No, Bhavish Aggarwal, We Don’t Need a 70-Hour Workweek—We Need More Leisure Time!

"The Siesta" by Vincent van Gogh, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Introduction: Billionaires vs The rest of us

For a while now, our billionaire overlords have been complaining that we plebs have gotten too lazy and work too little. It began with Indian billionaire and Infosys founder Narayana Murthy, the guy who discovered that you can build a global empire if you pay your employees just enough to survive, proclaiming that the Indian youth should be ready to work 70 hours a week to increase work productivity, otherwise, “what can the poor government do?”

This was immediately welcomed by his wife, the most humble Sudha Murty as well as other billionaires and tycoons such as JSW Chairman Sajjan Jindal, Shaadi.com founder and Shark Tank India Judge Anupam Mittal, and former Infosys CFO Mohandas Pai.

And this is not just some Indian billionaire thing that is “in” these days. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man by the day and Patrick Bateman by night, has repeatedly sermonized that you must work 100 hours a week to achieve success. Similarly, Chinese business magnate and co-founder of Alibaba Group, Jack Ma has championed the grueling “996" work culture: 9 AM to 9 PM, 6 days a week, i.e., 72 hours per week, 12 hours per day.

But even amidst the cacophony of these tone-deaf pronouncements, there was one that stood out. Bhavish Aggarwal, CEO of Uber Ctrl+C, and Ctrl+V company Ola, not only endorsed Murthy's call for a 70-hour workweek but audaciously dismissed the entire concept of work-life balance. He even went so far as to declare weekends a Western construct irrelevant to India!

The Dark Side of Overwork: Why Long Hours Hurt Us All

These statements may seem innocuous at first glance, but are they truly harmless?

The Mental Toll: Stress, Anxiety, and Burnout

According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), 51% of Indian workers already work 49 hours or more per week. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 15% of working-age adults worldwide suffer from mental health disorders.

Mental health risks at work, also called psychosocial risks, are often linked to excessive workloads, understaffing, and long or inflexible hours. Other factors include authoritarian bosses and the challenge of balancing home and work responsibilities. These are exactly the kinds of settings billionaires like Bhavish Aggarwal and Elon Musk are pushing for.

The bitter irony is that being overworked can lead to a worsening of mental health, which in turn leads to a loss of productivity at work. The WHO estimates that globally, 12 billion working days are lost each year due to depression and anxiety, costing the global economy a staggering $1 trillion annually in lost productivity.

The Physical Price: Increased Risk of Serious Illness

And long working hours don’t just affect your mental health, they deteriorate your physical health too. Studies by the WHO and the ILO show a clear link between working 55+ hours per week and a higher risk of ischemic heart disease and stroke. In 2016 alone, 745,000 people around the world died from stroke and heart disease brought on by overwork.

A Journey Through Time: How Working Hours Have Evolved

The history of working hours is a little counterintuitive. Many of us may assume history is a linear path of progress, that is, things only improve with time. Therefore, we may think that stuff such as working hours must have steadily gotten better over the years.

But if you dig a little deeper, you’ll find that’s not entirely accurate.

Ancient Societies: The Surprisingly Leisurely Lives of Our Ancestors

Take ancient hunter-gatherer societies, for instance. You may think that since they lacked all the technological luxuries we have, they had to toil all day just to meet their basic needs. But you would be surprised to know that since the 1960s, the consensus among social scientists has been that early hunter-gatherer societies enjoyed more leisure time than is permitted by modern capitalist and agrarian societies. Even though their lifestyle was physically demanding, they worked mainly to meet immediate needs and still had plenty of time for socializing, storytelling, and relaxing. For example, the ǃKung people of Southern Africa only used to work two-and-a-half days per week, at around 6 hours a day.

Even in pre-industrial agricultural societies, while workloads fluctuated with the seasons, there were often periods of relative inactivity between planting and harvesting, allowing time for communal festivities, religious observances, and personal pursuits. You’d work 12 hours a day during harvest time but in the off-season, you’d work 2 or 3 hours per day.

The Industrial Revolution: A Shift to Grueling Workdays

Then, in the late 18th century in Europe, something extraordinary began to happen. Humans, with their ingenuity, were able to create sophisticated machines. It is hard to overstate how revolutionary this was going to be. This was the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, and it brought with it great promises of not only unprecedented prosperity and abundance but also the potential for increased leisure.

Now, a single machine could do the work of several people. Eli Whitney’s cotton gin could clean as much cotton in a single day as 50 people working by hand. Logically, this should have meant fewer people working to produce the same output. Even with increased demand, as long as innovation kept pace, everyone's working hours should have declined.

It all seems to make sense, right? And yet, it never happened. Instead, what began was the most notorious period for the working class’s well-being:

• Factories and mines popped up, demanding grueling 12–16-hour workdays, six to seven days a week, with minimal breaks.

