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| Not enough hours in the day? That could be a thing of the past. Photo: Nick J Webb |
Self improvement: It's about time
January is traditionally a time of New Year resolutions. It’s the time when we tell ourselves (and anyone around who will listen) that this is the year that we’ll mend some of our less noble personal traits and finally commit ourselves to ‘the good life’ through a programme that combines equal measures of self denial and dogged self improvement.
It was this happy-go-lucky outlook that I got myself along to the LSE public discussion, ‘About Time: examining the case for a shorter working week’. What I discovered both reactivated my love of policy and induced a severe bout of self-loathing. Allow me to explain...
21 is the magic number
For those of you lucky enough to have avoided my pun-heavy Tweeting on the subject, About Time was an in-depth look at the case for a shorter working week, as set out by the New Economics Foundation (or nef) last year in their report, 21 hours. The report sets out a case for how a ‘normal’ working week of 21 hours could help to address a range of urgent, interlinked problems: overwork, unemployment, over-consumption, high carbon emissions, low well-being, entrenched inequalities, and the lack of time to live sustainably, to care for each other, and simply to enjoy life.
An impressive selection of speakers had been assembled for Wednesday’s event. In addition to 21 hour’s co-author and nef’s head of social policy, Anna Coote, who chaired proceedings, we heard from three notable academics with expertise in this field. First up was Juliet Schor, Professor of Sociology at Boston College, and author of Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth, and The Overworked American. Next up was Lord Robert Skidelsky, Emeritus Professor of Political Economy at the University of Warwick. Lastly, Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development at Surrey University, and author of Prosperity without Growth, reflected on the discussion.
