I’m not happy with my work-life balance at all. I work at least 50 or 60 hours a week so I don’t have any time at all for myself or to see my children. I communicate with my wife by leaving messages on the fridge. We hardly ever see each other because we work different hours and I never have time to see my friends or keep fit. Also, I eat very badly because my lunch “hour” (about 10 minutes!) isn’t long enough for me to have a proper meal. OK, I earn a lot of money but I don’t have enough time. Is it worth it?
B. (Amilie, lawyer, Paris, France).
I didn’t use to have much time for anything because I was working too many hours – 45 or more a week. But then here in France the government decided that people should only work 35 hours a week. Nowadays I have plenty of time for myself. I play tennis two evenings a week, and I finish work at lunchtime on Friday, so I can have long weekends. I am much happier. I think when you have time to enjoy your personal life, you work much better.
Give answers to these two questions.
1. Is Dan happy with his work-life balance? Why?
2. Is Amelie happy with her work-life balance? Why?
Focus on reading I
Ex. 1 a). Look at the title of the article on page 54. What do you think ‘hurry sickness’ could be?
B). Read through the article quickly and decide which of the following, A, B, C or D best describes its overall topic.
A Ways to improve your efficiency at work.
B Illnesses caused by working too hard.
C Problems arising from the increased pace of life.
D The importance of relaxation.
Ex. 2. Skim the text (sections A-H) and choose the correct heading for each section from the list of headings below. Write the correct number in the spaces provided. Be careful as there are more headings than sections.
| List of headings | Section |
| 1. The effects of social change. | Section A … |
| 2. How do we begin to tackle the problem? | Section B … |
| 3. What are the effects on our health and why are we so susceptible? | Section C … |
| 4. Who is responsible for the problem? | Section D … |
| 5. Danger signs. | Section E … |
| 6. A disease with no age limits | Section F … |
| 7. What is the main reason for “hurry sickness”? | Section G … |
| 8. A treatment for heart disease. | Section H … |
| 9. What is the cause? | |
| 10. Is there a cure? |
Hurry sickness
A. According to statistics, it is becoming increasingly rare in many Western countries for families to eat together. It seems that people no longer have time to enjoy a meal, much less buy and prepare the ingredients. Meanwhile, fast food outlets are proliferating. Further evidence of the effects of the increasing pace of life can be seen on all sides. Motorists drum their fingers impatiently at stop lights. Tempers flare in supermarket queues.
B. According to Barton Sparagon, an expert on stress-related illness, the above are all symptoms of a modern epidemic called hurry sickness. The term was invented nearly 40 years ago by a prominent cardiologist, who noticed that all of his heart disease patients had common behavioural characteristics, the most obvious being that they were in a chronic rush. Hurry sickness has been an issue in our culture ever since, but the problem is escalating in degree and intensity, leading to rudeness, short-tempered behaviour and even violence, alongside a range of physical ills.
C. The primary cause, according to Sparagon, is the increasing prevalence of technology – like email, cell phones, pagers and laptop computers. We can bring work home, into our bedrooms and on our vacations. Time has sped up for so many people, and there is increased pressure to do more in the same number of hours. Jill Stein, a sociologist at the University of California at Los Angeles, agrees that time is being more compressed than ever.
D. What about those annoying people who shout into their cell phones, unaware of those around them? Stein says that self-centred behaviour is related to larger social trends as well as technology. “There is a breakdown of the nuclear family, of community, of belonging; and an increased alienation and sense that we’re all disconnected from one another. This breakdown came before the technology, but the technology has exacerbated it.” Now we connect through this technology, says Stein, and we don’t have face-to-face interaction. Ironically, as people pull their cell phones out in the most unlikely venues, our personal lives are available on a public level as never before.
E. Sparagon claims that chronic impatience is damaging not only to our socia environment, but to our physical health. It builds, and then it doesn’t take much to explode. And for those who repress it, it’s equally damaging. The high-tech revolution and the lifestyle it has produced have brought with them a wide range of serious health problems, including heart attacks, palpitations, depression, anxiety, immune disorders, digestive problems, insomnia and migraines. Human beings are not designed for prolonged, high-speed activity. Our basic physiology has not evolved to keep pace with the technology. We are hard-wired to be able to handle a ‘fight-flight’ response where the stress ends within five to ten minutes. However, in our current culture we struggle for hours on end.
F. Even children are not spared the negative effects of modern-day overload. There’s a hidden epidemic of symptoms like hypertension, migraines and digestive problems among children as young as ten. Children are facing the same sense of overload, time pressure and demands that their parents experience, says Sparagon, “and they don’t have coping mechanisms to deal with it.”
G. Recovery is possible, but Sparagon emphasises that there is no quick fix. Many of these stress-related behaviours have become deeply ingrained to the point where people are hardly aware of them. The greatest paradox is that even when people are ready to change their behaviour, they are in a hurry to do so.
H. Sparagon works with people to become aware of their stress and the impact it’s having on their lives. They examine their belief systems (What is really important? What can they let go of?) and they learn to challenge their behaviours. One popular exercise is to assign a chronically impatient person to stand in the longest line in the grocery store. The only answer is to take it one day at a time. The irony is that all the techniques and technology designed to streamline our lives may ultimately be counterproductive. As Sparagon says, “People are finding that all of this multi-tasking, rushing and worrying is not only making life intolerable, but actually making them less efficient than they could otherwise be.”
