an essay about work and leisure

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Work and Leisure

The following example essay on “Work and Leisure” explores the importance of work-life balance – the ratio of time spent on work to time spent on the things you love: yourself, family, friends.

Introduction

Do you feel like you are running two lives? One for you and one for work? Most of the people thinks that work leisure balance is binary. When people focus most of the times on the work, they get less time for their family and own life. Some people may struggle to get relax time from the professional life, others may have leisure time in their life and they try to do some productive work in their lives.

The key of this issue is balance. Balance is a main point to a successful and healthy life . When people dont have balance in their life, their lives are being limited than what they want to do. Balancing work and leisure are often a challenge because it involves many people and complex circumstances that changes over time (Stewart & Johnson, 2006).

It truly feels like they are running two lives. Every individual always needs to balance one life against another to get the results they desire.

According to Lawhon (2014), Work is one thing we have to make a necessity, but leisure doesnt fall far behind. Work is something that people do to get salary and fulfill needs of ourselves and family. On other hand, leisure is a time that spend away from the work and feel relax and enjoy ourselves. However, this paper explains the life of a two young person that how they are balancing their life between work and leisure.

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A person who is better in his career, thoughts and skills that allow him to be better in his relationships, family life and hobbies.

Methodology

I had conducted an interview of two person named respectively Utsav Patel and Urvin Patel, who are good friends of mine. I know them since my undergrad. Utsav is an assistant team leader in mathematics department of Fountainhead School which is located in India and Urvin is an owner of IT company named Jemistry Info Solutions LLP which is located in India. I had selected these two persons for my interview because they struggled too much in their lives in young age to achieve their goal which can be inspired to others to never give up in life.

I initially set my method to take an interview of both was Skype video call as they both are already known to each other. But under some circumstances, Utsav was not available on Skype. So, I had taken an interview of Utsav on phone and taken an interview of Urvin on Skype video call. I was ready with my questions to ask them during call.

I structured my questions in a way that I could get information about their education, their professional life and personal life. The opening discussion with Utsav began with the basic education question, What degree have you earned? Do you believe that your degree is helpful to get your current job? With Urvin, my opening question was, What degree have you earned? How helpful your degree was to start-up your own business?

From there, our discussion started with the follow-up questions during the flow of dialogue. The interview was conducted with Utsav for 30 minutes on phone and with Urvin for 45 minutes on Skype video call. My findings below combine the data which I got from both and I came up with ideas and conclusion.

No pressure, No diamonds

Diamonds are formed because carbon is set under extreme pressure in the earth. Without pressure, it just a carbon or maybe it turns into graphite. Likewise, if you work hard then it makes you more productive. Utsav had achieved his goal of life with hard work. He thinks that Follow your passion, Chase your dream, Never give up. He is a leader of a team by passion. He taught to high school students when he was doing his bachelors. He studied Information Technology.

Therefore, his parents wanted him to apply in colleges as a professor rather than school. But his dream was to become a teacher of a high school. His family were not happy with was he was going to do. He was a teacher of Math and Physics subjects when he joined the Fountainhead School. Because of his passion towards education, he promoted with assistant team leader of Mathematics Department.

Fight till the last gasp

The warrior stays on battleground until his last breath. This quotes also followed by Urvin. He was a coma patient because of stroke during his undergrad. He was in ICU for one week. His parents had not had hopes that Urvin survives his life. But after one week, he woke up and he believes that he fought against death. Then after he started his own business without taking any economic help from their parents.

For an economy support, he taught to high school students and he earned money to put one foot toward his dream. His dream was that if he could fight against death then definitely, he can fight again his dream. And he worked hard. He just followed his dream, his passion. Now, he is a successful entrepreneur. His dream came true just because of his hard work.

Treasure relationships, not possessions

Relationships are more valuable rather than money. Relationships reflect future and show future. Humans need to active socially and do interaction among them is necessary for their mental health. My question was to both Utsav and Urvin like Do you like to spend your free time with other people? How you spend your free time with other people? where I got answer about relationships with other people.

Utsav replied to this question that he loves to spend his free time with new people. He usually goes park and meet new people in his leisure time. He talks with new people and get to know about them. Urvin has same personality to talk with people. But he doesnt like to meet new person. He spends his leisure time with friends and family. Generally, he goes for coffee with friends or for dinner with family. Also, he likes to cook delicious food when he gets chance from work.

Work and leisure both are important to maintain happiness and peace in our life. So, the balance is most important between work and leisure. I observed upon interview that they both are managing their professional life and personal life easily. As a view of Urvin, he measured his professional life by how much profit is in the company, how many targets are reached. And he measured his personal life by health, taking time out and feeling relaxed and happy. He can easily find his own balance between work and leisure.

After analyzing this, I feel that every person is divided into two lives. Internal and external elements involve in life for creating balance. Internal elements are those elements which involves mind, heart, health and your spiritual element. External elements are those elements which involves work, social activity, fun, refreshing and relax.

Utsav believes that he never amalgamates professional and personal life. He always strives hard to find happiness within himself. He says, Work is a part of life, life is not a part of work!. He enjoys his work without feel stressed. Like that I found a way to balance a life.

Work is one of the most essential and important things for people in modern era. On other hand leisure is one that makes you relax out of the work. I learn from Utsav that it is easier to work when you need to do work and enjoy yourself when you need to get relax while you separate your work and leisure time. So, balance is important between work and leisure.

On a balancing scale, one side you have work and another side you have leisure. When you put more energy on one side that side falls down. So, when you feel drained, you need to find a way to increase the amount of leisure time you have. When you feel yourself very free, you need to go ahead to become more productive when you are working (Young, 2006). To achieve balance between work and leisure is not hard, it is necessary for both our productivity and enjoyment.

