More Sun, Less Scroll

School’s Out

Holiday season is upon us (in the northern hemisphere, at least) and as we’re all about to take some time off, I thought I would look at our attitudes to work and to rest.

If it feels like you work more than ever today, that’s probably because it’s true. There’s a paradox here in the UK in that we work more and more hours even though we get more holidays than we used to. In addition to that, work has intruded into our personal time as we carry it around in our pocket, using our phone to check our messages at all hours, whilst managers expect us to be ‘on call’ outside of the working day.

Our society lionises ‘hard work’ but we interpret this as working long hours. It’s supposed to show some level of commitment and it’s driven by the protestant work ethic, which says that diligent work is a sign of grace. It became a driving force during the industrial revolution, as people moved from the country to the factories and were subjected to longer hours of labour.

We often think of the pre-industrial life as being hard and difficult and it undoubtedly was for some and at certain times. If a harvest failed, starvation was a real threat and, of course, there were many other perils like disease and illness.

However, a medieval peasant spent far less time working than we do today. Firstly, they followed the natural rhythms of nature, only working during daylight and so according to the seasons, doing little during the winter and mostly working in the summer. Secondly, they had many feast days and rituals that took up a great deal of their time. These were communal celebrations and a time to make merry and spend time with friends, family and neighbours. And thirdly, they only worked as much as they needed to in order to survive. They weren’t trying to save up to buy consumer goods, or build a pension pot, or go on a foreign holiday.

I’m not recommending that we return to those days; medical care was non-existent, work was hard labour and life expectancy was very low. However, they has plenty of time for relaxing and socialising and being part of their community. How many can say that today?

The protestant work ethic has been a major enabler of the spread of capitalism and economic growth, leading to the ‘hustle culture’ that has arisen in the past two decades - and which some are now rejecting. And yet, we all pride ourselves on working hard and being busy, it’s so ingrained in our culture that 6 out of every 10 employees in the UK don’t take all their annual leave. In the US, it’s almost half, which is insane because their leave entitlements are much lower (10 days a year on average).

We know how important it is to take time out, to switch off, relax and recharge the batteries. So do employers, that’s why they give us the holiday. And yet we don’t take it, and employers conspire with us to keep us working. We know it’s bad for us, they know it’s bad for us, so why do we do it? Why does the reality not match the rhetoric and the policy?

Perhaps we should ‘Be More Peasant’.

Summer In The City

I was as guilty of this as anyone when I worked in CorporateLand. I would let my annual leave build up and transfer it forwards to the following year - until the company put a limit on how much you could take forward. Then I had to take it in full, and also use up the backlog I had developed! And this was back when you couldn’t work at home, so you needed holiday to wait in for parcels or for tradespeople to come and do work for you, so I was really underusing it.

Why do people do this, then? For some, they feel guilty about their work being pushed onto their colleagues when they are away. For others, it more about being seen as lazy or not committed to the job. And some may just be so snowed under that they fear they will never catch up again if they take their full leave allowance.

And then there are those who have a misplaced sense of loyalty and/or sense of their own importance. They feel they can’t take holiday because they are working on an important project, or what they do is critical the business and will fall apart if they are not there.

Why do I say ‘misplaced’? Well, if you’ve ever been made redundant you will realise just how unimportant the work you were doing really was. It is discarded with your exit, no hand over, no continuity, just abandoned or, at best, dumped on someone else. If you’ve ever been subjected to a major reorganisation that throws everyone and everything up in the air, and even scraps entire divisions and areas of business, then you’ll see how unimportant any one project or work area is.

I get that we want to feel our work is important and significant, it makes us feel important and valued and gives us motivation. And I understand the anxiety that things will fall apart if you’re not there, that it might fail. However, the reality is that it doesn’t really matter that much, certainly not more than your own health and wellbeing.

In one of my roles (in Concert, a BT/MCI JV) I worked on a project that was one of 10 work streams. We were the only one that completed the first phase on time and within budget, and mostly to spec. Guess which one of the 10 got cut. For that year, I spent one week of every month in the US, away from my young family. Looking back, it wasn’t a good trade.

Don’t make these mistakes. Take your holidays. You deserve them and you need them.

Burn Baby Burn

How often have you seen the phrase “Work smarter, not harder”? I think it was kicking around when I was still in BT, which was 30 years ago. Any sign of it happening yet?

Of course, it depends what you mean by ‘work smarter’, so let’s look at it from a personal perspective. Much of the work we do today is cognitive labour, knowledge work. Increasingly, this is deep work, creative and complex. We have a limited amount of capacity for this type of work, for most of us it’s 3 to 4 hours a day at the most.

To do this work to our best ability, we need to be fit, healthy, well-rested and relaxed. We need to be able to focus, which means we need a quiet environment, both physically and mentally (so anxiety and threat are not conducive to optimum performance). We need to have regular breaks as our performance degrades after 60 to 90 minutes. (I’m generalising here, some people will have different patterns that suit them, particularly if they are not neurotypical).

That’s on a daily basis. Over the course of a week, we have the capacity for about four days work. The rest of the week, we are just filling in time. This may be doing useful things, like mundane paperwork or talking to people and developing relationships. Or it may just dicking around in the office, going to the pub, scrolling social media, putting on the washing. Let’s be honest, no-one really did much work on a Friday even when we were all in the office because we were knackered. This is why it’s not that much of challenge to switch to a four day week because there was always a day of ‘filler’.

Over the course of a year, we need longer breaks to get away from the hurly burly, let our minds empty of the ‘busyness’ and chatter, to relax physically and mentally. If we don’t, our performance will steadily degrade and our capacity for work reduce. It’s why people need a break when a project ends or after an intense period like Year End. We need to step out of the pressure cooker for a bit or we get boiled.

I realised that I had spent about 5 years working on overlapping projects at one point and it led to a degree of burnout, even though I took my holidays. The problem was that I wasn’t able to properly disengage and the effort of taking holiday negated the benefits. What I mean by that is that I did two weeks work in the week before, had two weeks off and then did two week work in the week I got back. Actually, probably more because I had to re-energise the projects that had stagnated whilst I was away (because no-one did any of the actions I had asked them to).

The point I am trying to make here is that we can’t keep pushing endlessly, we can’t operate at 100% all the time. In fact, we can only work at our max for short periods, no matter what story we tell ourselves, and no matter how many times we tell ourselves to ‘always be hustling’. What actually happens is that we get slower and less productive. There’s a reason why a 100 metres runner doesn’t run races every day.

We need to pace ourselves for the long run, listen to our bodies and find a pattern of work that is sustainable for us. That’s not always easy when life makes many demands on you (young children anyone?) and work makes even more. But it’s something that’s not just worth fighting for, it’s essential for your long-term health and happiness.

Relax

So I am following my own advice and taking August off. I have a busy month of social events, holidays and fun activities. I will be semi-unplugged, which means I’ll keep an occasional eye on my messages but won’t be posting stuff or having meetings (with one or two exceptions).

I’ll be scheduling some missives whilst I’m away that will be based on things I’ve posted on LinkedIN that you may not have seen and that are still relevant. I hope you find them interesting.

Enjoy the summer, see you in September!