There seems to be this mentality held by some creative people and even non-creatives who are working the daily grind that being busy all the time means you are the most productive person on the planet. That your self-worth is somehow tied up with how damn busy you are all the damn time. The busier you are, the more packed your schedule is, the more proof there is that you are working much harder than your peers or colleagues. And this is what defines us as people.
September 2015, directing Daughter in St Kilda.
I confess that I was one of these people around four or five years ago. I use past tense as now I'm more chilled and sometimes less productive than I have ever been. I still get stuff done but in healthy moderation. Even with my full time job, I get home and manage to smash out a couple of hours working on an investment deck or marketing for one of my films.
While producing and writing my film Daughter back in 2015 I was at my busiest and totally lost control of my work/life balance, my sanity, and also my physical health. I became the project, totally engrossed 24/7 in the writing with no workday deadline and sometimes not even stopping to eat. I had no desk at home so I would write hunched over on my mattress. During that time I was unemployed, so I lived and breathed the film, completely absorbed in the roles of writer, director, production designer and co-producer.
In addition to writing and developing the film, I would hit the streets to meet people for funding and sponsorship, apply for government grants, promote the film on social media, research online, attend the Drop in-centre for more research and also answer audience queries about the film and discuss violence against women, victim-blaming and current cold-cases almost every day.
Clearly, I had a workaholic nature and the word 'delegate' was not in my vocabulary. Whenever people would ask me how I was doing, I would look at them blankly and my reply was almost instantly, “Oh man, I am so busy. So, so busy.”
Even on social media, I would tell people how busy I was – it even became like a personal game for me, if someone was busy working on a project, I was much busier. I had to post about what I was working on. I had to let everyone know how busy I was because being busy is associated with being successful and hard-working. I mean, who is to say I was not, right?
But how busy is too busy?
In Japan, there is an intense work culture defined by arduously long hours where people in different fields are working themselves to death for dignity and peer expectations. In 2013 a journalist named Miwa Sado, after working overtime to the tune of 159 hours a week each month died of a heart attack at age 31. That is an extreme case, but it is all too common, and there is even a Japanese word for it – karoshi – invented to describe deaths caused by work-related stresses and pressures.
Now four years on from my own experience of being so busy that I collapsed into a sudden post-shoot depression, I am nursing extreme inflammation in my neck, back, shoulders, and my whole spine, caused by bad posture, stress and muscle tension while working on Daughter.
Speaking to a classroom of TAFE students at a Daughter Screening, Melbourne Australia August 2016.
I remember sitting on a poor fold-out wooden chair for almost ten hours so I could write the press release for the film and email a multitude of news outlets just before the premiere. When standing up to leave my office I felt a massive pull in my right shoulder. A sharp pain caused me to wince and my muscle was stiff; moving hurt. All the tension, stress, bad seating positions, lack of exercise and sleep, plus lack of general self-care resulted in a long term injury. Finally, I am doing something about it and seeing a chiropractor weekly, but being too busy cost me in the end.
We tell ourselves pushing the mind and body to the limit is harmless for a short term project; it's just a few months because you have a deadline or a launch looming, and why not when you love your job or you are creating something life-changing you are passionate about? I had to do it for the film to succeed and looking back it can be said I did a lot in a short time.
This is supposedly what the employees at Rockstar Games were doing when they were aiming to complete the game Red Dead Redemption 2 – reach a deadline and release a fantastic product. Co-founder Dan Houser let slip in 2018 that the staff were working 100 hour weeks in the lead up to launching that game, however, he backtracked to say it was only himself and a couple of other head writers doing those insane hours. But by then it was too late to take back, with many employees stepping forward and speaking up about the pressure-filled and difficult working culture at the company where overtime was always expected.
A new view that I have taken on in the last couple of years, part of my revelation you could say, is to cultivate work/life balance. I am always seeking better time management, setting new habits, separating my job personality from my personal self (“You are not your job,” thank you Fight Club), seeking hobbies that are not work-related, being conscious of my workstation setup and generally making sure I find time to stop and enjoy each day, rather than work, work, work.
I also take personal days when I need them – there is no shame in taking time off to rest and focus on your health. Maybe living in Malta for the past three years, an island where the lifestyle is more relaxed and things generally move at a slower pace, has changed me. If so, it is a change for the better and I am grateful.
There is so much more to life than work and being busy. It took me this long to learn it (I’m turning forty next year), injury, breakdowns, and years of stress, but now that I have learned to slow down I am making sure I don’t forget. There is a proverb in Malta that goes “gawdi ghax mid-dinja m’ghandna xejn”, and it translates to “have fun because we have nothing from this world.” It is meant to encourage us to live life to the full because, at the end of the day, we will not take any earthly possessions with us to the grave. So I’m taking care of myself and enjoying myself. It is never too late to relax.
Written by Sarah Jayne.