How to Talk to People - How to Keep Time: How to Leave Work Time at Work

Episode Date: December 18, 2023

Before laptops allowed us to take the office home and smartphones could light up with notifications at any hour, work time and “life” time had clearer boundaries. Today, work is not done exclusively in the workplace, and that makes it harder to leave work at work.  Co-hosts Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost examine the habits that shrink our available time, and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, a professor of Latin American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, offers his reflections on American culture and shares suggestions for how to use the time we do have, for life.  This episode was co-hosted by Becca Rashid and Ian Bogost. Becca Rashid also produces the show. Editing by Jocelyn Frank and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Engineering by Rob Smierciak. The managing editor of How to Keep Time is Andrea Valdez. Write to us at [e-mail].  Want to share unlimited access to The Atlantic with your loved ones? Give a gift today at theatlantic.com/podgift. For a limited time, select new subscriptions will come with the bold Atlantic tote bag as a free holiday bonus. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure that they're using their new tools to change our institutions. their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about what might

happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now. So, Becca, many years ago, I was. driving home from work. And I had a terrible day. I don't remember why, but I was just cheezed off. You know, it's like white knuckling, my steering wheel, you know, still angry from whatever it happened. As I was driving, I saw a colleague of mine from work walking to the train to go home.

And he was just kind of sauntering down the street. And I noticed that he was carrying a book, like as if it were a lunchbox almost, like he was very casually holding this book at his side. and he had nothing else, not a bag or a backpack or anything. And I remember looking at him and thinking, oh, man, he has it figured out. Like, what is wrong with me? That that's not how I'm behaving now that my work day is over. He has it figured out because he's holding a book?

Well, the interpretation I had of what was going to happen to him next is that he left work. His work day was over. And he was going to get on the train and read his book and go home and make dinner, do whatever he did. In his evening routine, it just somehow came naturally to him to leave the office and begin the process of not being at work. In a technical sense, I could do whatever I wanted with my leisure time once I'd left work, but there was something preventing me from really having control over that time. Welcome to How to Keep Time. I'm Becca Rashid, co-host and producer of the show.

And I'm Ian Bogust, co-host and contributing writer at The Atlantic. So, Ian, your book story makes me think of how many of us can't leave our work at the door. And there's this specific dread when you feel like your entire day and weeks and potentially your life will be expended at work. Yeah. I wanted to quickly play this clip for you of a young woman I saw on social media, Ian, talking about how all her hours a day are expended at work. And she's talking about her very first nine to five jobs. She's sitting on the couch. She's in her sweats.

And she starts tearing up a bit while talking about it. And I know it could be worse. I know I could be working longer. But like I literally get off. It's pitch black. Like I don't have energy. How do you have friends? Like how do you have time for like dating?

Like I don't have time for anything. And I'm like so stressed out. But like, am I so dramatic? It's fine. Oh, wow. I mean, yeah, she's got it. Doesn't she? I really empathize with this girl.

I mean, I'm in a very different. stage, but the situation this young woman is describing, it's not really new. And it's not really confined to her generation either. It's just she's got like these fresh eyes on it, you know? Like, what the heck? My whole day, my whole entire life seems to be taken up by work or work-related activities like commuting. Right, right. And there's no life for me left. That's what she's saying. Right. And the obvious first solution would be working less and winning more time back to yourself. but that seems pretty unlikely as the only solution. Yeah.

But what if you could live more for yourself even when you're at work? Like rather than seeing that as time that you've lost to your boss or your company, as time that's like not even yours. Right. Even though you're there, you know, you're there at work in your body, in your time while it's happening. And I do think in her stating it so plainly, it forces us to sort of revisit our mainstream approach to this. binary we create between work and life, which is obviously bothering her.

