To get the work-life balance right, a four-day working week is necessary. Currently we are stressed, immune compromised, and survival driven. Phrases like “Life’s a bitch, and then we die” describe how most people live. Another one comes to mind from The Shawshank Redemption, “Get busy living, or get busy dying”. I would suggest that right now, we are busy dying. I know many people, especially those employed in organizations, don’t have a choice but to work a five-day week, whilst those who are self-employed or rely on piecework might feel unable to afford a four-day week. But I believe the benefits will ultimately outweigh the costs in terms of health, wealth, and happiness. As a society, we are challenged to move in this direction as AI will soon take over many occupations. We need to reinvent ourselves, and our attitude to work, quickly.
In more ancient, hunter-gatherer times, humans were able to meet their food and shelter requirements within a couple of hours a day. We have clearly gone backwards. The industrial revolution ushered in formal education, where children were conditioned to work five days a week from an early age. We were turned into passive units of production, instead of the creative, problem-solving geniuses we were meant to be. Talk about ripping the guts out of our inherent natural potential, which is now more desperately needed than ever before. We find ourselves on the brink of the next mass extinction, given our narrow-minded, consumer orientation. As things stand, we are a drain on the planet’s limited resources – oxygen thieves. As a result, fellow species are dying off at the highest rate ever recorded, as our finely balanced ecosystem implodes due to our relentless pursuit of material advancement. With climate change and water security becoming our greatest natural threat, things need to change.
After suffering from burnout, clinical depression, and prostate cancer in 2021, I realized I was out of balance. Certain books I read confirmed how our nature is completely dominated by culture (nurture), robbing us of so much human potential. “Stuff that!”, I thought. With 60 years of age around the corner, I was not prepared to die without having really lived! And so, I started on a journey to nurture my nature, a journey that taught me to consciously breathe, emotionally regulate, develop mental flexibility, and meditate. This is what they should be teaching us at school – how to understand and process ourselves, because we are complex, phenomenal creatures. But no, all they do is cram us with content, filling our minds with often irrelevant facts and figures. So many of us leave school switched off and turned off, to ourselves, each other, and the world around us, ready to be dependent slaves and slave masters in a pathologically material, economic system.
A four-day week will help restore our balance from excessive time spent doing, to more time spent being. This will be unfamiliar territory at first, and just like for semi-retired people, an adjustment. Feelings of boredom, laziness, guilt, inadequacy, and anxiety will arise, as we encounter resistance due to deep programming. Hence the importance of learning to simply be, because when you know how to be, you will start to enjoy having less to do. And it will also be good for you, as you start to rediscover your gold – your inherent creativity, confidence, and clarity. When you practice being, you will ‘get busy living, and not dying’. A four-day week will give us all the chance to breathe again. Like putting the oxygen mask back on your own face when the cabin pressure drops in the plane you are on. We will start to think clearly, to solve the myriad problems facing us individually and collectively. We will be part of a creative solution, instead of a chronic problem, less governed by others, and more by ourselves. This is where the shift from an external locus of control to an internal one will happen. We will celebrate who we are as a species amongst species, instead of the instigators of the next mass extinction – heroes and not villains in the greater story of life. To find out more on the art and science of being, please refer to https://www.brianblem.co.za/blog/