How to Keep Time: Leave Work Time at Work

Before laptops allowed us to take the office home and smartphones could light up with notifications at any hour, work time and “life” time had clearer boundaries. Today, work is not done exclusively in the workplace, and that makes it harder to leave work at work.

Co-hosts Rashid Rashid and Ian Bogost examine the habits that shrink our available time, and Ignacio Sánchez Prado, a professor of Latin American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, offers his reflections on American culture and shares suggestions for how to use the time we do have, for life.
 

The following transcript has been edited for clarity:

Ian Bogost: So Becca, many years ago I was driving home from work, and I had a terrible day. I don’t remember why, but I was just cheesed off. And I was, like, white-knuckling my steering wheel, you know, still angry from whatever had happened. As I was driving, I saw a colleague of mine from work walking to the train to go home.

Becca Rashid: Uh huh.

Bogost: And he was just kind of sauntering down the street. And I noticed that he was carrying a book, like, as if it were a lunchbox almost. He was very casually holding this book at his side.

And he had nothing else, not a bag or a backpack or anything. And I remember looking at him and thinking, Oh man, he has it figured out—like, “What is wrong with me that that’s not how I’m behaving, now that my workday is over?”

Rashid: He has it figured out because he’s holding a book?

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Bogost: Well, the interpretation I had of what was going to happen to him next is that: He had left work, his workday was over, and he was going to get on the train and read his book and go home. And, you know, make dinner, do whatever he did in his evening routine. It just somehow came naturally to him to leave the office and begin the process of not being at work.

In a technical sense, I could do whatever I wanted with my leisure time once I’d left work, but there was something preventing me from really having control over that time.

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Rashid: Welcome to How to Keep Time. I’m Becca Rashid, co-host and producer of the show.

Bogost: And I’m Ian Bogost, co-host and contributing writer at The Atlantic.

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Rashid: So Ian, your book story makes me think of how many of us who can’t leave our work at the door, even if you are someone who successfully left work behind with the book on the train. And there’s just this specific dread when you feel like your entire day, and weeks, and potentially your life will be expended at work.

Rashid: I wanted to quickly play this clip for you, of a young woman I saw on TikTok talking about how all her hours in a day go to work. And she’s sitting on the couch, she’s in her sweats, and talking about her very first 9-to-5 job, and she starts shedding a few tears.
 

TikToker: I know it could be worse. I know I could be working longer, but like: I literally get off, it’s pitch black. Like, I don’t have energy. How do you have friends? Like, how do you have time for, like, dating? Like: I don’t have time for anything, and I’m like so stressed out and—but, like, am I so dramatic? It’s fine.

Bogost: Oh wow; I mean, yeah, she’s got it, doesn’t she? I really empathize with this girl. [Laughter.] I mean, I’m in a very different life stage, but even the situation this young woman is describing—it’s not really new.

Nor is it confined to her generation or anything. It’s just, she’s got fresh eyes on it. Like, what the heck, my whole entire day—my whole life—seems to be taken up by work (or work-related activities, like commuting), and there’s no life for me left. That’s what she’s saying.

Rashid: And the obvious solution would be working less, and winning more time back for yourself. But that seems pretty unlikely as the only solution.

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Bogost: Yeah, but what if you could live more for yourself even when you’re at work? Rather than seeing that time as totally lost to your boss or your company, as time that’s not yours—even though you’re there, you’re there at work, in your body while it all happens to you.

Rashid: And I do think in her stating it so plainly, it forces us to sort of revisit our mainstream approach to this binary we create between work and life, which is obviously bothering her.

Bogost: Thinking of your work time as something that isn’t yours—like it’s some ghost, other personality—that’s the problem that has to be solved in some way.

Rashid: And it forces us to question whether there are maybe new ways to structure our time.

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Ignacio Sánchez Prado: But, I also think—I mean, is a job worth not having a minute to think about yourself, you know? I don’t think so.

Rashid: So Ian, you know, maybe our conditioning to prioritize work isn’t just a thing in our heads or because we’re at the whim of our calendars.
 

Sánchez Prado: My name is Ignacio Sanchez Prado. I go by Nacho, which is short for Ignacio in Spanish. I’m a professor of Latin American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis who researches Mexican culture broadly.

Rashid: Depending on where you work, or the nature of your job, a lot of people’s work require you to leave your life at the door. Ian, Nacho is someone who spends time observing and studying cultural practices. And I wanted to ask him if, and how, time can be understood as a reflection of culture.

I’m wondering if our culture and social practices around our time at work can feel like more of a barrier to using our time in a more cohesive way, where that binary between work and life feels less disconnected.

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Sánchez Prado: I think that what was surprising actually is that in the United States, people work for working, and I think that one thing that I want to make clear because I don’t want to create this narrative where Americans are hard working and Mexicans are leisure centered. Mexicans work very hard.

