We will need to find new ways to occupy our free time in meaningful ways, since so much of our current life is focused around work. In some ways, however, this shift has already been occurring. In 1865 the average British man worked 124,000 hours over his lifetime, as did people in the US and Japan. By 1980, British workers spent only 69,000 hours at work, despite living longer. In the US, we went from spending 50 percent of our lives working to 20 percent. Work hours have improved more slowly since 1980. Still, UK workers now work 115 hours less a year than they did then, a decline of 6
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