Work-Life Balance Part 1

What would you think about a law to introduce a working week that would last only four days? That way, everybody would get a three-day long weekend. Wouldn’t that be great?

Recently, I’ve heard a rumor that such an idea has been discussed in german media and with german law-makers. But, what that would mean for us - employees?

Nowadays, everybody is talking about work-life balance. Normally, a typical job includes a 40-hour workweek. In the modern economy, however, (<em>it's good to vary up structure. There was a "But," there just earlier, so  I thought you'd prefer this)</em> there are a lot of positions where you'd have to work for 60 or even 80 hours a week.

If you are occupying such a job position, that normally means, that your private life is nearly nonexistent. A few friends of mine, who are working 60-70 hours a week, are usually complaining about their inability to build any long-lasting relationships. The combination of the enormous stress-levels and physical and emotional demands of such a work environment wouldn't do your health any favors. The consequent lack of sleep wouldn’t contribute positively to a good health either. In addition to the aforementioned factors, it would also be difficult to have and raise children.

I read an article a few weeks ago about a famous financial enterprise that is operating in finance that plans to increase the working hours of the employees officially to 60 hours a week in order to avoid work on the weekends. So, if you’re already working nearly 55 to 60 hours a week, and then you also have to work during the weekends, you could imagine there would be no time left for recreation and private life. You could say that you’re living to work and not working to live. That couldn’t be the purpose of our lives, could it?

On the other hand, we should think of our economy. If we work less, then it would be difficult to improve the GDP of the country we’re living in, and that would affect us all <em>negatively</em>(?).

It would be too expensive for the enterprises not to cut the salaries respectively. So, if we would get less salary, but the prices stay at the current level (and surely will), our standard of living would decrease. So the question would be, what is more important for us? And what does a good standard of living mean for a person?