Page 53 - Benjamin Franklin\'s The Way to Wealth: A 52 brilliant ideas interpretation - PDFDrive.com

22 QUALITY TIME

‘Leisure is time for doing something useful; this leisure the diligent man
will obtain, but the lazy man never,’ said Franklin, taking leisure
seriously.

We associate the idea of quality time with the time-starved, work-obsessed
West Coast Americans trying desperately to tend to their neglected
relationships, families and personal lives. Back in the 1750s Franklin was
already on the case.

DEFINING IDEA…
It’s a new age…It’s a new age…‘Creativity’ is the word in balancing
your personal and work life.
~ ROBERT EPSTEIN, CEO OF CAREERBANK

Although much is made of Franklin’s repeated calls to industry and
frugality, it’s often overlooked that he also rated leisure seriously enough to
distinguish between quality leisure time and wasted time. He was an
advocate of taking your leisure seriously and using it for something more
constructive than vegging out in front of reality TV while tucking into
tortilla chips. Not that he personally suffered from the twin plagues of Big
Brother and barbecue sauce-flavoured chips, but from the general tone of
The Way to Wealth it’s a fair inference that he wouldn’t have approved of
either.

If you’re flat out at work the idea that you need to do more with your
leisure time might sound like madness but in fact it makes perfect sense.
Doing nothing sounds like bliss when you’re busy and stressed, but in fact
doing nothing is not the antidote to stress—far from it. If you can’t clear
your mind of work then your downtime is likely to become an extension of
your working worries, and a festering, stagnating extension of them at that.

Speaking personally, I know that as someone who works from home I have
to make a special effort to get away from my work, so I really do try to