[ExI] france again

[Emlyn]

On 31/05/07, spike <spike66 at comcast.net> wrote:
>
> This article blew my mind.
>
> http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/europe/05/30/france.lunches.reut/index.html
>
> Are there Europeans here who can comment?  If this is true, not a gross
> exaggeration, I am so amazed.  35 hour work week?  How do they get anything
> done in that much time?
>
> spike
>
>

Yep, I'm pretty sure it's correct.

It was 37.5 hours/week here (Australia) everywhere that I worked when
I was younger, although these days I think that only persists in the
public service (in private industry it's 40 hours/week formally,
20,000,000 hours/week informally).

The only thing I don't agree with about the 35 hour week is that it's
still too long. The modern long work hours mentality favours people I
call the "work-harders" - people who rush headlong at a problem and
bash their head against a wall for hundreds of hours, rather than take
a bit of time to reflect, then do something creative and maybe
unintuitive to solve it in a short period of time. People are rewarded
for showing up early, going home late, and wandering around looking
harried, rather than for doing things well (if we cared about the
latter, we would give people some of their time back as a reward when
they improved things and increased efficiency, rather than just
heaping more on them or thinking "gee they look relaxed, mustn't be
doing anything useful").

In my own life, I've recently moved to working part time (approx 28
hours/week), and am finding that's suiting me really well. My mind is
clearer, so I do much better work when I am working, and I also have a
bunch of time to myself that I didn't have before. I have quite a bit
less money than I used to, but you'd be surprised just how little that
actually matters.

Emlyn