In our relentless pursuit of productivity, we’ve developed a peculiar relationship with work—measuring it, optimizing it, defining ourselves through it. Yet our narrow conception of what constitutes “real work” increasingly fails to serve either organizations or the humans that make them. It’s time to excavate older wisdom about leisure, contemplation, and human flourishing that might illuminate a different path forward; one that recognizes the etymological irony that the word “business” literally means the “state of being busy,” while “negócio” (business in Portuguese) derives from the negation of leisure itself.

the prejudices of productivity

Consider this scenario I once presented during a learning experience with an organizational team:

Imagine entering a workspace with six people during regular working hours. One person responds to emails with intense concentration; another engages in an animated phone call with a client, gestures and tone conveying enthusiasm and confidence; a third meticulously arranges materials into organized piles; two others converse animately around documents and sticky notes, careful not to disturb their colleagues; the last sits slightly removed from the desk, gaze alternating unpredictably between an open book and the window before them.

When I asked participants what this description evoked, their responses were both amusing and revealing about our collective biases regarding “work.” Comments included: “Typical, some working while others stare at the ceiling” and “The one reading must be the boss” followed by “Or the boss’s favorite!” provoking widespread laughter.

Nowadays most work is considered “intellectual,” and we, paradoxically, remain quick to judge that someone reading isn’t really working, producing, or doing anything valuable. This contradiction points to a misalignment between our concept of work and the actual nature of knowledge creation, innovation, and human cognition.

What might this reveal about our relationship to productivity? I’ve often wondered why we rush to categorize certain activities as “real work” while dismissing others as indulgence or idleness. Have we become so enchanted by the appearance of busyness that we’ve lost sight of the varied landscapes of productive thought?
This prejudice persists even as organizations increasingly call for innovation, creativity, and work-life balance, presumably because these qualities are lacking.

It’s ironic that organizations simultaneously venerate and undermine the conditions that make these qualities possible. We praise creativity while systematically eliminating the contemplative space from which it emerges. We celebrate innovation while structuring work around linear productivity that precludes genuine breakthroughs. We encourage balance while subtly signaling that “real” dedication means constant productivity.

the etymology of work and leisure: a revealing archaeology

To understand how we arrived at this contradiction, I find myself drawn to the etymologies of words related to work and leisure across languages—linguistic fossils that illuminate deeper cultural attitudes.

Consider first the word “work” itself. The English term derives from the Old English weorc, ultimately from Proto-Germanic werką, which neutrally denoted action or deed. But examine its cousins in Romance languages, and darker associations emerge. The Portuguese “trabalho” and Spanish “trabajo” derive from Latin “tripalium”—a three-staked instrument of torture. French “travail” shares this etymology. The words for work in these languages encode suffering and coercion at their roots.

Similarly, “labour” stems from Latin “labor” meaning toil, trouble, or hardship. In Portuguese, its cognate “lavoura” specifically denotes agricultural work: physical, demanding toil working the land, a connection preserved in the English phrase “to till and labor in the fields.” This association between labor and physical hardship remains embedded in our conception of work, even as most contemporary employment bears little resemblance to agricultural toil.

Equally telling is the Portuguese “negócio” (business), which literally means the negation (neg-) of leisure (ócio). In ancient Rome, “otium” (leisure) was considered the natural state for free citizens. It was the time for contemplation, culture, and civic engagement. “Negotium” (business) was its negative: what one did when not engaged in the more valuable activities of leisure. We see similar patterns in English, where “business” literally means the “state of being busy”, defining the activity by its occupation of time rather than by its substance or purpose.

Meanwhile, “leisure” itself (from Latin “licere” – “to be permitted”) has undergone significant semantic narrowing, now commonly reduced to recreation or amusement rather than its original sense of freedom and permission for contemplative activity. The Greek word skhole and Latin schola—from which we derive “school”—originally referred to leisure, free time for learning and discussion. The contemporary conception of leisure as merely “time off” from productive work would be unrecognizable to earlier civilizations that recognized contemplation as necessary to cultural and intellectual development.

