WORK: Should You Do Less of It? Adam Grant and James Suzman on the 15-Hour Workweek.

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Self-improvement, Arts, Books, Society & Culture, Education

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 12 May 2021

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Our work consumes us. But does it have to? Anthropologist James Suzman has spent decades living in the Kalahari Desert with one of the world’s last hunter-gatherer societies, and he’s concluded that our modern attitudes about work don’t mesh with the views held by our ancestors. For 95 percent of human history, we spent the bulk of our time doing … nothing. What changed? In this millennia-spanning conversation with Next Big Idea Club curator Adam Grant, James makes the case for spending less time toiling away at labor we loathe and more time working at things we love.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Rufus Griskem and this is the next big idea.
0:12.8	Today is working less the secret to abundance.
0:30.6	For 15 years anthropologist James Susman lived in the Kalahari Desert with some of the
0:36.2	last remaining hunter-gatherers in the world.
0:39.4	As he got to know them, they started asking questions.
0:42.8	About the world he came from, a world that seemed to them like a pretty strange place.
0:47.8	Why they asked did bosses who sat around in air conditioned offices make more money than
0:52.9	the young men who dug ditches in the hot sun?
0:55.4	Why did people keep going to work even after they'd been paid?
0:58.7	Why not take some time off for good behavior?
1:00.8	Come to think of it, why was everyone working so hard in the first place?
1:04.6	The more time James spent in the Kalahari, the harder it was for him to come up with
1:08.6	good answers.
1:09.6	Where at least answers that weren't at odds with his evolving thinking about the nature
1:13.6	of work and the necessity of leisure.
1:17.2	The men and women living in the Kalahari Desert are the closest analog we have to our ancient
1:22.2	ancestors, the ones who walk the earth during the first 290,000 years of human history.
1:28.1	Until the 1960s anthropologists believed these hunter-gatherers led short, brutally difficult
1:33.4	lives.
1:34.6	Only through incremental advancements in technology, the thinking went, where they
1:37.9	able to secure greater wealth, tranquility, and free time.
1:41.8	But when anthropologists started studying the world's remaining hunter-gatherer societies,
	...

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