• Stewart, S. I., & Johnson, K. M. (2006). Balancing leisure and work: evidence from the seasonal home. University of New Hampshire scholars repository. Retrieved from
• Lawhon, M. (2014). Difference between work and leisure. Retrieved from
• Young, S. H. (2006). Balancing work and leisure. Retrieved from

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Recreation Theory and Philosophy

• Practice and Mastery
• Indomitable Human Spirit
• Role of the Goal
• Locus of Control
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivation
• Self-Efficacy
• Arousal Theory
• Flow Theory
• Self-Actualization
• Psycho-Social Development
• Environmental Stewardship
• Biophilia / Identity & Environment
• Leisure & Work
• Library Information

Definition:

Work is defined as an activity involving mental or physical effort done in order to achieve a purpose or result. Leisure is defined as a freedom provided by the cessation of activities especially : time free from work or duties.

Work and Leisure Relationships

Spillover: Research has found positive relationships between work and leisure, such that people choose leisure activities involving the same psychological, social, and behavioral skills as their work.

Compensation: Other studies argue, negative relationship with individuals sometimes compensating for work deficiencies through leisure activities. For e.g. individuals with low occupational status are more likely to stress the importance of prize-winning in leisure than individuals with high status.

Segmentation: Work and leisure are independent and has no relationship.

Media/Videos:

Links/Documents:

• Why People Play at Work: A Theoretical Examination of Leisure-at-Work. Postmodern perspectives on work and leisure acknowledge the interwoven nature of these domains, an example being the increasing number of organizations intentionally incorporating leisure into the employee experience. Existing research, however, provides no specific theoretical guidance regarding the potential impacts of strategically integrating recreation activities into the work domain. Thus, based on positive organizational scholarship and leisure science theories, we build an individual level model describing the phenomenon of leisure-at-work (LAW). We propose LAW activities have the ability to produce feelings of personal expressiveness at work as moderated by employees' perceptions of the activities. Personal expressiveness then mediates LAW activities' ability to promote the development of organizational commitment, work engagement, and resilience among employees.
• Work and Leisure (eBook) Globalization, economic development and changes in social environments have put the relationships between work, leisure, social structure and quality of life under the spotlight. Profound transformations in the nature and organization of work are occurring, with potentially far-reaching social and economic consequences. Increasingly, organizations demand greater flexibility from their workforces and are introducing new technologies and practices in response to global competitive pressures. At the same time many employees are experiencing long working hours, increasing workloads and job insecurity, along with the challenge of balancing work and domestic responsibilities. These changes threaten long-term gain in leisure time while, simultaneously, the leisure environment is also changing radically, as we see increasing commercialization and professionalization of leisure services and experiences, the influence of the Internet, the rise of gambling and the decline of community-based activity. Exploring all of these issues, this book brings together specially commissioned chapters from international experts in a wide range of disciplines concerned with work, leisure and well-being. Each author takes stock of the current position, identifies core practical and theoretical issues and discusses possible future trends in order to provide an invaluable resource for all policy-makers, educators, employers and researchers in the field.
• Work-Leisure Relations The relationship between work and leisure, with regard to various aspects of work and its meaning, was examined in two groups of people: leisure-oriented and work-oriented. Leisure-to-work spillover characterized the relations between leisure orientation and the following variables: absolute work centrality, interpersonal contacts, intrinsic orientation, obligation norm, and weekly work hours. Compensation for work by leisure characterized the relation between job satisfaction and leisure orientation. The segmentation between leisure and work hypotheses, regarding economic orientation and entidement norm, were supported.
• Work and leisure: exploring a relationship hereas geographers have an established record of research into recreation and tourism, the wider issue of leisure has received less notice. This wider issue of' leisure ' deserves more attention by geographers at a time when both the organization of work and the availability of leisure time are undergoing significant change. These changes have implications in themselves but also raise more sharply the question of relationship between work and leisure. That some relationship exists is clear, less time at work means more time available for leisure, but other qualities of the link are less easily specified. A study of three groups of office workers at one workplace is used to examine the work-leisure relationship and significant differences in attitude to work can be related to contrasted perceptions of the role of leisure, though detailed leisure activities are less easily accommodated in any generalisation.

Audio Clips:

• Time Off: The Future of Work and Leisure on Spotify "Rest is essential. Unplugging in today's busy world is both a skill and a competitive advantage. Is it possible to get more done by working less? On this podcast, we talk to those who have developed a solid "rest ethic." They are people who successfully take time off through sabbaticals, active vacations, more play, fascinating hobbies, and other methods for becoming more interesting without burning out." Check out their Spotify page to stay up-to-date with their episodes.
• Time Off: The Future of Work and Leisure on Apple Listen on Apple Podcasts
• The Accented Philosophy Podcast on Spotify "The relevant philosophy podcast with Dr Ezechiel Thibaud and Dr Andreas Matthias. Two philosophers with cute accents and their guests discuss the intricacies of modern life. Brought to you by daily-philosophy.com. Every Tuesday." Check out their Spotify page to stay up-to-date with their episodes.
• The Accented Philosophy Podcast on Apple Listen on Apple podcasts
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• Last Updated: Nov 22, 2022 1:48 PM
• URL: https://libguides.ferrum.edu/rec360

Moderating Work and Leisure: The Relationship between the Work-Leisure Interface and Satisfaction with Work-Leisure Balance

• Original Research
• Published: 08 November 2023
• Volume 171 , pages 111–132, ( 2024 )

Cite this article

• Feng Wang 1 &
• Wendian Shi 2  

376 Accesses

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Work and leisure are important parts of people’s lives, and achieving a balance between work and leisure has become a key concern. However, previous studies have ignored the work-leisure balance (WLB) relationship, and no relevant research has been conducted to reveal the possible influence of the work-leisure interface on WLB satisfaction. Based on the demand-resource model, this study first explored the characteristics of the work-leisure interface and then analysed the relationship between the work-leisure interface and WLB satisfaction, as well as the roles of boundary control and WLB self-efficacy in this relationship. Based on a sampling of 104 employees over five consecutive working days, it was found that work-to-leisure conflict (WLC) was negatively correlated with work-to-leisure facilitation (WLF), and leisure-to-work conflict (LWC) was negatively correlated with leisure-to-work facilitation (LWF). The influences of various factors of the work-leisure interface on WLB satisfaction differ. WLC and WLF can not only directly impact WLB satisfaction but also indirectly exert influence through boundary control. The relationships of LWC and LWF with WLB satisfaction were not significant. WLB self-efficacy positively moderates the positive relationship between boundary control and WLB satisfaction. This study not only deepens the understanding of the work-leisure relationship but also provides some management suggestions for enterprise management and employees’ healthy living.

