Thanksgiving is approaching and it made me think about how work has encroached into nearly every domain of our lives and the importance of breaks, holidays, and sabbaths.

Our lives have several "domains." I think of these as the buckets or areas of our lives that add meaning and satisfaction. These buckets generally include intimacy/marriage, family, friendship, community, spirituality, health, material wellbeing, and work. If you are like me, the work bucket takes up a lot of my time and attention. Don't get me wrong, I love my work but I often feel that the other buckets in my life aren't getting enough. I'm certain many of you feel the same.

I've never liked the term "work-life" balance. To me, it's a misnomer because it seems to suggest that the amount of time or energy (or both) that we put into work should be in "balance" with our "life". Of course, work is part of, not something separated from, our life.  For many people, it's a critical part of their identity. Plus our lives are never "balanced" in the sense that everything is given equal weight. In reality, the amount of time and attention we devote to the various domains in our lives fluctuates from week to week. And over the course of time, there are seasons to life during which we rightfully focus on different priorities. Nonetheless, whether you call it work-life balance, or work-life integration, or simply life integration, I sometimes feel like work has become a tumor that's metastasizing and taking away the life force from everything else.

I was born in the 1960s. Like today, years ago people worked hard. Many professionals worked 50 and 60 workweeks. And people had families. Many families had 3 or 4 or even 5 kids. And most people attended "church" (in 1965, nearly 80% of Americans belonged to a church, synagogue, or mosque and regularly attended). And they were very engaged in civic organizations and clubs! And people had dinner parties and went to the theatre. How on earth did they have time for all of it?

The data suggests that most of us feel far more stressed-out, anxious, and busier than people did 50 years ago. Or even 20 years ago! What's changed? I believe there are three major culprits.

Mobile Devices - Smart Phones. Let's face it, we're tethered to our work (and all of the other demands in our life) every waking hour. Our work has become "woven" into every domain of our lives. And many of us (not just our students) are obsessively checking our phones (or laptops or tablet devices) for emails, text messages, and our social media feeds. A recent study found that, on average, we check our phones every 17 minutes and spend 3 hours and 53 minutes per day engaging with our mobile devices. That's 26 hours a week. On average. I'm sure you've experienced students in class or colleagues during a meeting or perhaps even members of your family at the dinner table checking their smartphone, not once, but multiple times. So, while smartphones are incredibly helpful and convenient, our indiscriminate use of mobile devices is coming at a very high cost.

Email (and other ways of asynchronously "pushing" communications). Up until about 1995, the only way you could "assign" work or make a request of someone was to meet them face-to-face, call them on the telephone, or (I suppose) send them a letter. This created certain limitations because the request could only be made AT WORK and it gave the recipient of the request an opportunity to negotiate. Today, emails show up on our smartphones (which we have in our possession at all times) and they can be sent at any time (day or night). And from anyone. At a very low cost to the sender. This includes lots of people, companies, and entities we don't even know. I regularly receive requests to submit papers to the Journal of Practical Ethnography (and I have only vague notions about what ethnography is). And I've been asked to give the keynote address at the International Conference for Distinguished Scientists and Massage Therapists. [Ok - I made those up ... but many of the requests I've received seem equally absurd] My point is, we are awash in a sea of email messages which creates anxiety as we try (our best) to attend and answer them. Even if you delete tons of messages and diligently add the sender to your spam list, it still takes precious time and attention away from the work that really matters. And while email may SEEM like an efficient way to communicate, in reality, it's a lousy way to have a conversation (e.g. a back and forth dialog) for lots of reasons, but primarily because it's spread out over time. Bottom line - we need to rethink how we use email.

Time expectations. Our expectations in terms of response times have shrunk so much it now causes us stress and anxiety when we have to exercise even just a little bit of patience. If our computer doesn't load the program or our slides within a nano-second, we get frustrated. We've given up on calling people because they probably won't pick up the call (perhaps because they are busy doing something else important) ... so we send them a text message so that we can get a response as soon as possible. Most people don't read books anymore because it takes too long. We favor 10-minute videos and podcasts. When we want to buy something, we either order it online (and expect delivery in < 3 days) or we run out to the store (that is now open very late, 7-days a week). We can't wait for "Black Friday" sales - so most of the big box stores are open on Thanksgiving now. We can't wait for the check in the mail, so we Venmo. Unfortunately, these shorter and shorter time expectations have created a culture that requires all of us to be "always on and always available" so we can meet other people's demands.

I bring all of this up because I believe we have some serious systemic and cultural problems that we need to figure out.  Yes, each of us has a responsibility to engage in self-care practices and attend to our own well-being. We need to take care of our bodies, attend to our thoughts and emotions, and cultivate positive social bonds. But having a counseling center and offering free yoga at work isn't going to solve the root causes of the current state of affairs. Don't get me wrong, yoga is great (you should try it!) but most wellness initiatives place the responsibility solely at the feet of the individual. We need to address the underlying issues.

Which leads me back to breaks, holidays, and sabbaths. Sixty years ago breaks from work were more commonplace and a cultural expectation. During a workday, we need a few breaks to reset. But most of us move from one meeting, one class, one obligation to the next without any breathing room. People used to take a break for lunch to eat with colleagues. Before the pandemic, it was one of my favorite times of the day - lunch, sitting with colleagues, and talking about whatever was on our minds. Now I just eat a "sad lunch" at my desk. In Sweden, it's a cultural tradition to take fika every day - to gather with colleagues for a scheduled pause to enjoy some coffee and cake and conversation. Taking collective breaks together, whether that is to enjoy some food or go for a short walk, helps establish cultural expectations and builds social bonds. We need more breaks.

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday because it's all about giving thanks and spending time with family and friends. There is no expectation to buy people gifts. Plus, I enjoy cooking. Up until about 20 years ago, nothing was open (other than perhaps urgent care centers, hospitals, and police departments) on Thanksgiving. And nothing was open on Christmas. Or New Year. And I'm not sure when we started to treat Memorial Day, the 4th of July, or Labor Day like regular workdays - but many of us do now. Holidays used to be times we all would take off from work and collectively direct our attention toward something important, other than economic output, that we hold dear.

And most people used to rest a FULL day every week. It was a socially imposed norm to take a full day off since businesses were not permitted to be open. In many religious traditions, the sabbath is set aside for communal worship but it is also intended to give our bodies and minds a rest. On the sabbath, whether it's observed for religious or secular reasons, we are free from expectations and obligations. It is a time set aside to simply receive the gifts that have been bestowed on us. While many of us still engage in religious practices each week, I'm wondering if most truly take the day off, the entire day, to rest. To engage in hobbies. Or to spend time socializing. Or take a nice long walk.

So that's the challenge. How do we create space for all the life domains we think are important? This can't be an individual effort. We need to create and enforce new cultural norms and expectations. I certainly don't have the answers - but I hope we'll start to talk about these issues. Perhaps over lunch.

Reflection

What are some ways that you've intentionally built more breaks into your life - setting aside time to just relax, disconnect, and simply enjoy without trying to accomplish anything "productive"?

Taking a break in Sedona-

Interested in learning more? Check these out: