Would Life Be Better if You Worked Less?

Stephen E. Griffith was working up to 80 hours a week. He was frustrated by the bureaucracy of mounting meetings and craved time with family. So in 2021, he left his thriving practice at a Kansas City, Mo., hospital, and decided to work less.

The neurosurgeon now puts in about one-half to two-thirds of the hours he used to, picking up temporary assignments through a medical-staffing agency, sometimes traveling as far as Oregon. He’s still a doctor and still heals people. But he also goes on midmorning jogs with his wife. He drives his kids to music class. He’s taken more vacations in recent months—to Hawaii, Grand Cayman, Mexico—than during entire years of his past life as a hospital-employed physician.

“Time is a currency,” the 47-year-old says. “Gone are the days where you sign on the dotted line and you can be there for just as long as they tell you to be.”

People with all sorts of jobs seem to agree. They’re reconsidering their relationship to work, how much of their time it swallows, and making changes. In February 2023, 21.9 million Americans were working part time voluntarily, up from 20.7 million the prior year. Meanwhile, some participants in a four-day workweek experiment in the U.K. say there is no amount of money that could make them go back. Lawmakers stateside have taken notice, proposing legislation that would cut the standard workweek here to 32 hours.

It’s hard not to look around and wonder: Would my life be better if I worked less?

“You have this sense of, you’ve taken control of your life,” says Kevin Richardson, who works about 25 hours from Monday through Thursday for a small creative agency. “You see the work as part of your life, rather than the centre.”

Newfound freedom

Dr. Richardson shifted to part-time freelance work last year at the behest of his wife, Lindsay King, who was already down to 15 to 20 hours a week. Freed from the cost and stress of finding paid child care, they can swap who’s in charge of their one- and four-year-old boys. They’ve even been able to relocate to international spots for months at a time.

Speaking recently from a house set amid olive and orange groves in Kalamata, Greece, Dr. King told me she can’t see herself returning to full-time work, even when her children are older.

“I would just have many other things I want to do with my life,” she says, citing travel, volunteering, gardening and long-distance running.

Not that it’s picture perfect. The couple hasn’t amassed enough savings to buy a house in Texas, their home base, and they know they work at the whims of the organisations for which they freelance. Their gigs could dry up at any time.

‘Why did we all work five days?’

For plenty of workers, the possibility of putting in fewer hours simply isn’t an option because they need the money—especially amid inflation—or because of the type of jobs they do.

Some people working fewer hours, including Dr. Richardson, told me they make the same money as before. But contractors are on their own for health insurance and miss out on company benefits like paid time off.

Other workers take big pay cuts to shift to part-time hours only to contend with pressure to pop open their laptops on their day off anyway, or find they’re cut off from key company discussions and promotions.

The answer could be entire organisations where everyone’s putting in fewer hours, says Brendan Burchell, a sociology professor at the University of Cambridge who’s studied how work hours affect psychological well-being.

Humans need work to give structure to our days, to bestow purpose and self-esteem, he says. But we don’t need that much of it. A 2019 paper from Prof. Burchell and several co-authors found that people performing one to eight hours of paid work a week got the same mental health boost—less anxiety, less depression—as those who work 44 to 48 hours a week.

In the future, “We’ll look back and think, why did we all work five days?” Prof. Burchell says.

The part-time business model

Employing mostly part-time workers has helped Sam McKenna’s sales-consulting business be nimble and save money.

“We don’t have people who we’re paying 40 hours who only need 20 hours to get their jobs done,” the Washington, D.C.-area resident says. “We don’t pay overly competitive salaries. We don’t have health benefits.”

And yet, job candidates flood the team with inquiries each month, Ms. McKenna says, even when the company doesn’t have openings. Before the pandemic, it was mostly stay-at-home moms, as well as military and expat spouses who would express interest. These days, Ms. McKenna says she hears from high-powered executives at major consulting and financial-services companies who crave meaningful work, but want a slower pace.

Ms. McKenna initially envisioned herself working part time, too. She left her job at LinkedIn to launch the business in late 2019 with a goal of making half the money she had previously, in half the time she used to spend working.

“I wanted balance,” she says. But as clients kept coming, she swiftly ramped up to 60 hours a week. Keeping up with demand took, well, more work. “You can only do so much part-time.”

Peak performance

Many have found their long hours give diminishing returns.

A full-time employee earlier in her career, environmental engineer Megan Neiderhiser remembers loitering by the water cooler, chatting with colleagues. Now, working 30 hours a week, but aiming for the same revenue targets as her full-time colleagues, she bookmarks every hour for specific goals and doesn’t waste her 40-person team’s time with excess meetings.

Fridays are for yoga classes and playing with her kids, affording her time to think and relax. The Salt Lake City resident says she has better ideas and a better attitude come Monday.

“I’m just convinced,” she says, “this is my top performance.”

For some vacationers, the ideal getaway involves $1,200 ozone therapy or an $1,800 early-detection cancer test.

Call it the longevity vacation. People who are fixated on optimising their personal health are pursuing travel activities that they hope will help them stay healthier for longer. It is part of a broader interest in longevity that often extends beyond traditional medicine . These costly trips and treatments are rising in popularity as money pours into the global wellness travel market.