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Vahedi, A., Krug, I., Fuller-Tyszkiewicz, M., & Westrupp, E. M. (2019). Maternal work–family experiences: Longitudinal influences on child mental health through inter-parental conflict. Journal of Child and Family Studies , 28 (12), 3487–3498. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-019-01532-3 .

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Wang, F., Shi, W. Moderating Work and Leisure: The Relationship between the Work-Leisure Interface and Satisfaction with Work-Leisure Balance. Soc Indic Res 171 , 111–132 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-023-03257-9

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Why Your Leisure Time Is in Danger

Stop treating your time off as a productivity hack.

As Europe was recovering from the Second World War, the philosopher Josef Pieper was wondering about leisure. “A time like the present,” he admitted , “seems, of all times, not to be a time to speak of leisure. We are engaged in the re-building of a house, and our hands are full.” But such periods of recovery, Pieper argued, were also an opportunity for societies to reconsider their collective ends—the type of house they wanted to build together.

Pieper was not the only one to stand up for leisure amid hard times. Shortly after the start of the Great Depression, the economist John Maynard Keynes, who had lost nearly everything in the 1929 crash, suggested that people “devote our further energies to non-economic purposes.” He envisioned a 15-hour workweek for his grandchildren’s generation and looked ahead to a time when the population might “ prefer the good to the useful .”

Much of the world is near the end of another global calamity. And once again, we have an opportunity to rethink the type of house we want to live in.

Read: How much leisure time do the happiest people have?

Over the past few months, a string of pundits and business columnists has been calling for a four-day workweek, paid parental leave, and tighter limits on mandatory overtime. Many of these thinkers rationalize proposals to give us back our time by promising that they will contribute to overall prosperity. A well-rested workforce, the argument goes, is a more productive one, and that’s a “ bounty for bosses .” Iceland recently concluded a much-publicized five-year experiment in which 2,500 workers from more than 100 different firms reduced their working hours from 40 to 35 or 36 a week. Earlier this year, the Spanish government embarked on a similar experiment , cutting work to 32 hours a week. In 2019, Microsoft Japan also tried out a shorter workweek. Companies reported improvements in efficiency and overall productivity; in Microsoft’s case , productivity rose by 40 percent.

These experiments and the well-meaning arguments behind them illustrate a tricky paradox: Leisure is useful —but only insofar as it remains leisure. Once that time is viewed as a means to improve employee morale and higher growth, then leisure loses the very quality that makes it so potent. As Pieper wrote, “Leisure is not there for the sake of work.” Leisure is doing things for their own sake, to pursue what one wants. We should fight the urge to reduce it to a productivity hack.

This proposition is tougher than it seems because leisure time happens to be tremendously fruitful. Pieper and the philosopher Bertrand Russell, who wrote the essay “In Praise of Idleness” in 1932 , did not agree on much—one was a Catholic philosopher, the other an atheist—but they did agree that time off fuels human creativity and innovation. Russell argued that it “contributed nearly the whole of what we call civilization. It cultivated the arts and discovered the sciences; it wrote the books, invented the philosophies, and refined social relations.” Pieper went so far as to attribute to leisure something of the sublime. To be at leisure was, in his words, “at once a human and super-human condition.”

Many of us know this for ourselves: When we are hiking in nature, or under the shower, or simply daydreaming, flashes of inspiration come as if from nowhere. Neuroscientists speak of the “ incubation period ” that often precedes illumination as an absence of task-related thought. Cognitive psychologists have shown that leisure lends itself to the type of “intrinsic motivation” that is uniquely effective for learning .

The private sector sees the value of this time, which is why it is so intent on blurring the line between work and nonwork. Management experts gush about how “ daydreaming at work can fuel creativity .” Forward-thinking firms have responded with office hammocks and foosball tables and happy hours. Given how nearly half of the U.S. labor force is now engaged in some form of knowledge work , the ability to tap the creative potential of leisure has come to have real economic worth.

At the same time that our companies and policy makers are recognizing the value of leisure, employees have decided that they don’t need it. As countries grew richer over the mid-1900s, average working hours decreased and leisure increased. Then, sometime around 1985, the trend reversed: Leisure hours started falling, affecting the most well-off people within wealthy countries —the very people who made up what was once called the “leisure class.” The same pattern now shows up in emerging economies. The richest and the most educated are working more than they did 20 years ago . Income inequality has risen, but as the economist Robert H. Frank observes , “leisure inequality” is “growing as a mirror image, with the low earners gaining leisure and the high earners losing.”

Shortly before the pandemic, a study run jointly by Oxford Economics and Ipsos found that in 2018, more than half of Americans had not used all their vacation days. All told, Americans had failed to use 768 million days of paid time off . That was a 9 percent increase in forgone vacation from the prior year.

Among the handful of studies that examine the quality of our leisure time by reviewing diary records, the findings are even more sobering. “Pure leisure,” which social scientists define as “leisure time that is not ‘contaminated’ by other non-leisure activities,” has fallen across the board , affecting all income and education levels.

Technology usually gets most of the blame. But for all the focus on smartphones as the culprit, a more fundamental factor is at play. We yearn to “make the most of” our free time, so we are constantly giving our evenings, weekends, and vacations over to our self-advancement. Labor-market precarity and the growth of the gig economy have sharpened these incentives. Pure leisure now feels like pure indulgence.

