Something to think about.... Time

The U.S. is the Most Overworked Developed Nation in the World

Lets look at some stats reporting mid-2020

Americans work an average of 35 hours per week

American Work-Life Balance

• According to the Center for American PROGRESS on the topic of work and family life balance, “in 1960, only 20 percent of mothers worked. Today, 70 percent of American children live in households where all adults are employed.”. U.S. Department of Labor statistics back up this data, and notes that 75% of those women working full time.
• I don’t care who stays home and who works in terms of gender (work opportunity equality for all – it’s a family choice). Either way, when all adults are working (single or with a partner), that’s a huge hit to the American family and free-time in the American household.
• The U.S. is the ONLY country in the Americas without a national paid parental leave benefit. The average is over 12 weeks of paid leave anywhere other than Europe and over 20 weeks in Europe.
• Zero industrialized nations are without a mandatory option for new parents to take parental leave. That is, except for the United States.

American Average Work Hours:

• At least 134 countries have laws setting the maximum length of the work week; the U.S. does not.
• In the U.S., 85.8 percent of males and 66.5 percent of females work more than 40 hours per week.
• According to the ILO, “Americans work 137 more hours per year than Japanese workers, 260 more hours per year than British workers, and 499 more hours per year than French workers.”
• Using data by the U.S. BLS, the average productivity per American worker has increased 400% since 1950. One way to look at that is that it should only take one-quarter the work hours, or 11 hours per week, to afford the same standard of living as a worker in 1950!! (or our standard of living should be 4 times higher). Is that the case? Obviously not. Someone is profiting, it’s just not the average American worker> and what does that say about the emphasis of our TIME?

American Paid Vacation Time & Sick Time:

• There is not a federal law requiring paid sick days in the United States.
• The U.S. remains the only industrialized country in the world that has no legally mandated annual leave.
• In every country included except Canada and Japan (and the U.S., which averages 13 days/per year), workers get at least 20 paid vacation days. In France and Finland, they get 30 – an entire month off, paid, every year.

The Impact of Too Much Work

I’m not telling you to work less hours.

If you genuinely love what you do and are doing it for the right reasons, you are more than entitled to spend all of your waking hours plugging away – however maybe we should consider plugging away at what Father God has put in our hearts maybe?

But for many of us, more work leads to more stress and a lower quality of life. Without time to unwind, take care of your home, spend time with loved ones, enjoy our family, connect with friends, and generally live a more balanced life.

Stress is the #1 cause of health problems – mentally and physically. And there are few things that stress us out on a consistent basis like work does, especially when it takes away from all of the other things that life has to offer – Especially TIME with God!

How does this data effect our daily lives?

·      Our companies fairly ruthlessly let people go – Performance is still a gauge in our lives when with Father God it is NOT!

·      It emphasizes performance above all in society – self-worth is based upon productivity and want to keep our jobs and not be a ‘low performer’ compared to others – Yet with Father God HE Accepts us as we ARE!

• Cultural value of money over everything else.   Some where in our hearts we still have a love money, we want more of it, and we think money can buy happiness. And the more we work, the more we get paid…. So….
• It’s been drilled in our heads that we are lazy compared to emerging market counterpart workers in India, Mexico, China, and other parts of Asia. To validate those fears, our jobs are being outsourced to the cheap labor in those countries.
• In reality, the U.S. trails only Norway and Luxembourg (2 tiny countries) productivity per person.

What am I trying to say?

Time is short, what is your life? According to the Bible It's even a vapor that appeared for a little time and then vanished away.

If someone had told me when I was 20 years old, that life was very short and would pass just like that, I wouldn't have believed. And if I tell you that you don't believe it.  Half the time we cannot get young people to understand how brief life is, how quickly it passes.  

Anyone else agree that It seems like yesterday I was in school.

Yet Every one of us here has been given the same amount of time in a day.

·      Fourteen hundred and forty minutes a day.

·      One hundred and sixty eight hours per week.

·      The average American male today lives 78 years.

·       The average female, 80.5 – yes ladies its true

What a thing it is when you think that you have just one short life to spend.

We must begin to write down our priorities in life and get committed to certain priorities.

How are we using our lives to help others? How are we using our lives to be the change the world needs and sees? How are we using our lives to serve others?