September 4th, 2009
In the Work/Life Balance, Where Is Recuperation?
Adam Morgan presents a strong piece of data in his re-release of Eating the Big Fish.
In a discussion about the changing demands of the consumer he cites a statistic from a recent study: “94% of all American adults stated that a primary use of their free time was to recuperate from work.” (p. 15)
It’s a subtle shift to think about our free time as ‘recuperation time’ versus ‘leisure time,’ but critical to understand in the context of our lives today. Every working person knows the psychological/physical limbo of the period between the workday and home life; that period of absent presence where your body is at home with the family, but your mind is spinning on something left undone at work. It can last for minutes, hours or days depending.
No wonder we drink. No wonder we turn on the TV. No wonder we spend our weekday evenings doing a good impression of an inanimate object when some outdated section of the brain is saying, “you really ought to be working on that novel you’ve always wanted to write…” or “how about practicing your harmonica?”
Numerous times I’ve heard people mourn their lack of a hobby. I’ve watched friends pick up new interests and then drop them in frustration. Book clubs dissolve. Paints sit unused. Dance routines are forgotten. We blame ourselves or consider it a lack of initiative. But, who can blame us. Leisure can be work.
Adam points out the effect this recuperation time has on the way people relate to advertising, especially as it involves the evening television veg out, “In this context, when their prime evening motivation is recuperation and escape, advertisers have moved beyond being clutter. They are no longer in the communication business, they are in a new kind of business altogether: the nuisance business.” Noting that advertisers’ response to consumer filtering has been to turn up the volume and plaster ads on every visible surface he asks a good question: “Are we not pouring kerosene on the problem…?”
All the Days Before Tomorrow full
Think about it. We’ve assumed that the person receiving our ad on the subway, in a magazine or watching Mad Men is in a receptive state of relaxation. 
That’s a good time to hit them with a message, no? Well…no. If the person riding home, flipping the pages, or vegging out is trying to recuperate, then he’s absolutely closed to anything that makes a request of him. Recuperation is a supremely self-centered state. It has to be. One has to get back into one’s skin. Trying to sell someone while they’re working themselves out is – as Adam points out – not only ineffective, but annoying.
This helped me understand my own experience of free time. Moving forward I am going to incorporate this idea into my interviews with consumers. Understanding when and how they might be receptive to messaging requires understanding when they are recuperating and when they are recuperated.
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince
As for the rest of us…Maybe becoming aware of the fact that we need recuperation time will engage us in more active, more mindful, relaxation so that we might get it out of the way and recapture our free time for those things that don’t just rest our soul, but feed it.
Stir of Echoes: The Homecoming trailer порно фото мама с сынам
posted by schuyler brown
Filed Under: Skyelab