Without Work, There Can Be No Leisure - Essay Example

ESSAY By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date “Without work, there can be no leisure” The expedition to balance work and leisure, how to achieve it, and still maintain excellence standards has continued being a topic of heated debate. With shifting ways of life as well as work commitments related to present fiscal factors, people appear to have forgotten the concept of leisure as an element of their everyday plans (Taneja, 2013, p. 113). These days’ people may appear thinking that they are lucky to be employed in the current economic hard times, and this can as a result, force them to work longer and disregard leisure time. Undoubtedly, leisure time is vital for the every person for the reason that it re-energizes both their minds and bodies. Current stress on leisure finds scores of persons searching for various extrinsic benefits. For classicists, this does not meet the essential condition of intrinsic driving force as a significant value of leisure. According to McLean, et al. (2014, p. 16), unobligated time is just one method of defining leisure, and maybe not the most efficacious way. Scores of economists and people, hold the view that they cannot afford to work less, so they have to work harder so as to keep their economy going. To McLean et al. (2014) this is not an economic reality; rather it is a cultural belief. For instance, society in North America, particularly U.S. has developed a culture where material things are more valued than leisure time. Consequently, whereas people continue valuing leisure time, they deem that they have to work hard to afford leisure time. A number of works are vastly rewarding and are essentially and emotionally leisure; therefore, the essay seeks to discuss the statement ‘without work, there can be no leisure’. Work may be defined as something done so as to earn money or income. Basically, working for longer hours can be a sign of people working sluggishly, considering that work output is measured based on effort per unit time (Robinson & Godbey, 2008, p.49). Score of persons are these days working hard for the reason that the work ethic has been strengthened, often with no concern to working smart. In most countries, over-working is used to measure hard work, and so unproductive persons are usually rewarded with overtime or more help; thus, creating less time for leisure. There is heightened pressure to merge work, education, and family, bearing in mind that people who cannot fruitfully fit in these requirements, or decide not to, are seen as lazy and undeserving of promotion or support. These days, people usually work more hours, but achieve somewhat little in excess of what was achieved during a traditional workday, thanks to weariness, distraction or the desire for many breaks (Douglass, 1993, p.76). A number of persons are productive when working for long hours; therefore, people preferences have to be taken into account while measuring the quality of leisure. Essentially, work that is paying or not paying can be an element of self- identity and affirmation, with scores of people finding fulfilment as well as relaxation from more than one form of activity. This as per Stebbins (2013, p.187) may connote mixing together moments of leisure during the week, instead of waiting for lengthy periods of down-time. Persons with insufficient leisure must widen their list of activities. How leisure is experienced by people often leads to the insight of leisure dearth; however, by re-thinking how time is organized and used, one can realize a superior sense of leisure balance as well as empowerment. Leisure, on the other hand, can be defined as the time used far from work, business, education, and so forth. Leisure as well does not include time used on basic activities like sleeping as well as eating (Jütting et al., 2007, p.147). The reduction of hours needed to make one's livelihood in addition to the improvement of the apparatus at the disposal for day after day needs in modern society has left the ever-increasing populations with extra time for other occupations. At the present time, the decrease in working hours, the increased vacation time as well as the fading of conventional frameworks, actually increases leisure time, time, which provides optional experiences, contact to things which are further than those anticipated in people routine and accepted life. Still it is worth claiming that time has not become free to offer these opportunities, but instead it is the person's point of view that has been unchained, to a range of degrees, from a schedule that is full of activity and programmed to as schedule that consent to perceiving options. According to Taneja (2013), these options have always existed, but were outside the boundaries wherein the correct world view was limited. Without a doubt, life with no plainly defined boundaries is akin to life with no authoritarian supervision in various possible encounters facing the person. It is worth noting that all encounters, direct or indirect, of people with an attribute independent from their self-awareness has an enlightening prospective, that is to say factors which have an effect on their in progress shaping process. Work-leisure conflicts subsist as a consequence of the extreme competition within organizations that has resulted in more demand in addition to multifaceted responsibilities of knowledge workers. Numerous scholars like Taneja (2013) and Pieper (2009) have indicated that work- leisure conflict is a considerable feature in establishing the worker’s decision to go on working in their current workplace or to depart from the organization. According to Zhao and Rashid (2010, p.25), organizations must give role uncertainty a higher priority and reduce work-leisure conflict to successfully keep workers less stressed. According to O'Boyle (2011, p.262), fiscal activities such as work as well as leisure are mutually dependent and entwined with one another for the reason that workers accomplish their goals as well as needs through the abovementioned activities (O'Boyle, 2011). To begin with, these two activities (leisure, work, and consumption) offer the way to accomplish the ends, and the ends may be the wants and need founded on people’s individual work motivations. These motives and needs force people to act; for example, working to realize personal goals. Such needs may be to get (1) fundamental physiological needs like shelter, clothing as well as food; (2) social needs like from family, networking, relationships, as well as social groups; (3) esteem needs like maintaining state of affairs, accountability, status, and accomplishment; (4) safety needs like security and protection; and (5) self-actualization needs like achieving professional and individual fulfilment as well as growth (Taneja, 2013). Subsequently, such two mutually dependent activities are carried out by workers or people rooted in their individual abilities and energy levels or limit that are special to all people and workers with regard to their needs and desires. In addition, work and leisure can be theoretically described in a different way but, at the place of work, they are interdependent on one