Short on Time? Take Yours Back!
by John de Graaf
Environmental writer and farmer Wendell Berry once argued that Americans too often try to solve problems as isolated issues, one by one and separately, when we could more effectively solve them by pattern — that is, by taking on central elements in our lifestyle whose negative impacts make an entire constellation of problems worse.
We pay lip service to slogans like "all things are connected," but often act as if each problem can be solved by itself. Berry suggests that if we really want to improve the environment, for example, we need to think beyond specific symptoms of ecological abuse and neglect to challenge the larger cultural and lifestyle choices that lie at their roots.
In my view, the pattern of American lifestyle choice that most needs our immediate attention is our unconscious choice as a society to prioritize money and stuff over time. Overwork, over-scheduling and over-consumption threaten many aspects of our lives, from health, to families and communities, to citizenship and the environment.
Overwork: the New Epidemic
Juliet Schor, best-selling author of The Overworked American, has pointed out that the growth in American productivity since World War II offered an incredible social opportunity. We could now produce the same material standard of living that we had in the 1950s (when America was referred to as "the Affluent Society") while working only half as much or less. Or, we could put some of our productivity gains into improving material living standards and the rest into reducing work hours. Instead, we have taken all of our gains in the form of money and stuff and none of them in the form of free time. Americans have doubled their material consumption and we're working more now — much more — than we were then.
We're not just working to buy more stuff. Increasing wage inequality has left the poorest Americans working two jobs just to stay above the poverty line. Job insecurity keeps people at work long after the official workweek ends to avoid seeming expendable when layoffs come. Millions of Americans work longer hours than they would choose simply to keep their health benefits, ironically often damaging their health as a result. When the stock market crumbled like a house of cards, so did millions of pension accounts. Many who expected to retire comfortably continue to work well past their expected retirement dates.
For many of us, life has become a rat race. Stress is now endemic to American life. And our home and family lives mirror the frenzied "productivity" that fills our workplaces. Children carry appointment calendars; many are now chained to schedules that used to be reserved for CEOs. Even neglect and abandonment of pets is on the rise, as people have less time for them.
Haste Makes Waste
Last year I gave a speech to the Associated Recyclers of Wisconsin, an organization of public and private solid waste managers. My theme was "haste makes waste." If you want to reduce landfills, I argued, reduce working hours. It may seem like a non sequitur, but new research shows it is not.
A new study by psychologists Tim Kasser of Knox College and Kirk Warren Brown of the University of Rochester, finds conclusive evidence that the longer people work beyond about 30 hours a week, the less happy they are. Their research also shows that over-workers are less likely to recycle, more likely to use disposable products and more likely to eat fast, overly-processed, calorie-laden foods. They don't have time to be ecologically responsible.
Americans have the largest ecological footprint of any society on earth. If we want to stop our unsustainable rates of material growth, we need to begin now to trade productivity gains for time instead of stuff. And to do that, we need to talk about this issue and raise consciousness.
Putting It in Perspective
How can we have more satisfying, less hurried lives that prioritize relationships and communities instead of products? Take Back Your Time Day is the vehicle that can open a dialogue to change.
Take Back Your Time Day is the first initiative of the Simplicity Forum, an organization that brings together leaders in the Voluntary Simplicity movement to create new strategies for sustainable consumption, economic justice and balanced lives. From the beginning it was clear to members of the Forum that achieving sustainability, justice and balance is not simply a matter of individual choices and personal behavior. We realized that many aspects of our culture and economy are aggressively unfriendly to simpler living.
At a meeting last spring, the Public Policy Committee of the Forum was given the task of coming up with a broad public policy agenda and a more targeted policy campaign that could help make America more simplicity-friendly. We came up with the idea of Take Back Your Time Day, believing that mere exhortations to consume less would fall on deaf ears. We had to offer people an alternative to more stuff: more time.
On Friday, October, 24, 2003, people all across America will skip work, or leave work early (or progressive businesses and non-profits will give their employees time off). The date falls nine weeks before the end of the year, symbolizing the extra 350 hours — over two months — that Americans work each year compared to the average European.
Instead of working, people will attend one of the hundreds of teach-ins and speak-outs that will be taking place at universities and colleges, union halls, churches, libraries and workplaces all across America. People everywhere will talk about the time of their lives, how they've lost it and how they can take it back at personal, cultural, professional and political levels.
Our model is the first Earth Day. Within two years of that April 22, 1970 event, Congress passed (and a conservative Republican president signed into law) the most significant environmental legislation in our nation's history — the Clean Air and Water Acts, the EPA, the Endangered Species Act and other similar laws. It took a groundswell of popular voices to make that happen and it will take another to change our values about time and money.
Take Back Your Time Day is more than a single event — it is a reprioritization of our communal values. It offers the possibility of creating a broad coalition for social change. It can unite people who seldom talk to each other: family values conservatives and the women's movement, clergy and doctors, slow food and simplicity advocates, labor and environmentalists, and many more. Thousands of people have already joined our campaign and we need all of them — because there's no present like the time!
TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is an initiative of the Simplicity Forum and a project of the Center for Religion, Ethics and Social Policy at Cornell University. To form a Time Day Committee in your area, donate to the campaign, or learn more, visit www.timeday.org or email John de Graaf at degrj@kcts.org. He can also be reached at (206) 443-6747.
John de Graaf is a member of the Simplicity Forum, producer of the successful PBS Series Affluenza and the author of Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic.
How Much is Enough?
* The average middle income family now works four months more in total hours than they did in 1979 (economists Barry Bluestone and Stephen Rose)
* Americans work up to 12 weeks more in total hours per year than Europeans
* Almost 40 percent of Americans work more than 50 hours a week (U.S. News and World Report)
* 26 percent of Americans take no vacation at all (Boston College survey)
* 62 percent of U.S. workers report being "stressed out" from overwork (Harris Interactive survey)
* The wage gap between CEO-to-worker pay skyrocketed from 1980 to 2000, from 42 times worker pay to an astronomical 500 times worker pay (The Los Angeles Times)
Statistics compiled by Joe Robinson, founder of the Work to Live campaign (www.worktolive.info) and author of Work to Live: The Guide to Getting a Life.