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This is something which the Future Laboratory, www.thefuturelaboratory talked about last year. The article entitled Bleisure, was published on LS:N, their trend insight portal and can be viewed at www.lsnglobal.com . As the writer of the article, I agree that those boundaries have become blurred but I looked upon it as something positive. It's no longer about working your ass off and then freaking out and having to take me-time or a 3 month sabbatical. It's more about always working and playing at the same time. You don't experience extreme stress in this new setup. You don't therefore need escapes. Isn't that a healthier way to live?

This is something which the Future Laboratory, www.thefuturelaboratory talked about last year. The article entitled Bleisure, was published on LS:N, their trend insight portal and can be viewed at www.lsnglobal.com . As the writer of the article, I agree that those boundaries have become blurred but I looked upon it as something positive. It's no longer about working your ass off and then freaking out and having to take me-time or a 3 month sabbatical. It's more about always working and playing at the same time. You don't experience extreme stress in this new setup. You don't therefore need escapes. Isn't that a healthier way to live? Miriam Rayman

My 15 minutes of fame are up? Not! The quest for recognition is the real driving force behind the so called "proffesional".
Look, you got a job, you're not such a much, just do your job, and then go live your life without it until the next shift. Blending your work life with your private life only brings that same mentality to play, thus obscuring your reality.
What is important? Positioning yourself for a sloppy kiss to some corporate shills nether regions, or actually doing your job for what it's results are? New age my ass. Slackers need a new perspective, not this drivel.

Interesting take on new-age professionals, Mr Conley.
http://blogs.livemint.com/blogs/career/archive/2009/01/22/work-and-anxiety.aspx

Ridiculous to say that Americans work more than the citizens of any other industrialized nation. The Japanese work far, far more. Perhaps the Japanese government keeps statistics that purport to show the Japanese work less than Americans, but that's just based on "official" hours. Nearly everyone in Japan puts in hundreds of "unofficial" hours of unrecorded overtime every year. I just moved from Japan to the U.S., and I can tell you, there's a lot less work pressure here.

Distracted and tired by working so much, our lives fueled by a media driven consumer culture, chock full of the ubiquitous signs of an addictive form of slavery (cell phones, laptops, texting, IMing, email, TIvo, Wii, computer games, shopping), we've become devotees to the God of anxiety. As a consequence, we've allowed ourselves, our families, our culture, our nation, and now even our planet, to falter disastrously.

You're employed, quit ya bitchin'!

Growing up, there was a clear distinction between work and home. Now, I have tons of work stuff at home and home stuff at work, mostly by necessity. I take my work computer home with me every day just to keep up with those people who send after-hours emails.

The only way to get people to work like this is to give them meaningful equity stakes that will allow them to retire early. Otherwise people will burn themselves out or rebel in non-productive ways.

Excellent article. This totally describes what has happened to my life. The more I earn and the more successsful I am the more work I have taken home. My employers are intelligent in that they have offered lucrative bonus incentives that augment my base salary for doing extra work projects from home. In one way it is nice that I can access everything on my desktop from home since it is all computerized and I have remote access from my laptop or PC. So instead of staying in the boring, suffocating office I can go home and get work done between taking care of the kids, doing household chores and some leisure activities such as blogging or watching a program or movie. The bonus projects I get to do from home are short but time dependent. They require fast, high quality output so only a select few are given the opportunity to do them. Since they are numerous and optional I can cherry pick projects that I know I will enjoy working on rather than ones that are pure drudgery. The result is that I efficiently earn enough income in a few hours a night that my wife would make in an 8 hour shift. She hardly works anymore and she has been able to directly invest time in the children rather than ship them off all of the time and all of the crazy details of daily life are much better organized at home. However it does create an atmosphere where you don't want to stay at work longer than needed since you can do alot of the work at home and when you are home you always have the feeling that you should be doing some work related activity instead.

I work at Google and it is a myth that Googlers work non-stop. Few show up before free breakfast at 8am and few linger after free dinner at 8pm.

You know, I grew up the daughter of a single working mom who didn't have much time for the kids. And mom, I turned out pretty terrific. I have my bachelors, masters, and am almost at completion of my professional degree. I played sport in college, served in the military. Unfortunately, there is the ever tone that if parents can't spend the time with their children, they are doing something wrong. Writers don't make this comment in words, but sadly, it's implied all too often that working so much away from the home, you must be hurting your children.

The fact is, we needn't be so dramatic. Especially in today's economy, people must realize that family life and values don't have to be so intricately tied to the number of hours a person spends away from their children. I didn't really mind before, this argument about working or staying at home, but I've had enough. I'm tired of people silently dismissing the women and men that have had to work (nevermind a choice- many of us don't have it) away from their children. Raising a well-adjusted, successful, happy child does not have to be related to how or where a parent works. Many people, like my mother, managed. Why is it anymore difficult for people now???