Work to Live or Live to Work? | 5 Minute Videos

Do you work to live? Or do you live to work? Most people today would probably affirm the former—work to live. Most people would be wrong. David Bahnsen, author of Full Time: Work and the Meaning of Life, explains why.

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Do you work to live? Or do you live to work?

Most people today would probably affirm the former—work to live. Most people would be wrong.

We should do both: work to live and live to work. We are meant to work. I’ll go one step further: it’s what we are designed to do.

If you have religious leanings, it’s right there in the Ten Commandments. “Six days you shall work.” And then rest on the seventh, just as God did.

If you don’t have religious leanings, well, it’s just common sense.

A productive and meaningful life means spending more time working than doing anything else in your life. No other activity comes close—unless you count sleeping as an activity.

What one has to offer in skill, innovation, and productivity—that is, the work we do—is central to who we are. Nothing is possible without it. All things are possible if you do it well.

If you want to have a family, you have to work. If you want to own a home or give to charity, you have to work. Working is what responsible people do.

So then why does work get such a bad rap? Why do movies and television portray ambition as an enemy of your health, your relationships or just about anything else?

Yes, some use their careers as an escape from other serious responsibilities and obligations. But you can be fully committed to your work without letting it take over your life. I daresay, you know people who have managed this. The far greater risk to our society is the popular view of work as a chore that simply must be endured.

Overachievement is not our problem. Deriding achievement is. We don’t suffer from an epidemic of workaholism, but of “no-aholism”—no passion, no purpose, and no plan.

The best prescription for all three of these modern ailments is work.

Like so much in modern life, it seems like we need to re-discover a traditional value our grandparents and great-grandparents simply took for granted.

So, let’s take a step back and look at the value of work.

Arthur Brooks, a prolific writer on the subject of happiness and a professor at Harvard, has coined the term “earned success” to describe the psychological lift that work creates, the feeling of not receiving something, but earning it. This feeling is the basis of self-worth and deserved recognition. We achieve immense satisfaction from becoming valuable to others through our work.

That’s why it doesn’t matter whether you’re a truck driver or a bond trader. With purpose and hard work—whatever work you do—you earn self-esteem and the esteem of others.