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"If you can't enjoy a free leisure afternoon,
you don't know the value of the time" – as the
saying goes, but the question is where is the leisure
time? And even whatever leisure time we get, instead
of enjoying that, we keep ourselves engaged in thinking about many unnecessary things.
The world has changed a lot. Holiday count is reducing every year. The expectations
of companies, as also that of the people, have
risen enormously.
In today's competitive world, every company is trying to outperform other companies,
each quarter trying to produce better results than
the earlier quarter. Companies' expectations from
the employees have increased manifold. All these have resulted in extended working
hours, carrying work to the home, and reduced
declared holidays. Even many IT companies are compensating the employee for working
on holidays. People are really getting very less leisure time to spend, to introspect and
spending time with family. The situation is
becoming tougher and tougher. But studies show
that leisure time has a positive correlation with productivity. Here, we will see how both
these can be correlated and how companies are changing their policies to provide more
leisure times to the employees.
European countries, mostly protestant ones, once had a reputation for hard work, but they
have long since lost it. The Scots' industriousness
has gone the way of their industry. Germans now
start weekends at lunch time on Friday. France
closes down for the whole of August. So does
Brussels, the nerve center of the European Union.
Almost nothing is now done in England between Christmas and New Year.
The countries with their noses hardest to the grindstone are now Mexico, Japan and the
US. Ignore Mexico: May be its short statutory
rations owe something to the ancient Mexican
institution of San Lunes, St. Monday, celebrated by
many Mexicans as an extension of the weekend. Look instead at Japan and America. These countries
are rich. It would be worrying for those
predisposed toward relaxation, to find that their prosperity
was in some way a product of their hard work. |
