When it comes to the benefits of leisure, embracing it is half the battle
Work less. Enjoy life more. Words you can take to heart. Literally.
A series of studies that tie extra hours at work to an increased risk to heart disease, physical ailments and decreased mental health should give us pause to put the rat race on hold, at least at times. That’s especially good advice now that we’re experiencing fewer pandemic restrictions and finally starting to see some better weather, the kind that lends itself to more outdoor activities.
In one study, researchers compared people working a normal sevenhour day with those working a minimum of three hours extra. They found that this level of overtime is associated with a 60 per cent increased risk of heart-related problems, including death due to heart disease, non-fatal heart attacks and angina.
Even after adjusting for socio-demographic characteristics (such as age, sex, marital status and occupational grade) and other risk factors, researchers determined that working three to four hours overtime – but not one to two hours – led to that greatly increased risk of coronary heart disease.
A 2021 study in the European Heart Journal, published by the European Society of Cardiology, found leisure activity is important even to those who have physical jobs. Higher leisure-time activity provides lower risk of death whereas the opposite can be true with work-time activity.
“Many people with manual jobs believe they get fit and healthy by their physical activity at work and therefore can relax when they get home. Unfortunately, our results suggest that this is not the case. And while these workers could benefit from leisure physical activity, after walking 10,000 steps while cleaning or standing seven hours in a production line, people tend to feel tired so that’s a barrier,” said study author Prof. Andreas Holtermann of the National Research Centre for the Working Environment in Copenhagen.
Those of us who adhere to the notion that leisure equates to laziness could be paying a price for that.
Feeling like leisure is wasteful and unproductive may lead to less happiness and higher levels of stress and depression, Ohio State University researchers suggest.
In a series of studies, researchers examined the effects of a common belief in modern society: that productivity is the ultimate goal and time’s a-wasting if you’re just having fun.
People who most strongly agreed with this belief not only enjoyed leisure less, but also reported poorer mental health outcomes, said Selin Malkoc, co-author of the study and associate professor of marketing at the university’s Fisher College of Business.
“There is plenty of research which suggests that leisure has mental health benefits and that it can make us more productive and less stressed,” Malkoc said. “But we find that if people start to believe that leisure is wasteful, they may end up being more depressed and more stressed.”
In line with that research, Lynn Zubernis, Ph.D., a clinical psychologist and professor at
West Chester University in Pennsylvania, extols the virtue of leisure in a Psychology Today piece.
“Far from being a waste of time, engaging in leisure and recreational activities has been found to have significant benefits. Taking time to nurture the self, whether it’s taking a candlelit bath, a brisk walk in the park, or watching a favorite TV show, can help us manage stress, provide a sense of balance, and bolster our self-esteem. There are both physical and psychological benefits of leisure time, with reduced levels of stress, anxiety, and depression; improved mood; and higher levels of positive emotion. Engaging in recreational activities can also lower cortisol levels, blood pressure, and heart rate,” she writes.
The research finds even when they do take part in leisure activities, those who believe such time is wasteful experience fewer benefits. Such a take on leisure undermines the enjoyment of it.
Our plugged-in lives provide a measure of stress, especially when technology blurs the separation between work and home life. The words of British philosopher Bertrand Russell are as applicable in today’s pandemic times as when he penned them.
“‘If I were a medical man, I should prescribe a holiday to any patient who considers work important.’”
While underscoring a serious issue, the study lends itself to a worthwhile pursuit, one made even more relevant in this most languid of times: idleness.
In his 1932 essay In Praise of Idleness, Russell makes a case for less work and more leisure. He encouraged a fourhour workday. Even at that time, industrialization had left subsistence practices well behind: we could produce abundant supplies without working extraordinary hours.
Early on the industrial era we began to hear about the leisure society. That ideal became even more talked about in the computer age: we were going to have so much leisure time that society would actually have to make arrangements for it. That’s certainly not been the case. In fact, statistics from the last three decades show we’re typically working increasingly longer hours for modest, if any gains.
Where leisure had once been the domain of only the most privileged, Russell argues, industrialization should have paved the way for a more democratic distribution of idle time.
“Leisure is essential to civilisation, and in former times leisure for the few was only rendered possible by the labours of the many. But their labours were valuable, not because work is good, but because leisure is good. And with modern technique it would be possible to distribute leisure justly without injury to civilization,” he writes, though the postwar gains on that front were already fading out when Russell died in 1970 at the age of 97.
“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached,” he writes. “Everyone knows the story of the traveller in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun, and