'Tis The Season For Karoshi, Fa-la-la-la-la...

Karoshi!

No, it’s not how they greet you when you enter your favorite sushi restaurant, it means “death from overwork”, and if ever there was a time to talk turkey about karoshi, it's now, before we all collapse from a combination of overwork and holiday prep.

If you've got time to read this cautionary tale, you're one of the lucky ones. You still have time on your hands. Consider Kenichi Uchino, the man from Japan who was in the news recently for dying on the job, literally expiring from overwork, after logging 80 hours of overtime a month for six months running, culminating in 114 hours extra followed by death in his final month.

Mr. Uchino collapsed on the Toyota factory floor before dawn in February, 2002. He was 30 years old. He's in the news now because his wife, God bless her, pursued his case in court for compensation, and finally, five years after he died, a Japanese court admitted he died of overwork.

I will never feel the same about my Camry again. It's a nice ride, but Kenichi, wherever you are, it wasn't worth it.

If you think Mr. Uchino's case is exceptional, think again. The Japanese government actually keeps track of cases of karoshi, and in 2006 an estimated 355 workers became severely ill or died as a result of overwork - and 819 reported suffering from work-induced mental illness, with 176 suicides or attempted suicides. These are the highest figures on record since the government began keeping karoshi stats in 1987.

Japan has long been recognized as the hotbed of crazy overwork, but here in North America, we're doing our best to catch up. Kenichi's 80 hours of overtime a month is pretty impressive, but that got me to examine my own work practices, and let me say without boasting that I'm no slouch - and I'm a lot older than Kenichi Uchino.

Lately, I turn up to my office at 6-6:30 every day. It's quiet at that time of the day and I also have to pay attention to what's happening on the East Coast, which is up and at three hours before the West Coast, where, thanks to how the time zones play out, we have a reputation for being slackers. I doubt if there's such a thing as a slacker any more.

The insane thing about the early arrival into the office is that work started an hour or so before that. Before I hit the shower and had breakfast, I was working on e-mail thanks to the "miracle" of Blackberry.

So, 350 emails and couple of dozen phone calls, a couple of reports and a couple of meetings later, it's 5:30. Hey, time to go to spin class or swim class, or the gym. Gotta stay fit for those automatic 11-hour days. And that's routine - special days come along when I work from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Notice I don't count the early e-mail work, not to mention the after-dinner e-mail sweep. The only time I am completely off the clock is between 9:30 pm and 5:30 the next day. The other 16 hours of the day, I'm at least on call.

What's really nuts is that there is nothing unusual about this. The next meeting I'm at, I'll be surrounded by people who are exactly like me. My wife is the executive director of an immigrant agency, a completely different form of activity, and her work is just as nuts. Pile on those nuts: we look forward to weekends so we can perform sustained tasks that can't be done during the week because of all the email interruptions.

So figure, on average: Five 11-hour days a week plus another 6-8 hours of work on the weekend. Add 5 on-call hours a day during the week and another 3-6 on weekends. That's almost 70 hours week on the clock, or two times a typical union-regulated shift. So multiply 35 times 4 and that's 140 extra hours a month. We should be in the Karoshi Hall of Fame! Also known as the cemetery! Yikes!

This cannot continue. Now that we're on the verge of the "holiday" season, this should be an opportune time to chill out, throw another log on the fire, sit back and snooze over a bowl of eggnog...ha! Nope, it's time to put it into logistical high gear: fight traffic, find parking space at the mall or the supermarket, buy gifts, mail cards, plan menus, cook, clean, decorate, socialize, plus do all that other stuff. There is no relief until you end up in Karoshiville. And then there's nothing but relief, endless relief.

I suspect that often I'm thinking like I assume Kenichi Uchino used to think, I can't let down the team, the project, the company, the client, the creditors, the kids, the side, the ideals, the values, the high opinion of oneself. But really, who are we fooling? Is all this extra work getting us anywhere? I mean, global warming, war in faraway lands, Dancing with the Stars? Has our quality of life improved one stinkin' iota?

Don't think so. I suspect (and so do you), that if we cut our hours in half, nothing would happen. At least nothing bad. As it is, we're always behind now. I'm running out of excuses for all those similarly addled people who expect me to answer their emails at 3 a.m. or 9 p.m. If I cut my hours in half, it's conceivable that I could actually think for a few minutes, and thereby have an original thought, as opposed to the misshapen, list-driven, mental abomination that stands for thought in the year 2007.

OK, so here it comes, my first 2008 New Year resolution: In 2008, I will resolve to work 8 hours a day, no more, no less. If something happens after those eight hours expire, it will wait until tomorrow. Unless someone sets fire to my butt. I mean literally, mere exhortations won't get me going. I'm doing this to honor Kenichi Ochino and all the other poor souls who have gone beyond the reach of the time clock into that uncharted, unbillable realm, the Big Sabbatical.

During the other 16 hours of the day, I resolve to enjoy myself, even try to do a little good for my world and the people in it. And if this one goes the way of all my other New Year's resolutions, don't worry, I'll be back to work in no time!