“What does it profit a man if he gains the entire world and loses his soul?”
Matthew 16:26
Last night, after an exhausting day at work, I went out for dinner with my wife. But my brain was so tired that it was difficult to hold a proper conversation. At one point, she asked me a question and it took me a full 5 seconds to process it and answer (she counted). When we got home, I wanted to read a book and pray, but I could only muster enough energy to scroll through YouTube before falling asleep.
It’s days like these that make me wonder that maybe I’m working a little too hard.😄
Today, I came across two articles about what it means to experience true leisure on Maria Popova’s excellent blog The Marginalian. Reading them made me realise that my ideas of “work” and “leisure” needed a complete overhaul.
So, I decided to write this post as a reminder to myself.
The Cult of Productivity
We live in a cult of productivity: Hustle culture, startup grind, #workhardplayhard are now such common terms that they’ve become cliches. Figures like Elon Musk and Bill Gates inspire us to regularly forgo leisure in the name of “making an impact” and “building a legacy”. Our phones keep us constantly connected to our emails and chats. “Quiet quitting” is a derogatory term, even though it actually just means… doing work.
Ironically, I think people who like their jobs are actually more susceptible to the cult of productivity. In a job you hate, it’s easier to draw boundaries and simply do the bare minimum. But if you like your job, a lot of the motivation comes from within. In his book Drive, Dan Pink says that motivation comes from having autonomy, mastery and purpose. For example, I put in extra hours because I want to get good at my job and craft beauty into my work.
This is all well and good and there’s obviously a place for productivity and motivation. Without them, we wouldn’t get AI and self-driving cars and put food on the table. But when they are taken too far, they also come at a cost. We are working longer hours. Increasing numbers of young people are on some sort of anxiety medication.
Worst of all, we run the risk of seeing work as the be-all-end-all of our existence. As German philosopher Josef Pieper writes in Leisure, the Basis of Culture:
What is normal is work, and the normal day is the working day. But the question is this: can the world of man be exhausted in being “the working world”? Can the human being be satisfied with being a functionary, a “worker”? Can human existence be fulfilled in being exclusively a work-a-day existence?
In his essay In Praise of Idleness, Bertrand Russell wrote about the role of leisure in reclaiming our human dignity in a culture of busyness. Leisure reminds us that we exist not simply to work and be productive, but that we are composite beings – made to rest and celebrate and experience reality in all its glory.
Okay, so does it just mean that we need to leave the office on time? That certainly helps, but as we’ll see, the answer isn’t so simple.
Why Instagram and Netflix Aren’t the Same As Leisure
Have you ever had an entire evening of free time, but spent it binging Netflix or scrolling through social media? Or perhaps going out with your friends on Friday night, downing beers while talking trash? Instead of feeling recharged, that usually makes me feel more exhausted the next day.
According to Pieper, it’s important to distinguish between leisure and empty idleness. Empty idleness demands that we fill it with some sort of distraction like movies, gossip, drinking, or social media. These are the opioids in which we use to numb ourselves from the stresses of work. In the same way that busyness keeps us distracted from being present, empty idleness distracts us from the true rest that our souls yearn for.
In fact, empty idleness might be one of the biggest causes of our overwork in the first place! Pieper reflected that “the restlessness of work-for-work’s-sake arose from nothing other than idleness.”
Many of us experienced it when we were working from home during the Covid lockdowns. Since we had nothing better to do other than binge on TV shows and YouTube, we worked even harder because that was at least “productive”. In turn, our overwork only made us feel more exhausted, causing us to turn towards more media, continuing the Cycle of Emptiness.
So, if empty idleness isn’t the answer, what is?
A clue lies in Pieper’s definition of leisure as a condition of the soul. Maybe it’s not so much about what activities we’re doing, but rather what our state of Being is. To help us understand this better, Pieper lays out a helpful framework of thinking about leisure as the opposite of the three elements of work:
- While work is an activity, leisure is a state of stillness
- While work is an effortful industriousness, leisure is a celebration
- While work is a social contribution, leisure is an end in itself
Let’s look into each element in more detail.
