Read the article below and think about it before making a judgement. What if your school district DOUBLED your salary for next year. Would you feel more pressure to perform (whether is came from Admin OR yourself)? The doubling of your salary would make teaching a more attractive career choice for others. Would the prospect of more competition for your job add stress to your life? Many of you came from other professions where you made more money. Was the trade-off worth it--less money for more time off, more normal working hours AND a chance to make a REAL difference in kids lives? Does that not factor into your personal calculation of your overall quality of life, as well as a paycheck?
I am worth $50,000 a year for what I do. Am I worth $75,000? $100,000? If so, am I (or you) willing to pay the price to earn that salary? Do we make about the right amount to keep the wolves of undue stress at bay? I dont think these are unreasonable questions....
Go ahead, take your shots. Tell me where I am going wrong...Feeling Stressed? Blame Your Raise
People who complain about being pressed for time often blame an overload at work, home—or both. Now researchers are pointing to a surprising culprit: the pay raise.
Individuals who make more money tend to feel more time pressure, after controlling for a wide range of factors, according to “Time Is Tight,” an article in the latest issue of the Journal of Applied Psychology. The authors drew on an economic principle to explain the finding: The more value we assign to our time, the scarcer it seems to us.
The findings make sense to me. I’ve noticed a tendency in both family members and myself to rush around more after a promotion or raise, which seems to elevate one’s sense of importance as well as raising the economic stakes.
Researchers for decades have tried to explain why Americans feel so rushed, studying issues from longer work hours to growing use of technology to multitasking. But based on time-diary studies, neither actual time worked nor the amount of free time they have has changed enough to account for the collective sense of time pressure. Past studies have suggested that time-squeeze stress may be at least partly in our heads. The article suggests a general rise in affluence may at least partly account for the perceived time famine.
“It may be that rising income over the past several decades within many countries—a phenomenon that makes time appear more valuable—can help explain the so-called modern time bind,” according to the study by Sanford DeVoe, an assistant professor of organizational behavior at the University of Toronto and Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor of organizational behavior at Stanford University. Presumably, lower pay would lead people to feel less time pressure: If they aren’t being paid much, they may find it easier to go at their own pace and avoid getting stressed out.
The article encompasses five studies. The first, of 6,846 people in Australia over several years, found people felt more pressed for time as their income rose. A second study assigned 67 college students to a fictitious corporate job and told some to charge 15 cents a minute for their labor, and others $15 a minute. Although both groups did the same tasks for the same length of time, those who charged more reported feeling more pressure.
In two other studies, college students were asked to report their assets and then were made to feel either wealthy relative to others, or relatively poor. Those who were made to feel wealthy reported feeling greater time pressure. They also showed less patience and rushed more quickly through a reading assignment, compared with students made to feel poor.
In a final study, 427 people were encouraged to focus consciously on the value of their time by calculating their per-hour earnings. That awareness strengthened the link between income and perceived time pressure.
Readers, what causes you to feel time pressure? Does it have anything to do with your income? Or is it just clashing roles or a lack of help? Have you ever noticed feeling more time pressure after you get a raise?
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