All work and no play is no way to spend the rest of your life

Work less and if possible, find meaningful work, advises Shoba Narayan

Too many of us spend too much time checking emails, says Shoba Narayan. Jonathan Gainer / Bloomberg

How many hours a week do you work? For most of us, the problem is not the division between work and home, but the fact that work has now seeped into every part of our lives. We are constantly checking email without differentiating whether they are personal or for work.

Employees and employers are able to stay in touch 24/7, thanks – or perhaps it is more appropriate to say no thanks – to text messages and apps such as Whatsapp and Snapchat. The combined effect of this constant infiltration of the work culture into our lives can be overwhelming.

For many of us, it is difficult to switch off, and indeed, we don’t even know how to do it. I certainly am a victim, if you want to call it that. I cannot go one hour without checking my email or my phone, whether it is the weekend or whether I’m on holiday. The whole notion of switching off or taking time off for leisure seems oddly outdated in our continuously connected lives. Along come a couple of billionaires who suggest the opposite. Recently, both Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man, and Larry Page, the cofounder of Google, have suggested different versions of a shorter workweek. Slim suggests that people work for three days a week with longer daily hours. (The Herald in Scotland reported this under the headline: “Fat chance of Slim’s short week working.”) Page suggested shorter working hours as a way of combating unemployment.

Both billionaires linked shorter workweeks with higher life satisfaction. Is that really true?

Of the two approaches, I think Slim’s is better. With a net worth of $80 billion (Dh290bn), he doesn’t even need to work. His approach suggests that people work longer hours per day – 11 hours to be exact – and work for a longer number of years. The current retirement age of 65 is outdated, according to him. I agree. The beauty of working three days a week is that you can actually plan to do different things that physically and geographically remove you from work. You can go on a camping trip, for example.

Page’s proposal for shorter working hours will not change our lifestyles very much, in my view. It is not that we don’t have leisure time these days. We do. It is just that it is hard to switch off, even late at night when we don’t need to work. Being on again, off again has the benefit of not letting work issues fall through the cracks, but has the huge disadvantage of clogging up our mental space with everything that is only work related. How many of us don’t check work email on the weekend? I would venture to suggest that it is a minuscule proportion. Getting four out of seven days free per week, on the other hand, offers plenty of possibilities. You could volunteer, or you could sign up for a course.

The larger question has to do with the purpose of work. Do you work to make a living or to create a purposeful life? If you need to work to make a living, many of these philosophical questions aren’t really relevant. If you don’t need to work – at least to the level that you do and the hours that you do – to put bread on the table, the question of a shorter workweek becomes very relevant.

Why are you working? If you are over 50 and senior in your job, it would be a good time to figure out an answer to this question.

In coming decades, the more meaningful issues will not be about work, but will be about leisure and legacy. Building a family and raising good children and grandchildren are issues that have to do with legacy. Both require a time commitment that is linked with leisure. If you are stressed at work, it is unlikely that you will be open to the subtle signals that your children and family send.

Regardless of whether you choose the Page model or the Slim model, one thing is clear in my head: work less. If possible, find meaningful work; find an activity that will see you through years of leisure; cultivate a group of friends that you can stay in touch with over several decade. And last but not least, figure out your spiritual parameters that will help you stay content and resilient as you grow older.

Shoba Narayan is the author of ­Return to India: a memoir