"The French work as hard any anyone else. They just know when to stop."In a economy where employee productivity is up but employment is thin, in a space of the Internet where my artist acquaintances (you know, those wonderfully right-brained folks?) make public to-do lists, in a metro area where you need to zip about in a car to get anywhere (and people seem to drive by feel), on a day dedicated to meetings and pressure, I'd like to place one more thing on your agenda:
- Stop working.
American society is so performance-driven that it seems to drive us a little insane. I know, I've been there. I almost burned my life to the ground my first year of graduate school. You see, I'm one of the lucky people for whom most school work was easy. I had a knack for language and literature and book-smarts. So, grade-school was a snap. Most of undergraduate was easy, too. Grad school was an entirely different ball-game, one for which I was not prepared. Making lesson plans, reading hundreds of pages of literary theory a week, grading papers, preparing for comprehensive exams; I dove into it all with such frenzy that I literally blew my eyes: I've had bifocals since I was 22. The problem was, I didn't realize that graduate school was a job. So, I constantly brought my job home with me and it took over like kudzu. It wasn't until I started treating my graduate studies like a 9-5 job that life became sane once again.
Now the trick here is that I started treating it like the French treat their 9-5 jobs: I left the work at the office. I put down the lesson plans and research papers and went out to live life. I took long lunch breaks. I didn't think about Monday morning's class on Saturday afternoon.
It's not slacking; far from it. This principle was a key survival technique for my Doctoral studies. When I was at work, I was able to the be completely at work and I was quite productive. This "rest-ethic" allowed me to teach not only several very good intro French classes, but some courses on French cinema and world literature, and to craft a dissertation that eventually became a book in its own right. It continues to serve me well here at KSU. I don't slack in the office, but I do take a break about every two hours. I go outside, talk with the students, have a cigarette and recharge. And when I get home, I don't carry the stress of the day with me, nor any worries about tomorrow. That's tomorrow's problem.
So, this Monday, plan to do a little something that's not work. I know, it can be hard. Take it in small steps, an extra coffee in the morning. Leave your Blackberry off during dinner. Steal some email time and check out Icanhascheesburger instead.
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