These etymologies aren’t just linguistic curiosities. They reveal historical shifts in how we conceptualize human activity and worth. The original understanding positioned leisure (contemplation, learning, civic engagement) as primary, with “business” as secondary, necessary but subordinate. Our contemporary paradigm has inverted this relationship, elevating work to primacy while relegating leisure to what remains when work is finished, or, worse, what is necessary for recuperation in order to be able to work again.

Josef Pieper, in his landmark work “Leisure: The Basis of Culture,” reminds us that leisure was not originally conceived as idleness or the absence of activity, but rather as a distinct form of engagement characterized by receptivity, celebration, and contemplation. “Leisure,” he writes, “is not the attitude of the one who intervenes but of the one who opens himself; not of someone who seizes but of one who lets go, who lets himself go.”^[1] This receptive openness stands in stark contrast to the contemporary emphasis on productivity as active intervention and control.

This reversal of priorities, from leisure as foundation to leisure as remainder, manifests not just in our conceptual frameworks but in everyday attitudes and practices. The advice we offer young people reveals how thoroughly we’ve internalized this inversion, as does our approach to structuring even our “free” time. If leisure once provided the cultural space from which meaningful work could emerge, how might we understand our contemporary predicament, where work has colonized nearly every aspect of human experience?

the two modes of being and our biological reality

This perspective manifests in common advice: “Enjoy school while you can… Once you start working, the good life ends.” What a peculiar philosophy! Suggesting that at 23, life’s quality drastically diminishes for the remaining five or six decades. Yet this sentiment reflects our collective resignation to the “total work” paradigm, where leisure exists only in the interstices between productive activities.
Our relationship with leisure has deteriorated so thoroughly that we now plan our vacations with the same efficiency tools we use for work projects. Yes, I’m talking about you, dear reader, who uses Excel or something similar to plan your vacation. We feel compelled to “maximize” our enjoyment, to ensure we’re “getting the most” from our time off, as if pleasure itself must be optimized for maximum return on investment. This isn’t leisure but work in disguise, the same productivity mindset applied to different activities. “Free time occupation” is one of the worst, and most stupid, human inventions—transforming the liberation of unstructured time into yet another domain requiring management.

I find John Cleese’s framework illuminating here. Beyond his Monty Python fame, Cleese describes humans as operating in two modes: “open” and “closed.” The closed mode focuses on execution, completing tasks, and addressing immediate concerns. The open mode creates space for exploration, connection, and creativity—where new ideas emerge precisely because we’re not pursuing them directly.^[2]

This dichotomy isn’t just philosophical, it’s reflected in our neurobiological reality. Our brains operate through two complementary networks: the “task-positive network” activated during focused, goal-directed activities, and the “default mode network” that engages when we’re not focused on external tasks. This default network—active during mind-wandering, daydreaming, and contemplation—plays a role in creativity, self-reflection, and meaning-making.

I’m struck by how this biological understanding illuminates the person gazing out the window in our opening scenario. Far from avoiding work, they might be engaged in the neural integration needed for breakthrough thinking. Our brains require oscillations between focused and unfocused states for optimal cognitive function; attempting to remain perpetually “on task” actually impairs performance over time.

The closed mode is necessary but insufficient. A life, or an organization, operating exclusively in closed mode becomes mechanistic, depleted, and ultimately ineffective even by its own standards of productivity. Yet contemporary work culture systematically privileges closed-mode functioning while treating open-mode activities as wasteful or indulgent. Worse, we’re expected, if not demanded, to maintain the efficiency of the closed mode while simultaneously exhibiting the creative openness of the open mode.

The Korean-German philosopher Byung-Chul Han diagnoses this condition in “The Burnout Society,” where he describes how we’ve evolved from disciplinary societies (defined by external constraints) to “achievement societies” characterized by the illusion of freedom that masks a deeper and more insidious form of control. “The achievement-subject,” he writes, “gives itself over to compulsive freedom, that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement.”^[3] We have become, in his words, “achievement-subjects” who exploit ourselves voluntarily in the name of self-realization.

The Greek concept of kairos—the right or opportune moment—offers additional insight here. Unlike chronos (sequential time), kairos represents a qualitative experience of time’s richness and appropriateness. Our productivity obsession traps us in chronos while making kairos increasingly inaccessible or accessible but terrible. We count minutes without experiencing them. We accumulate time without inhabiting it.

