Hello Everyone!

Hello everyone! And welcome to the Imagine Nation blog. The purpose of this blog is to provide a place for dialoging about that place where we spend most of our waking hours….work. Yes, one of the most commonly used four letter words our daily vocabulary! The place we can’t live with and we can’t live without. Work…a place where many of us look for immediate gratification, professional growth and financial well-being. Work…a magical place that we that as children, we listened to our parents describe to us each evening. Work, a place that came to embody our entire educational effort, (i.e., “you have to go to college if you want to get a good job…”).

So what’s the status of this magical place for most Americans? Well, according to a recent article published by BusinessWeek, ”More than 31% of college-educated workers are regularly logging 50 or more hours a week at work, up from 22% in 1980. Forty percent of American adults get less than seven hours of sleep on weekdays, reports the National Sleep Foundation, up from 31% in 2001. About 60% of us are sometimes or often rushed at mealtime, and one-third wolf down lunch at our desks, according to a survey by the American Dietetic Assn. To avoid wasting time, we're talking on our cell phones while rushing to work, answering e-mails during conference calls, waking up at 4 a.m. to call Europe, and generally multi-tasking our brains out.”

Yet, with so much time spent doing this dance, it seems that most of us hate the music. According to a survey commissioned last year by the Concours Group, an executive education, research and consulting firm, only 62% of managers strongly or moderately agree that "I really care about the fate of this organization," and only half were glad they chose to work at their company over another. Moreover, only 35% of managers said their organization inspired the best in them.

If this were an episode of CSI, we would have ourselves a heck of a case to solve. Let’s review the facts. The majority of American citizens spend too much time at work, and far too little time with non-work related activities such as family, exercise, and just plain doing nothing. Most people gain little satisfaction from their jobs and yet continue this painful ritual for 20-30 years. Since our team of forensic scientists were unable to find any law prohibiting anyone from leaving their job, it does beg the question, “so, if we don’t like it…why do we not change it?” One of those life mysteries that simply makes one go hmmmmm…

This blog is dedicated to all of you who have thought about the paradox of work in our lives. It is a place to ask questions, offer insights, share resources and generally work on our individual strategies for incorporating work into our world.