VIDEOS FROM THE 2010 GREEN FESTIVAL IN SEATTLE

Gross National Happiness Seattle Panel with special guest Karma Tshiteem

This panel on Gross National Happiness (GNH) was convened at the annual Seattle Green Festival, June 6, 2010.  Speakers include activist authors Vicki Robin, Cecile Andrews and John de Graaf, as well as Anjani Millet, founder of GNH World, and special guest, Karma Tshiteem, director of the Gross National Happiness Commission of Bhutan, the tiny Himalayan country which first promoted the idea of GNH. 

The event was part of a campaign to bring GNH measurements to Seattle, and challenge Seattle to be one of the happiest cities!  The first step would be to conduct a city wide survey using multiple questions to determine life satisfaction in such life dimensions as:  material prosperity, economic security, time balance, environmental quality, community vitality, social connections, democratic governance, health, and subjective well-being or mental health. For more information visit http://www.gnhworldproject.com/GNHWP/Welcome.html.

VIDEOS FROM THE 2009 NATIONAL VACATION MATTERS SUMMIT IN SEATTLE

“Why Vacations Are Good for Business” – Joe Robinson

Joe Robinson is a work-life business consultant and author of WORK TO LIVE: the guide to getting a life.  In this talk, Joe discusses studies on the effects of leisure on workers and business.  The conclusion is clear.   Sufficient vacation time makes workers happy and healthier, increases productivity and creativity, and has the potential to save businesses billions of dollars a year.  Here are some highlights:

“In the 1920s… what they found was that employees did a better job when they were rested …John Patterson of National Cash Register promoted vacations for his employees, not out of the goodness of his heart, but because it actually resulted in better productivity.” “The biggest supporters of this [vacation] legislation should be business owners... but most of them are caught up in what I call the burnout model; just keep working until the paramedics arrive…and the science totally does not support it.”

“Job stress costs American businesses 344 billion dollars a year….40% of turnover is due to job stress. The remedy is so simple: more time off.”

"Heart Break: The Impact of Vacation Time on Coronary Health and Workplace Stress" – Sarah Speck, MD

Sarah Speck, MD, is a Cardiologist at Swedish medical center.  In addition to treating patients, Dr. Speck leads a group of health professionals in educating people about living an integrated, healthy lifestyle aimed at reducing the deleterious health effects of bad habits and stress.  In her talk, Dr. Speck gives a physiology lesson on what happens in our bodies when we experience stress.  The affects of stress range from shoulder aches and lack of sleep, to depression, heart attacks and death.  Vacations give us a chance to make good lifestyles, recover from stress, and practice active relaxation.

Some highlights from Dr. Speck’s talk:

“We all know stress is bad, but why is that? …Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in this country… and unfortunately it’s not confined to the United States…As we import not only our diet, not only our sedentary lifestyle, but also our work ethic to places like Northern Europe, and to China in particular, you can see that the incidence of cardiovascular disease is increasing; in fact, it’s only dwarfed in the African subcontinent because of the prevalence of AIDs.”

“Practice active relaxation…You feel calmer, you feel more tranquil, your immune function improves… You stop having headaches, back aches, shoulder aches, you improve your sexual function, and you have increased energy, simply by practicing active relaxation. You improve your sleep, you improve your productivity, you improve your impulse control: there are less anger outbursts, you improve your memory and concentration, you have quicker recovery of the mental imbalance when you are confronted with stress…”

“Why I Support Paid Vacations as a Physician and a Small Business Owner” – Arnold Pallay, MD

Arnold Pallay, MD, is the Medical Director of Changebridge Medical Associates in Montville, New Jersey, past president of his State Specialty and County Medical Societies and Clinical Asst. Prof. of Family Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.  In his talk at the Vacation Summit, Dr. Pallay discusses his personal experience with vacation time as a family physician and small business owner.  He emphasizes the importance of giving his employees time off, and argues that it is something every business should make a priority.  Dr. Pallay also relates his observations of time issues in his patients. The benefits of vacation time for employees and clients are obvious; all that remains is spreading the word.

“Reducing Stress and Depression with Vacation Time” – Peter Fraenkel

Peter Fraenkel is Associate Professor of Clinical and Environmental Psychology at The City College of the City University of New York, and Founder and Director of the Ackerman Institute for the Family's Center for Work and Family.

