October 24th 2009 has been chosen for two celebrations that this year, for the first time, have been connected to each other. The first one is TAKE BACK YOUR TIME, a North American initiative that everybody, no matter where they live, should take very seriously and personally.

Time is the only thing in your life that you can’t increase. You can only take steps (eating well, avoiding drugs and so on) to not reduce your theoretical life expectancy. After that, you can only maximize the percentage of that time that you spend well, that is doing things that really matter.

In its original form, Take Back Your Time is firstly about fighting the USA "epidemic of overwork" that comes from not having enough guarantees of at least a few days of paid sickleave and/or vacation. The Right to Vacation section of the website has all the details, including a paper by Joe Robinson which explains how "Vacations are vanishing. Only 14% of Americans will get a vacation of two weeks or longer this year. A third of women and a quarter of men get no annual leave anymore… Its time to protect vacations before they disappear altogether."

The time issue, however, is much more general. Lack of quality time or "time famine" is a real problem worldwide, every day, even for people who have a secure job which guarantees paid vacation days. Most of them would agree that they have never enough time to really rest or do really important things. Do you too belong to that category?

This year, Take Back Your Time has decided to connect with the other worldwide event taking place on October 24th, 2009: the "Day of Climate Action" of the 350.org international campaign 350.org. Why? Because "chilling out by reducing working hours and unnecessary consumption", can also reduce global warming. Unnecessary travel, for example, creates pollution without a good reason. Think to your job: was that meeting in another city really needed, or was it just an occasion for somebody to show off and justify their salary?

Stop!/Zona-M will regularly provide simple and useful information on how knowledge, participation and new technologies can create more efficient services, helping all us to Take Back Our Time and live in a healthier world. For today, we only invite everybody to look at the 90 seconds explanation about 350.org, to think about how these two issues are related and to not change channel on TV if they're covered in the news. If you have celebrated Take Back Your Day or the Climate Action Day in some special way, please let us know!