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Sánchez Prado: And are very productive in Mexico, in the office [00:10:00] culture, and the university culture. But I don’t think the notion that you are defined by your employment is as strong.

Rashid: Nacho, could you tell me about how that work and leisure-time balance is in Mexico?

Sánchez Prado: So people see their job as a means to an end, and the end is their family life, their social life, their leisure, their hobbies. I think the difference is not the hard working—but also the understanding that putting limits to your work is a right. And if you don’t, you’re just giving up your rights.

I think that leads for people to—I mean, I have friends who drop work at the time that the work is done, and they don’t care if it’s done or not. Or people don’t really think that they should be spending their weekends answering emails. I think that if you have the privilege to access employment, there’s no job that is worth destroying your mind or your life.

Sánchez Prado: My mom didn’t know how to cook, because she was a secretary; she worked six days a week, all day.

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Sánchez Prado: When she comes home, she’s not going to cook—but we would go together to an eatery and eat together. Because it is possible to walk out of your apartment and have 15 places where you can go eat in the vicinity of your neighborhood. And it’s very inexpensive. And it can be a sit-down place; it can be a taco stand.

Traditional Mexican places are not necessarily designed for this kind of expeditious eating. When I came to the U.S., it’s the first time I saw a restaurant telling you that you have the table for a maximum amount of time.

Rashid: Right. You have the timed reservation.

Sánchez Prado: It’s something I had never seen before. I mean, we have reservations, but nobody tells you you have to leave at 11:30, right?

Rashid: Yeah, right.

Sánchez Prado: You leave when you want, or when they close. But nobody’s gonna come and time whether you’re using the table too much.

Rashid: Right.

Sánchez Prado: There’s a word in Spanish called sobremesa; it’s sort of the after-dinner conversation. And that is so much of a social practice that there’s a word for it, and it’s called “over table,” right? So it means that it’s right after eating on the table. It is expected that you will linger and continue conversation, rather than just get up and leave.

Rashid: Right. What’s the rush? What’s the hurry?

Sánchez Prado: Exactly.

Rashid: Yes, where in the U.S., it feels like even our productive approach to work is also when we’re eating.

Sánchez Prado: You know, it is also the fact that dinner or supper also has other social components to it. So it is common that people would go from work, maybe to meet their family, their children, maybe to meet their friends—but I also think that the culture is a little bit more gregarious,

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Sánchez Prado: That motivates people, even in work spaces, to socialize. One practice that we have, it’s going away because of fast food and stuff like that. But our lunch times are very long—they’re about two hours. Because it’s the main meal, there are various restaurants that offer multi-course meals, and people usually go from their offices to those places to eat as a group.

And the two hours of the break allow you to have more full engagement with your coworkers than a half-an-hour lunch at your desk.

Rashid: This is during the weekdays?

Sánchez Prado: This is the weekdays.

Rashid: Oh! Can you describe this meal to me? I’m so jealous.

Sánchez Prado: Yes. If it’s a working-class place, it’s called a comida corrida. So it’s like a ... I don’t know if it has a direct translation, but like a meal in sequence. You get a soup, and then you get either rice or pasta or something. And then you get a main course with a side and dessert.

Rashid: Oh, sounds so good.

Sánchez Prado: It’s not only the gastronomical practice, which is interesting on its own. But also: If you have office workers that go to a place like this in groups of four or five, sit together, and are sharing a table for an hour or two, the social engagement in that office is different than when everybody’s sitting in their cubicle and their office. But I think that the embedding of social practice in the day makes a big difference in this case, for the nine-to-five or nine-to-seven worker.

In Mexico, we have become more of a victim of the corporate culture the minute we have lost the ability to have that kind of social, gregarious lunch.

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Bogost: Oh my gosh, Becca. I just had, yesterday, a supposedly social gregarious lunch with a friend in from out of town. And the whole time we were still, like, looking at our watches. He was like, “Oh, I want to make sure you get back for your meeting.” And I was checking to make sure I wasn’t going to be late. So it’s really difficult. We’re still at work, even when we take the time to eat that way.

Rashid: Right.

Bogost: I mean, I think one of the things Nacho is pointing out is that it’s too big a burden to ask people to create that time for themselves.

Rashid: Mm hmm. Right.

Bogost: You need to make space for it, socially and culturally. Um, there has to be a kind of common understanding that, you know, hanging out with your friends or even your co-workers in a different setting is important.

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Bogost: And that’s just how your day plays out, rather than, oh, How can I figure out how to finagle a way to be social with the people who are important to me?

Rashid: Right. And as Nacho was saying, this multiple-course lunch and these additional hours that people give themselves during the workday—there’s this sort of freedom they have, to go have that meal together and really enjoy it.

