The work-life balance literature tends to devolve into heroic stories of achievers. A common theme is the profile of Chris O’Neil, a male executive, who rises at 5:30 a.m. to meditate before he drops the kids at school and then goes to the club for more exercise before a full day of focused business. Many of these books follow Tony Schwartz’s Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time (2003), with his stress on maximizing personal energy (with exercise) rather than attempting to increase time free from work. An interesting variation is the books geared for the female reader and the debate about whether life and work can be reconciled. A prominent group argues that career women must “lean in” to work and make “life” (or family) time secondary in order to prove their commitment to the job.
It sometimes is not obvious that these self-help writers have actually considered time in the work-life balance question. But time is a real, if often complex, problem: How much flextime is needed for family? Is giving more free time to workers with dependents really fair to those without such needs? These books seldom address the emergence of a “gig economy,” where flextime is less an issue and where unpredictable working hours are often more the problem.
Note that in 2015 only a quarter of Walmart workers had a regular work schedule. Work-life books generally ignore the problems of all but the professional elite. This literature also seldom addresses the right or value of free time for personally attained happiness, only conceding the need (perhaps) of family care. In any case, its main thrust is to maximize personal efficiency, turning work and life into modernized versions of the old time-and-motion studies of early twentieth-century efficiency experts.
Thanks to anyone coming by my blog to see my little cartoon drawings, even though I’m not posting very often lately. Everyone try to enjoy a little “tree time” this holiday :)
Our main activities are relatively similar between countries, with some differences depending on economic development (based on this week #TidyTuesday ) #RStats code:
one of the most frustrating things i've come to notice about adulthood and specifically being in "the workforce" is that there's just very little time for anything else.
i missed out on lots of skills as a kid that i'd love to invest my time and money into learning. but then i spend 8 hrs a day working and get home just wanting to turn my brain off and vegetate.
maybe im in the minority in that i feel like all my energy is gone after work. but i strongly suspect im not, especially among people with disabilities that make the average workday harder to cope with.
i was learning to ride a bike last summer. but finding the time to do a task that, for me, was very nerve-wracking and intensive for my whole body became very difficult.
i was hoping to take an art class this summer, but no studios nearby offer classes that fit into my work schedule.
it just stinks, i guess. i just wanted to yell into the void about it.