“Anything But Work”: Viget During Downtime

We talk a lot about work-life balance around here. We proudly offer benefits like 15 paid days off (and more earned over time), 9 paid holidays, 2 community service days, and flex hours --  all to ensure that everyone has enough time to pursue their thousand-and-one hobbies, hang out with family and friends, and maybe even just relax. And we share informally all the time about our various extracurricular activities. Our tweets humble-brag about home-brewed beer, home-bred bees, and home-baked cookies. We hear tell at FLF of amateur tennis tournaments, family picnics, and puppies. And our Yammer feed last week featured an endless stream of unbearably adorable baby photos.

In fact, so rife is Viget with evidence of rich lives lived that we decided it was time for cold, hard data on the matter. After all, as Ovid once said, "In our leisure, we reveal what kind of people we are." What exactly do Vigets do with their spare time? (Besides win money on national television.) And what kind of people are we? We conducted a highly scientific survey about leisure activities pursued in the past three months (March, April, and May of 2013). Here are some of our groundbreaking discoveries.

Over half of Vigets did the following:

And exactly 61% of Vigets did each the following:

Perhaps most impressive for a digital agency, roughly the same number of Vigets have read fiction in the past three months (65%) as have played a video game (67%).

And it was heartening to learn that, while Vigets stay very, very busy during their time off, they also know how to take breaks:

Who would have guessed that 14% of Vigets have flown a kite in the past three months? Or that 20% of us have done a somersault? Or that 41% of us have spoken a language other than English? Or that 71% of us have woken up before 6am to make time for all these things?

Also noteworthy are these activities anonymously offered in the survey’s Comments section:

Noble pursuits, indeed.

In conclusion, as Abraham Lincoln once said, "I never did like to work, and I don't deny it. I'd rather read, tell stories, crack jokes, talk, laugh -- anything but work." Just kidding. We love our work. In fact, a few Vigets named pursuing personal web projects as a hobby, despite its overlap with their professional work. For many of us who are passionate about our work and industry, "work" inevitably bleeds across the "work-life" divide.

In conclusion, rather, we seem to have learned what we've known all along: Vigets make up an eclectic and talented bunch. As the proverb says, "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." Survey says… no dull Jacks or Jills around here.

Design Credit: Joseph Le.