We mock or bristle when we hear people say that school is too demanding for children and that the solution is to reduce the curriculum. Then reduce it again. And then reduce it yet again, until we arrive at illiteracy.
Yet we apply precisely the same approach to ourselves without the slightest hesitation. We try to make our lives ever easier, only to find that this lowers their quality—and so we would like to make them even easier still.
That, in a nutshell, is how one might summarize the debate over recent research, according to which most employees feel exhausted and stressed by their work. The conclusion drawn is that work is too long, too demanding, and so forth. And that employers should not be exploiting us so heavily.
In individual cases, this may well be true. There are people who are forced to perform work beyond their abilities, or who are exposed to a level of competition they cannot handle. But in the overwhelming majority of cases, making our work easier would do nothing to improve our mental well-being. Quite often, more demanding work would actually do us good.
We need to spend our time engaged in an activity that captures and absorbs us so completely that we are unable to think about anything else. After our shift, we may feel exhausted, but happily exhausted, much as we do after an intense workout. That is good for our brains, our lives, and the people close to us.
In many workplaces, the way work is structured, as well as workplace rules and other conditions, should certainly change. But let us not delude ourselves into thinking that making work less demanding would necessarily benefit us.