Death by Productivity
We all want to be efficient and productive, but forget to smell the proverbial roses
Karoshi light?
In 1969, a 29-year-old worker in the shipping department of a newspaper died of a stroke. It would become the first death officially attributed to karoshi – death by overwork. Estimates for this are difficult, but today hundreds of thousands of deaths are attributed to working too hard. Karoshi is generally the result of a stroke or heart attack caused by a combination of stress, sleep deprivation, and starvation. A subgroup of people succumbing to karoshi is known as karōjisatsu – people who commit suicide due to work-related stress, bullying, etc. Most victims of karoshi are in their 20s or 30s. Not exactly the age to get a stroke or heart attack.
(In Chinese it's known as guolaosi, in South Korean as gwarosa. Apologies if the romanization of the terms isn't entirely accurate.)
The majority of karoshi reported deaths occur in South-East Asia – specifically Japan, China, and South Korea. The roots of the problem, though, run much deeper and farther.
All over the developed world (I shudder at the massive biases implied by the term), society is facing a burnout bonanza. Depending on the question you ask and the people you question, between 60% and 95%(!) percent of employees report experiencing at least one risk factor for occupational burnout. And those are pre-pandemic numbers. That doesn't mean that all those people will suffer from a burnout severe enough to prevent them from working. Maybe they just had a bad day when asked the question. Still, the number of people afflicted by burnout is high and rising. To me, this suggests that – I daresay obviously – our current 'work' model is not working (haha, puns). I won't go into detail here, that deserves its own (series of) newsletter(s). I do encourage you to read David Graeber's excellent book Bullsh*it Jobs. (Warning: it may make you question your life choices.)
One of the issues is that, for a lot of people, jobs provide stress, but not purpose or fulfillment. Many of us are asked to be ever more productive and efficient, even if we don't like (or even know) what we're producing.
Let's make it worse. Most working-class employees don't have much of a choice. Rent, food, healthcare... It all costs money. For which you have to work. Hello, vicious cycle. When you have a job you can't afford to lose, your employer is granted a lot of power, and the pressure to ‘do more’ rises. To return to David Graeber, he suggests that a lot of current full-time jobs are akin to voluntary, time-restricted serfdom in which employees sign away 40 hours of their freedom per week.
Add a working culture where more is better, where long days are a badge of misplaced honor, and you've got a recipe for disaster. (Even though anything above 6 hours/workday is probably bunk with regards to productivity…) As the great MC Mr. Lif once rapped:
"The function of our life is just to work and consume."
There is a finer point to make, before you start thinking I'm a torch-wielding anarchist. (Not a fan of torches.) The above, I think, applies mostly to jobs where the primary motivation is extrinsic. When your motivation is mostly intrinsic, when you genuinely like your job, when it excites and challenges you in the right amount, the risk for burnout is a lot smaller. Not zero, though.
Beyond work
This focus on efficiency and productivity has seeped into the rest of our lives too. I recently received a newsletter from Ness labs dealing with this productivity addiction. It was quite a confrontation with myself. We no longer have hobbies, we have projects (this newsletter?) and side hustles (my Medium writing?). We no longer take the time to appreciate the sunrise and simply breathe for a few minutes. After all, what does that produce? Where's the immediate return on investment? Time is precious, and every minute that isn't productive is a minute lost. Unless, of course, you value your (mental) health and wellbeing.
Don't get me wrong, having goals is great. But when every goal is geared toward ‘production’, we lose a lot of what makes life valuable.
We no longer run for the joy of movement, but to train for a 5k or a marathon. Anything to turn it into another box to tick on our mental resume of achievements to unlock. Who still has the courage to say "I'm taking the day off to do silly, pointless, random things simply because I want to?" Yet perhaps that is exactly what we need to do more often. I bet a lot of you (myself included) feel the need to justify something like that. “What will people think? Don't I need something to show for that day I (selfishly, we think) devoted to myself?” Irrelevant, to answer question one; no for question two.
I've you made it this far, thank you, of course. I know time is precious. Now, after you shared this newsletter and forced your friends and family to subscribe, take a breath. Look away from the screen and do something fun, hug a loved one. Just for the heck of it.