> I always feel sorry for people who make statements like, "my work isn't my life" or "I work to live, I don't live to work". [...] And if your mindset is alway

> I always feel sorry for people who make statements like, "my work isn't my life" or "I work to live, I don't live to work". [...] And if your mindset is always that all work is bad, The first part is not inherently hateful towards working while the latter one is. > Considering how much of your life you dedicate towards working, why the hell aren't you making damn well sure it's doing something that gives you at least a sense of fulfillment, if not outright joy. Maybe they are. But people that say that they don't "live to work" seem to be more in opposition to the mindset of viewing everything through the lens of productivity and utility. They are against the idea that free time is chiefly about "recreation", ie about recharging your batteries/not burning out so that you can go back to being a fully productive worker bee at 9 am the next morning. In this "recreation" view, free time serves office time. In the view of "I don't live to work", work chiefly is about survival, and free time is about actually living. Does that mean they are necessarily against finding fulfilling work? No: work can be life-affirming (though I realize that some people might have such a chip on their shoulder towards work that they will never see it that way). But it certainly means that they refuse to delude themselves into thinking that working 60 hours a week at a job they at best feel lukewarm about is their grand purpose in life.