And you know, some of the happiest countries in the world, some of their primary metrics of their happiness include that freedom to make decisions and social support, both of which could be understood as time-related. They have the flexibility to make decisions about time, and time to invest in strengthening their relationships.

Bogost: I mean, do people in those countries just work less? Do they just have more time on their own to play with?

Rashid: Well, the three happiest countries in the world—Finland, Denmark, and Iceland—aren’t far off from the average American workweek, in terms of average hours worked. And the average American workweek, which is around 38.8 hours, according to data from 2022, is not that far off from Denmark’s average workweek, which is 33.4. Iceland’s is around 35.5, and Finland’s is 35. So it’s not so much a matter of not having enough hours in the day, which was so surprising to me.

Bogost: Which suggests that we don’t require a whole lot of additional time, necessarily, but figuring out a different way of conceptualizing that time in order to experience the kind of enjoyment and freedom that Nacho is talking about.

Rashid: Right, and even though there is a seemingly small difference in average work hours between each of those countries, that may translate into a more serious time discrepancy day to day—that does make finding that one extra hour a little harder.

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Sánchez Prado: What I find worrisome—and I say it to my students sometimes—is that sometimes you ask people “What enriches you?,” and they don’t have an answer to that question. If you don’t have an answer to that question, I will be worried. I think that that’s a question that you have to find an answer for.

Rashid: What kind of answers do they give you, if any?

Sánchez Prado: Well, sometimes nothing, because sometimes the teachers go on TikTok, right?

Rashid: Hmm.

Sánchez Prado: I’m very addicted to social media, so I’m not gonna bring any kind of moralism to that. It’s okay if you look at Facebook, but you need to have something that is, for you, a little bit more enriching in your leisure time.

Rashid: Mmm.

Sánchez Prado: In order for you to develop a sense of value to it. I had a student that was doing crochet, even in class, and she really loved that. Sometimes they tell me, “I like to paint.”

I think that one of the culprits is universities. And private ones very particularly, because they have this structure of after-curricular social activity that is built and regulated by the university, and it takes over time of the students. So the students never develop the ability to develop that kind of meaningful leisure time on their own. They’re here all day; they live here.

Rashid: Right.

Sánchez Prado: And I think that if you graduate from that, to the world…

Rashid: Right.

Sánchez Prado: I’ve seen some of my students; just they don’t know what to do with themselves after their job is done.

It might be that some people just don’t even develop the skill to begin with. If I were to give practical advice, which I like to do sometimes, is begin by asking yourself—what kinds of things enrich you?

Rashid: Hmm.

Sánchez Prado: And then make a proactive effort to make sure that they’re a part of your day. You have to be proactive about it, in this culture.

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Bogost: So Rashid, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Americans have more than five hours of free leisure time per day.

Rashid: Wow.

Bogost: Do you feel like you have five?

Rashid: It does not feel like five, for sure, but I believe it.

Bogost: It does not feel like five to me either. Right. And, you know, I think the reason it doesn’t is because we don’t know what to do with those five hours of time, or however much of it we have. And so it just kind of, you know, evaporates into little pieces. Instead of using it well, it just vanishes, between our fingers.

It makes me wonder. I mean, this is kind of an impossible question to answer, but, you know, it only makes sense to talk about leisure time once you have work time to compare it to.

Rashid: Right.

Bogost: And so, back before people had leisure. Leisure is essentially an invention of the Industrial Revolution. So, you know, when you would have been a peasant working the land—and your whole day’s worth of time was just taken up with subsistence from dawn to dusk, and then you couldn’t do anything anyway because it was dark—at least you kind of knew, maybe, why you were doing the things that you were doing hour to hour. Less of your time would vanish, because you had so little of it to start with. And also because you were making use of all of it.

Rashid: So you almost would prefer to know what you are going to be doing at every hour? Is there, like, a decision-making component there that makes it harder to know? Like, okay, “If this is my free time, and I just finished my work time, how do I make the decision about what to do now that it’s all mine? I can use it however I want.”

Bogost: That’s exactly it, Becca: “Okay, I’m at work. Oh, and now I’m not at work anymore. And so now I have to figure out what that means. Um, now I’m using my time for myself. And I’m not at work, so I really have to make good on the leisure time that I have. And then by the time I’ve figured out what I want to do, I’ve burned through half of it and don’t have it anymore.”

But you know when you’re a kid and even your leisure time is more structured? “Now is when you can watch TV,” because that’s when your parents allowed you to.

Or “It’s time to go brush your teeth,” or what have you. Something about, you know, that phase of life feels a little better, doesn’t it?

Rashid: Hmm, interesting.

Bogost: Because you know what’s happening next, and why.

