What our obsession with work is doing to our Children

Our obsession with work has unfortunately been pushed on to our children, in the following ways:

More often parents are not present physically when their children get home from school. I remember getting home from school and it was the best time to talk with my mum or dad around the kitchen bench - to debrief on important points from me day and to actually have relationship.

If parents are physically present, then they are often not emotionally present having their Samsung Galaxy s5, Apple iPhone 6 or Blackberry in their hand checking their work email. The current generation of children are missing out on important aspects of relationship with their parents and particularly their fathers.

Even worse we try to replicate our own unhealthy work habits in our children by expecting children to do a full day of school (often starting around 7:30am) and then get home at 4:00pm (if they have no after school commitment) and then complete hours of homework. Even if we are determined to increase our own work hours, we should not attempt to increase our children's work hours.

If you compare the amount of homework expected of students today with the time spent on homework 20 years ago, then it has dramatically increased and in this, students are losing their childhood.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Why are we obsessed with work? How to increase productivity the clever way!

It was not too many years ago that many workers in many occupations ended their work day at 5:00pm and did not take work home with them. Technology has greatly improved our work life, or at least that is the myth that we are fed by the big companies of Apple, Microsoft and Google. To be truthful it has affected our work life by making us always 'at work' but it has severely damaged our personal family lives.

The impact on our work lives has reduced productivity! How many times have you had a gruelling problem that you have only been able to solve when you have stopped thinking about it? I know that I have come up with some of my best work ideas in the shower when I haven't been thinking about anything or focusing on anything - a time of Input Zero. When are your times of input zero - they are critical for our mental health, productivity at work and leading a balanced life.

Maybe the Christian idea of the Sabbath actually has some legs and would actually do us well to take a whole day off work each week.

Posted with Blogsy

Change to blog

Please be aware that I have recently moved my blog from wordpress to blogger and also changed the web address for the blog to http://www.harnwell.org/. The RSS feed has been updated and should now reflect the changes without any change required on your behalf. If you subscribe by email, you will need to resubscribe at me new blog address.

Thank you for your loyal following over the last four years.