• Wages remained abysmally low, forcing children as young as five or six into labor to support their families.

• Working conditions were appallingly dangerous, with little regard for worker safety. Frequent accidents, exposure to toxic substances, and poor ventilation resulted in widespread health problems and high mortality rates.

• Women faced significant discrimination, earning half or less than their male counterparts, with no provisions for maternity leave or childcare.

• Workers lacked legal protections, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation and easily replaceable if they dared to protest or demand better conditions.

• The monotonous, repetitive nature of factory work, coupled with strict discipline, contributed to high levels of stress and mental fatigue.

Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (LC-DIG-nclc-01581)

From Nightmare to Norm: The Hard-Fought Battle for the 40-Hour Workweek

You may wonder then, so how did we go from this Dickensian nightmare to the 40-hour workweek we know today? Ah, it must be due to the generosity of the factory owners. They must have felt pity for the poor workers and decided to just gift it to them, right? Yeah, the chances of that happening are as much as the dinosaurs returning. At such times, we must remember the words of American abolitionist Frederick Douglass:

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will."

The establishment of the 8-hour workday and the 40-hour workweek was not a present with a bow handed over to the working class, but a hard-won victory achieved through decades of relentless labor activism, strikes, political pressure, and incremental legal reforms.

The demand for shorter working hours began as early as 1791 when Philadelphia carpenters went on strike for a 10-hour workday. The idea of an 8-hour workday was first articulated in 1817 by Welsh industrialist and utopian socialist Robert Owen, who coined the slogan "Eight hours labor, eight hours recreation, eight hours rest" and implemented it in his New Lanark factories. Over the following decades, movements, strikes, and protests for the 8-hour workday intensified, sometimes culminating in violence, such as the 1886 Haymarket massacre in Chicago.

Eight-hour day banner, Melbourne, 1856.

From Resistance to Reform: The Gradual Adoption of Shorter Hours

Finally, the workers started to see the fruits of their struggles:

• After the Russian Revolution, in 1917, Soviet Russia became the first country to establish the eight-hour workday by law for all professions as part of its labor reforms, influencing labor policies in socialist and communist movements worldwide.

• A significant breakthrough occurred in 1926 when Henry Ford, the founder of the Ford Motor Company, introduced the 8-hour workday. Ford, of course, did not do so out of pure benevolence or love for the well-being of his workers, but to boost productivity, retain workers, and create a market for his cars. Shorter hours made employees more efficient, reduced turnover, and gave them more time to spend money on products like Ford's automobiles. It was a strategic business move influenced by the broader labor movement's push for better working conditions, helping Ford maintain control and avoid labor unrest.

• Finally, after World War II, the 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek became more widely adopted in industrialized nations and many countries codified these standards into law.

Debunking the Myth of Scarcity: Do We Really Need to Work More?

Now, speaking of the 8-hour workday and 40-hour workweek, you might think that it is the bare minimum to meet society's needs. After all, don't we have stuff like world hunger, poverty, homelessness, and other pressing issues to solve? Surely, tackling these challenges requires everyone to work longer and harder, right? Well, don’t be so sure:

World Hunger

Consider world hunger. According to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), there’s no global food shortage. In fact, we produce more than enough food to feed everyone on the planet. Yet, somehow, one-third of it—1.3 billion tons—goes to waste. That wasted food alone could feed 1.26 billion people, which is nearly twice the number of undernourished people in the world.

Healthcare

Or look at healthcare. The tiny communist island nation of Cuba, despite being under a brutal embargo, has proved that universal healthcare can be achieved at a low cost through strong political will, emphasizing health as a human right, and not a 70-hour workweek. By focusing on preventive care, efficient resource use, and a well-trained medical workforce, Cuba has achieved health outcomes that are nothing short of impressive. Cuba matches the USA’s life expectancy and has a lower infant mortality rate despite spending 10 times less on healthcare per capita.

Education

Let’s look at education. In 1961, Cuba set an extraordinary example for the world by virtually eradicating illiteracy in just eight months through its ambitious Cuban Literacy Campaign. Following the Cuban Revolution, the new government led by Fidel Castro launched this campaign as part of broader social reforms aimed at creating equality across the nation. The campaign mobilized over 250,000 volunteers, including young students, factory workers, and professional teachers, who traveled to the most remote and impoverished areas to teach basic literacy. These efforts led to over 700,000 Cubans becoming literate by the end of the year, raising the country's literacy rate to 96%, one of the highest in the world at the time. Today, Cuba’s literacy rate is virtually 100%.

Homelessness

What about homelessness? Finland's "Housing First" policy demonstrates how political will and a human rights-based approach can effectively reduce homelessness. Since its launch in 2008, the policy has cut long-term homelessness by 68% by providing immediate, stable housing without preconditions. This allows individuals to address other challenges like employment and health. By converting shelters into permanent housing and offering continuous support through government and NGO partnerships, Finland has set a global standard for tackling homelessness.