another. Work and leisure as per Snir and Harpaz (2002, p.179) are inextricably interconnected with other life aspects; for instance, four-day work trip, watching a professional football match after work as well as re-energizing for the work all brings work and leisure together. Still, people get so occupied and obsessive about satisfying their needs to the extent that they stop thinking about the leisure concept, which is so imperative for their minds and bodies to perform something save for working so as to refresh making them better for performing well at work. According to Snir and Harpaz, (2002, p.181) workers’ who are leisure-oriented, motivation at work as well as commitment of the organisation may be heightened by matching their wants and needs like extended time for vacation as well as subsidized leisure. Real leisure as per Snir and Harpaz (2002, p.178) is a conscious, free activity taking people’s lives as its object. Basically, leisure permits for contemplation as well as appreciation of the divine; considering that it is in quietness and silence wherein people may see truths as well as understand the ambiguities of existence. Leisure classical conceptions, such as contemporary models of liberal education which are based on prehistoric beliefs of leisure, bear it as unexamined life that does not deserve living (Human Kinetics, 2012, p.46). In essence, leisure is the civilization foundation for the reason that is it the basis of enlightenment as well as insight concerning the human condition. To become healthy, satisfied, and happy no special training is not needed, but only true knowing which can be achieved at free time by sitting and looking at things from a different perspective. Together with this insight of leisure as the foundation of civilization surfaced the festivity of people togetherness with formation through festivals (Pieper, 2009). The spirit of celebration is sacrifice: offering presents without restraint demonstrate that profusion subsists even amid poverty. Such festivals are events for nurturing community. Constant care, like farmers commitment to their crops, is the foundation of both culture as well as cultivation. This argument connotes that it is not just lengthy holidays that are imperative, although they are undoubtedly sought-after, but day after day leisure cultivation. Commitment to work, although how creditable it could be, comes at higher cost. Lately, family has been cited as a reason for people going home at stopping time. Yes family is essential and employees have responsibilities to play at their houses, bust family is not essentially leisure. To see it as such degrades leisure and both leisure and family are reduced to production subsidiaries (Pieper, 2009). Family being used as a reason for taking vacation exhibits how prevailing the production-reproduction system has turned out to be. Maintaining work schedules so as to balance leisure and work is the responsibility of the organizations. So therefore to balance leisure and work it is exceedingly imperative to handle the present work schedules within the organization due to the mutuality of the idea “work is leisure and leisure is work”. Balancing leisure as well as work does not just aid in handling the work tasks but it as well generates the sense of appreciation at the place of work with collective goals and improved innovative energies and talents (Taneja, 2013, p.118). Firstly, it symbolizes what workers add in the achievement of organizational goals, and subsequently, it signifies what positive effects of work to the worker when they take pleasure in what they do. Practically, work cannot be completed only by working for more hours; instead, pleasure and passion are associated with the spirit of people when leisure and work are balanced. Workers including those with good paying, demanding jobs recognize the distinction between a bad day and a good day at work, and this distinction is regularly echoed in their physical appearance and overall performance. As mentioned by Taneja (2013), organizations grow as well as turn out to be successful when their workers are sharing and working and this can be achieved only through balancing work and leisure so as to result in efficiency and effectiveness within the organization. Furthermore, it is imperative for leaders within organizations to handle work schedules so as to balance leisure and work where workers' social faculties are valued and improved to boost productivity. In conclusion, it has been argued that the balance between leisure and work has eventually changed qualitatively and quantitatively due to technology, culture, as well as economic and social structures and the virtual influence of diverse groups in those structures. In spite of all the actual changes, particularly in the leisure and cultural industries, the fundamental forms of day after day life of work and leisure are still outstandingly identifiable. Importantly, the improved economic status of score of countries in past decades has failed to result in improved indicators of well-being and working, because people are busy working and lack time for leisure. Modern economic and social trends hint that the relationship between leisure and work is as vital as ever. Even though the way of life has changed in terms of working hours, where people have become busy and less productive, leisure still remains imperative in the modern workplaces. Leisure has been rated as a social class for rich people who can afford to leave their work and go out to enjoy, but for poor people they work many hours to afford the basic needs (food, shelter, and clothing). References Douglass, M.E., 1993. Manage Your Time, Your Work, Yourself. New York: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn. Human Kinetics, 2012. Introduction to Recreation and Leisure. Illinois: Human Kinetics. Jütting, D.H., Schulze, B. & Müller, U., 2007. Local sport in Europe. Proceedings of the 4th eass conference 31.05.-03.06.2007 in Münster. Munich: Waxmann Verlag. McLean, D., Dayer-Berenson, L. & Hurd, A., 2014. Kraus' Recreation and Leisure in Modern Society. Boston, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. O'Boyle, E., 2011. Meeting human need through consumption, work, and leisure. International Journal of Social Economics, vol. 38, no. 3, pp.260-72. Pieper, J., 2009. Leisure: The Basis of Culture ; The Philosophical Act. San Francisco, California: Ignatius Press. Robinson, J. & Godbey, G., 2008. Time for Life: The Surprising Ways Americans Use Their Time. Pennsylvania : Penn State Press. Snir, R. & Harpaz, I., 2002. Work-leisure relations: Leisure orientation and the meaning of work. Journal of Leisure Research, vol. 34, no. 2, pp.178-203. Stebbins, R.A., 2013. Work and Leisure in the Middle East: The Common Ground of Two Separate Worlds. New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. Taneja, S., 2013. Sustaining Work Schedules: Balancing Leisure and Work. Academy of Strategic Management Journal, vol. 12, no. 2, pp.113-22. Zhao, L. & Rashid., H., 2010. The Mediating Role Of Work-Leisure Conflict On Job Stress and retention Of It Professionals. Academy of Information and Management Sciences Journal, vol. 13, no. 2, pp.25-40. Read More