Do you go to work, come home and feel like everybody else has a social life except you? Do you feel lonely in your adult life, but too tired to socialise?
It might be your full time job making you feel this way. Read on to find out why.
How we ended up here
Many years ago, people were fighting for a better work life balance. There were union rally’s and protests to get us to where we are today. The unions clawed society out of the insane 12, 14 or even 20 hour workdays that were literally killing people.
The first labor strikes were about shortening the workday to a 10 hour a day, from a 14-hour day down to 10 hours. And then gradually, the eight hour day became the norm. Workers rights gradually improved over time.
“8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will”
During the Industrial Revolution, Henry Ford found the 5 day work week to be more productive for his car making business. It also allowed workers some extra time to rest.
This change to the working week was a business move to increase company profit, because workers were more productive and there were fewer injuries. Workers obviously benefited massively from the reduced working hours. At the time, it was seen as progress.
That progress hasn’t really moved forward since. Even worse, technology is allowing people to be exploited for nuggets of their free time. Work now seeps into our lives more than it used to. Nobody has 8 hours a day to play with after work. People are busy commuting and doing laundry.
The working week as we know it is a historical accident. It continues to leave society disconnected, lonely and isolated.
Allow me to explain…
Life Admin and House Work
During the days of the Industrial Revolution it was normal for one partner to work while another stayed home to take care of everything at home.
As living costs have risen over the years, this has pushed more and more women into full time employment. Being part of a single income household is now a luxury now many can’t afford or don’t want. Even if families can afford life on a single income, the career opportunities for part time work are unappealing.
With everybody at work, the house still needs to be cleaned, the broken washing machine replaced, the tax forms completed and the meals prepped. This is all work. It just needs to be completed after your paid work.
Once you have finished your paid work, you then go home to continue with your own labour. You unpack the Amazon packages, meal prep breakfast, lunch and dinner, do some online shopping to buy necessities because you don’t have time to visit the store. Free time is filled with adulting. You have very little time left to be a human and connect with others.
The House Price Trap
House prices always rise in conjunction with earnings. House price crashes occur when the earnings to affordability ratio becomes too unaffordable. There is a fine balance between people being stretched to pay their mortgage and going into the red.
Economics is always pushing the boundaries of how much things can realistically cost.
People blame boomers for the rise of house prices over the past decades. However, most families of this generation were single income households. As more women entered the workforce, house prices have increased to compensate for the increasing mortgage affordability. Property prices rose in conjunction with the new combined household affordability.
It’s now largely impossible for a family to survive on an average single income. Single people are often forced to lived in mixed occupancy accommodation, because buying a house or even a flat on a single income is rarely possible.
The slogan “8 hours for work, 8 hours for rest, and 8 hours for what we will” was based on one person going out to work and one person staying home. With the whole family out at work, we have gone backwards in workers rights with regard to our free time.
With busy working families both needing to work. They have to complete all their adult tasks after their trip to the office. There are few moments left to spend together and connect.
Life gets busy. Adulting needs to be completed.
Couples and single people alike end up feeling disconnected and lonely. Or are just really tired and disorganised if they have a busy social life.
Our Hierarchy of Needs
The working week leaves very little time for us to just be human. Our evenings are taken up by looking after our basic needs, so that we can wake up and do it all over again the following day.
According to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and my cunning perception, most of the average workers weeknight is spent providing for the needs right at the bottom on the pyramid.
Very few full-time workers have the time (or energy) to meet their needs for connection and fulfilment. After you have eaten dinner and completed some admin tasks or some laundry, your evening is over. We are all just surviving, very few of us thriving.
Stockholm Syndrome
Employers like to imagine that working for their company will give your life meaning. It’s the lie that past generations were sold.
“Work for our company and your life will have meaning”
They lied. They were manipulating people into thinking working hard for a company would provide the self actualisation and fulfilment that humans crave. It is in a companies interest for you to feel emotionally connected to work, so that you will work more.
Work has tried to replace family, friends and meaningful hobbies by making us believe that hard work gives our life meaning and fulfillment.
Our unhealthy relationship with work is a form of Stockholm syndrome, where our identities are so tied to 24-7 work. We’ve convinced ourselves working hard to leads to fulfilment.
Furthermore, technology has made us available 24/7 and people are never compensated with time or money for all the extra emails they respond to, or calls they take in the evening.
A lot of societies wealth is built on free labour in the form of unpaid overtime. The more past generations worked for free, the more profitable the company became.
People working in public service jobs like education or nursing get this in two fold. People go into industries such as teaching and nursing to give their lives meaning. The manipulation is even greater in these professions. If you don’t do this extra work then a child’s future will be ruined or somebody might die.
We are, right now, caught in a generational pull away from the toxic philosophy of living to work. Younger generations are breaking away from this Stockholm syndrome, but are branded as lazy.
There are a lucky few who are fulfilled by work, but for the vast majority of workers, work it is a means to an end. It shouldn’t consume your life.
Network vs Community
In the book ‘Dumbing us Down’, John Taylor Gatto wrote that we are lonely because we live in networks rather than communities. In his book he explained that many schools and companies act as a community, but they are, in fact, a network.
In a nutshell, a community is there for you for every stage of life. The good and the bad. A community can fulfill all functions such as friendship, healthcare, food and care for the sick and elderly. A network can only fulfil a small part of that function.
When somebody suffers a crisis in a community, the community rally round to help. Food is brought over, children are cared for by extended family, cleaning is done, emotional support is given. The same person involved in a network would have to depend on paying strangers to get the same sort of help. They may even worry about loosing their job or getting their pay reduced.
When was the last time your employer bought you chicken soup when you were sick, or comforted you through a life tragedy? Not often, I bet.
We spend our lives working hard for a network that would replace us if we couldn’t work. Your job is not a community.
Society is lonely, because the very fabric of our communities has been broken down into networks, acting as an artificial community. People live alone, go to work and have very little meaningful contact on a day to day basis with people that actually care about them.
We have our work colleagues, but if you get sick, it’s going to be hard for your colleagues to bring you some soup. They need to work and they also spend their evenings meeting their own basic needs. They won’t have time for yours.
Pull your socks up, make your own soup and get back to work.
We live in isolated networks, when what we need is a community.
What is the solution?
First off, stop working at the weekend or giving your time for free. Our ancestors fought so hard for the 5 day work week, that by working the weekend you are undoing all that hard fought struggle. Set boundaries. Say no. We need to move forward not back.
Secondly, society needs a shorter workweek. Multiple studies have shown over the past few years that a decrease in working hours leads to an increase in wellbeing.
With a 4 day work week people can spend a whole day completing house work and admin tasks. This leaves them with more time to spend with friends, family and loved ones. The added bonus is that they have more time for hobbies, which increases their well being and allows them to discover enjoyment and a passion outside of work. Leisure time is important.
More time away from our artificial networks allows us to nurture our connection to the community we live in and find real purpose and fulfilment outside of work. It’s time we challenged our unhealthy connection to overwork and started living more.
I’d love to know your thoughts on this. Drop me a comment below and let’s start a conversation.
If you liked this you may also be interested in reading about why you hate working 5 days a week.
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