Awakening to — And Escaping From — Total Work Through Non-Doing

This essay from Michael Ashcroftis a great short intro to the idea of Total Work.

I first encountered the idea reading Josef Pieper's book on Leisure, but haven't thought about it in a while.

Andrew Taggart highlights the five conditions of Total Work:

1. When work is the centre around which all of human life turns

2. When everything else in human life is not only put in the service of, but is made to be subservient to, work
3. When leisure, play and festivity slowly – perhaps imperceptibly – are turned into work
4. When we come to believe that we were born to work
5. When all other ways of living – those that existed well before work took over the world – fall away from cultural memory

Total Work says it’s absolutely fine to nap, meditate, exercise, eat well, and sleep, because those things will make you more productive for work.

I've noticed in myself that even on a highly reduced work schedule (I've been working 20 hours or less a week for over two years now), it's still so easy to keep the total work mindset alive.

It's something I want to think about and explore more in 2026 (see my 2026 Reading List). And I find myself using it as a framing heading into this year. As I'm thinking about new years goals and resolutions, I'm spending less time imagining what business goals I want to achieve or what's the "next step" in terms of my business, but how I can un-center work as a key part of my identity (and what would I replace it with??).

Awakening to — and escaping from — Total Work through non-doing

https://michaelashcroft.com/writing/awakening-to-and-escapting-from-total-work

Highlights

• Andrew Taggart highlights the five conditions of Total Work:
  1. When work is the centre around which all of human life turns
  2. When everything else in human life is not only put in the service of, but is made to be subservient to, work
  3. When leisure, play and festivity slowly – perhaps imperceptibly – are turned into work
  4. When we come to believe that we were born to work
  5. When all other ways of living – those that existed well before work took over the world – fall away from cultural memory (View Highlight)
• Total Work says it’s absolutely fine to nap, meditate, exercise, eat well, and sleep, because those things will make you more productive for work. (View Highlight)
• True leisure is not the opportunity to do things that aren’t work, but the freedom – and the ability – not to do at all. (View Highlight)
• Total Work takes advantage of this existential discomfort by distracting us with an endless cascade of activity. It then cunningly adds that moral imperative – “it’s right to be distracted” to prevent us from looking too closely at the whole game. (View Highlight)
• When all this dawned on me, I decided to opt out of Total Work for an hour and just read on the sofa. But at that moment I also saw the brilliant deviousness of Total Work: there is nothing anyone can do to get out without getting trapped by the first criterion: when work is the centre around which all of human life turns. To decide to take an hour off from work is to assert that life is defined by work. (View Highlight)
• In this way, Total Work is like the Dao, only the other way around: by intending to deviate you immediately accord. So how do we actually accord with the Dao? How can we actually deviate from Total Work? By not trying to. Just notice that it’s there and don’t try to change anything. (View Highlight)
• If you suspect that you too are caught up in Total Work then don’t worry, it’s enough just to notice it. Decide that you don’t want to be and then be aware that you are. Total Work, like quicksand, will only pull you in deeper if you struggle. (View Highlight)