Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
The Clare Byrne Show on Newstalk. With Aviva Insurance. Now, my next guest believes that we must all properly interrogate why we never seem to have enough time. And if we accept that the workday has expanded, why is it that employees who are on the cusp of burnout are told that they're the ones who need to manage their time better?
Dr. Dale Whelan is with me now, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Trinity College. You're very welcome, Dale.
Thank you. Thank you for having me.
We all feel, I think it's fair to say, that we don't have enough time to do anything outside of work.
Chapter 2: Why do we feel we never have enough time?
But it's not our fault. Is that what you're saying?
Yeah, I'm really curious by this statement. And once I became aware of it, I suddenly started seeing it everywhere. Like, it's the... You know, it's the family member who says they don't have time to go home. It's the parents saying that they don't have the time to, you know, look after themselves while also looking after their kids. And then there's work.
We don't have enough time to do all the work that we do. So that's interesting, despite all the focus we've had on time management over the last however many decades. All the money, all the efforts gone into improving people's relationship and management of their time. And yet we probably are never as time bored as we are now.
So are we being sold a pop when we're told, oh, you just have to manage your time better. You need to look at how you're dividing up your day. Is that not fair?
I think it follows how management as a kind of discipline formed back in the early 1900s. You kind of were able to kind of create different pockets of your work and therefore you could get more efficient and figure out how to do that. But work has changed quite a lot in the last 20 years. A lot of people work now in quite an unboundaried way. So there is no start or formal end of the day.
There's also a lot more expected of them. They have to use their brains a lot more than the past and having to come up with new solutions, innovations. All that sort of stuff creates a higher level of cognitive load on people. And people are feeling like there is too much to do, not enough time to do it.
But actually, their brain is often just overwhelmed by the speed of which society has evolved.
So is it the case that the more productive we become, the more demands are placed on us?
Correct. Yes. So there's a fundamental theory called social acceleration. Every time we get better, we make a technological advancement that's supposed to give us back time. We have a tendency to fill that time automatically with something new. And that's not to say that there isn't any impact of all that old work as well.
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Chapter 3: How has the workday changed in recent years?
We're still ticking along doing that, but now we're layering in new on top of it as well. And I think we're seeing this with AI. You know, people are talking about using large language models in their work and they're overwhelmed.
There's this new research coming out suggesting that people are engaging what's called cognitive surrender, which used to be this way of thinking you thought fast, you thought slow, depending on, you know, whether you were actively engaging in rational reflection of work. But now people are just not engaging whatsoever because they're so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information.
What about the value that we place on rest? We tend to see rest now as a bit of a luxury, right? But that's a relatively new concept, right?
Yeah, I mean, a lot of it came from the Industrial Revolution, but it got tied up quite a lot with Calvinist kind of Protestant work ethic back in the late 1800s, which said that if you aren't being productive, you aren't being worthwhile, essentially. So capitalism and industrial capitalism formed quite along that sort of moral way of thinking about our time.
And that is now completely institutionalized in how we have our relationship to time today. You only need to look at people, the increasing level of hustle culture that we would have traditionally only seen in places like America, seeping into places like Ireland.
What does that mean? Explain hustle culture to me.
The idea that nothing is enough. You know, there's always more I can be doing.
Keep pushing, keep pushing.
There's an anxiety, I think, around, you know, the achievement of the American dream or the equivalent of there, depending on your country.
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Chapter 4: What is the impact of cognitive load on our perception of time?
In Europe, work starts and stops at fixed times. Working beyond that is not expected by companies. And you've got healthier and happier workers. Is there anything in that?
Absolutely. I mean, there is that famous quote of Dublin being closer to Boston than Berlin. You know, our culture is much more influenced by... Well, we've invited it in, haven't we? We have, absolutely. And it plays a disproportionate level of influence on how we think about work in Ireland.
And there is, you know, working time regulation, the right to disconnect, flexible working policies, all these sort of things are coming down the pipeline. And we're seeing that happen in more of Central European countries as well.
And so I think there is a there's always a tension to figure out how do you spark innovation and, you know, business entrepreneurship while also protecting, you know, time and not viewing it as something that is inherently a left wing or right wing issue. Actually, when people feel happy and healthy and they have time, they actually are productive. It's not either or.
On an individual level, do we need to pull back from this always on model?
Yeah, we do.
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Chapter 5: How does social acceleration relate to our productivity?
Like, it is serving no one. By being on all the time, not only are we increasing our own stress, our burnout, we are less present in all the parts of our lives, work and non-work. We might think we have this endless capacity to continue to perform, but actually, by always being on, we're getting diminished returns.
But you know now if you do that and you do it alone, you get a rep for being like the no-hoper in the office. Don't ask Daryl for anything because he's not working after five o'clock.
Well, again, these are all about conversations of negotiation, though. So the workday in and of itself, the nine to five. is not in existence in the way that we thought about it six, seven years ago. So what I'm calling for is more explicit conversations around time in the workplace, thinking about it from the different stakeholder groups.
How do we give people back their sense of agency over their time? How do we ensure business gets value for the time that they are getting from their employers or employees? And how do teams ultimately get to figure that out at that middle level as well?
So the eight hour day is gone, is it? Doesn't exist anymore.
You tell me. I mean, yeah, I feel like the unboundaried nature of work, it's extremely difficult for us to be able to understand what do we qualify as work now? That's a bigger question. Work used to just be go in, do your core tasks and leave.
So if we accept that the working day is gone, it's about how we as humans survive that.
Well, it's about figuring out what is the future of work? What is the future workday? Is it 7am to 9pm? And is the expectation that we are expected to be available for all that time? Or is there more nuanced conversations that we could be having in business to safeguard people, but also safeguard business for the future?
It's fascinating. Dale Whelan, who's Assistant Professor of Psychology at Trinity. When does your workday start? When does it finish? Does it ever finish? WhatsApp us 087 1400 106. The Clare Byrne Show. With Aviva Insurance. Weekday mornings at 9. On Newstalk. Conversation that counts.
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