How many hours a week do you really work
Asking how many hours a week you work is like asking - how long is the proverbial piece of string. Let’s rephrase the question. Assuming you are in officially-recognised employment, how many hours a week are you contracted to work for your employer?
Face it, unless we’re going to be pedantic, work is – well, nearly everything. I consulted my ‘Shorter Oxford English Dictionary’ (short? – two hefty volumes). Look under ‘Work’, and you’ll find several thousand words of definitions and examples. The first short and sweet definition will suffice: “Something that is or was done.”
I used to work full-time in my present job, in other words, 37 hours per week, with around three weeks annual paid leave. For the last six years, I have been working part-time in the same organisation, but a different post, 32 hours per week, 40 weeks per year. I won’t go into the full reasons why I changed, but suffice to say, it allows me considerably more time to pursue my less well-paid but more fun freelance writing.
Add to those 32 hours (plus around an hour per day commuting – does that count?) the time I spend writing books and articles, and the total shoots up. I don’t keep a flow chart or spreadsheet to calculate precisely how much more, otherwise I would have to add an extra half hour of ‘systematic timekeeping’, or, er, ‘quality time management ratification’. (Pseuds’ corner, anyone?)
Include time spent replying to e-mails with my publishers or with other people and contacts for research, plus time spent surfing the Net, sifting through books and print sources in research, to say nothing of turning over ideas in my head while I’m doing the washing up or shopping, or even in the bath. And the estimated total would be considerably more than 32. Would it hit the 48-hour figure in the box above? I wouldn’t be surprised.
But where do you draw the line between work and hobbies? Reader, you write opinions for dooyoo. Assuming you give some careful thought to what you’re going to say in them, spend time planning them and perhaps even researching them on the Net, in your dictionary or somewhere else, in the expectation of receiving 3p every time some kind member reads it, is this work?
When I was small, I told my father that when I grew up I was going to be a stamp and coin dealer. ‘Never make your hobby your profession,’ he warned me. Well, my passion for stamps and coins has long since spent itself, though I have kept the bulk of my collections and probably will indefinitely. Even so, my love of writing, history and music (sometimes all combined in an unholy melting pot) have become more than a hobby. They’re now partly my job. They don’t pay a living wage (I can dream, can’t I?), but they do bring me in enough each year to make it necessary for me to keep records of income and expenditure, and tell the accountant/Inland Revenue, etc.
Many of you reading this probably juggle at least two careers, in addition to your family responsibilities. One highly-respected member of dooyoo, as some of you know, is a professional musician, music teacher and part-time politician. She’d probably be staggered if she was to sit down and calculate just how many hours of ‘work’ she puts in during a week for all these combined. (Except I’m sure she doesn’t have time to!) Several others – perhaps you - are in much the same position.
How stressful is it all? Speaking from my experience, a few months before I officially stopped working full-time, I went through a grim few weeks. The normal stress of my job had been exacerbated by an extremely unpleasant business involving a colleague [fuller details in ‘My experience of depression’ opinion elsewhere]. As a result I was off sick for a few days, and had high blood pressure for several weeks afterwards – high enough for the occupational health visitor at work to warn me to ease off a little. Soon after going part-time, the old BP was checked again and back to normal.
Yes, juggling two or three careers/different work projects at once is stressful in a way. I’ve got a deadline for such and such a book, I need to get that article finished by Friday, I promised a couple of people I’d do this and that for them – oh, and I’ve got to get down to the shops before they close. But up to a point, stress stretches you to achieve your full potential and get those things done. It needn’t be harmful, and can be constructive. I think it can sometimes be much more stressful worrying instead about all the things you should have done and haven’t. (There speaks a neurotic Virgo).
Let’s go back to qualifying the definition of work. For a long time, my sister used to try and pick tedious arguments with me along the lines of ‘writing, running discos [something I have since ceased doing on a regular basis] and so on aren’t work, because you enjoy them.’ Not so, I said – or would have if only she’d deigned to listen to little brother. They are work, because I get paid for them, but I take my commitments and obligations seriously. They aren’t something I tinker around with half-heartedly and drop when I get bored.
All this is a far cry from the lengthy hours certain people do, I admit. I don’t know any doctors or pub licensees that well, but they come to mind as examples of two professions who surely have a pretty punishing workload and/or extremely long hours. You can all name others. Maybe you’re just a multi-tasking butterfly (or can we say dedicated Renaissance man/woman/person), and maybe you undertake a certain amount of unpaid work in the voluntary sector in your local community.
So do you really have any idea how many hours a week YOU dedicate to work?
It’s back to that piece of string, isn’t it?
Reproduced with the permission of Dooyoo UK Ltd