This is just one example: a woman who goes to a meeting with a demanding client when she finds out that she has just had a miscarriage. She works long hours every day for a reputable company in London, but doesn’t interrupt her day, and goes to the meeting as scheduled.
This woman was one of the professionals we interviewed as part of our study on the professional life of highly qualified employees. For this research, recently published in Organization Science, we conducted 146 interviews with 81 professionals working in some of the UK’s largest consulting and law firms. Half of the respondents were women, the other half were men, and almost all of them had at least one child.
Our initial aim was to study how workers in demanding professional organizations manage their work-life balance. However, shortly after the start of the interviews, which began in 2014, we realized that we were going to have to revise the direction of our research. Indeed, we did not find individuals who were genuinely seeking to balance their work and their private life.
On the contrary, we have increasingly come to realize that these workers are in essence driven by their desire to be extremely busy all the time. In other words, they were prepared to sacrifice their family life in a significant way. As one of our participants said:
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“We get a bit ‘addicted’ to deadlines and work. It’s quite difficult to quit. “
So we found that the assumption that most workers seek to find a work-life balance remains an illusion – at least in the case of the highly skilled knowledge workers we studied.
More than a “badge of honor”
A common characteristic emerges among the respondents, who for the most part say they suffer from a lack of time to do what they have to do. This situation places them in an incessant search for an accelerated temporal experience where they feel they have mastered time. We call this experience “optimal busyness”, that is, an attractive experience similar to a flow, but sometimes difficult to contain.
More specifically, we have identified three different temporal experiences that participants regularly experience in their daily lives: optimal restlessness, excessive agitation and quiet time.
L’optimal agitation refers to an accelerated and exhilarating flow of time in which workers feel their best and productivity. This buzzing sensation gives them adrenaline and positive energy. The professionals interviewed then have the impression that nothing can stop them, and that they can even, for example, save their business from bankruptcy.
In our time, this attraction to being extremely busy all the time can also be interpreted as a new type of social status symbol, a sign of achievement or a “badge of honor”. Nevertheless, we observed that this trend went well beyond the simple social signal and that individuals derived some satisfaction from it, as testified by one respondent:
“I like the intensity of the game, in general. I get a feeling of shivering, that’s why I do the job I do. I like this. “
This feeling is therefore embodied on the emotional level and creates an intrinsic dependence.
The experiences are felt like waves. Indeed, optimal agitation, pleasant and positive at times, generally tilts to become on certain days a agitation excessive. In this case, the feeling of time control goes away and the restlessness becomes overwhelming and depressing. Respondents’ ties with their families are therefore seriously degraded.
However, the difference between optimal and excessive agitation remains difficult to establish. One can simply point out that when the energizing hum continues for too long and without interruption, it inevitably becomes unbearable.
We observed a similar pattern in the case of calm weather, i.e. when the busy work period is suddenly interrupted by a downtime or decelerated moment, for example a vacation period. This calm time is then experienced as something unwanted and meaningless, which causes boredom, even depressive states. As one professional interviewed pointed out, the idea of working in slow motion becomes an eyesore:
“When I don’t have a deadline, I’m bored. I am much less productive because I like to work on adrenaline. “
In previous research, we had studied the extreme sports enthusiasts. It is interesting to note that the speeches here are almost identical.
Thus, many of the participants in our study described situations in which they had brought work with them – often in hiding from their spouse. Hiding in the bathroom to send emails or go to the beach with a laptop does not appear to be isolated behavior.
Some of the partners of our respondents that we interviewed confirmed this trend:
“My wife is terrible. If she wakes up to go to the bathroom at 3 a.m., she’s not going to be able to help but check her email. “
While research and the media are quick to report that many people are increasingly choosing to slow down their lifestyles these days, so our results reveal a surprisingly different story: The desire to work fewer hours remains the exception.
Vicious circle
But how do professionals get there? Our research has identified two main factors. On the one hand, professional organizations do indeed produce extreme time pressures. A number of mechanisms, such as setting unrealistic deadlines, reporting, and above all the work culture itself, which expects everyone to be permanently available via their smartphone, fuel this agitation.
The companies we studied were elite institutions that hire the best students after graduation. The new recruits interviewed told us in particular that they wanted to submit to pressure because it was the only way to get a promotion. The culture of intensive work quickly absorbed them and helped normalize abnormal working hours.
On the other hand, we found that the individuals themselves were able to manipulate the desired temporal experiences. Some stimulated their bodies with various substances, including coffee, exercise, and even drugs. Others isolated themselves to work without being interrupted.
One participant explained to us, for example, that she had gone on a business trip and that she had not called her family during her trip, despite her promises:
“It’s only a short time. Once I am done, I will relax. “
However, in this type of strategy – common – which consists of thinking that free time will come later, the relaxation phase usually never takes place.
For decades, researchers have observed the persistence of long working hours, overwork and shortage of time. These characteristics are ingrained in many professional work contexts, and not just in consulting, auditing or law firms.
The academia is another alarming example: studies consistently show that the poor mental well-being of academics is linked to increased performance expectations, competitive spirit as well as measures causing uninterrupted activity.
Our research offers a new way to understand this phenomenon. The search for an optimal time experience fuels a vicious circle. However, so far there is little research that would uncover our day-to-day temporal experiences and how they can take hold of us. How is it, for example, that it has become almost impossible for our university colleagues to take a step back from work and relax a bit?
The individuals we studied, although in an extreme context, were often blissfully unaware of what was happening to them. So maybe it’s time for all of us to reflect on how and why we are so addicted to the frenzy of work.
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Through Joonas Rokka, Professor in Marketing, EM Lyon and , Associate Professor, ESSEC
The original version of this article was posted on The Conversation.
