Feeling burned out? You’re not the only one.
It appears South Korean government employees actually have it worse than all of us, averaging a whopping 2,739 work hours a year, according to the BBC. That’s about 1,000 more hours per capita versus the average, and equates to a 50-hour workweek.
But Seoul’s Metropolitan Government has a solution: giving workers no choice but to stop working, by shutting down their computers. The new initiative begins this Friday, March 30th, when all computers of government employees (only, sadly) will shut down beginning at 8 p.m. The goal is to have all computers turned off by 7 p.m. each day by May.
Drastic? Absolutely. But it’s more telling of the country’s attitude toward working overtime.
Overworking is certainly no joke: it gets in the way of healthy habits, it’s terrible for your sleep and it dramatically increases the risk of heart disease. Add in the heavy drinking that often accompanies it, and you’ve got a vicious cyle.
So if there’s anything we can learn from — again, think about how crazy this is — a government forcibly shutting down computers to stop employees from working, it’s that maybe that’s something we should all ratify in our own lives, before federal intervention becomes necessary.
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