As I do fairly regularly, I ran into the mayor enjoying a cup of coffee with friends last weekend. As we regularly do, we exchanged greetings. I asked her if she’d taken in a movie that everybody was talking about. She said, what with lack of time and the amount of work on her plate, that she hadn’t. I mentioned that I’d had the same problem trying to get some of my own writing done versus marking the writing of my students. I came up with what I thought was a constructive solution.
“Maybe if we gave half of the time we have available to do half of what we have to do… and then devote the other half of the time we have available to do what we want to do,” I said, “that might be more satisfying.”
I admit that my proposed solution was a rather clumsy description. Put more simply, I might have used James Howell’s proverb: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” By coincidence, in recent weeks, my son-in-law started a new job in Toronto. It’s a contract position; and so, right from the moment he arrived at work for his first day, he wanted to show his new employers that he was keen. At the end of his first week, again trying to impress, he asked his immediate superior if he could borrow a company laptop computer to take some of his work home with him over the weekend.
“No,” his boss said. “We think it’s a good idea if you leave your work behind at the office.”
I thought, what a progressive corporation, one that recognizes its workforce needs to have a life at home unencumbered by the weight of decisions and problems associated with the 9-to-5 at the office. But such enlightened thinking isn’t limited to corporate policy at a downtown office.
A friend of mine, a perceptively proactive mom, regularly checks in with her adult daughter who (like my son-in-law) has been scouring the Toronto marketplace for a meaningful job. Given the opportunity for one of them – either the mom or her daughter – to enjoy a sunbelt getaway this month, the mom offered the trip south to her daughter. As much as she coveted a potential escape from the February blahs, the mom knew the relief from job stress would do her daughter a world of good. She gave her daughter the Florida vacation. There aren’t medals big enough to reward such foresight.
But there are other kinds of “gottas” and “oughtas” out there, the kind we wish more of the world’s leaders – in politics, education, entertainment and show business – might want to consider. As recently as this week, for example, we’ve all wondered about the case of NBC news anchor Brian Williams. He suddenly felt he ought to fess up to an apparent exaggeration of his correspondence from the war in Iraq; he admitted he’d “misremembered” that his helicopter was the target of rocket-propelled grenades back in 2003. I realize I’m extrapolating here, but perhaps if Brian Williams felt less pressure to perform 24/7 in the anchor’s chair, and had more time and freedom to reflect on the events in Iraq, that he might have realized his oversight and corrected it (with less damaging results).
Sometime last year, the administrators at the college where I work decided in their wisdom that we – the faculty and staff – might need some counselling in work-life balance. They brought in an outside consulting firm to lead us through a seminar called “Living Well with Stress.” I remind you that at the college level those of us who teach don’t do so from a lectern on a podium in front of hundreds of students taking notes. Ours is a world of teaching (much like those in elementary and high schools) in which we work closely with students in tutorials, on assignments, and on a one-on-one basis. Anyway, the stress consultant thought it wise to help us define stress.
“You may not believe it,” the facilitator said, “but there’s stress everywhere – in the mind, the body, the career and in every relationship.”
I was tempted to invite the facilitator to my next news lab in which I guided my journalism students through the coverage of a traffic death, a murder or devastating house fire. I bit my tongue as the facilitator warned us of stress in the workplace. Clearly, he had no idea what it was like to cope with competitive reporters, disagreements between editors and merciless deadlines of broadcast, print or online journalism.
“Walk a mile in our shoes,” I said under my breath.
But the stress facilitator was right about one thing; if we’ve gotta deal with tension on the job, we oughta find a way to escape it when the work is done. I fully intend to take some of my own advice to the mayor this Valentine’s Day weekend.