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Importance of Work and Play Essay
1. introduction.
Although work and play represent two dichotomous aspects of life, they remain inextricably linked. Both are ongoing, individual expenditures of time and energy which aid in bridging the gap between one's present state and future aspirations. In spite of their interconnectedness and diversity, the disciplines of both psychology and adult education have tended to consider work and play to be separate entities. It is the purpose of this chapter to compare these seemingly opposite aspects of life and through such comparison to provide a more comprehensive understanding of ourselves. From such understanding, a number of implications for adult education emerge. Working and playing: these actions or concepts are as basic to societal formations as are all the varied, intricate, and complicated aspects of life. They are two of the simplest theoretical concepts to discuss, yet they remain two of the most complex phenomena to define. Their essential nature is subject to manifold laws, anomalies, perspectives, and opinions. And their assertion would be again brought to the observer's attention in their simplest form: although less than a century ago their existence demanded only the simplest tools, motives, rewards, or prejudice, the excessive social complexity of contemporary man requires a more universal reexamination of the fundamental natures of work and play.
1.1. Background and Context
Work and play are critical indicators of human well-being, yet there is limited empirical knowledge about their contribution to fulfillment in life. This article provides the most comprehensive UK analysis of the difference that work and worklessness, as well as parents' and children's play, make to the quality of people's lives. It explores the relationships between how people spend their time and seven different aspects of their 'well-being', namely: income, physical health, mental health, children's development, education and skills, social connectedness, and charitable activities. An econometric investigation into these factors suggests that using an additional £10 of income or spending the same time physically active is associated with fairly similar increases in well-being, while the benefits of gaining two playing hours a week are approximately comparable to those of an additional social hour. Using data from a variety of surveys, including the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS), General Household Survey (GHS), Time Use Survey (TUS) and Special Licence Access Survey (SLA), we demonstrate that employment and low job satisfaction contribute very little to individuals' overall well-being, while unemployed non-respondents and participants are unhappiest. Enhancing children's play experience, or the life quality of the almost 700,000 families in the entire 2000 cohort, would boost their life satisfaction. This would be good not only for them and their larger family, but for the 1.5 million siblings, 500,000 play volunteers and facing 145,000 with poor mental health. It would be of benefit to the entire society, today and tomorrow. In setting out the policy, administrative and methodological context for the dissemination of the results, our study brings to an end the life phase of play and work analysis 1988-2008.
2. Historical Perspectives
In the United States of America, as in several other prominent cultures, men and women try to establish standards of belief and behavior which are socially respectable and termed "the good life" by those who live according to these standards. The remarkable thing about the standards of the good life in the United States, at least prior to the 20th century, is the assumption that most adult members of the culture could be expected to pursue their lives according to these standards. By expectation, we mean something more than that these standards were regulatory in nature. We mean that in general, people acted as if adherence to these standards was commonly attainable, permitting people to expect that they and their contemporaries, if not all their children, would maintain themselves in private station, honor, and comfort without deviant behavior. Family welfare capitalism in America is rooted in the following beliefs or the systematization of them. The most important goal in life is to find happiness, if not contentment. Social activities and relationships that are judged as most satisfying and worthwhile have to do with establishing, maintaining, and preserving families and kinship, and with helping the members of the families of friends and relatives to success, respectability, and peace of mind. Corporate and collective activities designed and executed by men of talent and influence may contribute to the well-being of individual families, but they have no independent purposes or goals of their own, or at least they do not compete with family welfare in importance, for if they do, the quality of individual lives is no longer of primary importance, and if it loses its place at the top of the scale, a causal sequence of desires and motives degenerates into a chaotic mess of wishes and whims among unsatisfied and unhappy citizens of community.
2.1. Evolution of Work and Play
I believe that any complex or developed forms of the phenomena of work and play must be best understood as an evolutionary development of this most basic form of purpose and non-purpose. This is not to say that either work or play is static. They are not static in their goals, nor are they static in the manners in which these goals are realized. Nor are they static in the kinds of dynamics which lead to their units. Furthermore, basic dynamisms mean that their interactions produce constant entailment dynamisms. However, it is our ability to use collective purpose and collective non-purpose which separate us from biological animals. Our feelings of work are really a deep part of our collective understandings, of behaviors that contribute to collective purpose. Our feelings of play are a deep part of our collective understanding of behaviors that contribute to collective non-purpose. We are very complex animals that have developed amazingly complex and various phenomena of purpose and non-purpose. Yet we are different only in degree—the entire story of our complex behavior and motive is to be found back in the game and the work of animals. Our minds and our easy messages of consciousness should obey rules based on these deepest levels of behavior. Our computer or even non-vital systems give an inkling that this is the case.
