Am I working too hard?

I once wrote an essay in praise of idleness, and I meant it. I had been brought up, like most people of my generation, on the maxim that work is virtuous and that the devil finds work for idle hands. I came to think that this belief had caused an enormous amount of unhappiness and very little good.nnThe argument is simple. Modern methods of production make it possible for everyone to live in reasonable comfort while working far fewer hours than we do. We have chosen instead to have some people overworked and others unemployed, and to treat the overworked as admirable. I suggested a working day of four hours. People laughed. I still do not see what is funny about it.nnSo when you ask whether you are working too hard, I want you first to notice the voice that says you are not working hard enough. Where did it come from? Is it yours, or did you inherit it from a parent, a school, an employer who profits from it? Much overwork is not chosen. It is obedience to an idea.nnThen look at what is crowded out. Leisure is not idleness in the bad sense. It is the time in which a person reads, thinks, plays, talks with friends, follows curiosity, and becomes civilised. If your work has eaten all of that, you are working too hard, whatever your output, and the cost will show in you long before it shows in your results.

I have often said that most of the unhappiness of human beings comes from one thing: not knowing how to stay quietly in a room. We cannot bear it. The moment we are alone with nothing to do, we feel our emptiness, our weakness, our mortality, and we rush off to find something that will take our minds away.nnI called this diversion, and I saw it everywhere. The hunter does not really want the hare. If you gave it to him he would not want it. He wants the chase, because the chase keeps him from thinking. The king is surrounded by people whose whole task is to keep him from reflecting on himself. And many people who appear to work very hard are doing something similar. The work is not the point. Being occupied is the point.nnSo your question has two parts. The first is about hours, and you can answer it with a clock. The second is harder. What happens to you when you stop? If the evenings, weekends and holidays fill you with restlessness or a vague dread, and you are relieved to get back to your desk, then your work may be serving as a refuge from something you do not want to look at.nnI would not take the refuge away from you without offering something better. But try, for a short time each day, to sit still and see what arrives. That is where the real question is waiting.

I will not pretend to be against hard work. I told young tradesmen that time is money, and I lived by a strict timetable: up at five, work in the morning and afternoon, the evening for putting things in order, music or conversation, and examining the day. Industry made me independent, and independence is a fine thing.nnBut look closely at that timetable. It had an end to the working day, a fixed time for sleep, and a time for pleasure and company. Industry, as I meant it, is not the same as working all the time. It is working steadily, to a purpose, and wasting nothing, including your health and your evenings.nnAnd look at what I did with the money. I retired from my printing business when I was forty-two, handed it to a partner, and spent the rest of my life on experiments, public works, inventions and the affairs of my country. My hard work was a means. I knew what it was for, and when I had enough, I stopped and did the things I had been working towards.nnSo ask yourself these practical questions. Do you have a plan, with a sum or a goal at which you will slow down? Is your work making you more independent, or more dependent on the job? Are you sleeping, and keeping your health, which no amount of money buys back? If the hours are leading somewhere you have chosen, carry on. If they are leading nowhere in particular, you are not being industrious. You are only busy.