In the mornings while I make breakfast, I normally listen to the radio, typically CBC Radio 1. Believe it or not, I listen to it on an actual radio, not on my phone. I find the sound quality to be a little nicer on the radio versus the phone app. Yes, I’m old fashioned.
We still receive the actual physical newspaper every day, too. It makes for lot of recycling, but just as I’d rather listen to the radio on the radio, I much prefer reading a physical newspaper over reading news on my phone. I somehow find it more anxiety provoking and stressful to consume news on an electronic device. I also find myself only reading superficially and moving from story to story. In contrast, when I read the physical paper, I pay pretty close attention to each story before moving on to the next one.
I think there’s been some research on how people read things on devices versus on paper that’s consistent with my experience. I think I remember reading that people read in a “T” shape when they read on a device, reading and processing the first few sentences or paragraphs and then scanning downward for anything interesting without really reading or digesting it.
In any case, this morning I heard folks discussing research on an alternative to the standard 5-day workweek: A four-day workweek. Apparently, in this study, people were assigned a 4-day workweek with the same productivity expectations as they had for a 5-day week. Findings suggested no decline in productivity and an increase in quality of life outside of work. I can’t seem to find a reference for the study, so forgive me for being light on details here. I’m pretty sure that some of you with better search skills than I have will be able to find the article. In any case, the interviewee commented on the benefits of having more time for life outside work, and how a compressed workweek might actually make us more efficient, cutting down on unnecessary meetings, making necessary ones more organized and goal-oriented, and so forth.
I’ve often observed that, when we have a little less time to do things, we make better use of the time we have. As my wife’s grandfather used to say, “A vacuum will always get filled.” In one of our committees at the university, we used to have 1.5hr meetings, and then we switched to 2 hours for a couple of years. I noticed that we didn’t get more done in 2 hours versus 1.5 hours. In fact, the 2 hour meetings were even less productive (and sometimes more painful and exhausting!). We’re back to 1.5hr meetings now. I’m hoping, over time, that we can get them down to 25 minutes! In the past, I used to have 1 hour meetings with my graduate students. While it was nice to have time to discuss ideas, catch up, etc., I switched to 30min meetings (with more time as needed) several years ago and have noticed we probably get about the same amount done.
As another example, we conducted a major study comparing 6- to 12-months of DBT a few years ago (https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/525102). We found that 6-months was generally not any worse than 12-months. Moreover, during the first 6 months, the people who received only 6-months of treatment made quicker gains in certain areas of symptoms (specifically, general psychiatric symptoms and borderline personality symptoms) than the 12-month people did. Later on, the 12-month people caught up. We don’t know exactly why the 6-month group showed quicker initial gains, but I think the clients and their therapists might have used their time more wisely. Perhaps clients did their homework more diligently, and both clients and therapists worked a little harder, knowing that the “deadline” was coming sooner. The 12-month people, after all, had a whole year to work on therapy.
That’s not to say that it’s always a good thing to have less time. Time pressure can be a major source of stress. I find deadlines stressful, and I know I’m not alone. Having to hurry to get something done can lead to sloppy or mediocre work. Like anything, I think we all have to find the best balance, or as we sometimes say in DBT, the “middle path.” Give yourself enough time to do things thoughtfully and thoroughly, but not so much that you have room to squander your time. ~Alexander L. Chapman, Ph.D., R.Psych.