These figures are a scathing indictment of our socio-political-economic systems.

Wasted Wealth: How Our Resources Are Diverted from Solving Real Problems

So, what's really going on here? The problem isn't a lack of production; it's a lack of political will and an economic system designed for the plutocrats.

One of the reasons we struggle to feed, clothe, and house everyone on the planet is that our labor, resources, and wealth are being siphoned off to produce an overwhelming array of unnecessary products and services—thousands of varieties of shampoo, hundreds of types of breakfast cereal, scores of soft drinks, dozens of bottled water brands, countless flavors of chips, and endless options for laundry detergents, yogurt, and flavored alcoholic beverages.

Another culprit is our enormous military spending. In 2023, global military expenditure reached a record $2.44 trillion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI). This dwarfs the estimated $70 billion per year required to eradicate extreme poverty worldwide by 2030, as calculated by a UNU-WIDER paper. This is a mere 2.87% of the global military spending.

Imagine if we redirected all this money, labor, resources, and time toward fulfilling people's real needs rather than creating artificial ones like yearly iPhone upgrades, voice-controlled lighting, fast fashion, wellness fads, limited-edition sneakers, luxury handbags, exclusive social media features, gourmet pet food, or the latest diet trends.

"Bathers at Asnières" by Georges Seurat, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The Case for Leisure in the Modern Age

"Let us be lazy in everything, except in loving and drinking, except in being lazy." — German Philosopher Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

In a world hypnotized by hustle culture and rise-and-grind, it's time we demand a systemic shift. We live in an era of unprecedented abundance and prosperity, yet the fruits of this abundance rarely reach the majority, and instead of experiencing liberation, we're overworked and tethered to the relentless pursuit of producing unnecessary goods. It's time we reclaim our right to leisure.

Throughout history, numerous thinkers have upheld the cause of shorter working hours and advocated for the importance of leisure. Their prescient observations and arguments have never been more relevant than they are today.

Historical Advocacy for Leisure

In 1930, the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes published an essay “Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren” that predicted that by 2030, technological progress would enable a 15-hour workweek and we would be like “the lilies of the field” who are able to enjoy life directly and naturally, without being concerned with productivity or utility.

Paul Lafargue, a political thinker who also happened to be Karl Marx's son-in-law published a provocatively titled pamphlet in 1883 called “The Right to Be Lazy”. Lafargue argued that fighting for an eight-hour workday was misguided, as it still meant eight hours of exploitation. He believed people should fight for more leisure, joy, and self-realization, with minimal work. Automation, even in Lafargue's time, could have reduced work to three or four hours daily, leaving more time for what truly mattered—relaxation, socializing, and enjoying life.

Modern Perspectives: Reimagining Work's Role in the 21st Century

Contemporary thinkers have continued to uphold this cause. David Graeber, in his 2018 book "Bullshit Jobs," argued that many modern jobs are unnecessary and that technological advancements should have led to shorter working hours. Similarly, Juliet Schor has spoken extensively on work-time reduction, highlighting the potential benefits for individuals, families, and the environment.

The push for reduced working hours is not merely about personal comfort. It's a recognition that in an age of abundance, we have the opportunity to redefine societal priorities. Kathi Weeks, in her book "The Problem with Work," advocates for shorter working hours as part of a broader reimagining of work's role in our lives. This perspective aligns with growing discussions around universal basic income (UBI) and the need to decouple survival from traditional employment models.

The time has come to demand more leisure, not as a luxury, but as a fundamental right in a technologically advanced society.

The Four-Day Workweek: A Path Forward

Thankfully, in recent years, the concept of a four-day workweek has seen increased interest and experimentation and is being trialed in various countries with promising results. For example, businesses and organizations implementing a four-day workweek have reported improvements in productivity, employee well-being, and reduced stress levels, all while maintaining or even increasing overall productivity. Notably, successful trials in countries like Iceland and New Zealand show that a shorter workweek benefits both employees and employers. This suggests that adopting this model more widely could be a viable path forward.

In Praise of Idleness: Bertrand Russell's Vision for a Happier Society

In his 1932 essay "In Praise of Idleness," philosopher Bertrand Russell argued that working just four hours a day could provide enough for everyone to live comfortably, leaving the rest of the time for leisure.

Russell, in his admiration of idleness, wrote...

“In a world where no one is compelled to work more than four hours a day, every person possessed of scientific curiosity will be able to indulge it, and every painter will be able to paint without starving…Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid…Ordinary men and women, having the opportunity of a happy life, will become more kindly and less persecuting and less inclined to view others with suspicion. The taste for war will die out, partly for this reason, and partly because it will involve long and severe work for all. Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen instead to have overwork for some and starvation for others…In this, we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish forever.”

So, Bhavish Aggarwal and Narayana Murthy, I’ll take my weekends, thank you very much. And I’ll work towards a future where we all have more time to enjoy them.