To Live a Good Life is to Embrace Your Otium

If you were to explain your routine to an Ancient Roman, he would be appalled at the amount of time you spend working.

He would take one look at your schedule, see all those meetings and deadlines and blocks of time working on things that don’t really matter, and be baffled that a human being would subject themselves it.

See, the Ancient Romans had a very different way of looking at life than we do now. Somewhere in the last 2,000 years, our definition of what means to live a good life has flipped from “I’m working on myself,” to “I’m producing maximum value for my shareholders.”

Let’s explore this change, how it happened, and how you can get back to the good life.

Ancient Rome

The Ancient Romans had a unique word they loved to use: Otium.

Literally translated, Otium means “Leisure,” but it’s actual use is more abstract.

To the Ancient Romans, it encompassed any activity that would be considered “self-actualising,” from eating good food, playing with friends, relaxing, studying, learning new skills, and various academic endeavours like philosophy, poetry, and oration.

In our modern world, we see these things as the activities we engage in during our “spare time,” when we’re not working at our jobs or rushing from place to place. But to an Ancient Roman, Otium was the meaning of life.

Consider these two Latin words:

• Otium meaning Leisure

• Negotium meaning Business

Do you see what’s important there?

In Latin, the prefix “neg-” means to deny something, it’s a negative. If “neg-” appears before the remainder of the word, it’s saying not this. Now, look at the Latin word for business again: Negotium.

It’s literally Neg-Otium, or not leisure.

We can extrapolate this to mean that when you’re engaged in business, you’re not engaged in leisure, which to the Ancient Romans (as we’ve said), was the meaning of life. Otium was the thing you should be spending most of your time doing, and work was something you did because you had to, not because your life revolved around it.

In the years since the likes of Seneca and Marcus Aurelius walked the earth, we’ve seen the definition of work shift from something that had to be done, to something we base our whole lives upon.

Say we were transported back 2,000 years and found ourselves in Ancient Rome and in conversation with someone we bumped into on the street, the conversation might go like this:

• Lucius: Hi, what do you do?

• You: Well, I work in an office.

• Lucius: Work? I mean what do you do?

• You: Huh?

• Lucius: How are you improving your mind? How do you spend your life outside of work? How often do you converse with your friends?

Lucius would go on and on and on, because to him, the idea of introducing yourself with what you do for work (something that’s just become the default in our society) would befuddle him. He wouldn’t care about what you did for work, he’d care about your Otium, how you’re spending the time that was your own.

To him, the idea of basing our entire identity around what we do for work would be astonishing. The very fact that what we do for work is so often the first thing we say to people when we introduce ourselves would mark us as some kind of freak in Ancient Roman society. No doubt Lucius would run off to the nearest bath house and soak his skin for days on end to remove the stain our words had left on him.

Epicurus, the Ancient Roman philosopher, when discussing what one should do with one’s life, had this to say:

It is better to lie on the naked ground and be at ease, than to have a golden coach and a rich table and be worried.

The Epicurean view of Otium is to be contemplative in one’s life, to not focus on the stresses of work and the constant striving to acquire as much wealth (or golden coaches and rich tables) as possible. To Epicurus, it was infinitely better to spend your life lying on the ground and being at ease with yourself.

The world as it is demands we work to “make a living,” so of course we can’t all just strip off and lie down for the rest of our lives. But there are some things we can take away from this way of thinking, which we’ll explore a little later on.

How Did Work Take Over Our Lives?

To understand how we got here, we need to start with God.

As Christianity spread across the world in the centuries following the fall of Rome, a new relationship with work and labour began to take shape. The Benedictine monks of the 6th century operated under a simple motto: Ora et Labora, a Latin phrase translating to pray and work. To them, labour wasn’t simply a thing you do because you have to, but rather it was a form of devotion to the Lord Almighty.

On top of this, there became a shift in how the average, god-fearing person saw labour. When you needed to build a wall or till a field, you weren’t simply doing that thing on its own. Instead, through your labour, you were glorifying God through the sweat of your brow. By extension, to remain idle and to relax was an affront to the Lord.

This idea was codified further in 1891, when Pope Leo XIII published Rerum Novarum, a papal document that explicitly dignified labour as morally noble. The message of this work was very clear: work wasn't something you did because you had to, it was something you did because it made you good.

