Work and leisure

Posted on 13. Apr, 2010 by Julia Barnard in Wellbeing Research, work

Having a so-called passive job, has an impact on how active a person is in their leisure time. But only if you are a man, according to a study conducted by researchers at University College London. A passive job was defined as one where the worker had little control and not much stress. Over 6,000 civil servants took part in the study, which was carried out over a five-year period. They found that for men, those in passive jobs were 16% more likely to have less active leisure activities than men who had never had passive work. The researchers acknowledge that the percentage is not great but are enough if you apply this to all workers.

The ideal would be for workers to be in control of their work, and to then have the motivation to be active after work. Worth reading is Csikszentmihalyi’s book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience , where he discusses how workers create meaning from so-called meaningless jobs.

Tags: activities, control, flow experience, leisure, meaning, motivation, stress, work