Do Nothing: How to Break Away from Overworking, Overdoing, and Underliving

by Celeste Headlee

There was formerly a capacity for light-heartedness and play which has been to some extent inhibited by the cult of efficiency. The modern man thinks that everything ought to be done for the sake of something else, and never for its own sake.

The Nobel Prize–winning economist Gary S. Becker wrote in 1965: “If anything, time is used more carefully today than a century ago. When people are paid more, they work longer hours because work is so much more profitable than leisure.”

More than half of U.S. employees feel overworked or overwhelmed on a regular basis, according to a study from the Families and Work Institute.

Research from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health shows that about 40 percent of workers feel “overworked, pressured, and squeezed to the point of anxiety, depression, and disease.”

Regardless of how much people are actually working, the stress these people feel is very real and should be taken seriously. Stress is both dangerous to one’s health and, in a business sense, expensive.

The American Institute of Stress says more than half of all doctor visits are prompted by stress-related illness. By some estimates, businesses in the United States alone lose more than $300 billion every year because of absenteeism and health-care costs related to stress and anxiety.

Not thinking about your job is crucial, because every time you click that envelope icon, you are “polluting your time.”