
The Myth That Americans Are Busier Than Ever - jcklnruns
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/the-myth-that-americans-are-busier-than-ever/371350/?_ga=1.154308414.742779469.1395405048
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bitL
I have a feeling that "being busy" is just a gentle form of crowd control. I
could see it in Japan, people being terribly busy at work, yet producing very
little, spending most of the time during the day at job, unable to do anything
in their spare time. I guess that's how Asian society makes sure there is no
unexpected creativity leading to "interesting times". It could also help
individual people to cope with social anxieties by being "busy".

I wouldn't be surprised if the same were happening in the States. I don't
believe people can be super-productive more than 5 hours a day unless they
work on something they are passionate about or are on drugs.

From my experience, just walking away from a difficult problem, taking time to
walk in the forest, relax on the beach, playing sports with friends, doing
completely unrelated relaxing things with total focus often leads to sudden
inspirations on how to tackle difficult problems. It's like life is telling me
to relax and rewards me with great ideas that can be immediately executed, for
being just well balanced.

I remember flying with one US businessman between Hawaiian islands, and he
curiously asked me how many vacation days do I have - when I told him it's 6
weeks, he went on to complain about how crazy is it in the States, with
average of 8.5 day or so of vacation per year.

People, please live your lives!

~~~
tseabrooks
Question on those 6 weeks. I've heard before that some countries include
national holidays in there 5-6 week count. Is that the case here? Generally
when Americans are listing their vacation days they are not including what
they view as mandatory holidays (Memorial day, july 4th, thanksgiving,
christmas, new years, etc).

FWIW, I'm in the US and we have ~5-6 weeks vacation.

~~~
bitL
I am currently in Germany, 6 weeks is basically a standard excluding holidays
(which is up to 13 extra days depending on the state and weekend overlay as
there are no bank holidays). So in the end you can end up with ~8 weeks.
Minimum vacation days as specified by the law is 4 weeks.

Most of my friends in the US start with 2 weeks, after a few years they get 3
weeks, then these are reset if they change the job, and if they take a
vacation, they are either frowned upon or they have to be available to work on
a moments notice. I find this utterly crazy.

~~~
pc86
I have not, nor have I ever met anyone who has, been expected to work or even
be available on a vacation. I've also never taken or been offered a job with
less than 3 weeks vacation to start. Current job (been here for 2 months) is
25 paid days off plus ten or so holidays. This seems to be a common criticism
of the US but I've been in the professional workforce for just about a decade
and have never come across this. I've worked remotely, for small companies
with ten employees and Fortune 500 companies. I just don't believe there are
people taking jobs where they get 10 days off a year and are expected to
answer a phone call from their boss on vacation, unless they are 1) interns;
2) non-professional jobs, service industry, etc; 3) at the very beginning of
their career (I could see this happening with more predatory employers with
the huge number of unemployed recent grads looking for works).

~~~
bpyne
I think it depends on different factors. My wife has the same experience as
you - never had less than 3 weeks of vacation time. She's a policy analyst in
the non-profit sector. I've been in IT as a software developer for 20+ years
and have been with 8 different employers across different industrial sectors
and ranging from startup to Fortune 500. Most employer changes set me back to
2 weeks.

I know people who feel pressure to work on vacation. The pressure is very real
and isn't always related to ambition on the part of those people. Usually
they're being exploited by an ambitious manager who has a "hold" of some kind,
e.g. exploited person has a child with 2 years left of college and can't
afford to lose his/her job.

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Malarkey73
I'm not really sure what this "work-hours" data is capturing.

My parents were teachers and I remember them marking after school and some
weekends. My wife is now a teacher and she has after school meetings at least
once a week, spends hours marking every night and weekends, plus a lot of her
holiday preparing new lessons and admin. Contractually she has the exact same
hours and holidays my parents had but her life is nothing like theirs.

For myself I'm a scientist and people have worked long hours since I was a
student - but it used to tail off as people got into their 30s and became more
secure, maybe got a stable position, teaching, and students of their own. Now
this seems to have been pushed back to an ever receding horizon and people
work long long hours competing to get the next grant or next placement, to
keep their heads above water right up till retirement. Of course academics all
contractually work a 40 hour week.

I guess its anecdotal but I see the same sort of things amongst my friends in
tech and pharma. Their laptops and mobiles have enslaved them.

Maybe I was blind to it when young but I don't remember my parents generation
- their friends, my relatives working like that.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The data looks like it comes from the American Time Use Survey.

