Conscious Choice Seattle: Remote Access

August 2005 | The EM Column

Remote Access

The cure for “time poverty” might be disconnecting in a cabin—or attending this month’s Take Back Your Time Day conference

By Silja J.A. Talvi

The only real perks to the freelance writing profession are the two most obvious ones: Freedom from having a real‘boss’ in any sense of the word and the freedom to choose when to work, and for how long. If I feel like leaving the country for three weeks–assuming that I can afford to do so–then I don’t have to ask for anyone’s permission. I just do it.

In June, I did just that, returning to Finland to visit my grandfather on the occasion of his 94th birthday. I used most of the time to sit in the bare-bones summer cabin in the forest where I spent most of my childhood summers.

There, in the forest, there are no ringing phones, no e-mail alerts, not even postal mail from prisoners to remind me of the issues and stories that I needed to write about. Water has to be fetched from the lake, and the sauna takes a couple of hours to heat.

In this way, time ticks by at a pace that feels far more natural than anything in the‘civilized’ working world. I’m always better for having had the experience.

Those three weeks amount to roughly the amount of time guaranteed, at a bare minimum, to most Western Europeans, as my relatives in Finland so poignantly reminded me. From where they stand, the fact that I exist in a country with no national health insurance plan is bad enough; that my American countrymen aren’t guaranteed vacation time (when, for instance, even China grants its workers three weeks of paid vacation leave) is simply incomprehensible.

A good question

“But without a vacation from work, how do people stay sane?” one Finn asked me. How, indeed? That’s the kind of question that the Seattle-based documentary producer, writer and educator, John de Graaf, was asking himself about when he founded Take Back Your Time Day—celebrated each year on October 24.

In preparation for that day, a few hundred activists, academics, policy analysts, educators, faith-community members and political partisans (including the folks from the aptly-titled Work Less Party in Vancouver, B.C.) will be gathering at Seattle University from August 4 to 7, for the second annual Take Back Your Time North American Conference. “We’re moving in the wrong direction as a society,” says de Graaf, who edited “Take Back Your Time Day: Fighting Overwork” and “Time Poverty in America” (both Berrett-Koehler).

“It’s a myth that we have to a‘Lowest Common Denominator’ race-to-the-bottom in order to have a good economy,” says de Graaf. “Yet that race-to-the-bottom is exactly what we’re engaged in, often at our employers’ behest. But sometimes, to be absolutely honest, we’re doing it just because we’ve gotten in the habit of working constantly, and don’t really know what it means anymore to just turn off our cell phones and computers for a couple of days on end.”

Consider that in 1979, the average American worked 1,703 hours per year. In 2000, that average rose to 1,878, according to the Economic Policy Institute.

But things haven’t always been this bad. To be more specific, workers’ lives have gone from bad to better to bad all over again. The Industrial Revolution brought about extreme working conditions, and 14-hour days. The late 1800s saw the beginning of an epic workers’ battle fight for an eight-hour work day; by 1940, that dream was finally realized when Congress legislated a 40-hour work week.

By 1965, sociologists were openly speculating about what Americans would do with all the leisure time they would have once workdays shortened even further: the popular prediction, at the time, was of a 14-hour work week, owing in large part to the tremendous benefits of automated technology.

These days, a 40-hour workweek is usually seen as an antiquated concept in the corporate world; 50 and 60-hour workweeks are more common than not if a corporate employee expects to be taken seriously. The heads of many lower-income families are forced to take on two or even three jobs to keep afloat. Even so, many families are scraping by from paycheck to paycheck, which is hardly surprising considering the fact that the federal minimum wage is set at an astonishingly low $5.15/hour.

In sync with taking back

It’s for these reasons that Take Back Your Time Day resonates with people from across the American class spectrum, and particularly in progressively-minded cities like Seattle. The August conference promises to kick-start an exciting batch of activities for October 24th, ranging from teach-ins and music events to public policy-minded campaigns. I’ll be there, checking out the conference, and I encourage you to do so, as well.

The way I see it, there’s no better time than now to figure out how to reclaim your time than the present. After all, the present is the only time we know for a fact that we have. For more information on Take Back Your Time Day and the 2nd annual conference, visit www.timeday.org. All of the keynote speeches for the conference are open to the public; small donations are requested, but no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

If you’ve got the time, they’ve got the space.

Silja J.A. Talvi is an award-winning journalist and columnist for Evergreen Monthly.

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