Introduction

Whatever the opposite of a “traumatic childhood” is, that was mine. Idyllic? It seems too strong, but not far off. Not quite perfect, but as close as you could get. My family was close, my parents loved me and each other, and life was joy. I have few sad memories from childhood that were not the death of someone in our family, and those were blessedly few, but there was one thing I can recall even now with some of the feeling left in it. I remember when my dad would go to work, and when he would leave on work trips.

Every day, Monday through Friday, he’d leave our home for work and come back when dinner was on the table. He was responsible, and it made our lives possible, but it was sad. “So what?”, you ask. “That’s what good fathers do. They work to support families.” I agree with you. It’s a bittersweet sort of thing, even more for the father, as I now know well. “So what?” I hear you again, and we’re getting to that.

Working outside the home isn’t a new thing. Ancient and medieval farmers would sometimes work on land away from their home. Soldiers on campaign and traveling trades, like merchants, would obviously leave their homes. These were the exceptions. Fathers, in both pagan and faithful households going back to prehistory, raised their children and taught them, especially their boys. They did not leave home for most of every day, most days of the year. The antique exceptions became normal in the industrial revolution, and remain normal today. It is not normal, by traditional reckoning, for a father to leave his children all day.

I don’t think it needs to remain normal.

Laziness and The American Dream

Back in my high school years, there was a popular band – at least popular among my church friends – called Casting Crowns. I liked the music well enough and the lyrics were better than the repetitious monotony that has begun to define contemporary Christian music. One of their songs, in particular, began a debate in my own mind.

“American Dream” is a song whose meaning isn’t exactly veiled behind poetry. It pictures a man with a life breaking apart as he is consumed with work. He spends every waking moment at his job and is never around to see his family. I remember the implication that his wife left him, maybe from a music video, which is an unnecessary feminist twist to an otherwise good message.

It was a debate and not a new mode of thinking that began when I heard this because by the time I was about twenty years old and listening to it on my way into work at a corporate job. I was convinced that work was good, man was made to do good, hard work, and I could not imagine living without doing something productive. What would the point be? What else would I do with my time?

On the one hand was a desire to work hard and accomplish something great, providing for a family along the way. On the other was a desire to actually see that family, to do things for the pure joy of doing them and not because I had to in order to survive.

The Productivity Cult

As I said last week, I have tried every productivity system I have ever seen. What began with pen and paper became Microsoft’s OneNote and dozens of notebooks sprawling well out of control. RSS feeds poured in, content was organized and notated. Goals and projects were defined and prioritized. All the things you usually do at your boring desk job, I was doing for some mixture of ambition, entertainment, and foreboding. There were things I wanted to do, and having them written down meant I could get there with enough work; if I didn’t write them down, I’d lose the opportunities forever. This never seemed to work.

Having any particular method fail did not long deter me, and I was ready to search for something new. The supply of productivity “gurus” and self-help “experts” is limitless, so the only way to stand out in that market is to make some really insane claims. “Manage every last second of your week to get more done” or “build a second brain” or “get better every single day”.

I tried it all.

Much of what was written on the subject could be written these days, I suppose, by a chat bot. So much of it was vapid, and at its core there was something a little sinister. The contradictions eventually made me lose interest.

What if I despise planning every last second of every day?
What if most of the ways I want to get better are not related to work?
What besides chaos is produced if everyone is trying to “lead”?
Most importantly, why am I doing all of this?

Working to Death

The productivity cult makes every moment of every day an economic unit. Our debt economy makes servicing our debt the primary motivation for action. The American ethos that was once “do an honest day’s work” has become “work hard, day and night”. Everything we do is put into economic terms. The friendships we build serve our “opportunities” and our “opportunities” are always about money. People play games for money. They run social media accounts for money. The work never ends, either. Wealth is a means to more wealth, like one of those endless games where the numbers get bigger but you’re always doing the same things.

Don’t misunderstand. Making money is good. Finding ways to make money doing things you enjoy is good. It’s the reduction of human life into work for the sake of making money that is in view here. The all-consuming nature of these productivity regimes is contrasted well with the book of Proverbs. Thirty-one chapters, and they don’t give a system for living your maximally productive life, but instead wisdom.

On the Other Side

The past few years have offered more time than ever to consider the question: What would I be doing right now if I did not need to work for a living?

Whatever else I might do, I wouldn’t be working as much as I do now, but I’d still be working. I’d be building something, or helping someone, or writing something. I’d spend most nights and weekends as I do now: with friends and family. Most importantly, though, the time spent working would be with my family, not away from them. This would be the best part. Underneath it all, though, would be the simple peace that comes with no longer thinking in purely economic terms so much.