As I explored in another essay on the beauty of distraction^[4], what appears to distract us from immediate productivity often connects us to deeper currents of meaning and insight. The mind wandering from a spreadsheet to gaze out a window isn’t necessarily avoiding work but may be engaging in precisely the integrative thinking needed for genuine breakthrough.

the philosophical legacy of leisure

Our current predicament isn’t new but rather the culmination of a longstanding tension between different conceptions of work, leisure, and flourishing. Several philosophical traditions offer perspectives that challenge our productivity obsession and point toward alternative possibilities.

Hannah Arendt, in “The Human Condition,” distinguishes between labor, work, and action—categories that help us understand different dimensions of human activity. Labor refers to activities necessary for survival, producing objects meant to be consumed; work creates durable artifacts that last beyond their creation; and action constitutes the realm of politics, speech, and the creation of meaning through interaction. The modern workspace increasingly collapses these distinctions, treating all activity as labor—endlessly consumed and requiring perpetual production—while diminishing spaces for genuine work (creating lasting value) and action (meaningful engagement with others).^[5]

This flattening of human activity into mere labor connects directly with Josef Pieper’s concerns. Writing in post-war Germany amid urgent questions about rebuilding society, Pieper argued in “Leisure: The Basis of Culture” that true culture emerges not from utilitarian activity but from spaces of contemplative celebration. For him, leisure isn’t recreation but a form of receptive openness that allows for deeper engagement with reality. “Culture,” he writes, “depends for its very existence on leisure, and leisure, in its turn, is not possible unless it has a durable and consequently living link with the cultus, with divine worship.”^[1:1] While his framing includes religious dimensions, the core insight transcends specific theological commitments—genuine cultural development requires protected spaces beyond instrumental calculation. It clears a path to value the, let’s call it, spiritual dimension without being necessarily connoted with religion.

Robert Louis Stevenson complements these insights in “An Apology for Idlers,” arguing that conventional notions of industry often miss the deeper purpose of human existence. “There is a sort of dead-alive, hackneyed people about,” he observes, “who are scarcely conscious of living except in the exercise of some conventional occupation.”^[6] Against this deadened consciousness, he proposes idleness not as laziness but as attentive engagement with life itself—seeing, experiencing, and appreciating what the merely busy person misses.

Paul Lafargue extends this critique in “The Right to Laziness,” challenging the quasi-religious elevation of work as humanity’s primary purpose. Writing as Karl Marx’s son-in-law but developing a distinct perspective, Lafargue argues that the “right to work” championed by many reformers inadvertently reinforced capitalist logic by treating labor as intrinsically virtuous. Instead, he proposes the right to leisure—to time liberated from production—as necessary for human flourishing.^[7]

More recently, Jenny Odell’s “How to Do Nothing” explores resistance to the attention economy through practices of observing, questioning, and refusing participation in productivity metrics. Rather than literally doing nothing, Odell advocates for redirecting attention away from extractive economic systems toward bioregional awareness, community engagement, and contemplative practice.^[8] This approach resonates with my exploration of doing nothing^[9] as a conscious reclamation of unstructured time and thought.

These diverse perspectives converge around an insight: when work becomes totalized—when it colonizes every aspect of human experience—both work itself and the humans performing it become impoverished. The philosophical tradition demonstrates why contemporary workplace interventions so often fail—they attempt to address symptoms without challenging the underlying conceptual framework that positions productivity as life’s primary purpose.

the failure of superficial solutions

Given these insights about the nature of leisure and its relationship to meaningful work, it becomes clear why so many contemporary workplace interventions fail. Organizations have attempted to address the work-leisure imbalance through superficial additions—ping pong tables, meditation rooms, inspirational quotes on walls, “fun” team activities. I’ve watched these well-intentioned efforts proliferate while missing the point: leisure isn’t something that can be scheduled for 15 minutes between meetings or contained within a designated “relaxation zone.” It cannot be forced upon.

True leisure, as Pieper understands it, represents an internal attitude, a way of being that allows for receptivity, wonder, and the suspension of utilitarian calculation. It cannot be instrumentalized without being destroyed in the process. Making space for ping pong specifically to “boost creativity” transforms play into yet another productivity tool, undermining its nature. The moment leisure is justified by its contribution to work productivity, it ceases to be leisure and becomes merely work in disguise.