At high-end resorts, guests can now find biological age testing, poolside vitamin IV drips, and stem-cell therapy. Prices can range from hundreds of dollars for shots and drips to tens of thousands for more invasive procedures, which go well beyond standard wellness offerings like yoga, massages or facials.

Some longevity-inspired trips focus on treatments, while others focus more on social and lifestyle changes. This includes programs that promise to teach travellers the secrets of centenarians .

Mark Blaskovich, 66 years old, spent $4,500 on a five-night trip last year centred on lessons from the world’s “Blue Zones,” places including Sardinia, Italy, and Okinawa, Japan, where a high number of people live for at least 100 years. Blaskovich says he wanted to get on a healthier path as he started to feel the effects of ageing.

He chose a retreat at Modern Elder Academy in Mexico, where he attended workshops detailing the power of supportive relationships, embracing a plant-based diet and incorporating natural movement into his daily life.

“I’ve been interested in longevity and trying to figure out how to live longer and live healthier,” says Blaskovich.

Vitamins and ozone

When Christy Menzies noticed nurses behind a curtained-off area at the Four Seasons Resort Maui in Hawaii on a family vacation in 2022, she assumed it might be Covid-19 testing. They were actually injecting guests with vitamin B12.

Menzies, 40, who runs a travel agency, escaped to the longevity clinic between trips to the beach, pool and kids’ club, where she reclined in a leather chair, and received a 30-minute vitamin IV infusion.

“You’re making investments in your wellness, your health, your body,” says Menzies, who adds that she felt more energised afterward.

The resort has been expanding its offerings since opening a longevity centre in 2021. A multi-day treatment package including ozone therapy, stem-cell therapy and a “fountain of youth” infusion, costs $44,000. Roughly half a dozen guests have shelled out for that package since it made its debut last year, according to Pat Makozak, the resort’s senior spa director. Guests can also opt for an early-detection cancer blood test for $1,800.

The ozone therapy, which involves withdrawing blood, dissolving ozone gas into it, and reintroducing it into the body through an IV, is particularly popular, says Makozak. The procedure is typically administered by a registered nurse, takes upward of an hour and costs $1,200.

Longevity vacationers are helping to fuel the global wellness tourism market, which is expected to surpass $1 trillion in 2024, up from $439 billion in 2012, according to the nonprofit Global Wellness Institute. About 13% of U.S. travellers took part in spa or wellness activities while traveling in the past 12 months, according to a 2023 survey from market-research group Phocuswright.

Canyon Ranch, which has multiple wellness resorts across the country, earlier this year introduced a five-night “Longevity Life” program, starting at $6,750, that includes health-span coaching, bone-density scans and longevity-focused sessions on spirituality and nutrition.

The idea is that people will return for an evaluation regularly to monitor progress, says Mark Kovacs, the vice president of health and performance.

What doctors say

Doctors preach caution, noting many of these treatments are unlikely to have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, producing a placebo effect at best and carrying the potential for harm at worst. Procedures that involve puncturing the skin, such as ozone therapy or an IV drip, risk possible infection, contamination and drug interactions.

“Right now there isn’t a single proven treatment that would prolong the life of someone who’s already healthy,” says Dr. Mark Loafman, a family-medicine doctor in Chicago. “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”

Some studies on certain noninvasive wellness treatments, like saunas or cold plunges , do suggest they may help people feel less stressed, or provide some temporary pain relief or sleep improvement.

Linda True, a policy analyst in San Francisco, spent a day at RAKxa, a wellness retreat on a visit to family in Thailand in February. True, 46, declined the more medical-sounding offerings, like an IV drip, and opted for a traditional style of Thai massage that involved fire and is touted as a “detoxification therapy.”

“People want to spend money on things that they feel might be doing good,” says Dr. Tamsin Lewis, medical adviser at RoseBar Longevity at Six Senses Ibiza, a longevity club that opened last year, whose menu includes offerings such as cryotherapy, infrared sauna and a “Longevity Boost” IV.

RoseBar says there is good evidence that reducing stress contributes to longevity, and Lewis says she doesn’t offer false promises about treatments’ efficacy . Kovacs says Canyon Ranch uses the latest science and personal data to help make evidence-based recommendations.

Jaclyn Sienna India owns a membership-based, ultra luxury travel company that serves people whose net worth exceeds $100 million, many of whom give priority to longevity, she says. She has planned trips for clients to Blue Zones, where there are a large number of centenarians. On one in February, her company arranged a $250,000 weeklong stay for a family of three to Okinawa that included daily meditation, therapeutic massages and cooking classes, she says.

India says keeping up with a longevity-focused lifestyle requires more than one treatment and is cost-prohibitive for most people.

Doctors say travellers may be more likely to glean health benefits from focusing on a common vacation goal : just relaxing.

Dr. Karen Studer, a physician and assistant professor of preventive medicine at Loma Linda University Health says lowering your stress levels is linked to myriad short- and long-term health benefits.

“It may be what you’re getting from these expensive treatments is just a natural effect of going on vacation, decreasing stress, eating better and exercising more.”