Toyota engineer dies of "overwork"

[shoalcreek]

http://www.reportonbusiness.com/ser...709/BNStory/Business/home?cid=al_gam_mostview

"TOKYO — A Japanese labour bureau has ruled that one of Toyota's top car engineers died from working too many hours, the latest in a string of such findings in a nation where extraordinarily long hours for some employees has long been the norm...."

I found this quite interesting. Perhaps people here and in places like Japan will wise up about this. Working all the time leads to an early death.

 

[xwb]

It depends on whether you want to do it and whether you can control your work addiction.

I was addicted to programming in my younger days. I could write quite complex stuff for hours on end without moving from the terminal (except for natural breaks). It is strange how addiction drives people.

 

[anationalacrobat]

Addiction is a very good word for it. It's either addiction or a terror of not succeeding pushing the guy to do more. Many people in his situation would have burned out and gotten themselves fired or quit long before. I can't tell you how many people I know who have gotten themselves into an abusive situation (work, relationship, etc) and felt they could not do anything to change it.

Stephen King said that there are people with hobbies. When those hobbies take over their lives, they become compulsions. Some people compulsively collect stamps or teapots or what have you, not very helpful. King's compulsion is writing macabre fiction. He says he's very lucky it pays well since he'd still be doing it even if it didn't. He can't not write. When I hear about people getting lost in World of Warcraft I think "Wow, just imagine if they got into daytrading." As I understand it, daytraders can be profitable but the kind of person who makes money at it tends not to have any other life. They wake up to stock reports, hit the foreign markets before the domestics open, are hitting the foreigns long after the domestics close, brush their teeth while reading the financial papers and go to sleep with CNBC on the tube. Now most people look at that sort of thing and think "My God, that's like a horror story." But to those people, it's an itch that continually needs scratched.

 

[shoalcreek]

One problem is that hobbies sometimes become compulsions. I used to collect baseball cards. Eventually that becomes more work than fun.

My mother always seemed to make Christmas decorating work. I thought it was supposed to be fun. Fortunately, it doesn't happen that often.

 

[anationalacrobat]

That's what I said, hobbies become compulsions.

 

[Stella740pl]

shoalcreek

You see, when I was a high school student and my mother did all the cooking, and I could coook only if and when I wanted to, and had time to experiment and play around in the kitchen, I though of it as of fun.

Now that I have a family with kids, and I have to put dinner on the table every day (usually even if I don't feel like it, and even in the current summer heat), and I have full time job and many other responsibilities besides cooking (even though my husband has his share), I don't think of it as fun any more (even though it occasionally is). It's more of a chore.

I think the same happened to your mother's decorating. It's fun to you. It's a chore to her.

 

[shoalcreek]

Some people survive just fine with no Christmas decorations. It's a little different from eating supper.

 

[Stella740pl]

Of course. But some people survive without home-cooked meals, too - on take out, pizza, frozen entrees, etc. I don't even consider it as a viable option for my family (well, I do buy a rotisserie chicken or other cooked meal a few times a year when I am in a real bind), so I cook. I feel that I have to. (So I do overwork, but not from addiction to work, more from feeling responsible for it being done.)

I would guess that your mother has the same feeling - that she has to get it done, even though, in this case, it really isn't a necessity.

 

[Trevoke]

Did anyone bother to calculate how much overtime per week / this article is talking about?
Some americans work quite a bit harder than that.

Tao Te Ching Discussions : Chapter 9 (includes links to previous chapters)
What is the nature of conflict?

 

[Stella740pl]

Did anyone bother to calculate how much overtime per week / this article is talking about?

People that posted comments to that article did that first.
They also make for an interesting read - different takes on the topic. From "We work much harder here!" to "Do we REALLY work ALL that time that we spend at work?" to "I retired early. I would better be poor than dead.