1. On a personal note ...
My wife Charlene and I have two sons: one is
away at college, and one lives in LA. Both are visiting us in Chicago for a few days during the college spring break. It's wonderful to have us all together, and to see the great young men they are becoming. Soon our nephew will join us for the weekend, and we'll have three guys in their 20s, Charlene and me, and two dogs, all together in our two bedroom apartment. Good thing we like each other.
2. How one guy gets 40 hours of work done in 16.7. Your mileage may vary
One of the principles I am working with in my book "Not so Overwhelmed" is that the solution to our problems with overwhelm is not going be
technical. Put another way: better time management tactics will not solve it. At the same time, for most people, better time management will probably help.
Here's a good article about one approach to time management that is getting a lot of attention in some circles: the Pomodoro Technique. It's helped me, although I don't do it every day. It only works for people who have some ability to manage their schedule. The principles behind it are really important for our work
today (particularly focus, having a rhythm of work and breaks, and dealing with distractions).
3. This is how smart people used to think about work and leisure. Hopefully, they still do
Friedrich Neitzsche is mostly known today -- at least in Christian circles -- as the
nihilist who proclaimed that "God is dead." But when he wasn't being all "nihilisty" he had some pretty important and wise things to say. (Okay, okay ... even his nihilisty insights were probably important and helpful too, in their own way.) Listen to him decrying the over-focus on work and productivity he noticed emerging in his time:
“Even now one is ashamed of resting, and prolonged reflection almost gives people
a bad conscience. One thinks with a watch in one’s hand, even as one eats one’s midday meal while reading the latest news of the stock market; one lives as if one ‘might miss out on something.’ ‘Rather do anything than nothing’: this principle, too, is merely a string to throttle culture and good taste. …Virtue has come to consist of doing something in less time than someone else…
How
frugal our educated—and uneducated—people have become regarding ‘joy!’ How they are becoming increasingly suspicious of all joy! More and more, work enlists all good conscience on its side; the desire for joy already calls itself a ‘need to recuperate’ and is beginning to be ashamed of itself. ‘One owes it to one’s health’—that is what people say when they are caught on an excursion into the country.
Soon we may well reach the point where people can no longer give into the desire for a vita contemplativa (that is, taking a walk with ideas and friends) without self-contempt and a bad conscience.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
4. A key risk factor for addiction and burnout ... turns out it's not so good for your health
either
I've noticed that one of the greatest risk factors for both addiction and burnout is isolation. This is a hard subject to deal with, because nobody wants to admit they are lonely. And it's also complicated because, for most of us, our lives intersect with so many others over the
course of a day or week that we don't really think about how emotionally isolated we are.
But make no mistake: we are very isolated. This is true even for many of us who are surrounded by people. We can be relationally rich, yet emotionally starved, because the relationships we have are only surface-level and transient. The late, great pollster
George Gallup once said that "Americans today are the loneliest people who have ever lived."
Turns out this is really bad for us, on many levels. Even physically. Vivek Murthy, the surgeon general of the United States, has said many times in recent years that the most prevalent health issue in the country is
not cancer or heart disease or obesity. It is isolation.
There's a great article about this in a recent issue of the Boston Globe magazine, written by Billy Baker. The article is worth reading, especially for the part at the end, which talks about a group of men that has their "Wednesday night." Here's a
quote:
“Beginning in the 1980s, Schwartz says, study after study started showing that those who were more socially isolated were much more likely to die during a given period than their socially connected neighbors, even after you corrected for age, gender, and lifestyle choices like exercising and eating right. Loneliness has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease and stroke and the progression
of Alzheimer’s. One study found that it can be as much of a long-term risk factor as smoking.”
