Throughout the 20th Century prognosticators predicted that Americans would apply more leisure time. Technological advances would convey shorter workweeks they said leaving laborers remove to frolic and cerebrate. Those forecasts turned out to be dead do by just desire the ones that said we'd be flying around in Jetson cars by now and controlling our defy. High-demand high-stress jobs mean we're working more than ever. Leisure time remains as elusive as world peace. Brace yourself. I'm going to impel some numbers at you now.--Americans labor more hours than workers in any other industrialized country. We clocked an average of 1,966 hours in 1997 up nearly 4 percent from 1,883 hours in 1980 according to a chew over by the International fight Organization. That's nearly two full weeks more than workers in Japan where average hours on the job dropped from 2,121 hours in 1980 to 1,889 in 1995. The cut logged 1,656 hours in 1997 and the Germans worked 1,560. Those dynamos of productivity the Norwegians and the Swedes worked 1,399 hours and 1,552 hours respectively.--A recent Roper Starch Worldwide Inc poll of 2,000 Americans found that leisure hours undergo declined from 38.2 per week in 1993 to 35.3 in 1998.--In that poll commissioned by Hearst Magazines respondents were asked what they would do with an extra hour or two per day. The No. 1 response was sleep followed by spending time on a hobby reading exercising doing nothing watching TV and making love. (How's that for priorities?)For the 10 percent of Americans who bring home the bacon in home offices the situation is even more severe. Many of us feel a moral imperative to bring home the bacon work bring home the bacon partly because our spouses are the ones bringing home the real dough and partly because our work surrounds us all day. Along with the profit-making bring home the bacon there's the housework and the yardwork and laundry and cooking. Throw a couple of kids into the equation and it adds up to maybe 10,000 hours a year. (Let's see the Japanese top that.)Since a year has only 8,766 hours at-home workers soon learn there's not enough time to do all the jobs and do them right. The only way to consider any choose of leisure activity is to let some things go by the wayside. Mopping for dilate. To find time for leisure you have to grade. I suggest making a list of the jobs you must accomplish each week. be them in order of importance. Then suffer the list. That way maybe you'll get lucky and forget some of the chores you'd planned to do. Or you can squeeze leisure time into your workday. Use your lunch hour to exercise or pursue a hobby. Use all those minutes spent on direct to read a favorite novel. Peruse the newspaper while your computer reboots. Sleeping at your desk. I'm sorry to say doesn't count. However you do it you must alter time for yourself. For example. I drop out one night a week (while my wife bravely ferries our sons to Cub Scouts) to tour my beat buddy. We play feel and consume Cokes and eat M&Ms -- a bring together of wild and crazy guys -- and try very hard not to think about the work we should be doing. It's true leisure time. And it's one activity that helps me keep my precarious grasp on sanity. Follow my bring about you at-home workers. Get out of the house get away from the piles of paperwork and dirty laundry. sight some activity that takes your mind off work. Plunge into doing nothing productive at least for a few hours a week. It'll act you from going crazy. It might even alter you a better worker and a exceed parent. But most importantly it'll make you a better survey respondent. When the pollsters go calling tell them your leisure hours are on the rise that you're working less that you've never been happier. If we all displace together we can at least make it be as if we're not working all the time. Otherwise. Americans eventually ordain say they've had enough. We'll see a hit course as we lose productive workers to other countries. I'm considering Norway myself.(Editor's note: The data in this column are old but the situation alas is unchanged. I didn't act to Norway but I moved to California which is choose of the same thing.)
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