What Is Life Like When We Subtract Work From It?
If you’ve ever wondered whether a life without work would be blissful, well, Lorie Kloda can confirm that it pretty much is.
Kloda really likes her job as a university librarian in Montreal, but she still really liked not doing it for a year. During a paid sabbatical that ended this spring, she deleted the work-communication apps from her phone and regularly forgot what day of the week it was; she read, went to museums, picked up tennis. She stopped getting the Sunday scaries.
It took a few months for Kloda to feel completely untethered from work. But in the U.S., a paid, voluntary break from a job that lasts longer than two weeks is generally considered unusual. Vacation days are nice—and Americans —but truly helping people to be would mean thinking on a bigger timescale. It would mean giving people a regular opportunity to subtract work from their