If we think of these events as setting the theological groundwork, we can then look at the Protestant Reformation as a period that really took things to a whole new level.

In 1905, the German sociologist Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and in it he made an argument that still holds up uncomfortably well today. Calvinist theology[1], Weber argued, had introduced a troubling idea into the Western mind: that hard work was evidence of being one of God's chosen. In other words, if you were industrious, disciplined, and productive, it suggested divine favour. If you were idle, well… draw your own conclusions.

To the god-fearing masses, work wasn't just morally acceptable, it was proof of your worth as a pious human being. And leisure, our old friend Otium that we’ve already discussed, began its slow transformation into something suspicious.

Suddenly, the idea of having free time – time you could spend leisurely, bettering yourself or engaging in activities you enjoyed – became something for the lazy. Something, if you were an adherent to the word of God (and Church doctrine) a little ungodly.

With all of this as a backdrop for things to come, the Industrial Revolution sparked not just a transformation in machinery and production, but also sealed the deal as to the role that work would play in our lives.

Factories didn't just change how people worked, they fundamentally altered how we relate to time itself. For the first time, labour was governed by the clock rather than the season or the task. You didn't finish when the work was done (like you would on, say, a farm), you finished when the bell rang. Historian E.P. Thompson, in his landmark 1967 essay Time, Work-Discipline and Industrial Capitalism, argued that this shift fundamentally rewired Western culture's relationship with time and, by extension, productivity.

To waste time was no longer just unfortunate, it was, in a very real sense, immoral.

The factory floor instilled habits that outlasted the factories themselves. The staples that we now see to be just how things are – things like fixed hours, punch-in culture, and the equation of busyness with virtue – all of it seeped into the broader culture and stayed there.

And then in the 20th century we have one final push to put the nail in the coffin, securing society’s relationship with work.

Post-war consumerism fused productivity with identity in a way that would have been alien even to the Calvinist hardliners discussed by Weber. Buying things required earning money; earning money required working; working hard became not just a financial necessity but a marker of character. National pride, personal worth, social status, all of it became tangled up in what you produced and what you could afford.

And somewhere in all of this, a small but telling linguistic shift occurred. The question we ask strangers when we meet them stopped being "who are you?" and became "what do you do?" Our friend Lucius, remember, would have found that baffling. To him, your work was the least interesting thing about you, but to us, it's often the first thing we offer when we meet a new person. Two thousand years of theology, philosophy, industrialisation, and consumerism have seen to that.

So, what’s the answer? The Ancient Romans busy embracing their Otium had the luxury of incalculable wealth and slaves to do all the daily chores, so it’s a little hypocritical for them to say that a life should be devoted to intellectual pursuits or leisure activities, right?

In our modern world, with our bills and rent to pay and kids to drive to school, this isn’t something we can do. We can’t just drop it all, get a notebook, and retreat to the woods to write poetry all day long.

But, there are ways we can embrace the Ancient Roman way of life, whilst still remaining productive and taking care of business.

Let’s look at how we can embrace Otium.

Getting Back to the Good Life

The honest answer is that we cannot opt out of the system entirely. The bills still need paying, the meetings still need attending, and (sadly) no amount of philosophical musing will convince my landlord to accept this essay in lieu of rent.

The good news, however, is that Otium doesn’t ask us to ignore our responsibilities and live the life of a hermit in the woods.

The Ancient Romans weren't advocating for idleness. Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus, and any number of other ancient philosophers we know of today were all, by any measure, extraordinarily productive men.

To put their busyness into perspective: Marcus Aurelius was a Roman emperor, which would have been enough work on its own, but he just so happened to be in charge during the Marcomannic Wars, which saw him on the battlefield for the majority of his reign. Still, during this era, he carved out time in his day for regular reflections on his life, pushing himself to be a better man and to live with virtue.

Seneca was a statesman during the reign of Nero and, in his own right, a man with huge amounts of responsibility. On top of this, he also published a number of plays and spoke in public regularly, as well as found time to write regular letters to a chap called Lucilius, where he discussed matters of philosophy and “the good life.”

Epictetus, having been born a slave and was permanently disabled by his master, founded a school of philosophy in Nicopolis that went on to influence a generation of thinkers. He would regularly undertake lectures on philosophy, as well as engaging in heated public debates.

