TOW #14 - "You Don’t Need More Free Time"

After winter break last week, many students and teachers, having to go back to their regular schedules, are dearly missing the free time they got. Although many Americans - not just students and teachers - yearn for free time, "free time" is measured not just by the free time one has but the free time that everyone has. Happiness resulting from free time mostly comes from the fact that people can socialize with their friends and families during common free times such as weekends, and any free time one has without others to share it with tend not to have as much of an effect as one that's shared. Cristobal Young, editor for the New York Times, uses an example of a common situation and belief and then his studies that refute that common belief to show that workplaces should not focus on free time of the individual but rather free time of the group.

Young starts off by setting a general situation, where "Americans work some of the longest hours in the Western world, and many struggle to achieve a healthy balance between work and life. As a result, there is an understandable tendency to assume that the problem we face is one of quantity: We simply do not have enough free time. 'If I could just get a few more hours off work each week,' you might think, 'I would be happier'” (Young 1). This is indeed how many people have the tendency to think, and introducing the text with an idea that the readers are well acquainted with gives the readers and insight into what the common belief is right now. The reader is engaged with what the text is saying, since they can relate, and now that an idea that is commonly believed by many is explicitly stated, the readers can see how that will be challenged later in the text by research that Young includes.

Using figures from the Gallup Daily Poll, Young informs readers of his study which showed, "As measured by things such as anxiety, stress, laughter and enjoyment, our well-being is lowest Monday through Thursday...The surprising finding was that this is also true of unemployed people. We found that...their positive emotions soared on the weekend, and dropped back down again on Monday" (5). This well-established study shows the patterns and effects different times of free time have on people. It gives the readers good insight in a hard topic that shows that people enjoy free time more if they have other people to share it with, just has jobless people, although they have free time, enjoy the free time they have with their working friends and families better.

Young ties his ideas back to the situation where many companies and offices are tweaking the free time of their workers and their flexibility levels to increase the free time an employee has. However, he shows through his refutation of this common belief with research how this wouldn't be an effective method.