Timed writing/ Seungmi Park

Timed Writing

 Do we work to live or live to work?

    Do people happen to have the time to stop and think whether they work to live or live to work? The latter sounds more plausible. Throughout the history of mankind, people only worked more as time went despite the timesaving modern technology. Timesaving devices don't seem to help people diminish their working hours. However, I believe people need to work less and enjoy more leisure time.  

    Longer working hours are detrimental to people's mental health. Every day most of people would lay down on their beds thinking about their tiring routines waiting for them the next morning. In a study conducted by the University of Colorado, people who work more with less free time suffer from insomnia, depression, and neurosis. Let's take a direct example from workaholics, who spend most of their time working. They are often depressed, not to mention being stressed out. Their relationships with other people would be ruined because they have no time to brush them up. They equal to broken robots.

    Less leisure time weakens work efficiency. Suppose there's a guy who's been working 10 hours a day for one month at a marketing company. He wouldn't be able to focus on this work, and he would constantly think about the few hours of free time he would be having after work. The more people work, the less focused they are on what they are working on. Less leisure time doesn't encourage people to work efficiently, but dully.   

    Some people might argue that in order to survive in the competition with others at work, we have to work longer and harder. However, this attitude destroys people's inner peace and happiness. People's work is also a part of their lives, but without some time by themselves, they would end up letting their work completely consuming their lives. With this attitude, winning competition would become so important to people that they wouldn't see what's really important in their lives.

    People should have more spare time and work less because it harms their mental health as well as work performance. We are not robots. We need some time off to live better and to work better. We don't live to work but work to live.