How did people come to view leisure as a means to an end? In a reflection of leisure’s paradoxical quality, calls for its expansion tend to come first from utopians musing about human dignity, before being embraced by hardheaded pragmatists looking at input-output tables. What the social reformer Robert Owen put forward in 1810 as a radical notion, the industrialist Henry Ford advocated a century later as good business. In 1926 , Ford, who had already reduced the number of daily working hours in his factories from 10 to eight, then also shortened the workweek from six to five days.

Derek Thompson: Workism is making Americans miserable

In an interview following his factory reforms, he explained , “It is high time to rid ourselves of the notion that leisure for workmen is either ‘lost time’ or a class privilege.” On the basis of such solemn words, one might almost mistake him for an advocate of the good life. Ford was quick to rectify that impression: “Of course,” he went on , “there is a humanitarian side to the shorter day and the shorter week, but dwelling on that side is likely to get one into trouble, for then leisure may be put before work instead of after work—where it belongs.” Ford found that with their additional day off, his workers showed up “so fresh and keen that they are able to put their minds as well as their hands into their work.” Better yet, they used their time off to buy more things, which Ford argued would increase aggregate demand, fueling growth. Leisure became a means to a means.

This passing of the baton from utopians to pragmatists is a regular occurrence. Consider the odd fortune that has befallen sleep, that primordial cousin of leisure. The number of sleep hours for the average North American went from 10 hours a century ago to 6.5 hours today.

Then, a funny thing happened. Business leaders embraced the fruitfulness of sleep. In a blurb for The Sleep Revolution , a book by the business mogul Arianna Huffington, Sheryl Sandberg, the COO of Facebook, explained , “Arianna shows that sleep is not just vital for our health, but also critical to helping us achieve our goals .” Sleep, in other words, has become another means to an end.

Getting by on four hours of sleep is no longer cause for admiration; it’s a sign that you’re a small, stressed-out cog in the machine. The thinking person gets their full eight hours and tracks their REM minutes on a well-designed app. No self-respecting start-up is complete without sleep pods for employees who would like to take an energy nap and return to work, their best selves once more.

What is so bad about a tacit alliance between utopians and pragmatists? If leisure is justified by its contribution to other social ends—innovation, productivity, growth—it stands to lose any perceived worth as soon as it comes into conflict with those goals. An eventual clash between the two will always be settled in favor of work. The result is 768 million hours of unused vacation days. And even when employees take time off, they feel an urge to log in to their work email between dips in the ocean.

As we restart the economy, we must be mindful about this contest between economic means and noneconomic ends. Our reflex might be to put our nose back to the grindstone and make up for lost time. From past recessions, we know that economic shocks tend to be followed by an increase in working hours . The blurring of work and home that took place under lockdown has already lengthened working hours .

Read: The free-time paradox in America

However, we have reason to feel optimistic about this reset. For those lucky enough to have been able to work from home—especially if they were spared additional duties of caring for children or sick parents—the pandemic has been an odd period of imposed leisure. Perhaps these past 18 months, as some took up the ukulele while others spent more time with their family, have served as a corrective, a reminder of what ends people want to pursue, and what means are best suited to attaining them.

Leisure should be aspired to for no other reason than that it is possible. What used to be the preserve of a small elite is now achievable for a greater portion of advanced market societies than ever before. We should ensure that time off is made available to a greater portion still.

Yes, this leisure time might generate untold benefits for our knowledge economy. It might inadvertently lead to some brilliant lines of code, unprecedented levels of innovation, and a flourishing of culture. And policy makers may need to hear about those benefits. But as individuals, we gain from preserving a space for the doing of things for their own sake, a zone free of optimization. As Pieper wrote, “Work is the means of life; leisure the end.”

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IELTS Essay, topic: Leisure time activities

• IELTS Essays - Band 6

Some people think that it is important to use leisure time for activities that develop the mind, such as reading and doing crossword puzzles. Others feel that it is important to give one’s mind a rest in leisure time. Discuss.

Some people want to relax after their day of work. These people may prefer to relax by watching movies, reading or getting a massage. People who have a such as doctors, teachers and builders may choose these types of activities. If you are a doctor, you may feel that you want to let your body rest after work and you don’t want to do a five kilometer run after work, because you are already physically tired.

On the other hand, some people choose to be active in their leisure time because they do . For example, these people many spend all day sitting on a chair and their work. At the end of a working day, they a backache, and all of their body tired so they need to stretch their arms and improve their health by doing some activity such as going to the gym or swimming.

To sum up, the important thing is that people want to stay healthy by choosing what is best for them. In my view, the wrong way is to stay at home in your leisure time if you have a job.

This essay needs work. It has the right structure and covers the task. However there are many poorly structured sentences, many of the sentences are too simple and don’t have enough complexity, there are grammatical errors and some prepositions are use incorrectly (see comments underlined in blue). Overall, this looks like a Band 6 – 6.5 essay.

