April Taylor: British Crime Writer: Workers’ playtime ain’t what it used to be: The work/life balance

Reams have been written about the work-life balance. How vital it is for our wellbeing and mental health to make sure that life is not all about work. That we remain human beings and not human doings.

So one wonders why some countries – and although I am highlighting the USA here, I know other countries are just the same - still have a mindset that if workers take the holiday they are due, they are somehow slackers, not committed to their job; that if they are not on call 24/7, they are not pulling their weight; that they must never go anywhere without their phone in their hand. They are conditioned to be driven, otherwise they are sub-standard. In the USA, some people have been fired for taking time off because they are ill. If you’re not here, I will find someone who can be. The people who inhabit the land of the free have so little holiday time they have to fit a lifetime of experiences into two weeks or fewer. That’s relaxing…not. This is a lifestyle being promulgated by industry slowly but surely.

That leads on to what these driven people do in the few hours they are not at their desk. Do they sit back, kick off the shoes and look at the ocean? Seemingly not. Millions of them have a work hard, play hard mindset; they conquer the world at their desk and then go and kill somebody on the squash court. I cannot help but think this will end up with their brains like engines on maximum revs 24/7, leading to breakdowns and burnouts.

It is well documented and has been for years that people need downtime from work in order to make their work life mindset function at a higher level. All work and no play doesn’t just make Jack a dull boy, it makes him a sick boy. Here are a few studies you might find interesting:

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-012-9345-3

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6617405/

https://hbr.org/2004/10/presenteeism-at-work-but-out-of-it

Writers are no different. We, too, need a work/life balance, but even those of us who are lucky enough not to need a day job and who work from home, don’t always find it easy to live a balanced life. Because if we are not writing, we are usually working out plot twists or what happens next, or what aspect of research we are going to tackle tomorrow.

I have, in the past, managed to work out the details of a complicated plot twist whilst cross-stitching an entire row of stitches in the wrong colour. More than once. If I am walking the dog, I am likely to be dictating the next bit of the story or muttering bits of dialogue to myself. Or, when accompanied by my (human) dog-walking companion, explaining abstruse bits of history to her, or talking through why my main character has to do what he/she is about to do. Why on earth she would be interested in me pondering the reason William of Ypres retreated at the Battle of Lincoln in 1141, with his contingent of troops, in the least bit interesting is debatable. (Especially when contemporary chroniclers accused him of cowardice in leaving King Stephen to be captured by the Empress Matilda’s forces. My opinion is that he obeyed the instructions of Sun Tsu in The Art of War, and there is every reason to think that William, educated as he was, and experienced, hardened battle commander as he was, had read Sun Tsu’s advice.) See, I’m at it again!

What I am trying to say is that, we writers need to leave the words behind for a few hours every day and concentrate on something completely different that requires total concentration, in order to be fresh enough to come back to the words the next day with renewed enthusiasm. By which I mean something complicated but different. For me that is dressmaking, painting, and singing. You can’t sing properly if half your brain is thinking about your latest magnum opus, and you certainly can’t sew properly if you aren’t concentrating on putting on that facing so it fits perfectly. If you don’t, you are likely to sew it on the wrong side of the garment; (been there, done that).

I am learning – slowly – that my relaxation is just as important as my work time. That if I am not at my desk all the time, that is good. And that if I don’t take the downtime, the writing I do produce will be not my best work.