Work
many readers, I realize, this line of reasoning will fall flat. They will insist that duty is the enemy of happiness and consequently that the best way to have a good life is to escape all forms of duty: Rather than spending our days doing things we have to do, we should spend them doing things we want to do. In chapter 20 I return to this
... See moreWilliam B. Irvine • A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
[…] Human beings have organized their lives in such a way that some never work, while forcing others to work for them. Consequently they become bored because they don’t know what to do, and they think up all kinds of stupid and repellent activities to keep themselves occupied, whereas the others work night and day, and suffer because they have to
... See moreLeo Tolstoy • A Calendar of Wisdom: New Translation (Alma Classics)
It will be said that while a little leisure is pleasant, men would not know how to fill their days if they had only four hours’ work out of the twenty-four. In so far as this is true in the modern world it is a condemnation of our civilization; it would not have been true at any earlier period. There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness... See more
Bertrand Russell • In Praise of Idleness
The Ju/’hoansi, for example, were often content to spontaneously take a day off from foraging simply because they didn’t feel like it. Even if they were hungry, they knew that putting off the food quest for a day would not have any serious ramifications. For farmers, by contrast, taking a day off just because they need a rest is rarely an option.
... See moreJames Suzman • Work
The progressivist party line sometimes even goes so far as to credit agriculture with the remarkable flowering of art that has taken place over the past few thousand years. Since crops can be stored, and since it takes less time to pick food from a garden than to find it in the wild, agriculture gave us free time that hunter-gatherers never had.... See more
Jared Diamond • The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
In fact, this impatience in dealing with frustration is the primary reason that most people fail to achieve their goals. Unreasonable expectations timewise, resulting in unnecessary frustration, due to a perceived feeling of failure. Achieving the extraordinary is not a linear process.
The secret is to show up, do the work, and go home.
A blue
He noted that the ancient Greek translation for “work” was literally “not‑at‑leisure.” In Aristotle’s own words, “we are not‑at‑leisure in order to be‑at‑leisure.” Now, this is flipped. We work to earn time off and see leisure as a break from work. Pieper pointed out that people “mistake leisure for idleness, and work for creativity.”