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Work and Leisure

Updated 21 April 2023

Subject Biology ,  Work

Downloads 63

Category Life ,  Science

Topic Happiness ,  Human ,  Work-Life Balance

Work and leisure are essential components of human happiness and fulfillment (Engeser and Baumann 2016). Work provides fulfillment in life, yet total focus on work deprives individuals of enjoyment. Concentration on work might get tedious, thus people should indulge in leisure activities. This essay will concentrate on traveling as a form of recreation. The interpretive theory will guide the researcher. The Interpretive Theory and Travel According to Diaz-Bernardo (2015), there are distinct contrasts between a pleasure traveler and a business traveler.The differences are seen in the way the people will select their transportation means and how they will settle at a visited place. Business travelers go for the fastest means of transport while leisure travelers would be comfortable in luxury means of transport regardless of the time the chosen means would take. Business travelers show less concern on the quality of received services as compared to the amount paid. For business travelers, as long as the service is provided, the quality is not an issue of concern. On the contrary, the quality of a service really matters for a leisure traveler. A leisure traveler want to acquire quality services for the amount paid. They are only satisfied if the value of the service surpasses or equals to the value of the pay (Diaz-Bernardo, 2015, p.95). The suggested variances apply for me. When I travel for leisure, all I want is to have fun. Everything I encounter should add to the pleasure. I should enjoy everything including the means of transport, the place I visit, to the services am offered at the place of visitation. When it comes to business travels, I go for cost efficient means of transport and cheaper, but convenient services. References Diaz-Bernardo, R. (2015). The effect of the economic downturn on the way people travel for leisure and for business: The case of Spain. (International Journal of Management & Information Systems (Online)), 19(2): 95. [Online] (updated 2015) Available at: [Accessed Sep., 2015] Engeser, S., and Baumann, N. (2016). Fluctuation of flow and affect in everyday life : A second look at the paradox of work. (Journal of Happiness Studies), 17(1): 105-124. [Online] (updated 2016) Available at: [Accessed Sep., 2015]

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Work is more important than leisure. Do you agree or disagree?

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Some people say that advertising is extremely successful at persuading us to buy things. other people think that advertising is so common that we no longer pay attention to it. discuss both these views and give your own opinion., a museum near your house is looking for people to do part-time voluntary/unpaid work. you would like to do some voluntary/unpaid work at the museum. write a letter to the museum director to apply for voluntary/unpaid work in your letter: explain why you want to do voluntary/unpaid work at the museum describe some skills and qualities you have that would be useful give details of when you would be available for work., some people believe that it is best to accept a bad situation, such as an unsatisfactory job or shortage of money. others argue that it is better to try and improve such situations. discuss both these views and give your own opinion., in an era of globalization, some people think that studying abroad is the best way to attain a well-paid job while others believe other options are better. discuss both views and give your own opinion..

Band 9 sample essay about leisure activities

Home  »  IELTS BAND 9 ESSAYS  »  Band 9 sample essay about leisure activities

Some people believe that children’s leisure activities must be educational, otherwise they are a complete waste of time. Do you agree or disagree? Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your experience.

To derive a double benefit from anything is considered a bonus, and this is especially the case when discussing leisure activities for children. The idea to fuse both education and entertainment into one activity is a goal of many educators; some would even believe that failure to do this makes the activity pointless. Drawing from examples in Sweden and reviewing games, such as Pokemon, I firmly believe that all activities should have an educational value.

Leisure activities are a perfect time to take advantage of the receptiveness in a child’s mind, and some countries are adamant about this. Take Sweden, for example. For many years they have legally stipulated that all children’s toys sold in the country should have some educational value. In addition, for such a rule to be passed it must be upheld by scientific research. Therefore, the advantage of incorporating an education element into toys is scientifically proven.

On the other hand, across the UK, children were wasting their time collecting and learning the statistics of each creature on each Pokemon card. If, however, these cards had been intertwined with more educational data the child could have simultaneously gained a more practical education. Due to the child learning large swathes of irrelevant and useless information it can be argued that the time would have been better spent with real facts and figures on the cards.

To conclude, scientific evidence from Sweden and fantasy games such as Pokemon with little educational value are two clear reasons why children’s leisure activities should have an element of learning involved.

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Buddhist Economics

Ernst Fritz Schumacher (1911–1977) published the following version of his essay “Buddhist Economics” in the British magazine Resurgence in 1968. The magazine specialized in decentralization, deurbanization, libertarian technology, and alternative lifestyles. Schumacher discussed the issue of labor, which was fundamental to the psychic equilibrium of the individual and essential to a sense of satisfaction and social integration. In short, Schumacher deconstructed the whole capitalist economy so as to focus on individual well-being rather than on a system of financial exchange.

Born in Germany, Schumacher came to England in 1930 as a Rhodes Scholar to read economics at New College, Oxford. Schumacher was also an expert on farming, active in the Soil Association, which promoted organic farming and challenged the orthodoxy of chemical-based agriculture. He became an economic adviser to the British Control Commission in Germany (1946–1950), and then had a long career in the National Coal Board in Britain. The turning point came in 1955, when he was sent as economic development adviser to the government of Burma. He was supposed to introduce there the Western model of economic growth, but he discovered that the Burmese did not need economic development along Western lines, as they themselves had an indigenous economic system well suited to their conditions, culture, and climate.

Schumacher’s collection of essays, written in the 1950s and 1960s and published in 1973 under the title “ Small Is Beautiful: Economics as If People Mattered ,” became part of the shared consciousness of the 1970s. The “Buddhist Economics” essay was rewritten for this publication. Opposing small to big was a recurrent theme of the catalog. In simple terms, Schumacher provided convincing arguments for replacing industrial production with hand labor. In fact, Schumacher’s argument was extremely radical, substituting the emphasis on consumption with a value-based ideology, founded on satisfaction in production. — Caroline Maniaque-Benton

The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to be at least threefold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centeredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for a becoming existence. Again, the consequences that flow from this view are endless. To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence. Equally, to strive for leisure as an alternative to work would be considered a complete misunderstanding of one of the basic truths of human existence, namely that work and leisure are complementary parts of the same living process and cannot be separated without destroying the joy of work and the bliss of leisure.

From the Buddhist point of view, there are therefore two types of mechanization which must be clearly distinguished: one that enhances a man’s skill and power and one that turns work over to a mechanical slave, leaving man in a position of having to serve the slave. How to tell the one from the other? The craftsman himself, says Ananda [a historian and philosopher of Indian art], a man equally competent to talk about the Modern West as the Ancient East, “the craftsman himself can always, if allowed to, draw the delicate distinction between the machine and the tool. The carpet loom is a tool, a contrivance for holding warp threads at a stretch for the pile to be woven round them by the craftsmen’s fingers; but the power loom is a machine, and its significance as a destroyer of culture lies in the fact that it does the essentially human part of the work.”

“It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth.”

