Drop down a little rabbit hole with me. There’s a philosophical question that keeps bubbling up in my mind. Essentially, many people work in jobs they don’t care for, with increasing demands and responsibilities, all for the goal of retiring and entertaining a life of leisure. This comes at a time with tragic income inequality and painfully low social mobility.
I’m puzzled by this pattern that we are corralled into: Birth, education, working years, retirement, and then death. Why do we work as hard as we do to become financially solvent when time is an illusion and our days here are undefined? Moreover, why are we pursuing these stressful work lives that cause serious medical complications and early death (e.g., stress, heart disease, cancer, etc.)? Is there a balanced alternative?
This New Year’s Eve, I visited Chicago to celebrate with someone I care deeply about. As we walked around the city, I suggested we traipse over to the Field Museum of Natural History. That’s when some of these questions came into perspective and I found some surprising answers.
The hunter gatherer versus 21st century desk-sitter workweeks
As we strolled through the museum, I began to see how work and life changed for people. Where once we foraged and hunted, travelled in groups and visited a variety of places, we now hunker down and settle. Questions of food scarcity, shelter, and life expectancy abound when you’re a hunter gatherer. But you’d be wrong to assume that hunter gatherers were working all the time to survive.
Anthropologists have long known that the life of a hunter gatherer included far more leisure time than our traditional, 21st century desk-sitter. In fact, the average working day was less than 5 hours. Here in the United States and much of the working world, there’s a 40 to 44 hour workweek, and far less leisure time.
Popular productivity tips and organizational oracles flood major content websites. There are entire swaths of the Internet dedicated to tackling your work, life, and beyond. Admittedly, I frequent websites such as Lifehacker and the Reddit “lifehack” subreddit. I read The 4-Hour Workweek with great vigor, and promptly failed at utilizing most of the productivity skills it contained.
When I return to books and sites like these, I feel like I’ve admitted defeat and accepted that my lifestyle and workweek just go with the territory (a full-time grad student and employee with a monetary budget equal to a few packets of ramen). Each of these self-proclaimed productivity solutions seem to be getting at the same thing: less work and more play.
The 21st century desk-sitters’ kryptonite: Heart disease and early death
Despite evolving into bipeds – made for walking, running, and moving – we are more sedentary than ever before. At the museum, the curators boldly outlined a significant problem with our current lifestyle: heart and health-related early death.
The shift to 21st century desk-sitters and the productivity movement caused a sudden increase in heart and health-related diseases. Increased duration and pressure in the work environment is associated with depression, obesity, cancer, sleep deficits, cardiovascular complications, stress, and eye strain. Here’s what we know about working beyond 7 hours (aka, overtime):
The research shows a 60% increase in heart-related illness such as non-fatal heart attacks and angina in those who work for three hours or more longer than a normal seven-hour day.
“Employers and patients need to be aware of all of the risk factors for coronary heart disease – and should consider overtime as one factor that may lead to a number of medical conditions.” (The Guardian)
Despite these risks and loss of enjoyment, we continue to pursue these workweeks that perpetuate and encourage the trouble. The solution and ontology are simple: move and find time to relax more.
The hunter gatherers were really good at one thing: Minimalism
While we fight mightily to carve out more time for leisure via productivity, we’re failing and the paradigm needs to shift. There are systemic, governmental factors that limit our ability to engage in more leisure time. But more interestingly, there seems to be a cultural appreciation for those that work two or three jobs, and fight to make a living. This may hold us back more than any federal legalese.
Hunter gatherer societies seemed to understand that life was held in a delicate balance. Time versus effort was carefully calculated. Needs were different, as many just needed to feed, cloth, and find shelter. These people weren’t squabbling over cloud-piercing skyscrapers, or debating between iPad and Google Nexus tablets. They carried and traveled with little more than their necessities, and the urge to consume was much less. They were minimalists to the fullest extent – out of pure necessity.
Fortunately, some countries are wisening up to these consequences and reducing the normal workweek schedule. Germany, the Netherlands, and France top the list of countries with the fewest average work hours. Germans work an average 25.6 hours per week, make $35.33 an hour, and only have a 6% unemployment rate.
My night at the museum opened my eyes to this simple change in our workweek, lifestyles, and health complications. There’s an alternative to the work, work, die lifestyle and it starts with your schedule.
Would you be able to reduce your work hours? What consequences would you see, positively or negatively?
I was actually just at the Field Museum! Not my favorite in Chicago, but always a great stop!
I’m hoping to move to a part time job soon so I can focus on side income. Working 9-5 wears me down. I’m reverse cave-manning it with my posture!
Michelle,
I’d agree that it’s not my favorite museum, but it was cool to see the T-Rex and tour the latest exhibits. 🙂
I totally agree that the stresses of modern life and the trappings of “success” (which usually equal many materialistic things) have heavily contributed to our increased incidence of health problems, stress, unhappiness, etc. In our household we are trying to get out of the rat race ASAP for multiple reason, including all of the above!