Yeah, like, you know, thinking of your work time as something that isn't yours, like it's like some ghost or some other personality. Yep. That's the problem that has to be solved in some way. And it forces us to question whether there are maybe new ways to structure our time. But I also think that, I mean, is a job worth not having a minute to think about yourself, you know? I don't think so. So, Ian, you know, maybe our conditioning to prioritize work

isn't just a thing in our heads, or because we're at the whim of our calendars. My name is Ignacio Sanchez-Brado. I go by Nacho, which is short for Ignacio in Spanish. I'm a professor of Latin American studies at Washington, New York in St. Louis, who researches Mexican culture broadly. Depending on where you work or the nature of your job,

a lot of people's work require you. you to leave your life at the door. Not show someone who spends time observing and studying cultural practices. And I wanted to ask him if and how time can be understood as a reflection of culture. I'm wondering if our culture and social practices around how we should be using our time at work can feel like more of a barrier to using our time in a more cohesive way, where that binary between work and life feel, less disconnected.

I think that what was surprising actually is that in the United States, people work for working. And I think that one thing that I want to make clear because I don't want to create this narrative where Americans are hard working and Mexicans are leisure center. Mexicans were very hard and very productive in Mexico, in the office culture and the university culture. But I don't think the notion that you are about. defined by your employment is strong.

Nacho, could you tell me about how that work and leisure time balance is in Mexico? So people see their job as a means to an end, and the end is their family life, their social life, their leisure, their hobbies. I think the difference is not the hardworking, but also the understanding that putting limits to your work is a right. And if you don't, you're just giving up your rights. I think that leads for people to I mean, I know I have friends who drop work at the time that the work is done and they don't care if it's done or not.

Right. Or people who don't really think that they should be spending their weekends answering emails. I think that if you have the privilege to access employment, there's no job that is worth destroying your mind or your life. My mom didn't know how to cook because she works six days a week all day.

she comes home, she's not going to cook, but we will go together to an eatery. I need together. Yes. Traditional Mexican places are not necessarily designed for expeditious eating. When I came to the U.S. is the first time I saw a restaurant telling you that you had the table for a maximum amount of time. Right. You have a time reservation. Yeah.

Yes. I mean, we have reservations, but nobody tells you you have to live at 1130, right? Yeah, right. You live when you want or when they close, but nobody's going to come and time you whether you're using the table too much. Right. There's a word in Spanish called so bremesa, and it's sort of the after-dinner conversation.

Ah. And that is so much of a social practice that there's a word for it. And it's called over-table, right? So it means that it's right after eating on the table. It is expected that you will linger and continue a conversation rather than just get up and leave. Right. What's the rush? What's the hurry? Yeah, exactly.

Yes. Where in the U.S., it feels like even our productive approach to work is also when we're eating. But it is also the fact that dinner or supper also has other social components to it. So it is common that people would go from work, maybe to meet their family, their children, maybe to meet their friends. Right. But I also think that the culture is a little bit more gregarious. That motivates people, even in work spaces, to socialize. One practice that we have is going away because of fast food and stuff like that. But because our lunch times are very long, that are about two hours because it's the main meal,

there are various restaurants that offer multi-course meals. And people usually go from their offices to those places to it as a lot. group and the two hours of the break allow you to have more of an engagement with your coworkers than a half an hour lunch in your desk. This is during the weekdays? This is during the weekdays. Oh. Can you describe this meal to me?

I'm so jealous. Yes. If it's a working class, place is called a Comita Corrida. Uh-huh. So it's like, I don't know if it has a direct transition, but like a meal in sequence where you get a soup and then you get either rice or pasta or something. something, and then you get a main course with a side and dessert. Oh, sounds so good.

It's not only the gastronomical practice, which is interesting on its own, but also, if you have office workers that go to a place like this in groups of four or five, sit together and are sharing a table for an hour or two, the social engagement in that office is different. Of course. And when everybody is sitting in their cubicle and their office, But I think that the embedding of social practice in the day makes a big difference in this case for the 9-to-5 or 9-27 worker. In Mexico, we have become more of a victim of the corporate culture.

The minute we have lost the ability to have that kind of social gregarious lunch. Oh my gosh, Becca. I just had yesterday a supposedly social gregarious lunch with a friend in from out of town. And the whole time, we were still like looking at our watches. I was like, oh, I want to make sure you get back for your meeting. And I was checking to make sure I wasn't going to be late. So it's really difficult. We're still at work even when we take the time to eat that way.

