Whatever Happened To Leisure?

A manic focus on productivity has replaced every other way of thinking about our lives.

Girl Reading by William Baxter Closson, courtesy of Smithsonian American Art Museum, Transfer from the National Museum of American History, Division of Graphic Arts, Smithsonian Institution

The four-day workweek is coming. At least, so say many of our esteemed business publications. They report that companies around the world are implementing trial runs of this radical strategy with surprising success. Workers are happier and, amusingly, no less productive than they were with five days on their hands.

This last point gets a lot of breathless coverage.

Not only has this company done something truly revolutionary by giving their employees an additional eight hours off each week, we are informed, but productivity has not gone down. Sometimes, the article crows, productivity at the company actually increased after the four-day workweek was instituted.

You can find this same emphasis on productivity in the coverage of any workplace initiative in which the primary goal is ostensibly something other than shifting the bottom line.

For instance, a quick Google search will turn up a thousand and one articles arguing that diverse teams are smarter, more innovative, and higher-performing than their less diverse counterparts. Forbes leads the way here, dutifully noting “Diversity Confirmed to Boost Innovation and Financial Results.”