My husband was definitely born in the wrong era. He would’ve thrived as a hunter gatherer.
(Me, I would probably have died at birth!)
Amazing! Haha. Thanks for making me crack up. 🙂
Sam
I read an article recently suggesting that most of the jobs that exist are really just make believe careers to keep people “in the system”, paying taxes and giving them money to afford to buy things….which in turn keeps them employed.
Always torn about this one – my sister is always lamenting the fact that we are no longer a hunter-gatherer society. On the other hand, I do love the era we live in today where so much is possible. The Internet, specifically is an advancement that I feel lucky to have around.
That said – I completely agree that we can learn a lot from the priorities and daily decisions of hunter gatherer folks!
Dave,
This sounds like a really balanced way of looking at this question. I agree that there are many things we’ve gained by how society has developed, and that there are surprising things to be learned from our ancestors.
Thanks for your insightful comment,
Sam
I think the point is that things like the internet are supposed to make our lives easier. Instead the internet adds to the chaos of existence and eats up more of our leisure time in sedentary activity. Look what happened when everyone came off the farms, not only did they get stuck behind desks, sitting down, out of the sun, not only were they forced to work as much or more than the farmer, not only were they stripped of their community and forced into higher pressure environments where mistakes could lead to poverty, but we were also given toxic food.
I think of the microwave. Here to save time. Now everyone eats out of this food destroying box, because not only do they not have time to grow their own food, they don’t have time to cook food appropriately. Their leisure time (television, sedentary) must fit into a specific short window and they don’t want to spend it on their feet (sitting breeds sitting by necessity) cooking. Ultimately the device is not used to save time, but to free up time for more work.
Its a sorry way we live. I have distanced myself from it as well as I can. But for many people the choice is extreme poverty or homelessness, if they don’t conform to the rules of the labor force (long stressful hours). Its not an option to work to pay your internet bill, and grow your food on your farmstead. If you don’t acquire money for the various taxes, land, car, labor, sales (purchase,) and now health care then the government will give you a place to sleep, but you certainly won’t like it.
The only thing that will make it change is massive amounts of people disengaging from the system. Otherwise it will always be a battle for the people who don’t have the money addiction to be free from the long hours of stressful labor.
I guess that there were some benefits working in the past, but I am pretty sure that I am satisfied with my AC/Heat, my electronics, and my relaxed weekend. Although time flies by, this is the best era to live in.
As you mentioned about walking trough the museum, we learn something new every day, and because of this don’t take the era that we live in for granted.
David,
These creature comforts definitely help, don’t they? You’re right that many parts of the hunter gatherer life would be unappealing to me, as well. More than anything I wanted to stress their work-life balance that seemed to be better suited to humans. Moreover, that by moving away from this life, we may have lost some important parts about ourselves.
Hope this makes sense.
Thanks for your comment,
Sam
And yet you neatly leave out that your creature comforts are largely powered by the demise of the planet. That electronics are nothing but a form of escapism, and that your weekend… well I don’t even see how you make the argument “well they let me out of my cage on saturday!”.
You might not take it for granted, but if you look at what you are doing to the planet it would be my assertion that your ancestors will consider you a glutton, and your children (not literal) a thief.
I think it’d be great if businesses extended their lunch breaks. When I work traditional 9-5, I rarely have enough energy to workout (or do anything more than plop down on the couch) when I get home. If, however, lunch was 2-2.5 hours, I would workout, shower, eat, and be ultra energized for an afternoon of work, not to mention a much happier and healthier person.
You might think this, and you might be right. But I have a feeling this has been looked into and it has been reasoned that its better to just chain you to the desk for as long as they can get away with.
I’d agree with you. I’m just not sure the facts yield the same answer.
Love this article and totally agree!! I feel like they are putting more and more on our kiddos in school too!
Stephanie,
This is such a fantastic point that you bring up. With the increasing emphasis on testing and statistics in classroom management, it has led to some interesting learning pressures for the kiddos.
Thanks for your comment,
Sam
Great! I am a police dispatcher that works 12 hour shifts at night. I have read over the years that having a job where shift work is required and be dangerous to your health, and I really believe it. Unfortunately, shift work is part of my job right now and there is now way around it.
A clear article Sam. I think about this topic frequently, and it is often hard to avoid golden-age romanticizing. I think you did a good job of avoiding that and making a strong point. Today I was at the super-market trying to buy healthy food when I was really craving pure sugar, and I was thinking that we have historically lived in environments where nobody ever needed to use will-power to deny sugar for no good (as in obvious) reason. Sugar was scarce enough and valuable enough that when you got that sugar you ate it! Now we have unlimited access to sugar. With so many people depressed from the alien nature of their modern life-styles, its no wonder we all eat too much sugar and frequently die early.
I think you will find the same is true with fats. But you are spot on.
Interstingly enough I was reading an old book i found online on the native americans. At least in the late 19th or early 20th century they would make pounds and pounds of sugar from maples. It seemed they made even more sugar than syrup (probably easier to store I guess). But not many cultures would have been like this.