hours of rest, and get rotated on and off their vessels to avoid burn out, exhaustion and the inevitable mistakes that operating at less than 100% usually results in.
Meanwhile, in yachting, hours are for the most part, still crazy. And many crew love to tell everyone they haven’t had a day off since last year. “We’ve been so busy, just back to back charters, I haven’t had a full night’s sleep in months, but the tips are worth it!” they declare, with eye bags so prevalent they’d be charged excess baggage at the airport. And the longer this goes on, the more proud we seem to be of ourselves for completely ignoring the fact we’re exhausted, fed up, burnt out and let’s face it, about to get horribly sick the moment we do get some time off.
So why have we bred this culture of overworking? Why do we praise it, why are we happy to be taken advantage of, and why are we so adamant it’s something to be smug about? It seems we’re guilty of equating longer hours with achievement. We are giving ourselves purpose. And possibly working ourselves into an early grave.
Well, it doesn’t help with the big guns of the world bragging about this work ethic. Elon Musk of Tesla said nobody “ever changed the world on 40 hours a week”, and went on to state that 80 hours was a sustainable number. He reportedly works up to 120 hours a week. When does he sleep?! Apple boss Tim Cook is a notorious workaholic and starts sending work emails out at 4am, and regularly runs 5 hour meetings. Good grief. I hope he supplies coffee and donuts by the bucket load.
Meanwhile on the flip side, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos claims to have a great work life balance, getting 8 hours sleep a night, having breakfast with his family and never sets his alarm clock. Which sounds lovely but then what about his employees? Amazon’s been in the news repeatedly over the past few years due to staff being pushed into working overtime whether they like it or not, being expected to answer work calls throughout the night, and working so hard in the warehouses to meet ridiculous targets they’ve had to pee into bottles to avoid losing time in bathrooms.
Look online, and you’ll see that overworking not only increases mental health problems (anxiety, depression, even suicide). Harvard carried out a study and found that working overly long hours increases the risks for Type
2 diabetes and, even more worryingly, heart attack and stroke. Cheerful reading huh? So what can we do to better look after ourselves during the season?
We all know the drill, when it’s busy, it’s hella busy and self care can take a huge back seat – that being said, don’t forget that self care can just be having a nice hot shower, and sleeping 8 hours. If you can’t be bothered to do some yoga, go for a run, a swim etc, that’s ok. Watch some
some time for yourself away from yachting entirely. If you don’t want to get on a plane and visit family and friends back home - then don’t. Just have some of that ‘me time’, it’s OK to go somewhere on your own to relax, reflect and re-charge the batteries so just do it!
An engineer told me a couple of weeks ago he’d only taken 16 days leave in the past year and cited a range of excuses but seriously, come on. Take a week off,
Haven’t you noticed how your productivity goes down the toilet when you’re tired? Work stops being fun? Even the smallest things can tip you over the edge when you’re worn out, and yes, that does explain why the stewardess was in tears when she overflowed the salt shaker.
Netflix, read a book, call a friend, whatsapp your mum, or have a nap. Don’t make self care as competitive as the hours you work.
Again, crew and let’s face it a hell of a lot of other landbased people compare themselves to others constantly on social media, and when they see one of their Instagram ‘friends’ (I’d rather say connections, because are they really your friends in the actual sense?) claiming they just took some ‘me time’ to ‘meditate and clear my mind’ whilst getting someone to take a photo of them on the bow looking serene at sunset, start to feel guilty that when they finally got a few hours off they jerked off and watched Game of Thrones. Maybe simultaneously.
I’m not judging. Self care is self care my dudes, you do you. Literally if you want. And when the season is over, make sure you take a proper break. For the love of God, take your holidays. Don’t be a ‘hero’ because if you drop down with exhaustion and are forced to take time off during a crossing or when the boss is on, nobody is going to thank you for it. Least of all your body. It’s not big, and it’s not clever, so go on, take that bloody leave!
Do not book in courses which will consume all of your leave days (try to negotiate some unpaid leave if the yacht won’t pay you for doing your courses), make sure you have
go sit in a spa if you can’t get home due to covid restrictions, hike up a mountain, do nothing but recharge and your quality of work upon your return will skyrocket.
Haven’t you noticed how your productivity goes down the toilet when you’re tired? Work stops being fun? Even the smallest things can tip you over the edge when you’re worn out, and yes, that does explain why the stewardess was in tears when she overflowed the salt shaker yesterday. And why the captain locked himself in the bridge and refused to open the door for half an hour.
Sometimes we just. Can’t. Even. And that’s OK. it’s just important that we recognise these situations for what they are and put plans into place to rectify the situation.
Book your time off and get planning what you will do, where you want to visit (global travel restriction permitting) and just do it!
When you have some exciting things to look forward to your whole mentality will change, it will give you new purpose. Then you’ll be surprised how more often than not, you’re actually excited to return to work and get cracking in the madness once again.
And if you’re not, well that’s when you need to make some changes… but that’s a topic for another day. Stay well out there!
ONBOARD | AUTUMN 2021 | 35
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148 |
Page 149 |
Page 150 |
Page 151 |
Page 152 |
Page 153 |
Page 154 |
Page 155 |
Page 156 |
Page 157 |
Page 158 |
Page 159 |
Page 160 |
Page 161 |
Page 162 |
Page 163 |
Page 164 |
Page 165 |
Page 166 |
Page 167 |
Page 168 |
Page 169 |
Page 170 |
Page 171 |
Page 172 |
Page 173 |
Page 174 |
Page 175 |
Page 176 |
Page 177 |
Page 178 |
Page 179 |
Page 180 |
Page 181 |
Page 182 |
Page 183 |
Page 184 |
Page 185 |
Page 186 |
Page 187 |
Page 188 |
Page 189 |
Page 190 |
Page 191 |
Page 192 |
Page 193 |
Page 194 |
Page 195 |
Page 196 |
Page 197 |
Page 198 |
Page 199 |
Page 200 |
Page 201 |
Page 202 |
Page 203 |
Page 204 |
Page 205 |
Page 206 |
Page 207 |
Page 208 |
Page 209 |
Page 210 |
Page 211 |
Page 212 |
Page 213 |
Page 214 |
Page 215 |
Page 216 |
Page 217 |
Page 218 |
Page 219 |
Page 220 |
Page 221 |
Page 222 |
Page 223 |
Page 224 |
Page 225 |
Page 226 |
Page 227 |
Page 228 |
Page 229 |
Page 230 |
Page 231 |
Page 232