I mean, I think one of the things nacho is pointing out is that it's too big a burden to ask people to create that time for themselves. You need to make space for it socially and culturally. There has to be a kind of common understanding that, you know, hanging out with your friends or even your coworkers in a different way is important, and that that's just how your day plays out, rather than, oh, how can I figure out how to finagle a way to be social with the people who are important to me. Right. And as Nacho was saying, this multiple course lunch and these additional hours that people give

themselves during the workday, there's this sort of freedom they have to go have that meal together and really enjoy it. And, you know, some of the happiest countries in the world, some of their primary metrics of their happiness include that freedom to make decisions and social support, both of which could be understood

as time-related in a way. They have the flexibility to make decisions about their time and invest that time in strengthening their relationships. I mean, do people in those countries just work less? Do they just have more time

on their own to play with? Well, the three happiest countries in the world, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland, aren't that far off from the actual. average American work week in terms of average hours worked. And the average American work week, which is around 38.8 hours, according to data from

2022, is not that far off from Denmark's average work week, which is around 33.4 hours. Iceland's is around 35.5. And Finland's is around 35. So it's not so much a matter of not having enough hours in the day, which was so surprising to me. which suggests that we don't require a whole lot of additional time necessarily. It's not about finding more time, but figuring out a different way of conceptualizing that time in order to experience the kind of enjoyment and freedom that Nacho is talking about. Right. What I find worrisome and I see it in my students sometimes is that sometimes you ask people,

what enriches you and they don't have an answer to that question. If you don't have an answer to that question, I will be worried. I think that that's a question that you have to find an answer for. What kind of answers do they give you, if any? Well, sometimes nothing because sometimes the thing is just going on TikTok, right? I'm very addicted to social media, so I'm not going to bring any kind of moralism to that. It's okay if you look at Facebook, but you need to have something that is for you a little bit more enriching in your leisure time in order for you to develop a sense of value. to it.

I had a student that was doing crochet even in class, and she really loved that. Sometimes they tell me I like to paint. I think that one of the culprits is universities, a private one's very particularly, because they have this structure of after-curricular social activity that is built and regulated by the university, and it takes over time of the students,

so the students never develop the ability to develop meaningfully sure time on their own. They're here all day. They live here. Right. And I think that if you graduate from that to the world... Right. I've seen some of my students, they don't know what to do with themselves after their job is done. It might be that some people don't even develop the skill to begin with.

If I were to give practical advice, which I like to do sometimes, is begin by asking to yourself what kinds of things enrich you. and then make a proactive effort to make sure that that are part of your day. You have to be proactive about it in this culture. I'm Anne Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered, don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals?

Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country, and preparing you to think about what might happen next.

The new season of Autocracy in America, available now. So, Becca, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans have more than five hours of free leisure time per day. Wow. Do you feel like you have five? It does not feel like five, for sure. But I believe it. It doesn't feel like five to me either.

Right. And, you know, I think the reason it doesn't is because we don't know what to do with those five hours of time or however much of it we have. And so it just kind of evaporates into little pieces. Instead of using it well, it just vanishes between our fingers. It makes me wonder, I mean, this is kind of an impossible question to answer, but it only makes sense to talk about leisure time once you have work time to compare it to. Right.

And so back before people had leisure, leisure is essentially an invention of the industrial revolution. So, you know, when you would have been a peasant working the land, and your whole day's worth of time was just taken up with subsistence from dawn to dusk, and then you couldn't do anything anyway because it was dark. At least you kind of knew maybe why you were doing the things that you were doing hour to hour. Less of your time would vanish because you had so little of it to start with, and also because you were making use of all of it. So you almost would prefer to know what you were going to be doing at every hour?

Is there like a decision-making component there that makes it harder to know, like, okay, if this is my free time and I just finished my work time, how do I make the decision about what to do now that it's all mine? I can use it however I want. That's exactly it. That's exactly it, Becca. Okay, I'm at work. Oh, now I'm not at work anymore.

And so now I have to figure out what that means. Right, right. Now I'm using my time for myself and I'm not at work, so I really have to make good on the leisure time that I have. And then by the time I've figured out what I want to do, I've burned through half of it and don't have it anymore. But you know when you're a kid and even your leisure time is more structured, now is when you can watch TV because that's when your parents allowed you to or it's time to go brush your teeth or what have you. Yes.

