Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty

¶ … Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America by John de Graff

In the book Take Back Your Time: Fighting Overwork and Time Poverty in America, author John de Graff talks about the differences between how much work vs. vacation time people get in the United States and how much they get in Europe. In the United States, people work longer, if not harder. Their days are generally longer, and they do not take the kind of time for vacation and holidays that other people in other countries do. There is the idea in America that a job defines a person, and unless that person works to support a family to an excessive degree, that person is not a valuable member of society. Of course this is not true, but many people have still been conditioned to think that it is.

The main critical concept in this particular book is that people are working harder and harder today. However, they often seem to think that they have to do things this way, or they will not stay on top. There is a concern that the economy will collapse, or will at least go into a serious recession, if people do not 'do their parts' and keep working more and more hours each week. These people do make more money, but for that money they trade their valuable time. By the time they are very old, they realize what they have missed out on in many cases, but there is no way to get back the time that they have devoted to other things. It is simply gone.

The reasons behind why people are devoting so much of their fleeting time to work-related pursuits are also discussed by de Graff (2003). He indicates that individuals who spend so much time at work do so because they are in pursuit of material things - especially those which are only temporary. These can be fancy dinners, cars, and many other things. People have to 'keep up with the Joneses,' and in order to do that, they need money. Unfortunately, they see money as being more important than time. For some areas of life, money is important. People need somewhere to live. They also need to have clothing, food, and often a vehicle to drive. Beyond that, however, there are materials wants and desires, but few actual material needs. Most people do not realize this.

When it comes to recreation and leisure issues, this book is also very important. Recreation and leisure are big businesses - or at least they used to be. They are still important for many people, but more and more people are taking shorter vacations and not travelling as far from home when they do take a holiday. Some of this comes from not having enough money, but the largest majority of these people are so busy making money to buy more things that they do not have the time to go and take a break. When they do 'relax,' they are thinking about working, or they feel anxious and uncomfortable because they are not at work. In short, they have forgotten how to do anything other than work.

The love of money and the material things that it can provide has taken over their lives, but very often they do not even realize that this has taken place. Instead, they only see the material things that they feel that they need. They are trained by society to want these materials objects, and they generally do not even understand why they feel this way. They only know that this is the way things are 'supposed to be.' While others who are not as materialistic try to tell them differently, and live with fewer possessions and more time, those who are working to make money to buy things continue in their vicious circle. It perpetuates itself by being passed on to their children, who also see only the material benefits of making a lot of money so that they can have the best homes, the most expensive cars, and all of the latest technological gadgetry that money can buy.

For many of these people, they do not realize until it is too late that there is much more to life than money, and that power and material things really do not make a person's life. Some never realize it at all. For those who realize it in time, though, the options for recreation and leisure are very abundant. There are so many activities that can be entered into with little to no money, and people who become aware of how much money they are spending and how much time they are working to afford things that they do not really need have the chance to change their lives and the lives of their families.

It seems as though what de Graff (2003) is really trying to say is that there is so much more to life than what money can buy, and more and more people are missing out on everything else that is offered to them, because they only see material gain as being important. This is putting a strain on certain facets of the recreation and leisure industry, and it is also keeping a lot of people from enjoying their vacations because they either really cannot afford to take them or they spend most of their time thinking about work. Only by learning to detach oneself from the monetary and material concerns of life to a certain degree can people really have any recreation or leisure time.