First named by the writer Nilanjana Roy in a 2016 column in the Financial Times, time millionaires measure their worth not in terms of financial capital, but according to the seconds, minutes and hours they claw back from employment for leisure and recreation, says an article in Britain’s Guardian newspaper.
“Wealth can bring comfort and security in its wake,” Roy says. “But I wish we were taught to place as high a value on our time as we do on our bank accounts – because how you spend your hours and your days is how you spend your life.”
The coronavirus pandemic has created a new cohort of time millionaires, the Guardian says.
People actively embracing a less work-focused life are, generally speaking, childless members of the professional classes, the Guardian says. But this shouldn’t have to be the case, says Roy: “If society was truly progressive, it would not work people to the bone in the first place, or make the assumption that leisure, time to rest, time to be with your family, is only for the wealthy.”
"The enforced downtime of the pandemic caused many of us to reassess our attitudes to work, and whether we might be able to lead less lucrative but more fulfilling lives,” says The Guardian.
The article mentions Bertrand Russell’s 1932 essay, "In Praise of Idleness." He wrote: “Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all [but] we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines. In this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.”
One of my favorite quotes from Walt Whitman: "I loaf and invite my soul.”
Comments