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One additional challenge that will need to be addressed in Japan is unreported overtime (サービス残業). Often my friends, upon preparing for a day off, will work about 8 hours of overtime beforehand and not report it on the time and attendance systems at their companies. From my understanding, unreported overtime is not always reflected in most statistics; even when self reporting I bet many people forget all the unreported overtime they do. Another example is rounding down: work 2.5 hours of overtime but only report 2.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but one idea is to lock out work laptops after a time limit, or at least record overtime when a work laptop is being used.

Until we can begin to accurately track and measure the unreported overtime, we won’t be able to improve it.

Finally, I think working in multicultural teams helps. When you see your peers have diverse beliefs and actions about work and life, you may be more willing to take more time off, and more accurately report the overtime you do take.