It's About Time

Take Back Your Health by Suzanne M. Schweikert M.D. Copyright 2003 All Rights Reserved Comments, thoughts, and personal experiences on time related topics are welcome. Email: Dr.Schweikert@WritersMonthly.com

As a physician, I often tell people to do things.

Take your pills. Exercise. Stop smoking. Eat more vegetables.

Sometimes, this makes me sound like a professional nagger. And, like most people who nag, I find that hardly any one listens to me. Sure, they might do what I say for a while, but it usually doesn’t last.

When I ask my patients why they don’t do the things I nag them about, I get a common answer: they don’t have enough time. And, I think to myself, who am I to argue? That’s been my own excuse for years. Doing things for my health just always seems to take too much time.

So, when I heard about Take Back Your Time Day, I quickly scratched off a note of support to John de Graaf, the founding father, up at KPBS in Seattle. Well, he quickly scratched off a note asking me to write a chapter on the health effects of time-poverty for this book.

My first thought was: I don’t have time for this! And besides, every disease affecting human kind has something to do with time-poverty. Where do I start? But, as I began to write, I started to understand why we feel we have so little time. I also began to understand why we are so hesitant to take it back.

First of all, I’ll let you in on a secret: Physicians are not shining examples of the "take back your time" concept. We work longer hours than is healthy. We often fall into the trap of believing that material things will compensate for a lack of time. We buy lots of time saving devices. We rush around on freeways. And we hurry our patients through visits like they are products on an assembly line.

So, it’s highly unlikely that a physician will look you straight in the eye and say "you will be healthier and happier if you work less." If we can’t do this ourselves, we are not about to tell everyone else to do it.

However, over-work has been studied in the medical profession. It has been shown to contribute to fatigue related errors, impaired judgment, a lousy bedside manner, and a quality of life problem for many doctors. The main thing we went into medicine for, to alleviate pain and suffering, is the last thing on our palm pilot’s list of things to do. Of course, we end up helping people along the way, but we get too caught up in the rush rush of things to notice or enjoy it.

And, to top it all off, we put tremendous peer pressure on each another, our nurses and our office staff, to work more. It’s a good cause, after all. But have you ever wondered why the receptionists in a doctor’s office are so grumpy?

Secondly, I used to think that only people in the medical profession worked such crazy hours. But when I began writing this chapter, I met people from many occupations who were working fifty, sixty, or more hours per week, taking their work home on weekends, working two jobs, and not remembering when their last vacation was. I also met many people who said they would feel guilty if they cut back their hours. And others who said they said they needed to work two jobs to make their rent, mortgage, or car payment.

So, I wrote a chapter in the "Take Back Your Time" book because I think it is important for physicians to say, it’s ok to take a step back from our work commitments, and make sure we don’t lose our compassion and our enjoyment of work in the process. And let’s recognize that everyone else who is subject to long hours and take-work-home jobs, should also have the ability to step away and recover their health.

Because I’m an obstetrician, I wrote about the health effects of working long hours during pregnancy. When women from Europe go through a pregnancy in the U.S., they are always surprised and amazed that we only allow six weeks of leave for pregnancy. They tell me that, back home in Sweden, France, and Luxembourg, they can take up to six months off to get ready for and spend time with their newborn, and that the baby’s father can take three months. How often do we see Americans asking for or being granted that much time? If we did, we would lose our jobs.

Finally, I think we should think about the state of our health insurance. As it is, we often get health benefits if we stay in full time jobs we hate, but not if we change to part-time jobs we love. If we work two or three part-time jobs, or cut back our hours to go to school, raise a child, or take care of a sick or elderly relative, we lose our benefits.

And that’s the greatest irony in all this. We stay in jobs which literally make us sick, in order to keep our health care benefits. Unless we are willing to give up the very benefits that might protect us, we will continue to make ourselves sick. This is not good for our health, and it can’t be good for our country.

If our enjoyment of work depends on our ability to do our jobs well, and if our ability to do our jobs depends on our health, and if our health depends on taking time to recharge our batteries, then isn’t time off the best investment our employers could make?

I only wrote one chapter of the Take Back Your Time book. In other chapters, you will read many different perspectives on the political and legislative issues involved in time poverty. But you won’t read about how to save your time, manage your time, or organize your time. The decision of what to do with your time is really yours alone. It is the goal of those of us celebrating Take Back Your Time Day, to remind all of us that the time is there for the taking.

So, if someone you work with decides to take a step back from the rat race and work less, remember that they are making a decision which will have a profound impact on their health. More of an impact, in the long run, than any advise from a doctor.

On October 24^th, the official Take Back Your Time Day, don’t quit your job. Just take a moment to think about what you would do if you had the next nine weeks off work, and a job waiting for you when you returned. That is how much time the average person in Europe will get this year. No wonder they have fewer heart attacks than we do. It’s not just the wine.

>>Back to top<<