BY ALEX SOOJUNG-KIM PANG
SOCIETY
AMERICANS HAVE LONG BEEN KNOWN FOR OUR INDUSTRY and ambition, but until recently, we also recognized the value of rest. The Puritans had a famously strict work ethic, but they also took their Sundays very seriously. In 1842, Henry David Thoreau observed, “The really efficient laborer will be found not to crowd his day with work, but will saunter to his task surrounded by a wide halo of ease and leisure”; a decade later he wrote, “A broad margin of leisure is as beautiful in a man’s life as in a book.” Post–Civil War captains of industry didn’t rise and grind, according to business journalist Bertie Charles Forbes: “No man goes in more whole-heartedly for sport and other forms of recreation than” industrialist Coleman du Pont, while Teddy Roosevelt “boisterously . . . enters into recreation” despite a busy public life.
At the same time, union organizers, mass media and entertainment, and the parks movement democratized leisure: rest became a right, enshrined as much in college sports and penny arcades as in labor law. Richard Nixon, during a campaign speech in 1956, predicted that “new forms of production will evolve” to make “backbreaking toil and mind-wearying tension” a thing of the past, and “a four-day week and family life will be . . . enjoyed by every American.” Together, these sources paint a vision of American life in which work and leisure are partners in a good life, and “machines and electronic devices,” as Nixon called them, created more time for everyone.
But in recent decades, the world turned against rest. Globalization, the decline of unions, and the rise of gig work are factors that have created an environment in which people and companies feel compelled to work constantly. The CEO who steadily worked his way up from the mailroom to the corner office has been replaced by the 20-something genius who makes billions by disrupting the system. Technology lets us carry our offices around in our pockets, and makes it almost impossible for us to disconnect from work. Even the blue-tinted glow of our screens and late-night traffic noise can have a measurable impact on the quality of our sleep. Add raising children and managing family schedules, and Thoreau’s “wide halo of ease and leisure” sounds great but, ultimately, impossible.
Early in your career, it’s easy to believe that passion and youthful energy are inexhaustible. But at some point, family demands, a health scare, or the passa
