Part One: A Perspective on Work, Time
and Leisure
Boredom has become more than a specter on the horizon of modern man. As the work-week shortens and time-saving equipment proliferates, the great majority of America's working force begins to confront a strange dilemma — what to do with the time they have fought so hard to obtain. A group of distinguished news commentators was asked, in an end-of-the-year roundup, what was the gravest crisis facing the American people in the year ahead. After responses ranging from cold-war tensions to the emerging African nations, it came Eric Sevareid's turn to comment. In contrast to the others, Sevareid cited as the most dangerous threat to American society the rise of leisure and the fact that those who have the most leisure are the least equipped to make use of it.1
At the other end of the spectrum are the conclusions of the Twentieth Century Fund study by Sebastian de Grazia
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referring to "our work-centered, almost work-compulsive society." "What is work? What is time? What is leisure?" asks de Grazia. Do the questions startle? Aren't the answers obvious? Be assured, concludes the author, they are not:
A great fracture in the ethos has taken place. The resultant fault will bring work and time under survey. The American will have to question his identity and ask about his destiny. Why does he work and rush? For bread? To stay alive? Why stay alive? Anyway, does it matter? What really does matter? A great shifting of substrata is going on, a whole pattern of duties and pleasures seeking to come to rest on something new. Work and time's displacement will bring a fresh inclination. Were our traditions of leisure stronger, we could be more confident that it would settle us where we should have been long ago — in the second stage of political community, the living of a life of good quality.2
Time is divided between work and leisure. One man's work is another's leisure. One woman's leisure is another's work. Some work for pleasure, others solely for profit. Some achieve both. The people whose philosophy is that anything worth doing is worth doing well are more contented in their jobs. And that will be the person most interested in the subject of the management of time.
REFERENCES:
1. Lee, Robert, Religion and Leisure in America, Abingdon Press, Nashville, 1964.
2. de Grazia, Sebastian, Of Time, Work and Leisure, Twentieth Century Fund, New York, 1962.
