Is your work your life?

Jason Lee Miller, in his blog "Yahoo Says Americans Work Too Much," points out that statistics demonstrate that Americans work way too much.

Looking at numbers and percentages I have to agree with Jason. But from my experiences with some American people I will say that it is not quite true. They go to work late in the morning and come home after 8 – 9 hours. They don't seem to stress too much about their job. This is not too bad. It is interesting that when I first came to the United States I noticed that American people are more relaxed than European people. It seems that they go to work knowing what they have to do without anybody watching over their shoulder. They also have the option to go out to lunch. On the other hand some of Romanian companies are not allowed their employees to leave the factory at the lunch time. Isn't this a good example? I was there and I know how I felt.

In my opinion, we work because we have to, not because we want to. We have lots of expenses such as the mortgage, school, car, clothes, food, and health care. These are things that we can't live without. If we have money without having to work we look for activities that we enjoy doing rather than looking for work.

Are we working too hard as Jason remarked in a survey done by Yahoo HotJobs? Maybe we do work too hard mostly because the new era of communication makes it possible to keep us connected to work tasks even when we are at home. I strongly support that people should set their own limits between work and personal life.

Miller, Lee Jason. Yahoo Says Americans Work Too Much. Jason Lee Miller, 2007. Web.

6 April 2007.