Work Less, Live More

Remembrance Day serves to remind us all of the horrific nature of war, as well as the heavy cost of the freedom and lifestyles we enjoy. But for many, Remembrance Day is also a much-appreciated day off, a day to enjoy freedom of a different kind: freedom from work. In a recent article for the New Internationalist, Zoe Cormier reflected on the images we saw in 2008 of people laid off from the failed financial firm, Lehman Brothers, smiling as they left the office for the last time. Why were they so happy?

The question of why we enjoy getting a day off of work raises another question: why do we work in the first place? It seems like a silly question: we work to make money to pay the bills so we can continue to live. But do we work to live, or live to work? 

Canadians are working longer hours than ever before, in spite of all of the advances in efficiency and technology that make us more productive. Are we truly any richer than we were before? Typically, when we have more disposable income we simply dispose of it more quickly (in fact, our economy depends on it!). Despite all of the time-saving devices invented in the past century, the average person spends more time on housework now than they did in 1925; our houses have just become larger. The more we work, the more gadgets we buy to save us time – but we spend that time working anyway.

This is called the Jevons Paradox, named after British economist William Stanley Jevons: efficiency and lower prices serve to raise consumption rates. We will never truly get ahead. Surely this pattern of working more to consume more is not sustainable!

But not everyone is caught up in it. Europeans work an average of 300 hours per year less than Americans, and workers in Denmark recently went on a general strike to raise their paid vacation time from five weeks per year to six. A British study called 21 Hours suggested that the normal work week should be 21 hours, and when the state of Utah brought in a mandatory 4-day work week to avoid layoffs they discovered a savings not only of millions of dollars but also of 4,535 tonnes of carbon emissions and 744,000 gallons of fuel. Some are concerned that if we stopped growing as an economy, jobs would be lost; perhaps the solution is for us all to work less…and live more.

Think of the things you could do with extra time at home: many of them are things you may currently need to pay someone else to do. How much unpaid work are we able to accomplish with a shorter work week? How much time spent with our families rather than sending kids to daycare? How many skills can we acquire to not only save ourselves money but also to become more resilient? 

Do we work to live, or live to work? “Work less, live more.”

Jeff Wheeldon