It is clear, therefore, that Buddhist economics must be very different from the economics of modern materialism, since the Buddhist sees the essence of civilization not in a multiplication of wants but in the purification of human character. Character, at the same time, is formed primarily by a man’s work. And work properly conducted in conditions of human dignity and freedom, blesses those who do it and equally their products. The Indian philosopher and economist J. C. Kumarappa sums the matter up as follows: “If the nature of the work is properly appreciated and applied, it will stand in the same relation to the higher faculties as food is to the physical body. It nourishes and enlivens the higher man and urges him to produce the best course and disciplines the animal in him into progressive channels. It furnishes an excellent background for man to display his scale of values and develop his personality.”

If a man has no chance of obtaining work he is in a desperate position, not simply because he lacks an income but because he lacks this nourishing and enlivening factor of disciplined work which nothing can replace. A modern economist may engage in highly sophisticated calculations on whether full employment “pays” or whether it might be more “economic” to run an economy at less than full employment so as to ensure a greater mobility of labor, a better stability of wages, and so forth. His fundamental criterion of success is simply the total quantity of goods produced during a given period of time. “If the marginal urgency of goods is low,” says Professor Galbraith in “The Affluent Society,” “then so is the urgency of employing the last man or the last million men in the labor force.” And again: “If … we can afford some unemployment in the interest of stability — a proposition, incidentally, of impeccably conservative antecedents — then we can afford to give those who are unemployed the goods that enable them to sustain their accustomed standard of living.”

From a Buddhist point of view, this is standing the truth on its head by considering goods as more important than people and consumption as more important than creative activity. It means shifting the emphasis from the worker to the product of work, that is, from the human to the subhuman, a surrender to the forces of evil. While the materialist is mainly interested in goods, the Buddhist is “The Middle Way” and therefore in no way antagonist to physical wellbeing. It is not wealth that stands in the way of liberation but the attachment to wealth; not the enjoyment of pleasurable things but the craving for them. The keynote of Buddhist economics, therefore, is simplicity and non-violence. From an economist’s point of view, the marvel of the Buddhist way of life is the utter rationality of its pattern — amazingly small means leading to extraordinarily satisfactory results.

– Ernst Fritz Schumacher, 1968

E.F. Schumacher was a German-British economist and statitician who influenced British economic policy with his theories on sustainable development. This article is excerpted from the volume “ Whole Earth Field Guide ,” which offers 80 selected texts from the nearly 1,000 items of “suggested reading” in “The Last Whole Earth Catalog. “

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The Last Thing This Supreme Court Could Do to Shock Us

There will be no more self-soothing after this..

For three long years, Supreme Court watchers mollified themselves (and others) with vague promises that when the rubber hit the road, even the ultraconservative Federalist Society justices of the Roberts court would put democracy before party whenever they were finally confronted with the legal effort to hold Donald Trump accountable for Jan. 6. There were promising signs: They had, after all, refused to wade into the Trumpian efforts to set aside the election results in 2020. They had, after all, hewed to a kind of sanity in batting away Trumpist claims about presidential records (with the lone exception of Clarence Thomas, too long marinated in the Ginni-scented Kool-Aid to be capable of surprising us, but he was just one vote). We promised ourselves that there would be cool heads and grand bargains and that even though the court might sometimes help Trump in small ways, it would privilege the country in the end. We kept thinking that at least for Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch and Chief Justice John Roberts , the voice of reasoned never-Trumpers might still penetrate the Fox News fog. We told ourselves that at least six justices, and maybe even seven, of the most MAGA-friendly court in history would still want to ensure that this November’s elections would not be the last in history. Political hacks they may be, but they were not lawless ones.

On Thursday, during oral arguments in Trump v. United States , the Republican-appointed justices shattered those illusions. This was the case we had been waiting for, and all was made clear—brutally so. These justices donned the attitude of cynical partisans, repeatedly lending legitimacy to the former president’s outrageous claims of immunity from criminal prosecution. To at least five of the conservatives, the real threat to democracy wasn’t Trump’s attempt to overturn the election—but the Justice Department’s efforts to prosecute him for the act. These justices fear that it is Trump’s prosecution for election subversion that will “destabilize” democracy, requiring them to read a brand-new principle of presidential immunity into a Constitution that guarantees nothing of the sort. They evinced virtually no concern for our ability to continue holding free and fair elections that culminate in a peaceful transfer of power. They instead offered endless solicitude for the former president who fought that transfer of power.

However the court disposes of Trump v. U.S. , the result will almost certainly be precisely what the former president craves: more delays, more hearings, more appeals—more of everything but justice . This was not a legitimate claim from the start, but a wild attempt by Trump’s attorneys to use his former role as chief executive of the United States to shield himself from the consequences of trying to turn the presidency into a dictatorship. After so much speculation that these reasonable, rational jurists would surely dispose of this ridiculous case quickly and easily, Thursday delivered a morass of bad-faith hand-wringing on the right about the apparently unbearable possibility that a president might no longer be allowed to wield his powers of office in pursuit of illegal ends. Just as bad, we heard a constant minimization of Jan. 6, for the second week in a row , as if the insurrection were ancient history, and history that has since been dramatically overblown, presumably for Democrats’ partisan aims.

We got an early taste of this minimization in Trump v. Anderson , the Colorado case about removing Trump from the ballot. The court didn’t have the stomach to discuss the violence at the Capitol in its sharply divided decision, which found for Trump ; indeed, the majority barely mentioned the events of Jan. 6 at all when rejecting Colorado’s effort to bar from the ballot an insurrectionist who tried to steal our democracy. But we let that one be, because we figured special counsel Jack Smith would ride to the rescue. Smith has indicted Trump on election subversion charges related to Jan. 6, and the biggest obstacle standing between the special counsel and a trial has been the former president’s outlandish claim that he has absolute immunity from criminal charges as a result of his having been president at the time. Specifically, Trump alleges that his crusade to overturn the election constituted “official acts” that are immune from criminal liability under a heretofore unknown constitutional principle that the chief executive is quite literally above the law.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit held in February that the president does not have blanket or absolute immunity for all actions taken in office, including “official” acts performed under the guise of executing the law (for example, Trump’s attempt to weaponize the DOJ against election results under the pretense of investigating fraud). The D.C. Circuit’s emphatic, cross-ideological decision should have been summarily affirmed by SCOTUS within days. Instead, the justices set it for arguments two months down the road—a bad omen, to put it mildly . Even then, many court watchers held out hope that Thursday morning’s oral arguments were to be the moment for the nine justices of the Supreme Court to finally indicate their readiness to take on Trump, Trumpism, illiberalism, and slouching fascism.