Peter Fraenkel discusses the connection between mental health and work stress.  A spiral of depression can occur if there is no break from work stress: the work stress creates relationship stress at home, which in turn increases stress at work.  Vacation provides a chance for the parasympathetic nervous system to recover and bring people out of depression.

"Vacation, Travel, and Life-Transforming Experiences" -- Suzy Ross
Suzy Ross is a professor of Recreation Therapy in the Department of Hospitality, Recreation and Tourism at San Jose State University, California and leads transformative travel to sacred sites. In this talk, Suzy discusses transformative experiences, and research showing that travel can be used to bring about major life change and aid the integration of these transformative experiences (e.g. childbirth, marriage, death, retirement, divorce) into daily life.
"Vacations and the Slow Life" -- Cecile Andrews
Cecile Andrews is the author of CIRCLE OF SIMPLICITY, SLOW IS BEAUTIFUL, and LESS IS MORE. She teaches at Antioch University in Seattle, Washington.

Cecile provides an inspirational template of what “simple” life should look and feel like.  Not a life of deprivation, but a life that is content to move slow and appreciate the things that truly add value to our lives.  She emphasizes that vacations help keep alive the basic instinct for leisure, reminding us there is more to life than work and the bottom line.

"Distraction-Free Vacations" -- Mara Adelman
Mara Adelman, an associate professor in the Department of Communications at Seattle University.  New technologies have prompted an escalated state of distraction and erosion of attention, even in such novel experiences as travel. Mara discusses this in her talk, asking: is there any way out?
 "The Economic Crisis as an Opportunity to Re-think What Matters" -- Cathy O'Keefe

Cathy O'Keefe teaches leisure and recreation at the University of South Alabama in Mobile. She is a member of the Take Back Your Time board of directors. 

Cathy focuses on the connection between vacations and spirituality.  To "vacate" means to empty something so that something more sublime and beautiful can emerge. Vacations allow us to be present in wonder, awe, creativity, rest, freedom, growth and renewal. 
VIDEOS FROM THE 2009 GREEN FESTIVAL IN SEATTLE

“Time, Vacations, and Sustainability” – John de Graaf

John de Graaf is the director of Take Back Your Time.  John is also the author of Affluenza: The All Consuming Academic, the producer of several documentary films, and is constantly working with politicians and leaders to improve time balance in our society.

“To put it simply, my view is that to become sustainable on this finite planet we must begin immediately to trade productivity increases for time instead of stuff.”

The pressure to choose “the goods life” over “the good life” is creating havoc in so many aspects of our lives.  We are increasingly unhealthy, unhappy, and unaware.  Our politicians don’t even have time to read the bills they are passing in Congress.  John drives these points home with statistics and studies from all different angles: health, society, economics, politics, and environmentalism.  After going over the history of labor in the US and in other parts of the world, John discusses legislation that has been introduced at the State and Federal level, and why we should support it.

The U.S. Census Bureau in the past decade dubbed 3.4 million American workers "extreme commuters":  commuters who drive more than 90 minutes to, and from, work (it used to be defined as an hour).  At least two percent of Americans are waking up to these commutes of 90 minutes or more one way.  Not surprisingly, most of these workers live near major metropolitan centers; New York, New Jersey, Maryland, California, and Washington, D.C., have the most workers with extreme commutes.  As the prevalence of these extreme commuters continues to increase (it skyrocketed 95 percent in the U.S. between 1990 and the late '00s), albeit at a lower rate since the global recession, and as highly polluting stop-and-go traffic on urban roadways also increases, the personal, environmental, and social benefits of the widescale adoption of Four-Day Workweeks will also increase. 

The number of workers with commutes lasting more than an hour grew by almost 50% between 1990 and 2000.  According to the 2000 U.S. Census, the commuting miles driven by Americans went up by 15 percent during the 1990s and rose even further during this first decade of the new century (although probably dropping since the recession started).  Meanwhile, the number of Americans who walk or bicycle to work is about four percent -- compared to Europe's 20 percent!

All of this data supports the environmental -- and social -- benefits of moving as many American workers as possible onto a Four-Day Workweek -- one that is less than 40 hours in length, so the individual days are less than ten hours each.  Reducing the number of hours that define the standard full-time American workweek would make it easier for the U.S. to widely adopt the Four-Day Workweek -- for example, in four nine-hours a week (a total of 36 hours) or even four eight-hour days (a total of 32 hours).