Reading passage 2 

Stress of Workplace 

A. 

How busy is too busy? For some it means having to miss the occasional long lunch; for others it means missing lunch altogether. For a few, it is hot being able to take a “sickie” once a month. Then there is a group of people for whom working every evening and weekend is normal, and franticness is the tempo of their lives. For most senior executives, workloads swing between extremely busy and frenzied. The vice-president of the management consultancy AT Kearney and its head of telecommunications for the Asia-Pacific region, Neil Plumridge, says his work weeks vary from a “manageable” 45 hours to 80 hours, but average 60 hours. 

B. 

Three warning signs alert Plumridge about his workload: sleep, scheduling and family. He knows he has too much on when he gets less than six hours of sleep for three consecutive nights; when he is constantly having to reschedule appointments; “and the third one is on the family side”, says Plumridge, the father of a three-year-old daughter, and expecting a second child in October. “If I happen to miss a birthday or anniversary, I know things are out of control.” Being “too busy” is highly subjective. But for any individual, the perception of being too busy over a prolonged period can start showing up as stress: disturbed sleep, and declining mental and physical health. National workers’ compensation figures show stress causes the most lost time of any workplace injury. Employees suffering stress are off work an average of 16.6 weeks. The effects of stress are also expensive. Comcare, the Federal Government insurer, reports that in 2003-04, claims for psychological injury accounted for 7% of claims but almost 27% of claim costs. Experts say the key to dealing with stress is not to focus on relief—a game of golf or a massage-—but to reassess workloads. Neil Plumridge says he makes it a priority to work out what has to change; that might mean allocating extra resources to a job, allowing more time or changing expectations. The decision may take several days. He also relies on the advice of colleagues, saying his peers coach each other with business problems. “Just a fresh pair of eyes over an issue can help,” he says. 

C. 

Executive stress is not confined to big organisations. Vanessa Stoykov has been running her own advertising and public relations business for seven years, specialising in work for financial and professional services firms. Evolution Media has grown so fast that it debuted on the BRW Fast 100 list of fastest-growing small enterprises last year—just after Stoykov had her first child. Stoykov thrives on the mental stimulation of running her own business. “Like everyone, I have the occasional day when I think my head’s going to blow off,” she says. Because of the growth phase the business is in, Stoykov has to concentrate on short-term stress relief—weekends in the mountains, the occasional “mental health” day—rather than delegating more work. She says: “We’re hiring more people, but you need to train them, teach them about the culture and the clients, so it’s actually more work rather than less.” 

D. 

Identify the causes: Jan Eisner, Melbourne psychologist who specialises in executive coaching, says thriving on a demanding workload is typical of senior executives and other high-potential business adrenalin periods followed by quieter patches, while others thrive under sustained pressure. “We could take urine and blood hormonal measures and pass a judgement of whether someone’s physiologically stressed or not,” she says. “But that’s not going to give us an indicator of what their experience of stress is, and what the emotional and cognitive impacts of stress are going to be.” 

E. 

Eisner’s practice is informed by a movement known as positive psychology, a school of thought that argues “positive” experiences—feeling engaged, challenged, and that one is making a contribution to something meaningful—do not balance out negative ones such as stress; instead, they help people increase their resilience over time. Good stress, or positive experiences of being challenged and rewarded, is thus cumulative in the same way as bad stress. Eisner says many of the senior business people she coaches are relying more on regulating bad stress through methods such as meditation and yoga. She points to research showing that meditation can alter the biochemistry of the brain and actually help people “retrain” the way their brains and bodies react to stress. “Meditation and yoga enable you to shift the way that your brain reacts, so if you get proficient at it you’re in control.” 

F. 

Recent research, such as last year’s study of public servants by the British epidemiologist Sir Michael Marmot, shows the most important predictor of stress is the level of job control a person has. This debunks the theory that stress is the prerogative of high-achieving executives with type-A personalities and crazy working hours. Instead, Marmot’s and other research reveals they have the best kind of job: one that combines high demands (challenging work) with high control (autonomy). “The worst jobs are those that combine high demands and low control. People with demanding jobs but little autonomy have up to four times the probability of depression and more than double the risk of heart disease,” LaMontagne says. “Those two alone count for an enormous part of chronic diseases, and they represent a potentially preventable part.” Overseas, particularly in Europe, such research is leading companies to redesign organisational practices to increase employees’ autonomy, cutting absenteeism and lifting productivity. 

G. 

The Australian vice-president of AT Kearney, Neil Plumridge says, “Often stress is caused by our setting unrealistic expectations of ourselves. I’ll promise a client I’ll do something tomorrow, and then [promise] another client the same thing, when I really know it’s not going to happen. I’ve put stress on myself when I could have said to the clients: Why don’t I give that to you in 48 hours?’ The client doesn’t care.” Overcommitting is something people experience as an individual problem. We explain it as the result of procrastination or Parkinson’s law: that work expands to fill the time available. New research indicates that people may be hard-wired to do it. 