It was not to be. Justice Samuel Alito best captured the spirit of arguments when he asked gravely “what is required for the functioning of a stable democratic society” (good start!), then answered his own question: total immunity for criminal presidents (oh, dear). Indeed, anything but immunity would, he suggested, encourage presidents to commit more crimes to stay in office: “Now, if an incumbent who loses a very close, hotly contested election knows that a real possibility after leaving office is not that the president is going to be able to go off into a peaceful retirement but that the president may be criminally prosecuted by a bitter political opponent, will that not lead us into a cycle that destabilizes the functioning of our country as a democracy?” Never mind that the president in question did not leave office peacefully and is not sitting quietly in retirement but is instead running for presidential office once again. No, if we want criminal presidents to leave office when they lose, we have to let them commit crimes scot-free. If ever a better articulation of the legal principle “Don’t make me hit you again” has been proffered at an oral argument, it’s hard to imagine it.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor spoke to this absurdity when she responded in what could only be heard as a cri de coeur: “Stable democratic society needs good faith of public officials,” she said. “That good faith assumes that they will follow the law.” The justice noted that despite all the protections in place, a democracy can sometimes “potentially fail.” She concluded: “In the end, if it fails completely, it’s because we destroyed our democracy on our own, isn’t it?”

But it was probably too late to make this plea, because by that point we had heard both Alito and Gorsuch opine that presidents must be protected at all costs from the whims of overzealous deep state prosecutors brandishing “vague” criminal statutes. We heard Kavanaugh opine mindlessly on the independent counsel statute and how mean it is to presidents, reading extensively from Justice Antonin Scalia’s dissent in a case arguing that independent counsels are unconstitutional. (Yes, Kavanaugh worked for Ken Starr , the independent counsel.) If you’re clocking a trend here, it’s gender. Just as was the case in Anderson , it’s the women justices doing the second-shift work here: both probing the thorny constitutional and criminal questions and signaling a refusal to tank democracy over abstractions and deflections. As was the case in the EMTALA arguments, it’s the women who understand what it looks like to cheat death.

Is the president, Sotomayor asked, immune from prosecution if he orders the military to assassinate a political rival? Yes, said John Sauer, who represented Trump—though it “depends on the circumstances.” Could the president, Justice Elena Kagan asked, order the military to stage a coup? Yes, Sauer said again, depending on the circumstances. To which Kagan tartly replied that Sauer’s insistence on specifying the “circumstances” boiled down to “Under my test, it’s an official act, but that sure sounds bad, doesn’t it?” (Cue polite laughter in the chamber.)

This shameless, maximalist approach should have drawn anger from the conservative justices—indignation, at least, that Sauer took them for such easy marks. But it turns out that he calibrated his terrible arguments just right. The cynicism on display was truly breathtaking: Alito winkingly implied to Michael Dreeben, representing Smith, that we all know that Justice Department lawyers are political hacks, right? Roberts mocked Dreeben for saying “There’s no reason to worry because the prosecutor will act in good faith.”

The conservative justices are so in love with their own voices and so convinced of their own rectitude that they monologued about how improper it was for Dreeben to keep talking about the facts of this case, as opposed to the “abstract” principles at play. “I’m talking about the future!” Kavanaugh declared at one point to Dreeben, pitching himself not as Trump’s human shield but as a principled defender of the treasured constitutional right of all presidents to do crime. (We’re sure whatever rule he cooks up will apply equally to Democratic presidents, right?) Kavanaugh eventually landed on the proposition that prosecutors may charge presidents only under criminal statutes that explicitly state they can be applied to the president. Which, as Sotomayor pointed out, would mean no charges everywhere, because just a tiny handful of statutes are stamped with the label “CAN BE APPLIED TO PRESIDENT.”

The words bold and fearless action were repeated on a loop today, as a kind of mantra of how effective presidents must be free to act quickly and decisively to save democracy from the many unanticipated threats it faces. And yet the court—which has been asked to take bold and fearless action to deter the person who called Georgia’s secretary of state to demand that he alter the vote count, and threatened to fire DOJ officials who would not help steal an election—is backing away from its own duty. The prospect of a criminal trial for a criminal president shocked and appalled five men: Thomas, Alito, Kavanaugh, and Gorsuch suggested that Smith’s entire prosecution is unconstitutional; meanwhile, Roberts sounded eager at times to handle the case just a hair more gracefully: by cutting out its heart by preventing the jury from hearing about “official acts” (which lie at the center of the alleged conspiracy). Justice Amy Coney Barrett was far more measured, teasing out a compromise with Dreeben that would compel the trial court to tell the jury it could not impose criminal liability for these “official” acts, only “private ones.” Remember, drawing that line would require months of hearings and appeals, pushing any trial into 2025 or beyond. The president who tried to steal the most recent election is running in the next one, which is happening in mere months.

The liberal justices tried their best to make the case that justice required denying Trump’s sweeping immunity claim, permitting the trial to move forward, and sorting out lingering constitutional issues afterward, as virtually all other criminal defendants must do. They got little traction. Everyone on that bench was well aware that the entire nation was listening to arguments; that the whole nation wants to understand whether Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election was an existential threat to democracy or a lark. Five justices sent the message, loud and clear, that they are far more worried about Trump’s prosecution at the hands of the deep-state DOJ than about his alleged crimes, which were barely mentioned. This trial will almost certainly face yet more delays. These delays might mean that its subject could win back the presidency in the meantime and render the trial moot. But the court has now signaled that nothing he did was all that serious and that the danger he may pose is not worth reining in. The real threats they see are the ones Trump himself shouts from the rooftops: witch hunts and partisan Biden prosecutors. These men have picked their team. The rest hardly matters.

