What is the "The Rat Race"?

“It’s getting harder and harder to make ends meet. I wish I had more time to spend with my kids. I wish I had an extra $500 a month. I need more fun in my life. I’m ready to do something for myself. I wish I could quit my job”.

Statements and phrases of this nature are becoming everyday language in conversations among middle-class and lower-wage earning workers. Articles and cover stories are appearing more frequently in various magazines and newspapers. Everyday we force ourselves to get up and go to our “J.O.B.”, and we remain miserable for the duration of the day. Customer service begins to suffer because the jobs are all being filled with unhappy workers that despise working the hours, commuting back and forth to work, never having time for their family and friends, and getting paid just enough to barely survive until the next paycheck. This paycheck-to-paycheck cycle leaves us tired and drained of all energy and motivation. Our health suffers because we cannot afford to miss a day of work due to feeling ill.

Millions of Americans say they feel overworked and stressed out. Many say they want to work fewer hours and find a better balance between responsibilities at home and work. The number of people who work more than 50 hours a week has steadily grown in recent decades, feeding the complaints about long hours. Large surveys have found that while as many as one in six couples would like to have both partners work part-time, only one in 50 couples obtains such an arrangement.

Some economists, sociologists, and psychologist say the paradox arises because of the changing nature of the workplace. In a growing number of professions, mainly those involving thinking and social skills, company managers and owners are finding it increasingly difficult to measure the day-to-day performance of employees. When making or manufacturing tangible products, it’s easy to measure employees’ performance based on the quality of the products. When work is intangible, and you have an indefinable product, there is a strong temptation to measure output in terms of hours worked. The focus on hours is responsible for this “rat race” at many companies, where most people want to work shorter hours, but no one is willing to step forward and ask for them, because the first person to make such a move will be branded as insufficiently committed to his or her job.

Though everyone would benefit if the race were called off, we’re all running just to stay in place, and no one can afford to lose their job by being the first to slow down. Employers are also paying the price due to this “arms race” of hours, not just in higher wages, but in the loss of talented people the race systematically filters out. Those that had a single flaw, they didn’t want to work the long hours.

Driving this rat race is our obsession with consumption and competition. We are constantly in competition with one another over who has the biggest house, the fastest and nicest cars, the flashiest jewelry, and we put ourselves in debt trying win. Researchers have asked people which they’d prefer: A world in which they made $50,000 but everyone else made half that; or one in which they made $100,000 and everyone else made twice that (prices staying the same in both worlds)? The majority of people preferred the first world. They would happily make less money, as long as everyone else made even less money. Therefore, as wages and available jobs continue to decrease, and the cost of housing, healthcare, and fixed expenses continue to rise, we “trap” ourselves in this situation forcing you, for instance, to work more hours to support a larger mortgage payment than you really needed. Thus losing the valuable time you could otherwise have spent enjoying a hobby or spending time with family and friends, leaving you less happy than you figured you would be with the big house.

But there is still a solution, there is always a solution. STOP. Pull out of the competition and look at it with a new pair of eyes. It’s time to unplug yourself. Do you feel as if your running a never ending rat-race and getting nowhere fast?