If you work more than 40 hours a week, you are either an economic slave or an inefficient worker who needs psychologic care ..
We talk about efficiency but never about the capacity to deal with the unexpected. In Medical care, chaos is the norm rather than orderly behavior or outcome prediction and to employ algorithmic allocations will not bear fruit.
Efficiency is good when you can predict the outcome and not when unexpected things happen.
In the care of patients with Diabetes where nothing is quite predictable, one has to be less robotic and more in the intuitive and imaginative mode.
I have been lucky to be working with Native populations for whom chaos is understandable and who do not insist on certainty (try to sell Life Insurance to them and you will find out their disbelief!)
So the lesson from Diabetes care to the Indians to the world outside is this : Adapt and respond, as Professor Heffernan UK would say.
There are situations where long ours of work are necessary, like front line workers during a pandemic. But in general most people can control the number of hours they can work. A wonderful colleague of mine, a Diabetes Educator, said to me: I tried to finish the work I have to do while at work, I never take my work home.
Currently, during this pandemic, while a sector of the society have become unemployed , among the employed the working hours and situations have enormously increased, as the border between work and leisure has blurred, since there is not much of Leisure to speak of.
I have met during my travels, people who look perpetually fatigued boasting about their long hours of work, one of them even saying , I sleep with my iPhone and MacBook Pro (perhaps no one will want to sleep with her?). It is inefficient to work longer hours, then the hours put in would be to correct the mistakes you have made and thus chasing your tail.
Studies show that human efficiency falls off at around 40 hours, use those hours, take advantage of the efficiency and accomplish more.
Despite the pressures of Covid 19 and the desire to protect patients, clinical life has become a bit more difficult. But anthropologically speaking, I am living through a wonderful time, taking care of Diabetes when parameters of good health Indices are fluctuant: Food, Activity, Mental Health. and grateful that I am working with American Indians
Have been reading a bit of Yuval Noah Harari. He is a bit of an intellectual Guide for the Perplexed ! While other Yogic philosophers are dealing with the outcomes (Emotions, Sensations) and how to deal with them; Harari is looking at the origin of such sensations, in a rather objective fashion. A little bit of Vipassana meditation does help..
Beautiful day in Miami, hope the days are nice where you are ..Just waiting for the skies to open up to go wandering..
PS there are lots of immigrants to the USA who by necessity have to work for more than 40 hours a week, just out of necessity. I admire their work ethic and always wish them well and greet them when I see them doing the kind of work, earlier immigrants who call themselves Americans now do not wish to do.
This note dedicated to my friends Edward, Jessica and Michelle
