Should there be less personal enjoyment?

Enjoyment is one of the positive emotions that a human being can experience when completely engrossed in an activity. It is important that we arrange our schedule in a clever way that matches our lifestyle and personal goals. While conflicts between enjoyment and work have never ceased, I argue that there is no such thing as spending too much time on personal enjoyment for two reasons.

To begin with, excellence in hobbies can be elevated to a profession for a lifetime. Although many people are inclined to separate personal interest from achievement in their career, in fact, both require intelligence and diligence. Moreover, incessant effort in excelling at unremarkable hobbies can eventually pay off and be recognized by the world, which brings in income to individuals. For example, video games used to be equivalent to juvenile delinquency and indulgence. Nonetheless, despite all the discrimination, professional players staunchly demonstrate remarkable techniques and coordination of the body it requires to master it. After decades of effort, video game playing is gradually promoted as an international sports competition, and what is more, it is officially listed as an Olympics sport, not to mention how incredibly well-paid those professional players are. This example perfectly illustrates how a once worthless hobby evolves into a now high-paying profession.

Second, increasing stress during workdays further necessitates personal enjoyment. Compared to the past, people nowadays actually experience more stress than ever in view of more and more demanding work, which leads to burnout and high suicide rate throughout the globe. Hence, it is not only necessary but also crucial for workers to find a work-life balance by exploring personal enjoyment during their leisure time. Furthermore, instead of blaming individuals for squandering time over worthless hobbies, we should encourage everyone to relieve workday stress through more leisure activities. For example, managers from several tech companies have noticed how stressful it is for employees to meet more and more exacting job requirements and the long-term consequences of such stress such as low performance and burnout. Therefore, the managers encourage their workers to take days off for subsidized family trips. In short, there is simply not enough personal enjoyment nowadays.

To sum up, I firmly believe that there should never be less personal enjoyment because personal enjoyment can evolve into a lifetime profession and is a necessity of life. Therefore, I suggest all of us be brave to explore and embrace hobbies and leisure activities so that we will lead a more enjoyable life.