LET'S GIVE IT A REST

Downtime and time-wasting have become more aspirational than luxury goods. In a world that rewards overwork and burnout, taking it easy can be radical

- By Alexandra Jones

A few weeks ago, in a dusty field at Glastonbury Festival, I bumped into a number of peers who asked (predictably) how work was going. “Yeah, good,” I heard myself telling them. “Although I’m kind of decentering work at the moment.”

A few weeks ago, in a dusty field at Glastonbury Festival, I bumped into a number of peers who asked (predictably) how work was going. “Yeah, good,” I heard myself telling them. “Although I’m kind of decentering work at the moment.” “Decentering work” - those were genuinely the words I used, much to my own bemusement and presumably others' too. They were drawn directly from an emerging lexicon of rest I had started out absorbing by cultural osmosis on social media and, before long, began to invest in. It’s all catchy lingo, of course - “micro-retirement”, “quiet quitting”, “lazy girl jobs” - easily dismissed as internet ephemera. But collectively, I soon learned, these terms point to something important: a subtle, but significant shift in the way people are approaching the relationship between work and rest.

It’s not just emerging in the language we use, but actively playing out in offices all over the country, too. This week, research by the British Chambers of Commerce found that one in 10 UK businesses has seen staff quit rather than comply with return-to-office mandates.

Experts have put forward various theories as to why workers are choosing freedom over stability, or autonomy over loyalty - but to me, it seems a natural response to a working world that has only become more extractive and less stable.