Why Work?

"Well...because we have to eat, clothe and shelter ourselves," you say.  Perhaps the more relevant question is why do we work the way that we work?  Work as we've known it will probably never be the same.  The days when an individual committed to a company, worked out her days and retired with a comfortable pension are, in many cases, a thing of the past.  Still, many of us work long hours with little leisure time and little financial progress to show for it.

With the impact of the "new normal" in terms of jobs and the economy, many of us have taken the opportunity to rethink the work we do and how we do it.  Innovation, self-direction and creative problem solving are the skill set of the twenty-first century worker, and we're using these skills to consider how we define for ourselves a life worth living.

 In this context, it is fascinating to return to reading Helen Nearing's 1954 classic The Good Life: Helen and Scott Nearing's Sixty Years of Self-Sufficient Living.  In this book, Nearing lays out the planning and execution of a back-to-the-land, self-reliant life that she and her husband began in the depths of the Depression-plagued United States of 1932 and carried out for the remainder of their days.

While I have found many interesting and inspiring ideas in this book, one in particular has stuck with me since I first began reading it.  The Nearings had an interesting approach to work and the balance of their daily schedule.There were morning hours and afternoon hours.  Four hours were dedicated to labor that brought food and money, four hours spent in leisure which might involve reading, playing music or enjoying nature and four hours were spent socializing or working in the community.  Four hours of labor earned four hours of leisure.  On Sundays there was no schedule and no bread labor.  Vacations were taken  in blocks of time ranging from weeks to months.  This, of course, was done in the absence of  mortgages and other debts.

Utopian?  Perhaps, though Nearing admits that some of the experience was deeply satisfying and some not so enjoyable.  Though I could easily see myself finding ease and enjoyment in such a daily schedule, what intrigues me most is the idea of taking control of my life in such a way that I could schedule my work around my life rather than my life around my work--meeting my needs and still having plenty of time to address my interests.  That is life design!

What would your ideal work/life balance look like if you were to design it from scratch?