STORY BY

David Theis

Laptop, Cell Phone, Palm Pilot, (Bathing Suit), Back-Up Charger, Passport…

Part One of a Two-Part Series

“Summer time, and the living is easy,” proclaims the Gershwin song. But is the living ever really easy for 21st Century Americans? Dr. Benjamin C. Amick, associate professor of behavioral science and epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, thinks not. “We’re at a strange point in the development of work,” he says. Because of our still relatively new communications technologies, “we can work 24-7, unimpeded,” even on our summer vacation.

Why do we Americans take our work with us everywhere we go? Email, cell phones, wireless networks make it possible to do so, but why do we routinely agree to compromise our private time?

Sometimes, it’s just practical. Because of the global economy, Amick says, our jobs tend to be far more demanding, time-wise, because businesses “have to cut costs,” which means that each worker ends up doing more work.

And the technologies that were supposed to liberate us often have become the very chains that bind us to our desks, even if the “desk” becomes a laptop on a beach towel. “We’ve got to solve the email problem,” says Amick. “People don’t want to go away for a week and find 500 emails in their inbox,” so they find a way to check their email every day—or all day—even on vacation.

‘Convenience’ run amuck

Part of the “email problem” is behavioral. “People send emails about everything,” Amick says, implying that we need to become more selective about email, and use it only for relatively important matters.

And part of the problem is built into the technology. One attorney, Teresa Demchak, who puts in very long hours, speaks of the pre-Internet days with some nostalgia. “It used to be that when you wrote a letter [to opposing counsel], it would take three days to get there, and three days for their reply to get back to you, and you could get some work done on the case while you waited. But now the reply is instantaneous, and you have to reply to the reply, instead of actually working on the case.”

Demchak receives about 80 emails daily, and so on a recent vacation she began each day by finding a way to log on and answer them. This might only take an hour or two, but mentally and emotionally it’s hard for her to disconnect from the pressures of work, she says.

I’m wired, therefore, I AM

The mere existence of pagers and cell phones creates a false urgency to answer them. One harried CPA, wife and mother of two, explains, “By virtue of the fact that we own them, we are compelled to be plugged into them. If I miss a call or page because I’ve left them in the hotel room on vacation, the caller will inevitably say [upon the returned call], ‘Why didn’t you answer your phone?’ And I will feel a flush of absurd guilt.”

Downtime, downright un-american

But do workers in other cultures work as hard as Americans? Europeans, for example, have roughly the same access to email and certainly, cell phones as Americans, but they still manage to take substantial and truly restorative vacations as a matter of routine.

Part of their advantage comes from the sheer number of vacation days they enjoy, often up to six weeks a year. But there is also a psychological difference between the European and the American worker. Americans are more likely than Europeans to find their self-image in work, not in leisure, Amick says, then adds, “long vacations are not a status symbol in the U.S.”

Indeed, Americans take pride in working long hours. “It’s part of the Puritan work ethic,” Amick says. “We buy into the Carnegie myth, and the John Henry myth.” In the Carnegie myth, hard work leads to financial success. But in the John Henry myth, hard work is its own reward. We remember the “steel-driving” hammer-slinging man simply because he could work like a machine.

So, what can Americans do to improve on the quality of their vacations? Amick recognizes that some people can’t take much more than weekends. But, he says, even a weekend can be restorative if we don’t treat a day off as a watered-down workday.

On such days, he recommends that we “do things that you don’t do at work.” For most people, that might include getting “reasonable exercise.” He also adds, “Do things that make you happy.”

Even if workplace productivity is your ultimate goal, you should still find ways to relax. “It’s the quality of work, not the amount of work, that’s important,” Amick says. And without adequate breaks, the quality of your work will suffer.

But on more human terms, work breaks and relaxation are vitally important. After all, if you recall the ballad about John Henry, he “was a hard-workin' man/He died with his hammer in his hand.”

(This report is filed, alas, from a Galveston beach house, where your correspondent is supposed to be on vacation.)

UPDATED: 08-04-2003

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