Rashid: Yeah. It sounds to me, Ian, like having that authority figure telling you how you should be using your time is helpful in a way. And as Nacho said, his university students have many of their leisure activities baked into their day to day—the place they work is also the place they live, and sleep, and make friends, so that makes it easier to decide what to do.

If everyone is going to the football game or taking breaks between a study session, it guards against the kind of decision paralysis you may have if you have a full Saturday afternoon free. There are so many more variables: Maybe gathering everyone in one place to do it with, schedule it, and making sure you have a good time.

Bogost: And having that external force that is making a decision for you is really helpful, because now you no longer have to make a choice. And when you make a bad choice, and it’s your choice, then you feel guilty for it. You feel, I could have made any choice, and I did the wrong thing with the time I had available.

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Sánchez Prado: I don’t care about what people think. Not everybody has that privilege, right?

Rashid: Yes.

Sánchez Prado: Some people get pressures because their promotions, their salaries are tied to that, so we don’t have to be frivolous about that.

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Sánchez Prado: But I also think—I mean, is a job worth not having a minute to think about yourself, you know?

Rashid: Mm hmm.

Sánchez Prado: I don’t think so.

Rashid: How do you think someone who doesn’t have that flexibility in their schedule could incorporate some of these practices in their life?

Sánchez Prado: I don’t think you need to be working all the time that you’re at work.

Sánchez Prado: Unless you have a boss on top of you or a computer timing you, which happens.

Rashid: Uh huh.

Sánchez Prado: I mean, if you are in that, you just don’t have a way out, right? You’re just in, like, a work regime of constant surveillance, right?

Rashid: Right.

Sánchez Prado: Since most people are not in that situation, bring a book to your desk and read. Give yourself 10 minutes every hour to read it.

Rashid: Hmm.

Sánchez Prado: Right? I mean, if you’re going to eat and work, you might as well eat while you’re working, and then take your lunch break and do something else.

Rashid: Yeah!

Sánchez Prado: People care that they’re not being perceived as good-enough workers. Because you are aware of a judgment that other people are going to have of you. But maybe you shouldn’t care, right?

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Rashid: So Ian, as we’re analyzing these work-life boundaries, it made me think about our American cultural values around work and home, and which one people think should have more value, or which one we should allocate more time to. And I found this really interesting data on Americans evolving views about the meaning of life.

Bogost: Oh my gosh. And what did it say?

Rashid: And there was the survey conducted from September 2017 to February of 2021, and it sort of tracked these changes and preferences over that four-year period. And the Pew Research Center asked a sample of adults to answer the question “What about your life do you currently find meaningful, fulfilling, or satisfying? What keeps you going, and why?”

Bogost: So what did people say?

Rashid: Of course I assumed it was work.

Bogost: Uh huh.

Rashid: But surprisingly, over the course of those four years, the share of adults who mentioned their job or career as a source of meaning declined from 24% to 17%, which was already significantly lower than I thought.

Bogost: —was already pretty low.

Rashid: And people were more likely than the initial year in 2017 to mention society a source of meaning in life.

Bogost: Yeah, Becca, it almost sounds like we’ve been faking ourselves out.

Rashid: A little.

Bogost: Like, yeah: We believe that everyone else believes that work is where we should derive satisfaction. But, in fact, very few of us in America seem to think that that’s really the case. And instead we want to find it in one another, rather than in our workplaces.

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Rashid: That’s all for this episode of How to Keep Time. This episode was hosted by Ian Bogost and me, Becca Rashid. I also produce the show. Our editors are Claudine Ebeid and Jocelyn Frank. Fact-check by Ena Alvarado. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. Rob also composed some of our music. The executive producer of audio is Claudine Ebeid, and the managing editor of audio is Andrea Valdez.

Bogost: We’re taking a quick break next week, and after all this talk about busyness and schedules, I’m really looking forward to some rest. That’s also the topic of our next episode. Talk to you then.

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Bogost: Becca, I’ve been oversleeping lately, and I finally went to the doctor, and he recommended that I sleep on a bed of herbs.

Rashid: [Laughter.] This is ridiculous. What? What? What?

Bogost: [Laughter.] You gotta give me a “Why?” [Laughter.]

I’ve got another one. You want another one?

Rashid: Let’s do another one, because I started laughing too early.

Bogost: Yeah, you started laughing prematurely. It was a ridiculous setup. [Laughter.]

Bogost: How can you tell when your clock is hungry?

Rashid: [Laughter.] Why aren’t you feeding your clock, Ian?

Bogost: Wow, well, you know… [Laughter.]

Click here to listen to additional episodes in The Atlantic’s How To series.

Rebecca Rashid is a producer at The Atlantic.

Ian Bogost is a contributing writer at The Atlantic.