Something about, you know, that phase of life feels a little better, doesn't it? In my memory anyway, because you know what's happening next and why. Yeah, it sounds to me, Ian, like having that authority figure telling you how you should be using your time is helpful in a way. And as Nacho said, his university students have many of their leisure activities baked into their day-to-day. The place they work is also the place they live and sleep and make friends. So it makes it easier to decide what to do. If everyone's going to the football game or taking breaks between a study session, it guards you against the sort of decision paralysis you may have if you have a full Saturday afternoon free.

And there are so many more variables. in where should you go? Who do you want to do that thing with? You know, gathering everyone in one place, scheduling it, and then make sure you have a good time. And having that external force that is making a decision for you is really helpful because now you no longer have to make a choice. And when you make a bad choice and it's your choice,

then you feel guilty for it. You feel I could have made any choice. And I did the wrong thing with the time I had available. I don't care about what people think. Not everybody has that privilege, right? Yes. Some people get pressures because their promotions, their salaries are tied to that. So we don't have to be frivolous about that.

But I also think that, I mean, is a job worth not having a minute to think about yourself, you know? I don't think so. How do you think someone who doesn't have that flexibility in their schedule could incorporate some of these practices in their life? I don't think you need to be working all the time that you're at work. Unless you have a boss on top of you or a computer timing you, which happens. Uh-huh. I mean, if you are in that, you just don't have a way out, right? You're just in like a work regime of constant surveillance, right?

Right. But since most people are not in that situation, bring a book to your desk and read, give yourself 10 minutes every hour to read it. Hmm. Right? I mean, if you're going to eat and work, you might as well eat while you're working. and then take your lunch break and do something else. People care that they're not being perceived as good enough workers because you are aware of a judgment that other people are going to have of you.

Right, right. But maybe you shouldn't care. Right. Right. So, Ian, as we're analyzing these work-life boundaries, it made me think about our American cultural norms around work and home. And which one people think, has more value in their lives.

And interestingly, I found this data on Americans' evolving views about the meaning of life. And there was a survey conducted from September 2017 to February of 2021, and it sort of tracked these changes in people's views over this four-year period. And the Pew Research Center asked a sample of American adults to answer the question, what about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling? or satisfying. What keeps you going and why? So what did people say?

Of course I assumed it was work. But surprisingly, over the course of those four years, the share of adults who mentioned their job or career as a source of meaning declined from 24 to 17 percent, which was already significantly lower than I thought. And people were more likely than the initial year in 2017 to mention society as a source. source of meaning in life. Hmm. Yeah, Beck, it almost sounds like we've been faking ourselves out.

A little bit. Like, we, yeah, we believe that everyone else believes that work is where we should derive satisfaction. Right, right. But in fact, very few of us in America seem to think that that's really the case, and instead we want to find it in one another rather than our workplaces. That's all for this episode of How to Keep Time. This episode was hosted by Ian Bogost and me, Becker-Asheet.

I also produce the show. Our editors are Claudina Bade and Jocelyn Frank. Fact Check by Anna Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smerciak. Rob also composed some of our music. The executive producer of audio is Claudina Bade, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez. We're taking a quick break next week,

and after all this talk about busyness and schedules, I'm really looking forward to some rest. That's also the topic of our next episode. episode. Talk to you then. Becca, I've been over sleeping lately and I finally went to the doctor and he recommended that I sleep on a bed of herbs. This is ridiculous. What? Yeah. What?

You got to give me a why. I've got another one. You want another one? Okay, let's do another one because I laughed. I started laughing too early. Yeah, you started laughing prematurely. It was a ridiculous setup. Yeah. How can you tell when your clock is? hungry. Why aren't you feeding your cloth with Ian? Wow, well, you know. I'm Ann Applebaum. Over the past year, as I watched Donald Trump demand unprecedented new powers, I wondered,

don't he and his team fear that these same powers could one day be used by a different administration and a different president to achieve very different goals? Well, maybe they are afraid. And maybe that's why they're using their new tools to change our institutions, even to alter the playing field in advance of midterm elections later this year, to make sure their opponents can't win. Ultimately, destroying trust is the currency of autocrats. We could win, but we are very, very, very likely to lose if we keep treating this as business as usual. Reporting on the sweeping changes unfolding in our country and preparing you to think about

what might happen next. The new season of Autocracy in America, available now.