[http://www.bls.gov/tus/](http://www.bls.gov/tus/)

It's collected via time diaries, not contractual hours worked.

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nowlnowl
As a European I am always amazed how much the US-citizen work. Very little
vacation, very little security and a atmosphere of a very (very very, haha)
competetive nature.

~~~
Shivetya
As an American I am always laughing each time I read this. There are people on
both sides who choose to work a long number of hours. I would not be surprised
to read the numbers are not to dissimilar.

Far too much of this workaholic issue only occurs because people want
lifestyles they otherwise could not afford. Two cars, the big house or
exclusive location, the island vacations, and such, are not necessary for a
happy life. Yet there are many who think so and adapt to make it happen. I
don't begrudge them for a minute

~~~
mtbcoder
I will disagree with your first point. As a European who has lived in the US
now for over a decade, I can say the OP is correct. Yes, there are people in
Europe who do put in long hours, but the overall atmosphere/attitude (for lack
of better terms) of work is remarkably different. In the US, you can work
without abandon, all day, every day, take no vacation or personal time,
neglect your time at home and be hailed as an exemplary for your work ethic.
In Europe, the pervasive attitude towards a lifestyle like this is quite
contrary to being exemplary. Failing to take vacation time is frowned upon to
say the least and often is forbidden depending on your location. Even
something a small as working on Sundays will bring disdain from your
neighbours. Again, this is not to say that you cannot find the US "work
lifestyle" in Europe, it's just that it is not as glorified as it is in the
US.

~~~
jff
> In Europe, the pervasive attitude towards a lifestyle like this is quite
> contrary to being exemplary. Failing to take vacation time is frowned upon
> to say the least and often is forbidden depending on your location. Even
> something a small as working on Sundays will bring disdain from your
> neighbours.

Make sure you're not the tallest poppy...

------
jordanb
This article defines leisure as "time spent not working" and then observes
that the underemployed segment of our society gets to enjoy an abundance of
(presumably, in large measure, involuntary) "leisure."

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bryanlarsen
If you include all Americans, not just working Americans, the amount of time
spent not working has spiked dramatically. Kids are staying in school longer;
the labour force participation rate is dropping as blue collar jobs disappear;
people are retiring earlier and living longer.

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forgottenpass
Here is a blog post by a psychiatrist on work/life balance. Basically: _One of
our time 's great sociological questions is why we filled downtime back up
with work, and the reason is it's better than alcoholism._

Try to look past the writing style you probably won't like at first:
[http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html](http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.html)

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onion2k
_" High pay is highly rewarding," Kolbert writes, and in a winner-take-all
economy, we're motivated to put in extra-long hours to, well, win._

We trade time for money. If you enjoy your work, and someone is willing to
give you a large sum of money for your time, then working long hours makes
sense... but only if you couldn't be doing something that you'd like even more
than money with that time. For example, a reasonably high level executive
position might pay you $250k/year for 20 years - so $5m - but it'd take you
away from your family doing business travelling for 2 weeks out of every
month. Would you trade a total of 10 years away from your family for $5m? Some
people would. I wouldn't.

~~~
cryoshon
A lot of the time it's not particularly a fair trade, either.

Salaried employees can typically be forced to work upwards of the 40 hours
they are officially bartering with for money. The money doesn't scale with
time or effort put in, which is one of the contributing causes to burnout and
do-nothing-but-still-so-"busy"-ism.

------
zhte415
Recently posted, related article (New Yorker) and discussion (144 comments)

Article:
[http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/05/26/14052...](http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2014/05/26/140526crbo_books_kolbert?currentPage=all)

Comments:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769610](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7769610)

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bowlofpetunias
The stats for the Netherlands are partially skewed by the fact that although
there is technically a high participation of women in the workforce, but many
if not most of them only work part-time. That significantly brings down the
average.

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ogdenyogly
This article only focuses on one aspect of "busy" \-- working.

The real problem is "time inflation." This is the name given to the fact that
there is more to DO than ever because life is generally becoming more
complicated, and because companies and government entities have decided to
make you responsible for large portions of their business processes as a cost
saving measure. Government is always the worst since the relationship is not
voluntary.

Some real examples from my own life: * IRS sends me a letter saying I didn't
pay taxes from a stock transaction in 2011, tells me I have 60 days to prove
otherwise or I automatically owe the money.