3. Psychological and Developmental Benefits
With time out for play, children enhance their imagination, increase their creativity, and strengthen their capacity for concentration and intellectual learning. Play helps them develop a positive self-concept and enhances their social skills and their capacities for learning and personal development. For adults, leisure and recreation pursuits provide an outlet for extra work effort, create positive attitudes toward work, recover energy lost to work fatigue, reduce stress, and thereby improve health; and facilitate immigrant and other minority group adjustment. For a broader society, the provision and maintenance of recreational facilities and social and community services can reduce the cost of welfare and related benefits and contribute directly to employment, economic development, productivity, and economic wealth. The full benefits of play, leisure, or recreation in all its guises should be faced directly and be shown, not only to educators and early childhood institutions, but to the public at large, the professions, all levels of government, employers, unions, and students of economics. Play and leisure are essential for the well-being, health, and longevity of all people. These are psychological, educational, and individual and social motivating reasons showing the inherent value of these activities for children, adults, and society. The psychological and developmental importance of play is most readily grasped when two questions are answered. What benefits heretofore caring of play and leisure are available for children and adults in their personal and social lives and behavior, and in other activities like work, education, and daily living? What benefits directly earthen to the individual, family, commerce, industry, and government and their public and social services organizations where leisure and recreational facilities are facilitated or not provided for sunshine, fresh air, space for large muscle movement, the company of their peers in spontaneous and structured play, and opportunities for executive function, for activity when resting the mind, and for enjoyment and pleasure, for waste of energy and relaxation.
3.1. Cognitive Development
Because children are living in the information age, they are entitled to a high level of cognitive functioning, particularly the ability to understand the toy-like aspects of their new world. Toys are a child's first (and sometimes only) experience in appreciating the importance of function, structure, and design. In order for cognitive abilities to develop to their potential, the physical environment must also stimulate the development of these abilities. This idea is depicted negatively in the instance when deprived Romanian orphans, so damaged by institutional rearing, show a "heightened interest in unusual visual patterns, exploration of toys, and a reliance on conformity, a situation that contrasts vividly with the lack of curiosity and exploratory behavior often cited in infants exposed to psychosocial adversity". Containing objects, these test patterns stimulate cognitive development by causing the infant to focus on the colored moving patterns. Unfortunately, the infant is often left, or should I say placed or positioned, propped up, or placed in a swing without any type of surroundings to explore. In other words, instabilities of development are experienced due to environmental deprivation in crowded, over-stimulating, lethargic, or hyperactive environments.
4. Societal Impacts
The consequences of inadequate play can be severe, affecting economic and societal issues. The value of a grown-up as contributing to society is diminished by the lack of such development. Workers lose perspective and are unable to distance themselves from their work problems. Solutions to problems do not come easy because the worker lacks the quality insight necessary for smart resolutions. A worker who has worked too much - at least 45 hours per week and at least 2000 hours per year - will "tend to hurt their reputation, health, families and companies," Alexander writes. Workers need to be able to engage fully in hours of serious work, but their off-hours require equal dedication to play, family and leisure. Without the development play brings, society has, according to Alexander, "reduced employability, worker productivity, worker security, problems solving ability and self motivation." Companies at risk from such work habits do their own work to remain competitive in a technologically driven, global economy. They rely on smart workers to employ their human capital, and the human resources sector feels that managers and officers who play preserve the competencies they derive their company value from creating. An effective worker knows how to play and renew because the individual knows how to prioritize and be balanced and know what the next step should be, Alexander explains. The human resources department should facilitate a worker's personal, professional and corporate growth, and promote the creation of a 'thinking organisation' that utilizes an "individual's real assets on the job." These are the value-driven desires of employees in forward-thinking corporations. For these ideals to be met, employees need to be assured that the limits of work and play are being respected so they do not careen into burnout. The vice president of a Human Resources department interviews at his firm interviewed for this book declares: "if the employee becomes so preoccupied with their work that they become the only other person in the office and they live in the office, as soon as they die, they will replace that person." (Lesley Kennedy, HR Director, Information Technology Department, Sportgear).
