{"id":141,"date":"2013-09-28T12:25:06","date_gmt":"2013-09-28T17:25:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/?p=141"},"modified":"2013-10-06T00:54:43","modified_gmt":"2013-10-06T05:54:43","slug":"workaholics-get-a-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/2013\/09\/28\/workaholics-get-a-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Workaholics: Get a life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist blogged on a same topic that I have explored in an earlier blogpost <a href=\"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/2013\/07\/16\/the-busy-trp-how-we-get-into-it\/\">here<\/a>. That showed\u00a0data from the OECD that in a vast majority of its member countries, people are working fewer hours than they did in 1990.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" style=\"font-size: 13px;\" title=\"Working hours in 1990 and 2012, OECD countries\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.static-economist.com\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/full-width\/images\/2013\/09\/blogs\/free-exchange\/working_hours_picture_2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"536\" height=\"297\" \/><\/p>\n<p>While people do generally work less hours in these OECD countries, the reduction in hours is hardly significant. The only two exceptions are Korea and Portugal. Korea has successfully grow its economy while cutting the working hours of its average people by an astonishing 500 hours per year, although Koreans still work the longest hours among the OECD countries. Portuguese, on the other hand, are working less too, but they probably failed to raise their productivity by a even faster pace, and that is how they find themselves in economic turmoil now.<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone\" title=\"Relationship between hours worked and productivity (OECD countries, 1990-2012)\" src=\"http:\/\/cdn.static-economist.com\/sites\/default\/files\/imagecache\/full-width\/images\/2013\/09\/blogs\/free-exchange\/working_hours_picture_1_2.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"536\" height=\"280\" \/><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m personally more interested in a related <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ft.com\/intl\/cms\/s\/0\/19edf3a6-2220-11e3-bb64-00144feab7de.html?siteedition=uk&amp;siteedition=intl#axzz2fhVUyF8P\">article<\/a> by the Financial Times on how you can tell you are a workaholic.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-size: 13px;\">The Bergen Work Addiction Scale was presented last year in the Scandinavian Journal of Psychology and uses seven basic criteria to identify work addiction. The questions are scored on the following scale: (1) Never; (2) Rarely; (3) Sometimes; (4) Often; and (5) Always.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You think of how you can free more time to work.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You spend much more time working than initially intended.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You work in order to reduce feelings of guilt, anxiety, helplessness and depression.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You have been told by others to cut down on work without listening to them.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You become stressed if you are prohibited from working.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You de-prioritise hobbies, leisure activities and exercise because of your work.<\/p>\n<p>\u25cf You work so much that it has influenced your health negatively.<\/p>\n<p>According to the study, scoring \u201coften\u201d or \u201calways\u201d on at least four of the seven questions suggests you may have a problem.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Economist blogged on a same topic that I have explored in an earlier blogpost here. That showed\u00a0data from the OECD that in a vast majority of its member countries, people are working fewer hours than they did in 1990. While people do generally work less hours in these OECD countries, the reduction in hours [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4610,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[110819,8824],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-labor-economics","category-social-policy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4610"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":458,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141\/revisions\/458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/michaellaw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}