Two views concerning idleness, from Tolstoy’s War and Peace and Bertrand Russell’s “In Praise of Idleness” …
“The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor – idleness – was a condition of the first man’s blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though idle, he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the conditions of man’s primitive blessedness.” War and Peace , Book 7 Chapter 1.
(btw, goes on to “suan” military service by saying “the chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness”, haha), and on the other hand, …
“I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. … and that the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work.
If the ordinary wage-earner worked four hours a day, there would be enough for everybody and no unemployment — assuming a certain very moderate amount of sensible organization. This idea shocks the well-to-do, because they are convinced that the poor would not know how to use so much leisure. …
When I suggest that working hours should be reduced to four, I am not meaning to imply that all the remaining time should necessarily be spent in pure frivolity. … I mean that four hours’ work a day should entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life, and that the rest of his time should be his to use as he might see fit.” In Praise of Idleness (1932)
Are you working too little, or working too much?
While I Live, I Learn 