Rethink Work

Changing how we think about work

Good life

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  • faviconWill I ever retire? It doesn’t look like it — The thought of not working every waking second, of not feeling pressure to produce for the good of the capitalist machine, is undeniably appealing [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconOscar Wilde: A great deal of nonsense is being written and talked nowadays about the dignity of manual labour; there is nothing necessarily dignified about manual labour at all, and most of it is absolutely degrading [1891]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconGuaranteed income helps people leaving jail and prison, and that helps everyone — Guaranteed income is an efficient way to help people succeed in reentry, reducing recidivism and quickly paying for itself [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: US   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconIreland’s basic income for artists changed my life. Other people deserve the same luck — The state’s own research found that for every euro the government spent on supporting artists, society received €1.39 in return, and the scheme was estimated to have generated more than €100m in social and economic benefits [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: IE   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconIreland announces new scheme providing basic income for artists — The research revealed that participants in the pilot project showed greater professional autonomy and capacity for creative work, as well as less anxiety and  higher life satisfaction [2026]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: IE   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconAndré Gorz Was the Theorist Who Predicted the Revolt Against Meaningless Work — We have to get rid of the productivist ideology of work, as it’s not a natural thing with inherent value [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Productivism, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Jacobin    

  • favicon‘I awoke at ½ past 7’ — Our cursed age of self-monitoring and optimisation didn’t start with big tech: as so often, the Victorians are to blame. But tech companies have monetised this deep-rooted urge to better ourselves, providing new ways to document and compare our daily lives, which can create a perpetual sense of failure [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Aeon    

  • faviconWhy Work? The meaning and significance of work have already changed fundamentally. The possibilities of increasing and using leisure time have meanwhile increased exponentially. To ignore these facts is to remain trapped in the gravitational field of classical social theory—from Hegel to Freud via Marx—and to make work a fetish [2017]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: The Baffler    

  • faviconYou aren’t lazy. You just need to slow down — The idea of laziness has been effectively and expertly wielded to make people feel unproductive and unworthy. It’s a lie, and a trap that makes us believe there’s always more we could be doing — at work, in our relationships, at home — and that worth is productivity [2021]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Productivism   
    Comments   
    Source: NPR    

  • faviconYour Worth Is Not Your Productivity — From the draconian Poor Laws of the nineteenth century to today’s workfare conditions, governments have consistently used benefits as a tool to discipline those deemed to be ‘idle’ [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Productivism, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Tribune    

  • faviconIceland Embraced a 4-Day Workweek in 2019 – Now, Nearly Six Years On, All Gen Z Forecasts Have Materialized — With more time for leisure, family, and friends, the stress associated with rigid work schedules has decreased, and overall happiness has increased [2025]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: 4 Day Week   
    Comments   
    Country: IS   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconThe benefits of doing nothing — An overactive ‘life drive’ endlessly seeks expansion, inevitably leads to burnout, and drains us of the energy needed to truly progress. Finding the time to do nothing is essential to reassessing who we are and who we want to be [2020]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: iAi    

  • faviconThe Age of the Crisis of Work — No less than the state, work makes promises to its subjects. Our culture has scripts about what makes work worthwhile, not just necessary; not a burden to be endured but an important component of a flourishing life. And increasingly these scripts do not play out as written [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human   
    Comments   
    Source: Harper's Magazine    

  • faviconThis Job Is (Literally) Killing Me: A Moderated-Mediated Model Linking Work Characteristics to Mortality — When job demands are greater than the control afforded by the job or the individual’s ability to deal with those demands, there is a deterioration of the individual’s mental health and, accordingly, an increased likelihood of death (PDF) [2020]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Mental Health, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Various    

  • faviconWhy are we all working so hard? The intensification of work doesn’t seem to be making us richer, but it does appear to be making us sicker — In spite of — or perhaps because of — new technology, people now say they are working harder to tighter deadlines under greater levels of tension [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workism   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Financial Times    

  • faviconExpert who coined presenteeism term says employers who force staff back are dinosaurs – Cary Cooper says ‘micromanagers’ risk driving away talent and damaging wellbeing [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Remote Working, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: The Guardian    

  • faviconAristotle On Why Leisure Defines Us More than Work — Transposing his thought — that we often do not know how to spend our leisure time constructively — to the modern day, at one extreme we can find workaholism, at the other we find those who want to completely forget work [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Leisure, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconWhat if work is making us sick? — While employment has become less physically dangerous, it seems to have become more psychologically harmful, as high demands and low control at work — known in the academic literature as “job strain” — is bad for mental and physical health [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Workplace Dictatorship   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: Financial Times    

  • faviconHannah Arendt on the Human Condition: Productivity Will Replace Meaning — Arendt thinks we must somehow cease glorifying labor and return it to its true place at the bottom of the vita activa hierarchy. We must unblur the lines between labor and work, and between work and action [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Protestant Work Ethic   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconPaul Lafargue’s ‘Right to be Lazy’ — While he exclusively focused on laziness as a form of rebellion by workers against the social pressure to constantly work, his treatise echoes modern research on the positive health benefits of boredom and daydreaming [2023]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   

  • faviconBertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness — In his brilliant and timely 1935 essay, the philosopher suggests that “a great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of work, and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work…” [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, Leisure   
    Comments   
    Source: Philosophy Break    

  • faviconBasic income: why we need to start talking about money. Many aren’t getting their basic needs met in the UK. UBI could change this – if we can believe we deserve it [2024]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: UBI   
    Comments   
    Country: UK   
    Source: openDemocracy    

  • faviconThe Shame of Work — Review of “The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work”, by David Frayne; If ever a book was designed to help you question the value of the work ethic and look anew at our modern obsession with productivity and promotion, this is it [2016]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Books, Protestant Work Ethic, Workism   
    Comments   
    Source: The New Rambler Review    

  • faviconA meta-analysis on the crossover of workplace traumatic stress symptoms between partners — Workers’ PTSD/distress from violence, harassment and abuse on the job is as harmful for their intimate partners as the traumatic stressors are for workers encountering them firsthand, shows research [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: Mental Health, Research   
    Comments   
    Source: Scientific Journals    

  • faviconWhy You Hate Your Job: it’s a bullshit job — The creation of UBI would liberate many from degrading working conditions and meaningless work, while allowing them to take on dignified work that truly serves the society. Whether this dignity is derived from external or internal sources, it is a prerequisite to our pursuit of the good life [2022]
    In: Good life    
    Topics: How to be Human, UBI   
    Comments   
    Source: Current Affairs