* When I was a kid, grocery stores removed the items from your basket and rang them up. Then conveyor belts became more common and you were expected to place your groceries on the belts. Now, some stores don't even have checkers, you scan and bag your own groceries (fresh and easy for instance).

* Target has a security breach and _I_ need to sign up for credit card monitoring and do due diligence, read my statements etc-- the banking industry has created a massively vulnerable payment system which requires my constant vigilance.

* I ordered an electric weed whacker from woot. It arrived broken (I'm already being used as product testing-- they should have tested it not me). Woot won't take it back, they suggest calling the manufacturer. The manufacturer actually asks me if I have a multimeter and screwdriver so I can test various components so they can send me a new part. Buying a weed whacker has now cost me 5 hours of my weekend, as I have become product tester and repair staff.

* Get pulled over for a missing tail light, police officer writes a "fix-it" ticket for "incorrect instrumentation" or some such nonsense. What was weird about this was, the CHP officer who inspected my car said he had _NEVER_ seen a ticket for this before.

* The city I live in apparently goes through your tax returns, and saw that I had $400 of 1099 income. The city defines _ANY_ 1099 income as operating a business and requires me to get a business license and pay taxes on the income, I have to spend a whole day at the city hall getting a business license (I in no way operate a business) under threat of going to jail.

* Apple recalls my phone, I have to make two pilgrimages to the Apple store, each time backing up my phone completely and restoring it. Total cost, 4 hours.

* Anything relating to medical care is a CLUSTER, I could write a novel on just this.

Some more mundane annoyances are simply plays for my attention:

* Despite being very diligent about unsubscribing I get 40 or so emails a day from random companies I have done business with sometime in the last 10 years.

* The USPS brings me junk mail every day that I never, ever look at. It goes straight to the trash. Still about 30 seconds/day goes to this.

MASSIVE time sinks in my life:

* Inadequate transportation infrastructure in my county means I spend needless hours on the road.

* Purposefully poorly designed store ques. In the US most store ques are about 30% less efficient than optimal and all is required is a slight redesign of the area. The correct type of store que is where there is one line that feeds all registers-- in that way nobody can get stuck behind a customer whose taking a long time. (Think Fry's vs. Costco). I shop as much as I can online but cannot purchase groceries online obviously.

While none of these examples is particularly egregious the net effect of this
and hundreds of other of annoyances is that I always have something to worry
about. All of these companies / government entities waste my time on to
infinity because it costs them nothing to do so and I am powerless to stop
them.

~~~
cylinder
>* Purposefully poorly designed store ques. In the US most store ques are
about 30% less efficient than optimal and all is required is a slight redesign
of the area. The correct type of store que is where there is one line that
feeds all registers-- in that way nobody can get stuck behind a customer whose
taking a long time. (Think Fry's vs. Costco). I shop as much as I can online
but cannot purchase groceries online obviously.

Just to let you know, Whole Foods does this in its New York stores. Oh, and
you can order groceries online here, Google will deliver stuff from Target,
Costco, etc in the same day, public transportation is good and fast. Next
time, tell the weed whacker manufacturer to screw themselves and honor their
warranty or you'll file a Deceptive Trade Practices Act suit; you're not their
diagnostician.

Add to your list: reading social link aggregation sites and writing long
comments on them :)

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michaelochurch
Work _hours_ have been steady to slightly declining, especially factoring in
higher unemployment, longer between-jobs periods, and (one good change) the
increase of remote work, as people just get sick of spending 8 hours in an
white-painted anxiety-box that, in many cases, has nothing to do with getting
work done.

Work-related _anxiety_ has gone way up. People work slightly shorter days (8-9
hours for white-collar workers instead of 9-10) but are a lot more drained at
the end of them. In software, this is due to tightly-packed open-plan offices,
increasingly unreasonable expectations regarding availability and timeframe,
and declining autonomy due to the abuse of technology and processes (like
"Agile", which started with great intentions).

The real work has gotten easier (in some cases, so much easier as to be an
anxiety-causing factor in its own right, due to boredom) and hours have gone
down slightly (but with more variance) but the full-time impression management
job has become more competitive, much more mean-spirited, and far more
draining.

Watch _Mad Men_. It explains so much more about white-collar culture than I
could ever get into here. At the time, that was _the_ most stressful, painful,
and socially demanding white-collar job in the country-- which is why people
doing it, by the standards of the time, were paid extremely well. Now, that's
the mainstream corporate culture.

