We're Working Ourselves To Death

When you take a break, I'm working. If you just work as hard as you possibly can for as long as you possibly can. What about work-life balance? I need 20s. Because that's the time to put in the hard work. And then just work like hell. Just work your face off. Nobody you know has actually created success without working their face off. You will get burned out. We work so hard, but there is no reward. There is no joy to be had.

No job will ever make it. Because regardless of how easy or difficult it is perceived to be, I will always end up in a state of burnout. We work a lot in the United States. It's kind of a stereotype. What is it all for? Why work? The world's top golfer, Scotty Scheffler, has had quite the year, but he recently had a little existential crisis on camera. It feels like you work your whole life to celebrate.

Winning a tournament for like a few minutes, it only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling, and like to win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf, to have an opportunity to win that tournament, and you win it, you celebrate, get to hug my family, my sister's there, it's such an amazing moment, and then it's like...

Okay, now what are we going to eat for dinner? You know, life goes on. It's a question every working adult asks, right? We hit the alarm on Monday morning and start the work week all over again. We hate on work, but we seem, well, kind of addicted to it as well. There's the quintessential dad who works so much he misses every ball game in every 90s movie that we've ever made, or worse, he works so hard that he goes crazy running a hotel.

Or there's the I have a stable job, but it's killing my soul trope from falling down, office space, and fight club. In the United States, the average annual hours worked per worker comes out to 1,810 hours. That's 15 to 35 percent more hours annually than most Western Europeans.

Burnout is hitting hard across the workforce. According to the latest Aflac Workforce's report, nearly 60 percent of American workers are feeling it. And millennials, my cohort, we are leading the pack. 66% are battling moderate to high burnout, way more than Gen X at 55%, and boomers at just 39%. No wonder quiet quitting became a marquee Gen Z-ism. What's driving it? No surprise, heavy workloads and long hours top the list. But is that all that's going on? If yes, then surely the solution is just a four-day work week, fewer hours, and more snack breaks.

But I'm not convinced. I think this goes way deeper than, oh, poor wimpy Gen Zers, poor wimpy millennials can't handle 40-hour work weeks. Poor Scotty Scheffler isn't even happy when he wins $3 million for a golf tournament. Wrong. It's not just a question of the hours we put in and feeling tired. I think the Great American Burnout isn't a crisis of labor. It's a crisis of leisure.

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Good American children learn that the purpose of school is to get good grades, to work our tails off at sports, leadership, and service, to get into a good college, to get more good grades, to get good internships, to get a good job, to make a lot of money, and find purpose, ultimately, in our careers. How else will we be able to get the food we like, and afford the concerts, and the restaurants, and the houses that we like, and get the money we need to check off our bucket list, and afford the medicines that will keep us thin and warn off our depression and anxiety?

Then why aren't we happy when we get them? In Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky observes, For the mystery of man's being is not only in living, but in what one lives for. Without a firm idea of what he lives for, man will not consent to live, and will sooner destroy himself than remain on earth, even if there is bread all around him. We need to get back to leisure. We need to get back to purpose. I'm talking about totally rewiring how we think about rest.

Americans tend to think, and I think we're conditioned to think from the time we're very small, that we rest in order to work, work harder. How many times have you justified your day off work or why you weren't available on your phone to yourself or your boss with a line like, I just needed to step away, or all the workplace studies that tell employees you need a break so that you can work more efficiently. Did you catch that? We'll let you rest, but only on the understanding that if we do, you will work harder, better, more efficiently.

But let's flip that table over. What if we worked in order to rest? What if, instead of work justifying our leisure time, our leisure was the purpose of our labor? How can that be? One more adjustment to our thinking. Leisure isn't just a nap. It's not just doing nothing. Joseph Pieper put it well in his classic book, Leisure, the Basis of Culture.

Leisure is the power to step out of the workaday world, the world where we are slaves to our physical and material needs, always on the hamster wheel to feed, clothe, and shelter our bodies. But if leisure is a power, then leisure will take some effort on our part. We step out of work and into the most human, the most fulfilling, the most free activities. This is why we love leisure. It's why we love useless hobbies and art and music, and of course, most of all, those useless cute little babies.

