Over
the years, I have observed a phenomenon, in New York, in Kuala Lumpur, in
Europe and in Miami, people putting in long hours at work. The ones I knew
worked for Multinational Enterprises such as KPMG or EY or something, usually
in their forties. I also noticed that they had few friends or partners.
What
has happened to the work force around the Globe?
According
to the data published by International Labour Organization, nearly one in five
to one in four employed people work more than 49 or more hours per week, in my
estimate, more than just 49 hours, many many hours more.
I
also noticed that people were wearing this exhaustion and long hours of work as
a badge of honour, without realizing what it is doing to their physical and
mental health. More alarmingly, this culture of overwork is being exported to
pristine work landscapes such as Siem Reap or Hanoi. Singapore is immersed in
it, KL less so.
I
am busy; I have no time for myself have become oft-repeated mantras of the
overworked.
Is
there a choice? Is it a choice or volition?
It
has come to such a stage that the vicious circle forces them to say: I cannot
afford not to work, not work decent hours but these long inhuman hours.
GOOGLE found out that when the workers were given free
rein for two hours, they were more productive than the other full day they put
in, at work. Long hours reduces your capacity to be innovative or produce, and
from a doctors point of view, less healthy and feel ill. (Many Doctors are
guilty of the same behavior)
You hear the term, “burnout” among health care workers
who are forced to work long hours. There must be a reason why Laws require the
Pilots do not over work or do overtime!
In an article published on BBC, I quote: For instance, if
you woke at 8 a.m. and were still awake at 1 a.m. the next day (that is, if you
had been up for 17 hours straight), your physical performance would likely be worse than
if you had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%. This the level that
an average 73 kg male would get if he had drunk two 355ml cans of beer. That’s right, you’re drunk on overtime.
If you remained awake until 5 a.m., the impairment would
be similar to having 0.1% of blood alcohol – more than the 0.08% that is
considered the legal driving limit in most countries of the world.
So, an all-nighter will make your physical performance
(things like your reaction time or coordination) as impaired as if you were too
drunk to drive. And if you can’t drive, will you be able to work safely and
competently? Maybe typing on a computer is not very risky, but this is
something definitely worth considering when doing manual or physical labour, or
if your work demands attention to detail.
The one year I was hired to work at a
University in the USA, I questioned why we were supposed to show up at work on
Saturday mornings, even if we had no duties to do. It shows you are interested
in your job, said a tired colleague. I have better things to do with a free
Saturday morning!
It is not unusual hearing sudden
death among shift workers in the Call Centres in India. Whoever is responsible,
they make these jobs glamorous and extract long hours and strenuous work (from
the BBC: Still, in the Global South,
there are signs that this cycle of overwork is becoming ingrained. More than
half of the workers interviewed by Wood and his team said that they had to work
at very high speed, 60% worked to tight deadlines, and 22% experienced physical
pain as a result of their work.
A vicious cycle has been set, you have to work harder, meet
strict deadlines and then when you are supposed to be off, you are on call, you
are on the other end of the telephone or email and as my Turkish friend who
works for KPMG said: I sleep with my ipad and iPhone and they are constantly
going off during the night.
Cortisol rises quickly in these people who are trying to
break the barriers natural hormone cycles. This leads to disease and death.
They are dying for the wrong reason! No Time to enjoy
Friends, Family or Literature or Theatre.. Just No Life, they are shadows of
their dead selves walking on this earth.
At least in the West, they have a choice to leave that, if
they choose to suffer, it is of their volition and please don’t tell me:
I HAVE NO TIME..
What do you have time for?
While flying across the Atlantic, I sit in a section occupied
by these people, who cannot wait for the Plane to each 10 000 feet so that they
can open their Laptops and connect to the Internet.
They hate people like me, who start the journey with
Champagne and have a nice thick book to read and a collection of newspapers and
journals in various languages.
One young woman sitting in the same cabin, clutching her
Laptop once asked me, with a great sense of honour, I don’t have time to read
anything.
At another flight, a dapperly dressed African American with
his laptop, said he had just flown across for a two-day meeting and he had no
chance to see or enjoy the city in Spain he was visiting, he said that smugly.
And unlike my usual refusal to engage in conversations with these people, I
said: have you ever thought of buying yourself a space in the cemetery and
lying down there? Death will come soon enough.
All scientific studies now show that, people who work very
long hours, who are on call, who continue to work at home when they leave work,
have fewer friends or companions, do die earlier.. So my advice was not totally
without intention.
What a difference from my friend Pak Joe from Bogor who runs
an enterprise which employs about 150 people who goes out of his ways to
provide his employees free time. Are you doing all these, Pak Joe, I asked him,
so that they would work harder for you?
He said, absolutely not, I do these things for them because they would
be HAPPIER.
Be Compassionate to Others
Be Compassionate to Yourself
Accept a Little Happiness that others give you..