All three of these men, despite the responsibilities of their own roles in society, found the time to write extensively, reflecting on how to live a good life in accordance with nature. They were so productive, in fact, that the three books attributed to them (Meditations, Letters from a Stoic (and others), and Discourses respectively, went on to become foundational texts of the Stoic philosophy.

When telling us to embrace our Otium, they weren’t arguing that we should avoid all responsibility and focus on honing our skills in drawing or poetry, but were instead arguing for a reorientation of purpose. To the Ancients (and most of the world up until work became synonymous with being holy) work was the thing you did so that you could live. It was never supposed to become the thing you lived for.

With this in mind, here are a few ways to begin clawing some of that back.

Guard Your Attention Like it's Currency

The single most Otium-hostile feature of modern life isn't your job, it's the near-constant fragmentation of your attention outside of it. The Romans had long stretches of uninterrupted time in which to think, converse, read, and simply be.

But now, we have phones that take up most of our free time, whether we want them to or not.

Deliberately carving out periods of the day where your attention belongs entirely to you, not to notifications, the news cycle, or whatever the algorithm has decided you should be anxious about today, is perhaps the most Roman thing you can do in the 21st century.

Relearn How to be Bored

This sounds trivial. It isn't. Neuroscientific research shows that mind-wandering (the thing that happens when we're bored and don't immediately reach for a screen) is closely linked to creativity, self-reflection, and the consolidation of identity.

The Romans called this contemplatio, a term that translates to contemplation, and means to consider something for the sake of thinking about it. To us, sitting and just thinking is a waste of time, but to the Romans, it was an essential part of life.

Take Your Leisure Seriously

This might be the most counterintuitive suggestion, but Otium wasn't casual, it was intentional.

The Romans didn't stumble into self-actualisation; they pursued it with the same energy we bring to our careers. If you have something you love doing (reading, cooking, walking, making things, or even just watching movies or playing video games) treat it with the same seriousness you treat your work. Schedule time to do the thing you love, and protect that time like your life depends on it.

To take your leisure seriously and stop referring to it as "just a hobby." Just because an activity doesn’t bring in money or doesn’t directly contribute to KPI data in a spreadsheet doesn’t make it any less real or important.

Reclaim the Dinner Table

Sorry to hit you with another Latin word, but one of the central pillars of Otium was convivium. This was sharing meals with people you care about, having long conversations with friends, and enjoying the unhurried and often unfocused company of the people in your life.

It sounds almost embarrassingly simple, but research consistently shows that regular shared meals are among the strongest predictors of wellbeing, connection, and even longevity. Lucius, our Roman friend from the start, would have considered this a non-negotiable part of the day.

And yet, in our crazy-fast-paced world, we treat it as a luxury.

Ask yourself Lucius's questions

Let’s bring back Lucius one more time. When we went back in 2,000 years and he asked us what we did, he then followed up aghast with three more questions. Standing there in his toga and jaw dropping all the way to the ground, he asked:

• How are you improving your mind?

• How do you spend your life outside of work?

• How often do you converse with your friends?

It's worth spending a little bit of time seriously thinking about these questions, because for a lot of us, the honest answers are a little uncomfortable. Think about it, are you actively working to improve your mind? Most of us are not. So too, when we audit our activities outside of work, there’s no doubt more scrolling on social media than we’d like to admit. And then, how often are you actually speaking with your friends and loved ones? Again, probably less than we’d like to say.

By answering those questions honestly, you’ll give yourself concrete areas to improve on.

What’s great is that none of these points require a dramatic overhaul of your life.

Otium isn't a productivity system or a wellness trend that will be here today and then gone tomorrow. Instead, it’s the oldest argument in Western philosophy for taking your own life seriously. Not the career version of it, but your actual, real, just-one-shot-at-this life.

The Ancient Romans built one of the most extraordinary civilisations in human history, and they still found time to lie in the sun and eat good food.

That seems worth paying attention to.

[1] Calvinists believe that, at the beginning of time, God selected a limited number of souls to grant salvation and there's nothing any individual person can do during their mortal life to alter their eternal fate. Either you were chosen or you were not chosen, and that's all there is to it.