For a new definition of “work”

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. Perhaps it’s time to excavate older wisdom about leisure, contemplation, and human flourishing that might illuminate a different path forward—one that recognizes the profound 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.

In an era where most work is considered “intellectual,” we paradoxically remain quick to judge that someone reading isn’t really working, producing, or doing anything valuable. This contradiction reveals a fundamental 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. The irony is that organizations simultaneously venerate and undermine the very 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 revealing 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 very words for work in these languages encode suffering and coercion at their roots.

Similarly revealing is “labour,” which 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—a 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 essential to cultural and intellectual development.

These etymologies aren’t merely linguistic curiosities—they reveal profound 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, even 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 merely work in disguise—the same productivity mindset applied to different activities. “Free time occupation” is one of the worst human inventions—transforming the liberation of unstructured time into yet another domain requiring management.

I find John Cleese’s framework particularly illuminating here. Beyond his Monty Python fame, Cleese describes humans as operating in two fundamental 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 merely 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 crucial 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 precisely the neural integration essential 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. Even worse, and a probable reason for the increase of burnout episodes, is that 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 brilliantly 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 distraction⁴, 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 a novel phenomenon but rather the culmination of a longstanding tension between different conceptions of work, leisure, and flourishing. Several philosophical traditions offer valuable 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 mere 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 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, lets 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 mere 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 essential 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 nothing⁹ as a conscious reclamation of unstructured time and thought.

These diverse perspectives converge around a crucial 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 profound philosophical 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 fundamental 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.