Welcoming Wisdom #5 - The Time to Flourish

What happens when we finally get the free time we longed for—only to find it strangely unsettling? In this episode of Flourish As You Age, host Michael C. Patterson explores leisure as a vital (and often overlooked) condition of human flourishing. 

Drawing from his book Welcoming Wisdom, he traces how cultural expectations around work have shaped our identity, how the pandemic opened space for reimagining daily life, and how emerging technologies may lead to a future with much more free time. 

The question is: will we be ready to use that time well? Learn how leisure, when approached with intention and creativity, can become one of the most meaningful contributions of our later years.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:58 Flourishing Through Leisure
• 5:10 Technical Advances & More Leisure time
• 7:21 How to Use More Leisure Time
• 9:11 Redefining Success
• 10:49 Summary & Conclusion

Transcript

LEISURE: RECLAIMING THE VALUE OF FREE TIME. 

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Flourish As You Age, where we explore how to live fully, age boldly, and contribute wisely to a changing world. I’m Michael C. Patterson.

In today’s episode, we examine leisure time—not just as a break from work, but as a vital condition for human flourishing. We often imagine that having more free time will bring rest, creativity, and joy. But when we finally get it—especially after decades of structuring life around work—we may find ourselves surprisingly unsettled.

For many retirees, the question “What will I do with myself?” becomes real and unexpectedly difficult. After years of organizing our lives around jobs—whether out of necessity, ambition, or identity—the sudden freedom of retirement can feel disorienting. The very leisure we longed for can become a source of restlessness or even anxiety. Without a clear sense of purpose or rhythm, time itself can lose meaning.

But retirement is just one part of the story. A broader shift is underway.
 We are beginning to question a longstanding cultural obsession with work—the idea that our worth is defined by our productivity, that our identity lies in our job title, and that busyness is a virtue. The pandemic disrupted those assumptions. It blurred the line between labor and leisure. It normalized working from home. It gave many of us the opportunity to find value what we do in our free time—connecting with family, caring for others, enjoying nature—more than do in what we do for a paycheck.

And just ahead lies an even more profound transformation.

With advances in automation, robotics, and artificial intelligence, entire sectors of labor are being reshaped. Productivity is increasing, but the need for human labor is decreasing. This creates both a challenge and an opportunity. In the near future, many of us may have more free time not because we’ve retired, but because our work is no longer needed in the way it once was. The question then becomes: What is human time for? What will we do when labor no longer defines us?

In this episode, drawn from my book Welcoming Wisdom, we’ll explore what it means to flourish through leisure—how cultures have imagined this possibility in the past, why it has often remained elusive, and how it might yet become one of the most creative challenges of our collective future.

Flourishing Through Leisure: A Skill for the Emerging Era 

As modern definitions of flourishing shift away from fleeting pleasures and toward enduring well-being, one overlooked yet essential component is how we engage with our leisure time. In a world of increasing automation and extended life spans, learning to use free time meaningfully is no longer a luxury—it’s a developmental necessity.

Economists and visionaries have long predicted a future world in which human beings enjoyed more leisure. Tools, machines and clever innovations , they predicted, would reduce the time people needed to produce what they needed. Ben Franklin, in the early days of our republic, perhaps reflecting Enlightenment aspirations, predicted that four hours of work per day would be sufficient, leaving much of the remaining hours for “leisure and pleasure.” In the 1930's, the influential economist John Maynard Keynes imagined that rising productivity would lead to a 15-hour workweek.

But these early predictions have not proven true. The dominant forces of the industrial era prioritized productivity and profit over human well-being. As factories multiplied and capitalism intensified, work hours lengthened rather than shrank.

Rutger Bregman, in Utopia for Realists, notes that technological innovation continues its rapid advance, but this progress has not resulted in reductions in labor. The paradox is stark: while machines grow more capable, human laborers are working longer hours than ever. Increased efficiency and productivity are being converted into profits – for the few – rather than into increased leisure time for workers.

