[Lifestyle] Time millionaires: meet the people pursuing the pleasure of leisure

[THē-GHōST]

 

It is often a struggle just to stay afloat. But if you had enough money, would you pursue more of it – or should time now be our greatest aspiration  every job he has ever had, Gavin has shirked. When he worked in a call centre, he would mute the phone, rather than answer it. When he worked in a pub, he would sneak out of the building and go to another pub nearby, for a pint. His best-ever job was as a civil servant. He would take an hour for breakfast, and two for lunch. No one ever said anything. All his colleagues were at it, too. When the pandemic began, Gavin, now working as a software engineer, realised, to his inexhaustible joy, that he could get away with doing less work than he had ever dreamed of, from the comfort of his home. He would start at 8.30am and clock off about 11am. To stop his laptop from going into sleep mode – lest his employers check it for activity – Gavin played a 10-hour YouTube video of a black screen.One might reasonably describe Gavin (not his real name) as a deadbeat. In economic terms, he is a unit of negative output. In moral terms, he is to be despised; there are antonyms for the word “grafter”, and none of them are good. In religious terms – well, few gods would smile on such indolence. But that is not how Gavin views things. “I work to pay my bills and keep a roof over my head,” he says. “I don’t see any value or purpose in work. Zero. None whatsoever.” Gavin’s job is an unfortunate expediency that facilitates his enjoyment of the one thing that does matter to him in life: his time. “Life is short,” Gavin tells me. “I want to enjoy the time I have. We are not here for a long time. We are here for a good time.” And for now, Gavin is living the good life. He’s a time millionaire. “I am delighted,” Gavin tells me. “I could not be happier.” He is practically singing. And his boss? “My boss is happy with the work I’m doing,” he says. “Or more accurately, the work he thinks I’m doing.”First named by the writer Nilanjana Roy in a 2016 column in the Financial Times, time millionaires measure their worth not in terms of financial capital, but according to the seconds, minutes and hours they claw back from employment for leisure and recreation. “Wealth can bring comfort and security in its wake,” says Roy. “But I wish we were taught to place as high a value on our time as we do on our bank accounts – because how you spend your hours and your days is how you spend your life.” And the pandemic has created a new cohort of time millionaires. The UK and the US are currently in the grip of a workforce crisis. One recent survey found that more than 56% of unemployed people were not actively looking for a new job. Data from the Office for National Statistics shows that many people are not returning to their pre-pandemic jobs, or if they are, they are requesting to work from home, clawing back all those hours previously lost to commuting. “We’re seeing this great resignation,” says Charlie Warzel, the author of the Galaxy Brain newsletter and co-author of the forthcoming book Out of Office: The Big Problem and Bigger Promise of Working from Home. “People are quitting their jobs and not returning to work, even if their unemployment benefits are running out.” The people actively embracing a less work-focused life are, generally speaking, childless members of the professional classes, but Roy argues that this shouldn’t have to be the case. “If society was truly progressive,” she says, “it would not work people to the bone in the first place, or make the assumption that leisure, time to rest, time to be with your family, is only for the wealthy.” The enforced downtime of the pandemic caused many of us to reassess our attitudes to work, and whether we might be able to lead less lucrative but more fulfilling lives. “I got on a train last week at 7am,” says Samuel Binstead, a 29-year-old coffee shop owner from Sheffield. “And some guys next to me sat down and the first thing they did was get out a laptop and a stack of papers. All I could think was: ‘You are not in the office yet, and you’re already trying to get a head start on work, because it must be the most important thing to you.’ I felt sorry for them.” Binstead is a recovering workaholic. Pre-pandemic, he ran a 50-cover wine bar in central Sheffield. He would start work at 10am and leave at 1am, five days a week. On his days off, he would do paperwork. “I don’t think I realised how close I was to complete burnout,” he says. “I was using work to cope with work. Being there seemed to be my only option.” His mother didn’t bother inviting him to her 50th birthday, because she knew he would be busy. “She was probably right,” he says. “I wouldn’t have been able to get the time off.” When the pandemic hit, the sensation of relief was overwhelming. “It completely changed my relationship with money,” he says. “Having the time at home was so much more valuable to me.” In September 2020, Binstead closed his wine bar and moved his busine 

Link: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/12/time-millionaires-meet-the-people-pursuing-the-pleasure-of-leisure