This points to a deeper contradiction in contemporary organizational thinking. Companies simultaneously demand innovation while creating environments that systematically eliminate the conditions that make innovation possible. They want creativity without contemplation, insight without incubation, transformation without the seemingly “unproductive” phases that all meaningful development requires.

The paradigm resembles what I’ve elsewhere called “emotional bureaucracy”^[10]—the administrative regimentation of our inner experience to align with organizational demands. We create elaborate approval processes for our natural impulses, maintain strict opening hours for vulnerability, and file away unprocessed feelings into psychological cabinets. This bureaucratization extends to creativity itself, which becomes subjected to timelines, metrics, and predetermined outcomes that misunderstand its nature.

This demand for continuous productivity and transparent results connects with Han’s analysis in “The Transparency Society,” where he examines how our cultural obsession with visibility, accountability, and quantification eliminates the necessary opacity where genuine thought and creativity develop. “Transparent communication,” he notes, “is communication that proceeds particularly smoothly because it levels out all singularities.”^[11] The demand for visibility and measurability inevitably flattens the idiosyncratic, ambiguous, and multidimensional aspects of human thought and creativity.

the biological and natural foundations of contemplative productivity

The failure of superficial workplace solutions becomes even more evident when we consider emerging neuroscientific evidence about how human cognition actually functions. Our productivity obsession doesn’t merely clash with philosophical wisdom—it contradicts our biological reality.

I’ve been struck by research on attention restoration theory, which demonstrates how directed attention—the kind required for focused work—is a finite resource that depletes with use. Environments that allow “soft fascination” (like natural settings or contemplative practices) replenish these cognitive resources. The person reading a book or gazing at nature isn’t avoiding work but potentially rebuilding the cognitive capacity that makes quality work possible.

This biological perspective reveals the error in stigmatizing apparent idleness. What appears externally as “doing nothing” may internally involve integration of information, creative connection-making, and perspective-shifting that structured, focused work cannot provide. Our brains, shaped by evolution, require these contemplative interludes—not as indulgences but as components of effective cognition.

The natural world offers a powerful metaphor for this necessity through the concept of fallow periods. In traditional agriculture, fields must periodically lie fallow—remaining unplanted for a season to restore soil fertility. The Portuguese term “pousio” captures this practice perfectly: the land must rest to renew its productive capacity. Without this recovery period, soil becomes depleted, yields diminish, and eventually the land becomes barren.

This natural rhythm of activity and recovery appears throughout ecological systems: forests require fire to regenerate; rivers need seasonal fluctuations to maintain biodiversity; even cellular metabolism depends on cycles of activity and recovery. The industrial mindset that demands continuous production without restoration contradicts not just our neurological reality but the patterns of the natural world.

What might our work environments look like if they were designed around this neurobiological and ecological reality rather than industrial-era conceptions of productivity? How might we recognize and honor the invisible but necessary cognitive work happening during moments of apparent idleness?

the psychology of uncertainty: leisure as health, work as pathology

This tension between natural rhythms and industrial demands extends beyond biological reality into psychological health. Argentine psychoanalyst León Grinberg offers an insight that illuminates our relationship with work and leisure: mental health correlates directly with one’s capacity to tolerate uncertainty, ambivalence, and ambiguity. Conversely, psychopathology manifests as an imperious need to control and predict.

This framework casts our contemporary work paradigm in a revealing light. The modern workplace worships precisely what Grinberg identifies as pathological markers: predictability, measurement, and control. Our organizational obsession with key performance indicators, strategic planning, and risk management reflects not just administrative preference but a collective psychological stance that cannot tolerate the unknown.

Leisure, by contrast, creates space for precisely those experiences that Grinberg associates with psychological health—engaging with uncertainty, embracing ambivalence, and dwelling comfortably in ambiguity. The contemplative gaze from our window-watching colleague might represent not just biological restoration but psychological integration—a rare moment of healthy uncertainty in a context that pathologizes it.