4.1. Work-Life Balance
The modern working environment has changed considerably in the past few decades. Employees are almost constantly available, and many people work long hours with increased work demands. Moreover, the younger generation has demonstrated a desire for more time off and greater flexibility, striving to attain happiness in their work and personal lives. They prioritize things on a day-to-day basis, rather than just considering long-term career goals. Work-Life Balance (WLB), as conceptualized, suggests that individuals will strive to be in a state that allows for all dimensions of life to function/flourish at an optimal level. Research after research has identified WLB as a primary player for life satisfaction. Regarding the measure, the classic "multiple commitments" approach has become the most commonly used methodology. In the past decade, a number of empirical studies have used this approach to test the commitment profile of multiple roles in addition to work and family. These data actually show that 24 percent of the workforce feel they are often or very often time-constrained. Full-time employees outside the home are least satisfied with their time balance. A new body of literature has also focused on the employee and not lifestyle verities that affect work-life interrelationships. This area is still in its embryonic stage as far as studies and applications carried out are concerned, due in part to a limited number of previously defined reference models, how they manage work-life enablers, conflicts, and WLB, and with what broad impacts on cooperative performance.
5. Conclusion
The process of work and the baseline theoretical implications have been discussed. The rest of the paper is dedicated to examining empirical evidence on basic questions of labor economics. Our last issue is the linkage between the theoretical concept of "pure" work and human activity, and the empirical phenomena we have discussed. How do we conceptualize the distinction between "pure work" and employment on one hand, and what has been called "nonwork" but covers a far wider range of mundane activities, on the other? Work as we have described it is almost exclusively a market phenomenon, except insofar as people have a legal or moral obligation to perform certain tasks, or insofar as individuals or households derive satisfaction from the outcomes of such tasks as housecleaning, cooking, or child-rearing. Employment occurs when individuals are asked to perform market-related work beyond some minimal amount. Much nonemployment "work" involves creative effort, discipline, application, and the overcoming of alienating experience. When the word work is so used, it implies pain at least as often as it does human capital acquisition. Daniel Hamermesh, who has made a particular effort to measure the time devoted to what is non-work, the concept of discipline if not pain, makes it clear that the distinction at the individual level between work and nonwork derives from the characteristics of the activity from which the individual is choosing alternatives. At an aggregate level, no such distinction is necessary. People cannot work all the time. We all need to rest. Work is preferable to leisure only if it is well-rewarded or if working offers psychic benefits of human or capital type. The distinction between market-related activities and apparently unproductive pursuits which consume time (i.e. between what people actually choose to do and what we think they should be doing) is best made by society itself.
5.1. Summary of Key Findings
To summarize, we find that play is associated with lower cortisol in a particularly stressed, disenfranchised population of urban youth. Our assessment of work and play reveals important key differences in how these activities influence stress hormone levels. Our preliminary analysis and previous studies suggest that work and play have differential effects on cortisol and the stress process more generally. There are many possible mechanisms of the relationship and further research is needed, but our results suggest that future work in this area should recognize and investigate the possible role of social status in building models of the work-stress relationship. Our research demonstrates the need to understand the whole of growing up and also points to the concurrent nature of work and non-work activities and how they are associated with growing and developing. It's important to note that adolescents and youth are participating in many different forms of activities and it is likely that the stress-health relationship varies within and across different types of activities. The effects of work and play on stress depend, at least in part, on the nature of the activities in which they are engaged. Certainly, an adolescent working in a quiet service-oriented business would have much different effects on their cortisol compared to an adolescent working in a noisy, fast-paced, competitive and physically demanding fast food restaurant as per the present study. Indeed, prior research analyzing adolescent work hours has found that working in jobs that are more demanding and expose youth to noxious, stressful working conditions have adverse impacts on health outcomes such as substance use, academic achievement, emotional distress, and physical activity. With respect to play, research on adolescence has shown that participation in extracurricular activities was associated with a lower risk of drug use and delinquency, better school achievement, positive personal development, high self-esteem and an overall satisfaction in life. Our findings are consistent with these studies and indicate a relationship between work, non-work activities and cortisol.
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Striking a Balance Between Work and Play
- Category: Life
- Topic: Work-Life Balance
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