From Activity to Stillness
We’re often so busy jumping from one task to the next, that we don’t give ourselves a chance to reflect on why we’re doing all this activity in the first place. Pieper describes how leisure is necessary for us to pause and recenter ourselves around our present reality:
Leisure is a form of that stillness that is necessary preparation for accepting reality; only the person who is still can hear, and whoever is not still, cannot hear. Such stillness is not mere soundlessness or a dead muteness; it means, rather, that the soul’s power, as real, of responding to the real… has not yet descended into words.
Blaise Pasal famously said that “all of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone”. Is it any wonder that mindfulness has taken off in such a big way? If we could learn to pause, recenter, and refocus, maybe we’d remember that life is not just about movement and speed. But that there is merit to being still, fully immersed in the present moment.
From Effort to Celebration
Work, of course, takes effort. Effort is rewarding, and our brains release dopamine whenever we check off a task, deliver a big pitch, or close a project. But at the same time, we often forget to celebrate those wins. Recently, I led the organising team for a big conference at work. The event went well, but once it ended all I did was to have a celebratory glass of wine. Then, my brain immediately refocused itself onto the next project. It was as if all those months of hard work had simply evaporated, and all that was left was the next thing.
Pieper warns against this mentality and emphasises the importance of embracing the spirit of joy and celebration when we’re at leisure:
Against the exclusiveness of the paradigm of work as effort, leisure is the condition of considering things in a celebrating spirit. The inner joyfulness of the person who is celebrating belongs to the very core of what we mean by leisure.
When I was in the Army, we’d go for 3-week long overseas exercises. These were usually gruelling and stressful, but at the end of it we’d always have a big celebration dinner and a few days of R&R. We weren’t drinking to escape from the daily grind, we were drinking to celebrate our achievements and each other. We’d recount stories, make fun of each other, toast our MVPs, and overall just revel in the feeling of being joyful.
Sometimes, in the midst of responsibilities and worries and obligations, we often forget what it means to have joy. Leisure is a way for us to reconnect with that state of being
From a Means to an End
Most of us see Sundays as a day to recharge to be more productive for the work week ahead. Yet, according to Pieper, this is a completely backward perspective. Leisure is not merely a “break” we take to work harder later, but is an end in itself:
Leisure is not there for the sake of work, no matter how much new strength the one who resumes working may gain from it; leisure in our sense is not justified by providing bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to lend new vigor to further work… Nobody who wants leisure merely for the sake of “refreshment” will experience its authentic fruit, the deep refreshment that comes from a deep sleep.
In the Biblical book of Genesis, God created the world in 6 days and rested on the 7th. But God didn’t rest so that He could work more. He rested because He wanted humanity to see work as a means towards leisure, not as an end in itself.
That’s why the Sabbath is celebrated all around the world for Jews (on Saturdays) and Christians (on Sundays). In the Judeo-Christian understanding, the Sabbath isn’t a “break”, it’s the end towards which we work towards. As David Perell writes:
“The Sabbath doesn’t serve the weekdays. The weekdays serve the Sabbath. It is not an interlude, but rather the climax of the week where even the thought of productive labor is prohibited. Only then can people celebrate the joys of friends, family, and contemplation. Even God needed the seventh day to look back at his work and affirm it as Good, and yet we cannot take time from our yoga classes and self-help videos to do the same with our meager office jobs.”
The purpose of leisure isn’t so that we can work more. Instead, we work so that we can claim our leisure as its rightful and proper end.
Conclusion
I’m writing this lying on a couch on a bright and breezy Saturday. My wife is next to me, crocheting a pouch – something she learned recently. We’re going for a massage in a bit, but beyond that, we don’t have any plans.
There’s always a temptation to fill this empty space with more activity, a new TV show, or even more work, but I’m reminded that this rest isn’t for the sake of some bigger goal. This IS the goal, to have our souls at rest, to reclaim our human dignity, and be one with the people we love. I’ll leave you with this final quote from Pieper:
Leisure… is not the same as the absence of activity; it is not the same thing as quiet, or even as an inner quiet. It is rather like the stillness in the conversation of lovers, which is fed by their oneness.
Note: This post was inspired by Maria Popova’s reflections on leisure on her excellent blog The Marginalian: Leisure, the Basis of Culture and In Praise of Idleness. Read them during your leisure time 🙂