What if we understood work environments not merely as productivity spaces but as psychological ecologies? Might we recognize that our fetishization of predictability creates not just operational efficiency but collective pathology? And could we reimagine work as a context that cultivates not just productive output but psychological health through a more balanced relationship with uncertainty?
If our biological and ecological reality demands oscillation between focused activity and regenerative rest, our psychological well-being similarly requires movement between certainty and uncertainty, control and surrender, prediction and wonder. Our approach to human development must transcend narrow conceptions of “skill acquisition” that treat humans as productivity machines to be optimized.

from skills to virtues

The conventional response to workplace challenges typically involves developing new “skills”—time management, mindfulness, resilience—treating human capacity as a collection of discrete competencies to be acquired and deployed. This approach itself reflects the fragmentation at the heart of our work culture, where humans become assemblages of capabilities rather than integrated beings.

As I’ve argued in “Beyond ‘Soft Skills’”^[12], this fragmentation creates a false dichotomy between technical abilities and human qualities. We might make more progress by reaching further back—to Aristotle’s concept of virtues as excellences of character developed through practice and reflection. Unlike skills, virtues aren’t merely things we do but ways of being that integrate knowing, feeling, and action into harmonious expression.

This perspective suggests we need fewer “productivity hacks” and more cultivation of qualities like patience, wisdom, integrity, courage, and temperance. Rather than asking “How can I get more done?” we might ask “What kind of person do I want to become through my work?” or “How do I and the work I produce contribute to a greater good?” It’s cliché, I know, but we should stop treating it like one, and take these questions conscientiously and with consequence. Rather than optimizing for output, we might optimize for meaning, connection, and planetary flourishing (which encompasses human flourishing).

The Greek concept of arete—excellence of any kind, the fulfillment of purpose—offers a more integrated framework for thinking about human development in work contexts. It encompasses both technical mastery and ethical character without artificial separation, recognizing that how we work and why we work cannot be meaningfully divorced from what we produce.

temporal ecologies: reimagining our relationship with time

Before we can create spaces for contemplative work, we must first reconceive our relationship with time itself. I’ve often reflected on how the industrial revolution didn’t merely change how we work—it transformed how we experience time, replacing natural rhythms with mechanical ones. Factory whistles superseded sunrise and sunset; mechanical clocks replaced biological ones; time zones synchronized the world of work and the world itself. This shift represented not just a practical reorganization but a philosophical reorientation—time became something external to be measured rather than something internal to be experienced.

Contemporary workplaces generally operate within a singular temporal framework—what philosopher Henri Bergson would call “clock time” (chronological, homogeneous, quantitative). Yet human experience encompasses multiple temporal modes: the cyclical time of natural rhythms, the experienced duration of psychological time, the kairos of opportune moments.
What might work environments look like if designed around temporal diversity rather than temporal uniformity? Organizations could cultivate what we might call “temporal ecologies”—varied landscapes of time that support different modes of thinking, creating, and being. Such environments would acknowledge that:

•	Creativity requires “slow time”—expansive, unbounded periods for exploration and incubation
•	Implementation may benefit from “structured time”—bounded periods with clear beginnings and endings
•	Regeneration needs “cyclical time”—patterns of engagement and disengagement that honor biological rhythms
•	Innovation emerges from “liminal time”—transitional periods between structured activities where unexpected connections form

In my own experience, I’ve found that my most valuable insights rarely emerge during scheduled “thinking time,” but rather in those transitional moments—walking between meetings, gazing out windows during travel, during the shower, that reflective cigarette (or some healthier equivalent), or in the liminal space between wakefulness and sleep. What if our work environments honored these temporal interstices rather than treating them as unproductive gaps to be eliminated?

These temporal ecologies would align with our biological realities—recognizing ultradian rhythms of focused attention (typically 90-120 minutes) followed by necessary recovery periods. Rather than expecting sustained attention for artificial eight-hour blocks, work might be organized around these natural cognitive oscillations.

creating space for “useful uselessness”

Within these reimagined temporal frameworks, we can then cultivate what I’ve called “useful uselessness”^[13]—recognizing that many of our most significant breakthroughs emerge from seemingly unproductive activities that create space for new connections and insights. This recalls physicist Richard Feynman’s practice of pursuing “perfectly useless” research that led to groundbreaking discoveries precisely because it wasn’t constrained by immediate utility.

