Just as much as New Year's or the beginning of school, the warmer, longer days of spring can spur us to join plants and trees in seeking renewal and rejuvenation. Washington Post reporter Brigid Schulte's Overwhelmed: How to Work, Love, and Play When No One Has the Time would be a good place to start a quest for renewal, particularly if that quest encompasses the goals of her subtitle. I imagine many of you, whether you work outside the home or are stay-at-home moms and, yes, even if you're male, can sympathize with Schulte's feeling of "overwhelm." She extensively researched this book, both examining the causes of this condition, from which Americans suffer especially acutely, and, significantly, seeking out solutions. It's the kind of book I read and want to join causes and implement recommendations, but then I'm on a constant quest for self-improvement with the hopes that my quest will also help others find more fulfilling, happy lives. Sadly, I will be out of town, but you can actually go hear Schulte speak thanks to the Parents Council of Washington, Tuesday, April 12 from 8:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m. at The Langley School, 1141 Balls Hill Road, McLean, VA. I'm sure it will be an informative and constructive session, more than worth your while.
As I said, Schulte breaks down the overwhelm into two parts, the sources of this feeling and potential solutions. Today, I'm going to focus on the sources and will continue onto the solutions in future columns. In the case of both the sources and the solutions, both external and internal forces contribute, in different degrees for different people. Let's begin, however, with what the problem looks like. Just in case you don't feel overwhelmed yourself, Schulte would describe it as feeling "scattered, fragmented, and exhaust[ed]. . . . always doing more than one thing at a time and feel[ing] I never do any particularly well."(4) So why, male and female, working and stay-at-home, do so many of us feel this way? Summarizing Schulte's analysis, I would say ultimately it comes down to two primary factors: the powerful concepts of the "ideal worker" and the "ideal mother" (don't worry dads: plenty of this involves you, too).
We've all read the statistics. Americans work longer hours than anybody else in the industrialized world. By the 1990's, we were working "a full month longer" than we had on average in the 1960's. Professionals make up most of these overworking individuals, with 40% of college educated men and 20% of college educated women working more than 50 hours a week. Moreover, in the 1960's only 38% of mothers with young children worked outside the home, whereas by the 2000's, 75% were and many of those full-time. If you combine the amount of time worked outside the home by both parents, between 1970 and 2000, together they worked approximately 28 more days annually.(30-1) We also all know the ways in which technology has allowed work to invade our private lives. Being always on call, feeling compelled to check our email regularly, leaves us feeling that even when we're home with family or on vacation, we're never truly free of work. Unlike most industrialized countries, the US legally requires no paid vacation and 60% of Americans don't even take all of the limited time – usually 14 days, way less than the mandated 20-30 days of other countries – we are given. We have what the US Travel Association calls a "work martyr complex."(27)
Always a country of individualistic strivers, we define ourselves by our work. While the Protestant Work Ethic may sound like a relic of the past, its results are alive and well. We work hard and long and take pride in our diligence even as we may resent it. Enter the "ideal worker" who "freed from all home duties, devotes himself completely to the workplace. He is a face-time warrior, the first one in in the morning and the last to leave at night. He is rarely sick. Never takes vacation, or brings work along if he does." He can travel at a moment's notice, answers emails at all hours of the day and night, and willingly relocates if necessary. Obviously, this is an exaggeration and a stereotype, but, as Schulte observes, "this notion of the ideal worker wields immense power in the American workplace. We are programmed to emulate him at all costs, or at least feel the sting of not measuring up."(77) Such expectations exclude a personal life, and certainly being an even marginally involved parent. This is what Anne-Marie Slaughter calls a "toxic work world," one suited for the "Mad Men" era, but is completely outdated for today's workers. You cannot have both spouses meeting the "ideal worker" standard and realistically have children spend much time with their parents; someone else will have to carry the responsibility for raising them. When both parents in the majority of American families with young children work, this creates a conflict. Moreover, even if we were comfortable handing over all the child-raising to someone else, in most cases it is difficult and/or very expensive to find quality child-care during the normal workday, much less one that extends from the early morning into the late evening.
More often than not, the incompatibility of the "ideal worker" and dual-income families is presented as a woman's issue. However, it is actually far more complex. The "ideal worker" places unhealthy expectations on everyone, not just working mothers. And as both Schulte and Slaughter point out, some men are beginning to push back. Slaughter cites a study from the Families and Work Institute that found that "only a third of employed millennial men think that couples should take on traditional gender roles." These millennials are requesting and taking paternity leave.
The "ideal worker" problem, however, extends even beyond the challenges it presents to family and personal life. Schulte refers to research that calculates that the grueling expectations of the "ideal worker" cost the US economy $1.5 trillion a year! Other research showing that "forcing long hours, face time for the sake of face time, and late nights actually kills creativity and good thinking, and the ensuing stress, anxiety and depression eat up health-care budgets" explains this cost (88). Almost two-thirds of American workers wish they could work for themselves so they would have more control over their time. This sense of lack of control and demanding expectations clearly contribute to a sense of overwhelm.
The disadvantages of the endless workday fall into two categories: the demoralizing effect of a sense of lack of control and lack of productivity and diminished quality of work. We know from Daniel Pink's work (which Schulte references) that people need autonomy, mastery and a sense of purpose to thrive. Workers who feel they have no control over their time do not have autonomy. This hurts their morale. Schulte cites a 2011 Gallup poll that found fully "71 percent of Americans reported feeling emotionally disconnected and disengaged from their workplace."(88) Such emotions hardly encourage quality work.
Second, we know from brain research that we can only work for so long productively and that breaks refresh us, open us to new ideas and solutions, and foster creativity. Schulte refers to the work of psychologist Anders Ericsonn who argues that we work in cycles of alertness that last at most ninety minutes after which we need to switch gears completely. If we just power through the down cycle, we operate at well below optimal levels. We're much more productive if we concentrate our efforts and then take a break. Other research has actually shown that when we relax, our brain waves travel through different parts of the brain allowing connections and prompting creativity and problem solving. (266-68) I think we've all experienced this. We walk away from an issue, literally or figuratively, and then a solution pops into our head. In addition, we all know that time logged at the office does not necessarily equate to work done. Deadlines help us focus, and if work seems to stretch endlessly into the evening, we feel less compulsion to work efficiently. Plus, in the digital age, any number of activities can easily distract us, checking social media or shopping or aimlessly surfing the web while appearing to be working away. Without an ebb and flow of focus, we toil, probably unproductively at least some of the time and without a sense of accomplishment much less happiness, all of which contributes to the feeling of overwhelm.
The real problem posed by the "ideal worker" is the ideal part; despite evidence to the contrary, many companies feel that success depends on employing ideal workers and enforcing ideal worker standards; secondly, many of us feel that we have to live up to this standard in order to be successful. However, neither as individuals nor as a culture or economy do we need to be held hostage by the "ideal worker." As the last paragraph hints, alternatives do exist.