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March 02, 2006
You Load Sixteen Gadgets, And Whaddaya Get?
I saw this article last week and I knew I'd write something about it at some point, because it just reinforces something I have believed for a very long time: we Americans work too damn much. And all those little toys and gadgets "they" tell us make our lives easier are in fact little more than trojan horses that allow The Man to get his hooks into us more deeply... owning increasingly larger percentages of our lives and returning the United States to the workstyle of a century ago, when 12 hour days were the norm.
Workers completed two-thirds of their work in an average day last year, down from about three-quarters in a 1994 study, according to research conducted for Day-Timers Inc., an East Texas, Pennsylvania-based maker of organizational products. The biggest culprit is the technology that was supposed to make work quicker and easier, experts say.
Expectations that technology would save time and money largely haven’t been borne out in the workplace, said Ronald Downey, professor of psychology who specializes in industrial organization at Kansas State University. “It just increases the expectations that people have for your production,” Downey said.
Ironic, ain't it? The kicker is that the whole system is beginning to have the opposite effect of what we were all told it would... personal productivity is heading down, as the relentless encroach of technology and communication means that we never have time to concentrate on getting any single task or thing done. Combine that with the increasingly ratcheted-up pressure for workers (funny, it never seems to be the C-level guys whose resources are cut... wonder!) to do more with less, and workers are feeling increasingly stressed and less productive. It's my opinion that if we don't take steps as a society to return some freaking sanity to the work environment -- and make work-life balance more than a platitude or cliche that receives lip service every now and then -- we are heading for a dire health crisis in this country, as stress-induced or exacerbated illnesses and conditions become a self-induced epidemic that could threaten the economic strength of our country.
This isn't a rant about my job, by the way, as much as it is an observation of the work culture we have set up in this country. My work pressures wouldn't be any different anywhere else. And, I like my job. Understand where I am coming from and why... this isn't about my personal situation, it's rather my observation of American culture.
I swear to you, once my grad school loans are paid off and I don't owe anyone anything anymore, I might well just quit the rat race, move to the Caribbean, open up a bar & grill and take tourists fishing on the side, and go all Jimmy Buffett on y'all and leave the whole sick pressure cooker behind. And the only rule in my bar or on my boat is that no damn Blackberries, cell phones or e-mail devices will be allowed.
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Comments
What surised me here is that there's a town in Pennsylvania called "East Texas" (if not, that's how the article wording makes it sound).
Posted by: eden at March 3, 2006 11:19 AM
need a good bartender?
Posted by: Cuzin Jose at March 4, 2006 03:54 AM
