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Keynes, the father of modern economics predicted in 1930, “In the future, working hours would be short and vacations long. Our grandchildren would work around three hours a day—and probably only by choice.” Economic progress and technological advances had already shrunk working hours considerably by his day, and there was no reason to believe this trend would not continue. Faster cars and planes were taking us places and modern appliances were reducing drudgery in the home and the office. Concern was being raised in social circles: what are we going to do with all the free time in the future?And here we are, in the 21st century, afflicted with a ‘perennial time-scarcity problem’. And the matter is growing more acute with every passing day. We have never worked so hard, for so long and for so little. Technology hasn’t made life any easier at all. Workers are finding themselves under more pressure than ever before. People are living to work and not working to live.

Masanobu Fukuoka has raised this concern in his book ‘The One-Straw Revolution’, “I do not particularly like the word ‘work.’ Human beings are the only animals who have to work, and I think that is the most ridiculous thing in the world. Other animals make their livings by living, but people work like crazy, thinking that they have to in order to stay alive. The bigger the job, the greater the challenge, the more wonderful they think it is. It would be good to give up that way of thinking and live an easy, comfortable life with plenty of free time. I think that the way animals live in the tropics, stepping outside in the morning and evening to see if there is something to eat, and taking a long nap in the afternoon, must be a wonderful life. For human beings, a life of such simplicity would be possible if one worked to produce directly his daily necessities. In such a life, work is not work as people generally think of it, but simply doing what needs to be done.”