Leisure means that we accomplish our highest purpose in creation, not in necessity or an obligation, but in delight and in freedom. What we really want is already given to us. The world is only complete, our lives only have purpose, when our human activities, the activities that set us apart and make us human, are a free response of joy to what God has given us, and we need leisure to see that. Leisure embraces everything, which is an essential part of a full human existence.

Pieper again, he says, And as it is written in the scripture, God saw when he rested from all the works that he had made, that everything was good, very good. Just so the leisure of man includes within itself a celebratory, approving and lingering gaze of the inner eye on the reality of creation.

When we rest after our work, we're not just checking out of hard things to doom-scroll easier things or to chase a dopamine rush. We're checking out of slavish things, however necessary and good they are, in order to reconnect with the freedom of the sons of God. We're checking out of labor to step outside the workaday world and say, see, this is very good. These things are good in themselves. My family, this art, that music, this game. This is what we exist for, and this is what we work for.

We spend a lot of time being useful. In fact, to be called useless is a great insult. Philosophy is such a useless major. Why waste your time on that useless guitar? But is useless really all that bad? Useless does not necessarily mean pointless. We work at doing things that society deems useful in order to sustain our bodies for the moments of leisure that give purpose. To those labors. Why is it that so many people of my generation and younger seem to want an intimate level of personal fulfillment from the jobs they do, essentially for the money that we need to live?

Is it any wonder we experience burnout when our jobs don't give us ultimate meaning? That's because career is not identity. Work is not identity. You know what else leisure is? It's independence. According to G.K. Chesterton, when we are employed, busy at a job, we're dependent on our employer. But when work is over, and we are not employed, not jobless, but simply not working, we enjoy our independence, our freedom, our free time. That independence frees us to direct our energy towards pursuits during which we are useful to absolutely nobody, hence useless, or, in the case of building family, caring for small children who are useful to absolutely no one at the moment.

That's exactly what Scotty discovered when he took a minute to step outside his workaday world of laboring at his golf game. This is not a fulfilling... Life. It is fulfilling from a sense of accomplishment, but it is not fulfilling from a sense of the deepest places of your heart. There are a lot of people that make it.

What they thought was going to fulfill them in life, and then you get there, and all of a sudden, you get to number one in the world, and then they're like, what's the point? And, you know, I really do believe that, because, you know, what is the point? You're like, why do I want to win this tournament so bad? That's something that I wrestle with on a daily basis. It's like, showing up at the Masters every year, it's like, why do I want to win this golf tournament so badly?

Why do I want to win the Open Championship so badly? I don't know, because if I win, it's going to be awesome for about two minutes. And then we're going to get to the next week, and it's going to be like, hey, you won two majors this year. How important is it for you to win the FedExCup playoffs? And it's just like, we're back here again, you know? So, we really do. We work so hard for such little moments, and I mean, I love playing golf.

I love being able to compete. I love living out my dreams. I love being a father. I love being able to take care of my son. I love being able to provide for my family out here playing golf, and every day when I wake up early to go put in the work, my wife.

thanks me for going out and working so hard and when I get home I try and thank her every day for taking care of our son it's just you know that's why I talk about families being my priority because it really is you know I'm blessed to be able to come out here and play golf but if my golf ever started affecting my home life or it ever affected the relationship I have with my wife with my son you know that's gonna be the last day that I play out here for a living you know this is not The be-all, end-all.

This is not the most important thing in my life, and that is why I wrestle with why is this so important to me, because I would much rather be a great father than I would be a great golfer. At the end of the day, that is what is more important to me. He reflected on it, and realized that however much he enjoys winning, that's not what gives him purpose. Scotty figured it out. He then capped it all off with the Open Championship, finishing 17 under par.

Isn't it great when a guy discovers the purpose of his work is not his work, but that purpose, that little baby, that art, that talent, gives him the drive he needs to excel at both work and leisure? The big motivators, the things that make life worth living—babies, art, music, sport—are meaningful in themselves. They give us eternal purpose to get out there and do the hard, useful things that make what really matters possible. As Christ said, seek ye first the kingdom of God, and all these things will be added unto you.

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