H. 

A study in the February issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology shows that people always believe they will be less busy in the future than now. This is a misapprehension, according to the authors of the report, Professor Gal Zauberman, of the University of North Carolina, and Professor John Lynch, of Duke University. “On average, an individual will be just as busy two weeks or a month from now as he or she is today. But that is not how it appears to be in everyday life,” they wrote. “People often make commitments long in advance that they would never make if the same commitments required immediate action. That is, they discount future time investments relatively steeply.” Why do we perceive a greater “surplus” of time in the future than in the present? The researchers suggest that people underestimate completion times for tasks stretching into the future, and that they are bad at imagining future competition for their time. 

Reading passage 3 

DESTINATION MARS 

Mars is the closest potentially habitable planet. It has solid ground, protective surface features, a thin atmosphere, more closely mimics the gravitational and lighting conditions on Earth, and is reachable - just. Most importantly, studies have found that this planet has vast reserves of frozen water, and there are other basic minerals as well. In contrast, the closest heavenly body - the moon - is dusty, barren, hostile, and dark. Settlement of the moon would be much easier, but since there are no resources there, it would ultimately be more costly and of little use. If there is any extraterrestrial site where humankind will ultimately settle, it must be Mars. 

Yet this planet is much more distant than the moon, making the logistics daunting. Food, water, oxygen, and life-support systems for such a journey would be too heavy for current rocket science. Technological innovations would be necessary, and the timing of the trip absolutely critical. The different orbits of Mars and Earth mean that they most closely approach each other every 26 months, but this event itself fluctuates on a 15-year cycle. This means that only once in that time does a launch window open. That is quite few and far between, yet missions must necessarily leave at these times. 

The trouble is, even then, the journey to Mars and back would take over a year, and the human body suffers profoundly when left in micro-gravity for that length of time. Without the need to stand, there is almost no flexing or pressure on the back or the leg muscles. These gradually shrink and weaken, while bones lose their density, and lungs their aerobic capacity. When left long enough in space, astronauts are unable to function properly. Yet these people will need their full physical strength and alertness for the many operational duties required. These include docking in space, approaches and landing on Mars, remote manipulation of machines, and dealing with any emergencies that arise. 

Another hazard of such duration in a hermetically sealed spacecraft is disease. Human bodies constantly shed waste material (sweat, skin-flakes, hair, moisture, mucus, and the products of digestion), all of which allow microbes to breed prolifically. Coughs and sneezes spray fluids into the air, which, without gravity to pull them down to surfaces, simply float as airborne particles in those cramped confines, causing easy microbial exchange between crew members. Bacterial infections and fungal attacks can be prevalent, and human immune systems are weakened in micro-gravity. Thus, a long mission to Mars would require the best air-cleansing system available, rigorous disinfecting and hygiene procedures, plus an excellent supply of antibiotics. 

On reaching Mars, the problems only increase. Staying on the planet for any significant length of time will be difficult. In the absence of a thick protective atmosphere or magnetosphere to burn up or deflect objects, respectively, astronauts will be exposed to potentially lethal UV radiation, micro-meteoroids, solar flares, and high-energy particles, all of which regularly bombard the surface. Spacecraft and land-based capsules will need special shielding, which adds to the weight and expense. Construction of living quarters will be time-consuming, difficult, and dangerous. For a longer stay on Mars, the only solution, it seems, is to go underground. 

One of the most interesting discoveries in this respect is of possible cave entrances on the side of Arsia Mons, a large Martian volcano. Seven such entrances have been identified in satellite imagery, showing circular holes resembling the collapse of cave ceilings. The hope is that these may lead to more extensive cave formations, or perhaps lava tubes, offering the protection necessary in such a hostile terrain. An additional benefit is the potential access to vital minerals, and most importantly of all, the possibility of frozen water. These sites therefore open up the possibility of independent and permanent settlement on this planet. 

The most exciting option is to attempt that on the very first trip - in other words, making it a one-way journey. The advantage is that the duration of space travel is immediately halved, reducing the technological, biological, and financial challenges. This very strong argument is somewhat offset by the difficulties in establishing a permanent presence, as well as the necessary ongoing commitment to it - for example, in the delivery of food and supplies via unmanned spacecraft. Similarly, the psychological effects on these pioneers of permanent isolation from Barth and its community, as well as being crowded into confined Martian living quarters with the same companions, raise issues of whether such a settlement is humanly feasible. 

This begs the question of why undertake such missions at all. The answer, according to proponents, is that it is our destiny. Throughout history, explorers have regularly embarked on journeys in the full knowledge that death may await them, or that even if they succeeded, their health and wellbeing would be severely compromised. And today, people regularly practise extreme sports, or work in dangerous occupations, all of which significantly lower their life expectancy. The risks involved in being a Martian pioneer are no different, and so, it is argued, there is no reason why they should deter us now.