“This world is a place of business. What an infinite bustle! I am awaked almost every night by the panting of the locomotive. It interrupts my dreams. ​There is no sabbath. It would be glorious to see mankind at leisure for once. It is nothing but work, work, work.”

158 years ago a man named Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay called Life Without Principle. The words above are lifted straight from this essay and absolutely blew me away when I read them.

In 1863, this philosopher was complaining about the bustle of life and the busy-ness that people were obsessed with. All people did back in 1863 was “work, work, work,”. That’s 158 years ago!!

Sound familiar?

I bet that’s how you feel too, right? Work, work work.

If that’s how humans felt back in 1863 and that’s how we feel today, what on Earth makes us think that all of a sudden we’re going to figure out how to stop working so damn hard?

Here’s the unfortunate contradiction that I think we’re faced with: To figure out how to work less, we have to put more work into our lives.

You have two choices, as I see it:

You can do the same things day in and day out and hope things magically improve or you can put in a little bit of work every day that will contribute to your ability to work less tomorrow.

Now don’t get me wrong, hard work is necessary sometimes but as a default, I think that hard work is unsustainable.

There has to be more to life than finding your living and simply existing. Or as Thoreau puts it in his essay, "There is no more fatal blunderer than he who consumes the greater part of his life getting his living." This is not a new challenge. This is not unique to our tumultuous times. This is a human problem that requires proactive work to get right. You will not simply stumble through life without agency and one day wake up to riches, personal fulfilment and ample time to spend in whichever way you want.

That’s utopian thinking. That’s lalaland living. That’s naive and dangerous to a full and contented life.

To unlock your time, your freedom and your enjoyment of life, we must do a little bit of proactive work every day. We must make conscious choices. We must actively get rid of things that subtractive to our lives and do more of the things that are additive. These are choices we can make.

I get the feeling that if Henry David Thoreau were to time travel to 2021 he would be shocked and saddened that we haven’t figured out how to slow down and enjoy life a bit more than back in 1863.