Yeah, not buying this entirely. People love slacking off in their free time, after some intense period its the easiest way to relax. Hard manual labor should have mental exercises as resting and reverse.

Its completely on people. Who the heck was ever told to work like crazy whole life, do nothing more, and let their personality formed up till mid 20s slowly evaporate? I certainly never heard that. Its your and mine responsibility to keep our life interesting, bring up challenges for good old struggle and overcoming, fostering resilient personalities, find passions. Nobody forces you to work till you drop with gun next to your head, do they.

These aren't some empty words, I can attest it myself - moved myself half across the Europe into completely unfamiliar environment, culture, customs and language. That's challenging if one decides to stay, find friends and integrate properly. Doesn't help the language is French - one of the harder ones to learn well, IMHO a badly designed 'spaghetti code' of a language that needs desperate update from endless sets of old rules and exceptions. Then I picked up from 0 various mountain sports - from hiking to climbing and alpinism, ski touring, even flew paraglider for a while, also started free weights gym training. Diving in the sunny places with coral reefs. What spurred all this was a hard breakup and one guy who showed me the way to these activities and I walked it myself from that point.

Had a bad paragliding accident where I broke both legs (wheelchair perspective on life for 6 weeks was truly eye-opening experience), so I supplanted it with more climbing which I luckily can keep doing (ie this evening with my US buddy). You see the pattern - once these become your passions, its very hard to actually not wanting to do them more and more, they make me feel great long term, are super healthy and one sees world and life from other perspectives. As body ages I can move to other sports - planning starting wind surfing this summer as a replacement for that paragliding, fingers crossed.

When I compare myself with peers back home who literally never moved and stayed whole life in some comfy jobs its staggering how 'undeveloped' personalities many have - know only what few news websites say, repeat what others said, but not much experience outside their little bubble, no resilience, fear of unknown (of which for them in this world there are many). Hard to have any meaningful discussion about more than weather and kids with them, very shallow knowledge on whole world and life.

That on top of having and raising 2 kids with my wife with both busy careers, no nanny and all family 1500km away. I want to say I am busy but still, there is ton of time to slack off. TON of it. But some form of 'comfort zone', even if uncomfortable but at least familiar, is the proverbial death of a person, of that spark that makes you grin like a baby from time to time and feel joy of life. Or, more simply - if work is too much on you, work less, drop a day, leave earlier and screw what everybody else in office rat race thinks, they don't live your life.

Sorry trying to cram a lot of different ideas swirling in my head into one post and I am not a poet nor english native speaker.

Does Employment Slow Cognitive Decline? Evidence from Labor Market Shocks