Muße in relation to ‘what we will’
In America in the late 19th century the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions fought their battle to reduce extremely long working hours by demanding ‘Eight hours for work, eight hours for rest, eight hours for what we will!’[1] And what people wanted was loosely defined as things such as rest, thought, flowers and sunshine. Jenny Odell points out that ‘[a]lthough leisure or education might be involved, the most humane way to describe that period is to refuse to define it.’[2] This is part of what Muße is: Free, undefined time – a theme that also emerged in German literature at that point.
These ‘eight hours of what we will’ are constantly under threat. There are not really eight full hours available in the first place. As Pieper pointed out in relation to leisure, the time we spent on breaks during the work day are not part of ‘what we will’ or Muße, but are part of work.
Many lose time through long commutes to and from work which eats into the eight hours. Interestingly though there are people that missed their commute when the Covid-19 lockdowns confined many workers to their homes. It was mainly people that walked, cycled or used direct public transport routes that longed for their daily commute.[3] When
asked what it was about the commute that they yearned for, the most common response was that the time they used to travel to work was the only time in the day that was “me time”. Examples included having time to listen to the radio, read a book or phone friends and family. Those that typically used the commute to read often grieved the absence of reading – despite lockdown theoretically giving people more time for this.[4]
This means that having enough time is not just the problem, but that people find it hard to protect their ‘me time’ from external influences. The commute gave them permission to spend the time with something they enjoyed.
On the other hand, the commute can be taken over by work.
The extension of work into commute time reflects the presence of an intrusive and pernicious “always-on” culture. It reflects an environment where we are enslaved to work, even when not physically in the office. Our busyness, however, can only come at the expense of the quality of our lives and our health.[5]
Other people did not regain more time for Muße, but were able instead to finally get eight hours of sleep; an area that work might have taken over previously.
Research during the past decades has clearly shown that the time people allocate to work very often interferes with the time needed to recover from work, as well as the time devoted to restorative sleep. The consequences of lost sleep at the level of both the individual and society are dramatic and costly.[6]
While they did not manage to replenish the 8 hours of what they will, they did add it to the 8 hours of sleep.
We cannot get away from the fact that many of the older texts about Muße or leisure or idleness are written by men and about men, which means there is a whole different element missing that looks at the situation of working mothers to whom the idea of achieving eight hours of what they will must sound ludicrous. ‘[T]hroughout history, women’s time has always been subjected to unpredictable interruptions, while men’s ability to experience blocks of unbroken time has been protected.’[7] Protecting one’s time from external forces is the real challenge (for some an unsolvable problem). But we are also our own problem. Every time we try to solve something, we do it by adding more to our already filled week. More emails, more meetings, more talks, more competitions, more events – all at the expense of time. Yet many problems could be solved by looking at which items eat up our and other’s time and attention unnecessarily. What can we cross out to free up time and headspace, so Muße can be re-established in our lives? And how can we get used to the idea that we do not need to account for every moment of our lives; that not everything needs to be evidenced or quantified? Or as Josef Pieper asks: ‘Is there a sphere of human activity, one might even say of human existence, that does not need to be justified by inclusion in a five-year plan and its technical organization?’[8]
[1] Roy Rosenzweig, Eight Hours for What We Will: Workers and Leisure in an Industrial City, 1870-1920 (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p.1
[2] Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy, (New York: Melville House Publishing, 2019), p.13
[3] Abigail Marks, Lila Skountridaki and Oliver Mallett, People are missing their daily commute in lockdown – here’s why, The Conversation, (2021), <https://theconversation.com/people-are-missing-their-daily-commute-in-lockdown-heres-why-142863> [accessed 1 May 2021]
[4] Ibid
[5] David Spencer, Stop working on your commute – it doesn’t benefit anyone, The Conversation, (2021) <https://theconversation.com/stop-working-on-your-commute-it-doesnt-benefit-anyone-102459> [accessed 1 May 2021]
[6] Thomas, Kantermann, Behavior: How a Global Social Lockdown Unlocks Time for Sleep, Current Biology, 30:14, (2020), pp.822-823
[7] Brigid Schulte, Overwhelmed: How to work, love, and play when no one has the time, (London:
Bloomsbury, 2015), p.68, Kindle ebook
[8] Josef Pieper, Leisure as the basis of culture / The Philosophical Act, (Random House, 1963), p.38 Kindle ebook