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Kamala Harris Leads Push to Shore Up Democratic Support From Black Voters

Speaking in Atlanta, the vice president began a national tour to highlight how the Biden administration is trying to help Black Americans economically.

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By Maya King

Reporting from Atlanta

• April 29, 2024

Vice President Kamala Harris made a new effort to energize Black voters in battleground states on Monday, visiting Atlanta for the kickoff of a national economic tour that will highlight how the Biden administration says its policies are helping a constituency that will be vital to Democrats’ success in November.

Speaking to a largely Black crowd of about 400 people, Ms. Harris laid out ways that she and President Biden have sought to improve Black Americans’ upward mobility and help them realize their business ambitions. A chief objective of the tour, she said, was to let Black business owners and entrepreneurs know about the resources available to them.

“I need the help of the leaders who are here to get the word out so people know what is available to them,” she said during a conversation at the Georgia International Convention Center with Rashad Bilal and Troy Millings of the financial literacy podcast “Earn Your Leisure,” which offers business advice to its more than two million listeners, a majority of whom are Black.

Explaining how government policies have widened the racial wealth gap over the years, Ms. Harris pointed to the Biden administration’s attempts to try to narrow it, including small-business grants and efforts to forgive student loans.

“We want to make sure people know about it — and then know where they can receive — the support to be ready to take on the work and then to grow their capacity,” she said.

Her remarks at the official White House-hosted event — drier and less political than her forceful campaign speeches on abortion recently — meandered at times.

“As much as anything, the spirit behind the push for access to capital, and in particular, on this tour, focusing on minority small businesses and Black-owned small businesses, and small businesses and entrepreneurs who are Black men, is to recognize the disparities that have existed around the access to the opportunity to achieve success,” she said at one point.

But at other moments Ms. Harris was more pointed, including when she defended diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives that conservative lawmakers have pushed to dismantle in state governments and at colleges and universities .

“In spite of those who in certain parts of our country want to attack D.E.I., we understand that you can’t truly invest in the strength of our nation if you don’t pay attention to diversity, equity and inclusion,” she said.

The vice president’s Atlanta visit, her 12th trip to Georgia since taking office, was the first stop in a tour of several battleground states in the coming weeks. Much of the tour will focus on Black small businesses and economic issues that are especially pressing for Black communities. She will visit Detroit next week, aides said.

Ms. Harris’s tour will also seek to engage Black men, whom Democrats are urgently courting as polls show them softening in their support for Mr. Biden. Much of the crowd at the vice president’s event consisted of Black male political and business leaders, as well as a contingent of students from Morehouse College, a historically Black men’s college in Atlanta where President Biden will deliver the commencement address next month.

Before her speech, Ms. Harris visited an entrepreneurship hub near downtown Atlanta where she spoke with Black small-business owners.

Flanked by Georgia’s Democratic senators, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, as well as Representative Nikema Williams, the state Democratic Party chair, Ms. Harris highlighted the Biden administration’s marquee legislation, like the CHIPS and Science Act, which offers funding for small-business research projects.

She also underlined the roughly $7 billion that the administration has poured into historically Black colleges and universities, the largest investment of any White House administration.

Atlanta is set to receive more than $150 million for a project called The Stitch that is meant to revitalize the city’s downtown areas and connect them to its growing midtown neighborhoods. Georgia is one of 40 states that will receive money from a White House program that aims to repair the decades-old societal damage from federal transportation projects that disproportionately displaced Black communities.

Maya King is a politics reporter covering the Southeast, based in Atlanta. She covers campaigns, elections and movements in the American South, as well as national trends relating to Black voters and young people. More about Maya King

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Sophia bush reflects on her “journey” following revealing essay: “it took a long time and a lot of work to get here”.

The 'One Tree Hill' alum shares she "couldn't believe" that she's reached self-acceptance after writing about her divorce and coming out as queer in a recent 'Glamour' cover story.

By Tatiana Tenreyro

Tatiana Tenreyro

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Following her personal essay in Glamour , Sophia Bush reflected on her decision to share insight into her private life.

In her essay, Bush revealed what led to her split from Grant Hughes and confirmed her relationship with Ashlyn Harris . The One Tree Hill alum shared that by changing the course of her life and making the difficult decision to divorce Hughes and come out as queer, she found true happiness.

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Days after her essay was published, Bush explained what she meant with her birthday realization in an Instagram post shared on Sunday . “I feel like last summer I had my very first birthday. My own. And last summer Maggie Smith’s words helped me begin to understand why. From afar, she helped me put myself back together,” she wrote.

Bush included a poem from the You Could Make This Place Beautiful author, which explained Bush’s own emotions: “How I picture it: We are all nesting dolls, carrying the earlier iterations of ourselves inside. We carry the past inside us. We take ourselves — all of our selves — wherever we go. Inside forty-something me is the woman I was in my thirties, the woman I was in my twenties, the teenager I was, the child I was … I still carry these versions of myself. It’s a kind of reincarnation without death: all these different lives we get to live in this one body, as ourselves.”

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sophia Bush (@sophiabush)

Looking back at why it was important to shed light on her personal life on her own terms, the actress wrote, “This week I got to share my own words, that I wrote down from the bottom of my ever-evolving heart.”

She recognized her joy at self-acceptance, writing, “When I uttered ‘I really love who I am, at this age, and in this moment’ I sort of couldn’t believe it. It just fell out of me. Simple. But profound. I’ve always wanted to feel that in my bones. Suddenly I do. It took a long time and a lot of work to get here.”

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