Take Back Your Time Day

Did you know that October 24th is Take Back Your Time Day?  Sponsored by TimeDay,org, this 3rd annual U.S./Canadian initiative "challenges the epidemic of overwork, over-scheduling and time famine that now threatens our health, our families and relationships, our communities and our environment."

Consider these facts:

We're putting in longer hours on the job now than we did in the 1950s, despite promises of a coming age of leisure before the year 2000.

In fact, we're working more than medieval peasants did, and more than the citizens of any other industrial country.

Mandatory overtime is at near record levels, in spite of a recession.

On average, we work nearly nine full weeks (350 hours) LONGER per year than our peers in Western Europe do.

Working Americans average a little over two weeks of vacation per year, while Europeans average five to six weeks. Many of us (including 37% of women earning less than $40,000 per year) get no paid vacation at all.

TIME STRESS HURTS ALL OF US IN DIFFERENT WAYS:

• Time stress threatens our health. It leads to fatigue, accidents and injuries. It reduces time for exercise and encourages consumption of calorie-laden fast foods. Job stress and burnout costs the U.S. economy more than $300 billion a year.
• Time stress threatens our marriages, families and relationships as we find less time for each other, less time to care for our children and elders, less time to just hang out.
• It weakens our communities. We have less time to know our neighbors, supervise our young people, and volunteer.
• It reduces employment as fewer people are hired and then required to work longer hours, or are hired for poor part-time jobs without benefits.
• It leaves many of us with little time to vote, much less be informed, active citizens.
• It leaves us little time for ourselves, for self-development, or for spiritual growth.
• It leads to growing neglect and abuse of pets.
• It even contributes to the destruction of our environment. Studies show that lack of time encourages use of convenience and throwaway items and reduces recycling.

TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY IS NOT ANTI-WORK. Useful and creative work is essential to happiness. But American life has gotten way out of balance. Producing and consuming more have become the single-minded obsession of the American economy, while other values -- strong families and communities, good health and a clean environment, active citizenship and social justice, time for nature and the soul -- are increasingly neglected.

The main goal of TAKE BACK YOUR TIME DAY is to call attention to the problem and begin the public conversation about what to do about it. Some of the solutions will be personal, each in our own lives. Others will be cultural, as we evolve new norms about life balance. Still others will involve voluntary changes in the workplace and children's activity programs, or changes through collective bargaining agreements. We talk about why work/life balance is good for both employees and employers; about how to create decent part-time jobs and about solutions for low-income workers who can't afford to work less.

Get involved by visiting TimeDay.org and taking time today to be with the people you most love!

[Adapted from TimeDay.org.]