What I learned about leisure time from The Joy of Not Working by Ernie Zelinski

I am terribly surprised that I am just reading this book now. I guess that’s the feeling that people that read a lot get when they encounter a book that surprises and delights them with insights and changes their way of thinking. The Joy of Not Working was originally published in 1991! But even as I read it in 2020, the insights and takeaways from the book apply to life now.

One overall observation that I would like to make is that the book takes a different perspective than other books that I have read on time management, entrepreneurship or starting a business. The Joy of Not Working is really focused on that, how to amplify and really enjoy your leisure time (your leisure time being any time not spent doing something for someone else such as a job or other obligations). Other books try to maximize your output in a timeboxed working environment or talk about how working hard now will mean working less in the future.

Again, keeping in mind that this was published in 1991, here are some observations and takeaways that I found from the book:

Why are we working so hard?

The average working hours of people has steadily increased over the years. Although there is a shift today, it used to be that if you weren’t sleeping…