaningful human activity that one does for themselves. The author states that there are two reactions of the alienated and profoundly unsatisfactory character of the modern industrial work. One being the ideal of complete laziness and the other, hostility towards work. Fromm believes the reason why people have animosity regarding work is due to their unconscious mind. Subconsciously, a person has “a deep-seated, hostility towards work and all that is connected to it” says Fromm. I believe what Fromm is saying to be true, after all I witness it everyday. Millions of people each day goes to a work which they are dissatisfied with and that can negatively impact their attitude
at some point all employees will eventually need time off from work to deal with either a serious personal illness or other family obligations. “Many European nations took to the idea of making balancing family and work easier for employees but the movement did not gain momentum in the United States until the late 60s and 70s when working women were no longer the minority” (AAUW). There was a general shift in the nature of the common everyday american household and a two income household was slowly but surely becoming the new reality of american life.
People will argue that having a low-paying job and freedom is better than a high-paying job and a 60-hour workweek. However many including myself, don’t share the views of Hal Niedzviecki’s essay’s “Stupid Jobs Are Good to Relax With”. Having a higher paying and longer hours provides much more income and allows for a lot more financial freedom. This freedom can help bring much more happiness into your life compared to the lower paying workweek. Hal Niedzviecki mentions many benefits to the easy jobs with low-paying workweeks in the following statement
Henry David Thoreau argues that when people are thinking too much and focus on details, “our life is frittered away by detail.” (p.276) People keep working in the bustling world, and forget the beauty of nature and our world. Thoreau also says “As for work, we haven’t any of any consequence”(p.277), what he means is that people are working meaninglessly, they are
Over time, this dull pain can erode the self-confidence and passion of even the strongest people, which in turn, affects their spouses and children and friends in subtle but profound ways… Though it may be difficult to quantify, the dissatisfaction of employees has a direct impact on productivity, turnover, and morale, all of which eventually hit a company’s bottom line hard,” (p. ix –
Working in a fast-paced environment and being on their feet can really take a toll on a person. In addition they have to be prepared for anything to happen during their shift. A study of overworked and stressed nurses found that nurses are overworked suffered from physical sickness like type two diabetes (Stress and overworked 2006). For most nurses, their work week consists of more than sixty hours. Working that many hours can double their chances of sicknesses. When they compare the working week hours of nurses who worked the normal 21 to 40 hours with those that work more than 40 or 60 hours a week, they found that in comparison the ones who worked 40 hours or more a week increased the risk by almost 50 percent for type 2 diabetes (Stress and overwork 2006). If nurses were to work their normal work hours without mandatory overtime, then their health would improve.
It was once a common belief that if employees worked hard, showed up on time and followed the rules that they would be guaranteed a job for life. However, over the last decade there have been changes in the workplace. There are two main causes for this change. The changes in the work place in the twenty-first century are being caused by advancements in technology and expansions in globalization through the Internet.
Research indicates that long working hours contribute largely to stress and stress related diseases. Currently, employees are being put on pressure by the organization in order to achieve the set goals. Nevertheless, the employees are willing to work for longer hours in order to earn more money to satisfy their increasing needs (Gullotta et al., 2003:23). On the other hand, the organizations have been compelling their subordinates to work for longer hours as a way of punishment or increasing the possibility of achieving the set goals within the stipulated time. This aspect has increased the number of depressed people in the population. With many people being unaware of how to deal with depression, they are turning to smoking. As a result, long working hours have been associated with smoking behaviors (Burke & Cooper 2008:46). The most affected people are the young people. This behavior has increased the number of people suffering from cancer and other respiratory related diseases in the world. In addition, it has increased the number of people suffering from heart and lung diseases.
When hospitals do not have enough staff to care for patients, nurses are required to work overtime and because of that, 50% of nurses quit their job (Martin). This is not healthy for nurses and not safe for patients because if nurses are constantly working overtime, they can become tired and dissatisfied with their job. Moreover, when nurses are dissatisfied with their job because of always working overtime, it lead nurses to quit their job which can become a problem for hospitals because it is hard to keep training new nurses all the time. This can cost money and effort. In addition, it will affect patients because it nurses are tired from working overtime, quality of care for patients can suffer. According to Sung-Heui Bae, author of “Nursing Overtime: Why, How Much, and Under What Working Conditions?”, When a nurse works for over 12 hours or more than 60 hours a week, nurses are more prone to making medical errors which can compromise a patient’s safety (Bae). Like what Fackelmann says, “Overworked nurse may not get to a patient quickly enough to catch a subtle sign of a potentially deadly complication”. This can be one of the reason of 20,000 death of patients each year because of overworked nurses
Brief Literature Review: The literature review on Work-life Balance has been surrounded up in perspective of its picked up fame with the significant mean to have flourishing of pop culture and the acknowledgment of satisfying lives for its representatives by supporting the development of each worker and the further advancement of the organizations (Singh, 2013). The employers and the employees need to recognize fitting t...