Meet John de Graaf, editor of Take Back Your Time
Take Back Your Time is the official handbook for Take Back Your Time Day, a national event. Organizers have enlisted the
support of colleges, universities, religious organizations, labor unions, businesses, activist groups, and non-profit organizations to create events that will take place across the country, calling attention to the ways overwork and lack of time affect us-at home, in our workplaces, and in our communities-and to inspire a movement to take back our time.
In Take Back Your Time, well-known experts in the fields of health, family therapy and policy, community and civic involvement, the environment, and other fields examine the problems of overwork, over-scheduling, time pressure and stress and propose personal, corporate and legislative solutions. This book shows how wide-ranging the impacts of time famine in our society are, and what ordinary citizens can do to turn things around and win a more balanced life for themselves and their children.
Listen to the interview with John de Graaf recorded on October 15, 2008 for Bookends.
John de Graaf is the national coordinator of "Take Back Your Time Day," an annual event scheduled for October 24th, and a frequent speaker on issues of overwork and over-consumption in America. He is often a guest lecturer on college campuses. John is the co-author of the best-selling "Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic" (Berrett-Koehler, 2001). He is the editor of "Take Back Your Time" (Berrett-Koehler, 2003) and of the children’s book, David Brower: Friend of the Earth" (Henry Holt, 1992).
De Graaf has worked with KCTS-TV, the Seattle PBS affiliate, for 23 years, as an independent producer of television documentaries. More than 15 of his programs have been broadcast in primetime nationally on PBS. He is also the recipient of more than 100 regional, national and international awards for film-making. He produced the popular PBS specials, "Running Out of Time," an examination of overwork and time pressure in America, and "Affluenza," a humorous critique of American consumerism.
Prior to his work in TV, de Graaf was public affairs director for KUMD radio in Duluth, MN. He has taught documentary film production at The University of Washington and the Evergreen State College. He is the founder of the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Festival and the former president of the Hazel Wolf Environmental Film Network. He is also the recipient of the Founders of a New Northwest Award for his work in environmental media. He is also the co-chair of the Public Policy Committee for the Simplicity Forum, a national think tank for the voluntary simplicity movement.