W
e define time management as a personal rather than a
social issue in our culture. It’s your problem if you’re
stressed out and too busy. Take care of it if you can.
Just be sure to pay your bills and show up for work on time.
But let’s think on a social level for a moment before we buckle
down to the job of changing your life.
As a culture, could we establish a six-hour work day, a thirty-
hour work week, and a paid vacation for every worker?
Could we support universal alternative working arrangements
such as flex time and job sharing?
Could we acknowledge “workaholism” as a true social disor-
der instead of a badge of honor?
If not, are we willing to count the actual price we pay as a society
for health care along with underemployment and unemployment?
Can You Change?
It’s not impossible. In the 1950s we decided counteracting the threat of
a Communist takeover was our most important priority, and we com-
pletely restructured society to do it. (An important reason President
Eisenhower created the interstate highway system, for example, was
as a means of evacuating our cities in the event of a nuclear attack.)
And in the early 1960s John F. Kennedy pledged that the country
would have a man on the moon within the decade, and we did it.
Check out the way social attitudes have changed toward ciga-
rette smoking in the last twenty years. That didn’t just happen.
People worked hard to change those attitudes.