• by Mark Naples , September 9, 2004

I received a great deal of feedback on last week's column regarding media addiction, and the topic is one that I've been thinking about a lot anyway. This is due to two reasons: One - I had hoped to take some vacation in late August and found myself working every day; and Two - a fascinating essay was published by The Los Angeles Times last week, and it made me completely rethink my whole approach to this topic.

Many of us in interactive had worked in traditional media prior to joining the industry. Those seem like relatively halcyon days to me now, even though there were certainly long hours. One thing I wonder about from time to time is how different my life has become since the advent of e-mail and cell phones in the last decade. Forget about media addiction for a second, or about working long hours. Let's just talk about working ALL the time.

Have any of you reading this ever thought about what Tom Hespos' column and mine explored last week from the perspective of confinement, rather than productivity? I'm not trying to be subversive here. I've just wondered, from time to time, how this career, which has made me so productive and afforded me a nice living, has also managed to make me (and just about everyone else I know in interactive) a workaholic. This, to me is the crux of the media addiction discussion. It's not about entertainment or alienation from our communities due to the advent of media-delivering gadgetry. It's about the need for productivity and its costs. I think that's what Tom was really getting at in his initial piece last week.

The essay I referenced earlier was written by Joan Williams and Ariane Hegewisch, principals on the Program on WorkLife Law at American University. They expose what they call a dirty little secret: U.S. productivity, which is No. 1 in the world when productivity is measured as gross domestic product per worker, is nowhere near the top when measured as GDP per hour worked, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose members are the world's 30 most developed nations.

This may stun you as much as it did me, but productivity, when measured as GDP per hour worked, is roughly the same across most European Community (EC) nations and the United States, and slightly higher in... France! France - the place that takes August off and has a mandatory 35-hour work week - has a higher rate of productivity than the United States by meaningful measures. At the same time, U.S. workers put in many more hours than workers across the EC, and we're second only to the South Koreans in average hours worked.

It's sort of intuitive that working more hours per person implies somewhat less efficiency per person. In other words, if you have eight hours to complete a task, rather than 10, you'll probably find a way to complete it in eight. But, the disparity addressed in the American University study is more dramatic than a mere 25 percent. In fact, in two out of three American families with small children in which both couples work, these couples work an average of more than 80 hours per week, more than double the European rate, and this, while twice as many American individuals put in at least 48 hours a week than our European counterparts. We work FAR more than people in most countries. It's not even close.

I'm not surprised that Americans work more than Europeans. Any among us who do business with a European satellite or partner has been challenged at different times by the number of bank holidays and the like, which hinder our partners' abilities to help us meet deadlines. But, the sheer rate of disparity is truly staggering to me. And, as far as I'm concerned, this has less to do with media gadgetry such as cell phones and PDAs and much more to do with how we define ourselves here. After all, U.S. penetration of cell phone usage is way below that in most EC countries. Like any craftsman (or woman), we shouldn't blame the tools. The problem is us.

As I finish this on the train because I couldn't last night due to other work and a conversation I had with a friend in interactive, who was in his office past 11 p.m., I don't know what to do about it. Most of us like what we do - at least the people I come into contact with. For most Americans, it's not about making more money. It's about making enough to pay the bills. Now if I can just plan a vacation in the fall - with easy access to the Web.