This apparent paradox—that usefulness emerges most powerfully from activities not pursued for their utility—stands at the heart of Pieper’s understanding of leisure. He insists that genuine leisure “is not justified by providing bodily renewal or even mental refreshment to prepare for work, but by the lifting of that burden for its own sake.”^[1:2] The moment leisure becomes justified by its utility for work, it ceases to be genuine leisure and becomes merely another form of work disguised as rest. The challenge, then, lies in creating space for activities valued for themselves rather than for their productive outcomes—a difficult task in organizational contexts driven by metrics and outcomes.

This understanding of “useful uselessness” connects with Byung-Chul Han’s critique of contemporary transparency demands. In “The Transparency Society,” Han notes how our obsession with visibility eliminates necessary opacity: “Transparent communication is communication that proceeds particularly smoothly because it levels out all singularities.”^[11:1] Genuinely creative thought requires protected spaces beyond constant surveillance and measurement—a form of productive ambiguity that eludes metrics-driven evaluation.

Some practical implications emerge from this perspective:

Legitimize Contemplation: Rather than seeing someone staring out a window or reading as “not working,” we might recognize these activities as components of deep thinking and creativity. Organizations could explicitly value and protect time for such activities rather than treating them as indulgences to be eliminated.

Reconsider Measurement: If we truly believe in the value of innovation and creativity, we must develop more sophisticated approaches to evaluation that don’t undermine the very processes we seek to encourage. This doesn’t mean abandoning accountability but developing metrics that acknowledge the non-linear nature of meaningful work.

Create Temporal Variety: Different kinds of work require different temporal qualities. Strategic thinking demands spaciousness; execution may benefit from focus and time constraints. Organizations might cultivate more sophisticated “temporal environments” that match appropriate time qualities to different activities.

Honor Incubation: Creative insights often emerge after periods of apparent idleness, what psychologists call the “incubation effect.” Building deliberate incubation periods into work processes might yield better results than continuous activity.
Cultivate Presence: As explored in “Time, Gravity, and Conversations”^[14], the quality of our attention shapes our experience and effectiveness. Developing the capacity for full presence—even for brief periods—might prove more valuable than extending working hours.

metaphorical reframing: beyond the machine

Our ability to reimagine work depends significantly on the metaphors through which we conceptualize it. I’ve become increasingly aware of how our current discourse remains dominated by mechanistic language inherited from industrial-era thinking: we speak of productivity, efficiency, output, optimization, human resources. These metaphors aren’t neutral descriptions but active frameworks that shape both experience and organization.

What alternative metaphorical frameworks might better serve a reimagined conception of work? I find myself drawn to several possibilities:

Work as Cultivation rather than production—where, like gardening, outcomes cannot be forced but only nurtured through attentive care. A garden follows natural cycles, requires patience, relies on ecological relationships, and produces abundance through indirect rather than direct intervention. This metaphor acknowledges that meaningful results rarely emerge through mechanical processes but through organic development that requires sensitivity to context and timing.

Work as Conversation rather than execution—interactive, responsive, unpredictable, contextual. Conversations unfold through mutual influence rather than unilateral control; they produce understanding that neither participant could have created alone. This metaphor highlights how true innovation emerges through dialogue (literal or metaphorical) rather than through predetermined pathways.

Work as Craft rather than labor—where mastery emerges through embodied engagement rather than abstract planning. Craftspeople develop intuitive knowledge that transcends explicit instruction, learning through direct material engagement rather than abstract theorizing. This metaphor honors tacit knowledge and recognizes how expertise develops through practice rather than merely through analysis.

How might our approaches to work transform if we adopted these alternative metaphors? What practices and structures might emerge if we understood our efforts as cultivation rather than production, as conversation rather than execution, as craft rather than labor?

These alternative metaphors aren’t merely linguistic substitutions but frameworks that might transform both individual experience and organizational design. A company operating from a cultivation metaphor might organize its innovation processes differently than one operating from a production metaphor. A team approaching challenges through craft might develop different practices than one approaching them through labor.

the ethics of leisure: who gets to contemplate?

Our exploration of leisure’s value must acknowledge an ethical dimension: who currently has access to meaningful contemplative time? The “total work” paradigm affects different populations unequally, with precarious workers often lacking both material security and temporal sovereignty.