Technical Advances & Increased Leisure

But the nature of technological advances is now changing. Unlike earlier tools such as the steam engine or the assembly line, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics are rapidly replacing not only manual labor but also cognitive and creative tasks—from diagnostics to design. As these systems grow more capable, they can handle an expanding share of human work, enabling a possible decoupling of income from labor.

 AI systems don’t sleep; they operate around the clock. Robots don’t need protection from unions, nor the relief of breaks, or recovery time. Their use can dramatically reduce labor costs—which, depending on the industry, can account for 30 to 70 percent of total production expenses. Combined with tireless and increasingly flawless performance, AI and robotics have the potential to make many goods and services incredibly cheap or even nearly free. In theory, such abundance could liberate humans from toil while still producing everything needed for a good life. 

If Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics truly begin to replace much of what we now consider “work,” we may finally be forced to confront some fundamental questions. What is the purpose of work? What does “profit” mean? How will people earn a living if there are no jobs? We may be forced to revive and take seriously the idea of a universal basic income (UBI) that provides everyone with a living wage – and plenty of free time - whether they work or not. The issue hinges on whether the purpose of work is to produce endless growth and profits or to supply people with the resources they need to survive and thrive.

How to Use More Leisure time

If the future does result in more leisure time – as I believe it should – we will need to focus our collective creativity on how to enjoy life more fully, how to make life more pleasant for everyone, how to get closer to nature and how to play with greater abandon.

This is not idle daydreaming. A wealth of leisure time, poorly used, can devolve into listlessness, distraction, or despair. On the other hand,, leisure time well spent could provide benefits that resonate across all aspects of life, enhancing psychological, social and cognitive wellbeing. People with more leisure time, well spent, are healthier, live longer and contribute more to the cultural enrichment of their societies.

 Using free time well – that is, flourishing through leisure  - requires intention and creativity. It asks us to develop skills of choice—disciplines of curiosity, creativity, connection, and care. Older adults living in retirement are pioneers in this new world of increased leisure time. Research on creative aging underscores this point about using time well. Some older adults feel lost when they no longer have a job to fill their hours and anchor their sense of meaning and purpose.  Yet, many older adults  have been shown to flourish most when they engage in arts, civic activity, or other expressive pursuits that bring meaning and joy. Leisure, in this sense, becomes a new canvas for development, not a void to be filled.

Redefining Success 

Learning to flourish in leisure will require a possibly radical readjustment of how we frame success and the purpose of work. We will need to seriously question whether the idea of worth is tied solely to productivity and growth. We might question the need to continually produce more and more things that do little but cluttering our lives? Do we really want to be working in what have been called “bullshit jobs,” work that produces nothing of real value? What is the social benefit of endless growth – is it simply to provide ever more customers for an endlessly increasing supply of junk?

Truly creative engagement with increase leisure time might, instead, bring real value into our lives. We might learn how to be more present and relaxed with ourselves and with others. We might develop our curiosity and inventiveness and playful experimentation. We might have more time to help each other; more time to insure that all children have enriched upbringings.

As we envision a future shaped by longer lives and less work, one of the most important skills we can foster is not how to earn a living, but how to live fully—especially in the hours once dominated by labor. Leisure, then, is not a passive state. It is an invitation to grow and expand our vision of what it means to be a human being.

Cconclusion

As we consider how to flourish in a world with more leisure—whether by design or by necessity—we’re being called to reimagine not just how we spend our time, but what kind of people and society we want to become. 

For those of us in retirement, this isn't just theoretical—it’s the daily canvas of our lives. Do we fill our hours with distraction, or with discovery? Do we treat free time as empty, or as full of potential? The answers won’t come from old models of success, but from our willingness to envision new ways of flourishing as we age—using our time more wisely, and living with greater presence, purpose, and play. In a very real sense, how we choose to reinvent leisure may become one of the most meaningful contributions we offer to the future.

Thanks for joining me for this episode of *Flourish As You Age* and our exploration of leisure time. If today’s conversation resonated with you, I hope you will share the podcast with others who care about cultivating wisdom and well-being across the lifespan. And until next time—stay curious, stay connected, and keep flourishing.