'We've become a nation of workaholics'

Need more evidence that the Five Day Weekend is the way of the future? May we present a new story by MSNBC titled "Take that vacation — it could help your career."

The article tackles America's workaholism and prevalent attitude of "rest is for the weak." What some companies are realizing is that healthy happy employees are better employees. Shocking!

Here's the meaty center of the article:

Companies are beginning to realize the benefits of vacations for their weary workers — fewer sick days, smaller health care bills and a more motivated workforce.

Unfortunately, not all employers get this, and sometimes it’s the workers themselves that don’t get this, either. They have a perverted view that not taking time off and keeping their nose to the grindstone will advance their career, or keep their jobs from ending up on the chopping block.

But in fact, it could lead to burnout, emotional and physical illness, and end up jeopardizing their careers, their lives.

So keep that in mind.

BTW: Today's photo is via gerryriskin.com, a lawyer blog that tackled the issue of workaholism.

France's 35-hour workweek gets a punch in the croissant

There's a lot of international buzz today about a shorter workweek, but we have to admit we're not involved this time. (Except for this item, which taught us the delightful term "Seppo.")

France's newly elected president, Nicolas Sarkozy, spent a good chunk of his campaign being critical of his country's 35-hour workweek. Of course, he hasn't exactly promised to do away with it, either.

This is a good chance to point out that our plan isn't the same as the way France approached it. We don't want a government cap on what you can work. We simply want our legislators to acknowledge that overwork is an ever-worsening ailment in America, and businesses have few incentives to fight the trend.

One intriguing aspect of Sarkozy's plan is to make overtime pay be tax-free. Sounds good in the sense that it keeps the government from benefiting when you're overworked. But at the same time, it also creates a system where you're rewarded based on how much you work instead of how well you work.

And that's just un-American.

Thursday Thirteen, Five Day Weekend style

Thirteen things you didn't know about the Friends of the Five Day Weekend:

1. We are not alone.

2. Actually, there are more than 500 of us just on MySpace.

3. And thousands have signed the petition

4. Our plan might save lives.

5. We're not the first to propose this.

6. We really enjoyed this guy's take on overwork.

7. Our site, Fivedayweekend.org, is currently ranked 168,348th on Technorati.

8. We won't be happy until we're 145,208th.

9. Our bus, the Work Less Express, literally stopped working after the Atlanta rally. We were so proud.

10. But now it's back, and it's barreling toward Greensboro, N.C.

11. As much as we've researched the history of time off, we still learned a lot from this great article.

12. We're honored to be endorsed by SpiderElvis.

13. We are chagrined to find ourselves working on a Thursday, two days into the weekend. But that's how much we care.