The article ""Take Back Your Time Day" Is Coming" is about family, it was released by Norma Schmidt, Coach, LLC.
October 24 is Take Back Your Time Day.
On that date, Americans will have worked the same number of
hours that Euroepans typically
work in a whole year. In other words, Americans work nearly nine
more weeks per year than
their Eurpoean counterparts.
A U.S. and Canadian initiative, Take Back Your Time Day, draws
attention to the twin
problems of overwork and "time poverty." Orgainzers say the
number of hours Americans spend
working has risen dramatically over the last 30 years.
Consider these items from the "Take Back Your Time" handbook:
* Between 1979 and 2000, married couples aged 25-54 saw their
total numebr of hours of paid
work rise by 388, about 12 percent.
* Almost 40 percent of workers put in more than 50 hours per
week.
* 26 percent of American workers don't take any vacation time.
* Since the 1980's, work hours have risen by about half a
percent annually.
Experts say "time poverty" is hurting our marriages, our
physical and mental health, our
civic life, our kids and the environment.
Maybe you feel the pressure: Having too little time to exercise
or prepare healthy meals.
Being electronically leashed to your job when you crave a chance
to relax. You or someone
in your family putting in ever longer horus at work for fear of
being "downsized."
Then there are the more subtle signs. Ever notice the way
getting time with friends
requires searching your caelndars to find a small patch of
mutually available time weeks
away? Or maybe your dog looks under-exercised and lonely.
It wasn't always so.
Around 1900, American working hours had long been declining, and
economics books and
articles predicted the continuing expansion of liesure time,
writes leisure scholar Benjamin
Hunnicutt.
In the 1920s, Hunnicutt states, Julian Hulxey said in a speech
that a two-day work week was
inevitable because "the human being can consume so much and no
more...." In the 1930's,
economist John Maynard Keyes observed that "when we reach the
point when the world produces
all the goods that it needs in two days, as it inevitably
will...We must turn out attention
to the great issue of what to do with our leisure."
I was amazed to learn from Hunnicutt that the Kellog cereal
factories began a 6-hour workday
in the 1930s.
Productivity rose, workers lavished timed on their
families, and commercial
recreation and nonprofit organizations flourished.
Yet, here we are, 70 years later, with complex economic,
political and cultural realities
leading to ever-shrinking windows of time for nurturing
ourselves and our ties to each
other.
What to do?
On one hand, activists suggest, you could respond as an
individual. You might: * Schedule once-a-week or once-a-month
family tmies.
* Keep a "time diary" to raise your awarneess of
how you spend time.
* Write to your newspaper about time
poverty. * Organize a civic or religious gathreing to discuss
time issues. * Calim a block of time for cooking slow food,
cuddling your pets, making music or
photographing something beautiful.
Or, you can join with an organization. Advocacy groups around
the country are organizing
teach-ins, conferences and discussion groups about overwork and
time poverty.
A new "It's
About Time" Coalition is bringing overwork to the attention of
candidates for public office.
To learn more, visit www.Timeday.Org and www.Worktolive.Info.
(c) 2004 Nroma Schmidt, Coach, LLC
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