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In an age of information technology where we have a plethora of gadgets for this and that, a new study has revealed that more people than ever are working overtime.

This new trend is driven by employer purchased phones and laptops, which leave employees feeling pressured to remain on call 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Things are getting so serious that the study by the Australian Institute has created a new term: Time Pollution.

Time pollution
The Australian Institute study has shown that the line between personal time and work time is becoming more and more blurred, leading to a phenomenon it dubs ‘time pollution.’

According to the Institute, time pollution occurs when a worker’s personal time is eaten up or ‘polluted’ with work demands, driven by the creation of flexible work hours.

Workers on call 24/7
Despite our long-held notion of a 40 hour nine to five working week, many employees are now finding themselves on call 24/7.

As the demands of work and employer expectations rise, employees spend more time working from home in addition to the office.

The main culprits of time pollution and round the clock work hours are bosses themselves. The Australian Institute study found employees provided with  laptops or smartphones by their bosses  were more likely to feel they were constantly on call – often producing devastating effects on their health.

In fact, the study found that more than 6.8 million Australians are working during their personal hours.

Work life intrudes on personal life
One of the advantages of gadgets like smartphones is that they allow you to access emails anywhere, anytime.

The biggest disadvantage, of course, is that means you can access your work emails during your private time.

Thanks to technology, the line between work hours and personal hours is extremely blurred. We no longer start and finish at a set time or only have access to work information while in the office.

Technology now allows us to work from home or other remote destinations – which means we are more likely to work  in personal settings.

While the ability to work from home is certainly advantageous for some, for others it means always being at work.  It can therefore become difficult for employees  to distinguish between being at work and being at home.

The distraction of technology
Today’s technologies are often addictive and distracting. Email, SMS and phone calls, not to mention Facebook and Twitter, can make it more difficult for us to focus on our work, regardless of whether we’re working from home or in the office.

We’re regularly required to answer emails immediately regardless of the time of day, while the need to check our friends’ Facebook status can prove an addiction all of its own.

At no point in recent history has there been so many distractions fighting for a worker’s attention. This could be a primary reason why many employees find themselves working overtime at home in order to ‘catch up’ on work left unfinished during work hours.

Email over family
According to a study by Cambridge University, family life is taking a backseat to email and social media.

Gone are the days of family dinners to catch up on the family gossip – these days emails, SMS and status updates are used to keep family in the loop.

As a result, family members spend too much time each day catching up on personal emails and social media, distracting them from valuable family time.

Whether we like it or not, more of us are spending more time at work (unpaid) even when we’re at home. This not only impacts on our health but our social wellbeing too.

While it can be difficult to ‘switch off’ from work, especially if you’ve got a company phone and laptop, it’s important to do so for your physical, mental and social health.

So next time you find yourself checking your work email on a weekend, stop and tell yourself you’ll deal with it on Monday. You’ll be glad you did.

Written by Andrew Talati

A mystery public vegetable garden has just appeared in our local park, Edinburgh Gardens.

The timber planter boxes seem to be made from recycled pallets. What a great idea!

Inside the veggie box are a mixture of tomatoes, spinach, beetroot, corn, lettuce and even strawberries. They’re all looking mighty healthy. It’s a great example of how a vegetable patch can still flourish in an asphalt and dirt environment.

Sadly, it’s only a matter of time before the City of Yarra removes the guerilla planter boxes. The council requires that such projects go through the usual administrative channels to determine a suitable location in the public space.

Well, as a City of Yarra ratepayer, I’m more than happy to have this left for the community to enjoy.   North Fitzroy is littered with Victorian worker’s cottages, and most have very limited space to create a working veggie garden.

Perhaps this might inspire council to create a community space for projects just like these – and then they could be enjoyed by all the local residents.

Such public gardens have already been successful at CERES environmental park and  the Collingwood Children’s farm – but we could always do with more.

And, by the way, if you’re looking to create your own veggie garden at home, Sustainable Gardening Australia have a great handbook.

Written by Andrew Talati

This cordless Secateur from Bosch – the Ciso – is one of new range of body energy saving devices that raise some interesting questions about how much more sedentary our lives can become.

In Australia we’re experiencing an increase in the average house footprint with a corresponding decrease in the size of the average suburban block.

But even with shrinking gardens and smaller lawns, we’re also seeing a corresponding increase in the number of energy-saving devices that reduce our level of  physical exertion.

Everything has become powered these days. We now use hedge trimmers and leaf blowers where once we just got out the broom or large secateurs. And it’s taking a toll on our physical health.

While cordless secateurs are a great invention for those suffering from an impairment or injury that restricts their full range of motion, there are concerns whether there is really enough demand to produce such a product.