This raises questions about the politics of productivity—how economic imperatives become internalized as personal virtues, making “busyness” a status symbol rather than a potential pathology. When overwork becomes valorized, those unable to participate in this performance (due to caregiving responsibilities, disabilities, or other constraints) face both economic penalties and moral judgment.

As philosopher Josef Pieper noted, leisure requires both economic freedom and psychological freedom—the ability to step outside utilitarian thinking. In our current systems, both forms of freedom remain unequally distributed. Meaningful leisure often becomes a luxury good—available primarily to those with sufficient resources and status to claim it without penalty.

This inequality creates a paradox: those who might most benefit from leisure’s restorative and creative potential often have least access to it. Meanwhile, those with greatest access (knowledge workers in secure positions) have often so thoroughly internalized the productivity imperative that they struggle to engage in genuine leisure despite having nominal access to it.

Creating more human work environments thus becomes not merely an organizational challenge but a social justice issue. A truly transformative approach would address both external constraints (economic precarity, overwork) and internal constraints (internalized productivity imperatives, status anxiety) that currently limit access to meaningful leisure.

post-growth living: a new hedonism

The reimagining of work connects to broader questions about how we organize economic and social life. Philosopher Kate Soper’s concept of “post-growth living” offers a framework for this broader transformation. In her work, Soper advocates what she calls “alternative hedonism”—a new understanding of pleasure and fulfillment that doesn’t rely on endless consumption and growth.^[15]

Soper suggests that the conventional consumer vision of the good life has become self-defeating—creating stress, environmental degradation, and diminishing returns of actual satisfaction. She proposes instead a “hedonism of tranquility and less tangible pleasures” that might actually prove more fulfilling than the treadmill of work-and-spend that characterizes contemporary affluent societies.

This perspective aligns with our exploration of leisure and work—suggesting that a life with more contemplative space and less production/consumption might prove not only more sustainable but more pleasurable. It challenges the assumption that maximum productivity (leading to maximum consumption) necessarily creates maximum fulfillment.

What might this alternative hedonism look like in practice? I imagine it would involve reclaiming time from productivity imperatives and redirecting it toward contemplative engagement, meaningful connection, and the cultivation of what philosopher Martha Nussbaum calls “capabilities”—the substantive freedoms that allow human flourishing. It might involve working less but more meaningfully, consuming less but more intentionally, and creating more space for the apparently “useless” activities that ultimately prove most valuable.

Such a transformation would require both personal and systemic changes. As individuals, we might experiment with what Soper calls “voluntary simplicity”—reducing consumption to create space for non-material sources of fulfillment. At the systemic level, we might imagine economic models that don’t require endless growth and that distribute both work and leisure more equitably.

the personal journey

This transformation cannot begin with organizational policy alone. It must also manifest as personal practice and cultural norm. The deepest shifts in how we work will likely come not from top-down mandates but from individuals reclaiming a more human relationship with their work and gradually influencing those around them.
In the years since I first wrote about these themes in 2017-2018, a global pandemic forced many organizations to reconsider assumptions about work. Remote and hybrid arrangements demonstrated that productivity doesn’t require constant supervision or physical presence. The “Great Resignation” signaled widespread dissatisfaction with work cultures that demand everything while offering little meaning in return.

These disruptions create openings for more substantial transformation. They reveal that many aspects of work we assumed immutable are actually contingent and changeable. They invite us to reimagine work not merely as economic activity but as a context for planetary flourishing—a space where we might create value while simultaneously developing as people.

The path forward isn’t about abandoning productivity but transcending its narrowest conceptions. It invites us to move beyond the false choice between efficient work and meaningful engagement, recognizing that the most valuable contributions often emerge precisely when we create space for the apparently “useless” activities of contemplation, play, and open exploration.

As Robert Louis Stevenson observed, “The perpetual devotion to what a man calls his business is only sustained by perpetual neglect of many other things.”^[6:1] By attending to those “other things”—the contemplative spaces between activities, the seemingly unproductive moments of wonder or curiosity—we might discover not just better ways of working but more human ways of being.

This essay combines and adapts two pieces originally published in Portuguese in Link to Leaders in October 2017 and March 2018. While the technological and workplace landscape has evolved since their initial publication, the philosophical questions about the nature of work and leisure remain as relevant—if not more so—in our post-pandemic world of remote work and increasingly blurred boundaries between professional and personal domains.