Yes and it's not just at work: most of us feel we should fill every hour of our non-working lives with activities. Especially our kids' lives (no wonder people are having fewer kids!)
There are two things wrong about this I think. Firstly, it confuses activity with purpose. Secondly, unscheduled time is valuable not only for itself but for extra capacity when something important pops up.
“What civilization is is 6 billion people trying to make themselves happy by standing on each other’s shoulders and kicking each other’s teeth in. It’s not a pleasant situation. And yet you can stand back and look at this planet and see that we have the money, the power, the medical understanding, the scientific know-how, the love, and the community to produce a kind of human paradise.” - Terence McKenna
>McKenna saw modern culture as a sort of engine detached from the interests of the individual and serving the manipulative, power-focused agendas of various institutions and wealthy individuals.
That said there are quite a variety of cultures out there that you can choose to be part of. I'm currently in a yoga culture area and maybe as a counterpoint to "demanding never ending work weeks and 24/7 attention to work" I've hung a bit with landlord types who have bought a house, do it up buy another etc. If anything they tend to suffer from the opposite problem of not being very occupied much of the time. Plus awkward tenants - nothing's perfect.
Tired of seeing this kind of meme: are we talking about the 19th century working conditions of an Upton Sinclair novel, or the 21st century developed nation, when it is often likely for a blue collar worker to struggle to get enough hours to total a 40 hour workweek.
Average hours worked has gone down steadily over the last two centuries:
> 1830 69.1 hours per week
> 1880 60.7
> 1929 50.6
> 1988 42.4
> As the twentieth century ended there was nothing resembling a shorter hours “movement.” The length of the workweek continues to fall for most groups — but at a glacial pace. Some Americans complain about a lack of free time but the vast majority seem content with an average workweek of roughly forty hours — channeling almost all of their growing wages into higher incomes rather than increased leisure time.
I'm reading Michael Bloomberg's autobiography, and he describes working his last day as a partner at Salomon Brothers, a twelve hour day, to end fifteen years of twelve hour days, six day weeks. He was not unhappy in his work.
What I find confusing, is the extension of work into outside hours, on call.
9-5 office workers are supposed to be able to complete only 2 hours undistracted work during their day. This figure comes up time and time again despite the original study of American workplaces was long before we had computers and modern distractions universally.
Is there a acknowledgement of the value of the on tap working capacity, implicitly in this insidious invasion of outside life from work?
Because I have been understanding the constant on call expectations of employers to be in effect a admission of the end of necessity for offices.
As in, "sure I'll make sure to respond to your demands 24/7, now I just won't commute four hours a day costing me £7,000 for the train tickets, to only spend a couple of hours a day doing actual work for you!"
This is quite the indictment of the way we manage our business, is it not?