There’s an old saying – use it or lose it .  Over a lifetime, being sedentary leads to the possibility of insufficient grip strength to perform even simple tasks. Muscles atrophy and waste away through inactivity.

A common test to determine someone’s biological age is the “Grip strength” test.  Using a pair of secateurs is one practical example where a deterioration in grip strength affects a simple task such as pruning a rose bush.

And with concerns about the implications of global warming and conspicuous consumption, a great way to reduce the impact on the planet of landfill and the associated disposal of toxic chemicals from batteries – and keep our grip strength into old age -  is to use our plain old, battery-free secateurs.

Written by Andrew Talati

Given the crazy, hectic lives most of us now lead, we all need some strategies to make life more enjoyable and less stressful.

Here’s some ideas to keep you on track:

1. Write a to list and prioritise
With so many tasks to do in our everyday lives, it’s easy to become overwhelmed.

A great way to manage this ever expanding list is to write it down and prioritise from 1 to 4 – where one is very urgent and very important and 4 is non-urgent and not important.

If you’re having difficulty trying to pigeonhole a particular task or everything seems very important and very urgent, then ask yourself, ” If I only had one day to achieve everything, what would really need to be done first?”  Then put those top priorities on your level 1 list.

2.Identify the noise
Quite often we get easily distracted  by things that seem important in our lives but can easily be downgraded to remove stress and anxiety.

This includes constantly checking e-mails, updating our social media status or other trivial tasks that consume a lot of our time but make little difference to our quality of life.

Try turning off the computer, phone or iPad for a while.  Use your extra time to relax by reading a book or listening to music.

Alternatively, if you’re at work, try to resist the temptation to hit the send and receive button on your e-mails. Multitasking has been scientifically proven to be less productive so concentrate on the task at hand instead and extra minutes will magically appear in your day.

3.Use the 80/20 rule
The universal concept that 80% of what you achieve comes from only 20% of what you are doing seems to hold well for both work and personal tasks.

Basically that means most of us spend 80% of our time on stuff that really doesn’t matter.

Relating it back to our 1 – 4 task list, we spend most of our time on tasks we think are of low importance but urgent.

4. Take time out
We’ve become working machines.

We rarely down tools during the day, work through our lunch break or, even worse, eat our lunch in front of our computers.

It appears as if we’re being more productive, but we’re not.  Taking a break every hour – whether it’s getting up to grab a glass of water from the kitchen or going for a lunchtime walk – gives our brains an opportunity to relax and recharge.

In the long-term, high-volume working is far less productive. We become mentally fatigued, lose concentration and become more easily distracted. There’s even even a growing body of evidence that suggests that working in excess of 8 to 10 hours per day causes our level of coherence, concentration and focus to deteriorate proportionately for each additional hour we spend at work.  Overwork impairs our behaviour. The resulting mental fatigue can be likened to the effects of alcohol consumption.

5. Work to live not live to work
No matter how fantastic your job may be, never forget it only represents one part of your life.

Humans are social beings. We need to regularly interact in a social environment and develop nurturing relationships with our friends and family.

Set aside time to catch up with friends and family every week. You rarely hear of people on their deathbed expressing regret at not having spent more time at work.

On the contrary, when we reflect on our quality of life we reflect on our relationships and how they enrich us. We spend less time reflecting on how great we feel about a hard-earned promotion for extra income or a new job title.

Written by Andrew Talati

While the secret to a long, healthy life may be theorised, a Greek study highlights the relationship between longevity, eating a healthy diet and getting sufficient sleep.

The study of Ikariathat island residents in the Aegean was conducted between June to October 2009.

Amazingly 1.1% of the population were over 90 years old, compared to 0.1% for the rest of Europe.

On Ikariathat, the main diet consists of fresh fruit and vegetables, legumes and fish mixed in with the regular consumption of olive oil. Unlike many westerners,  sleeping habits included an afternoon siesta which gave the residents’ bodies time to rebuild and replenish from the day’s activities.

Like most things in life, taking a common sense approach to living a healthier lifestyle is challenging, particularly given the rigors of everyday life. When you add up too many commitments, too little time and all too consuming activities, it’s clear we’re neglecting the basic principles of optimum living.

With so many processed food manufacturers and restaurants happy to fill this void, we need to find the time to get back to the basics of eating less processed foods and more fresh fruit and vegetables.

Set a target of cooking one additional meal using fresh ingredients and forget the processed additives that can make the procedure a lot faster or more convenient. Try making your lunch for 2 -3 days per week. Not only will it save you thousands of dollars every year, your heart will thank you for it.

Written by Andrew Talati