Of course there are many who over work. But I would say even among the people who consider work/life balance and of course often fail to achieve it, think too much of it being a balance. As if life is best when there is the right amount of work and the right amount of life.
But in reality if we are talking about ideals in every way the right balance would be to work minimally. I used to have a different mentality than this. I always valued good work ethic and not being lazy. This has been the grind stone and attitude I've brought to nearly every year of my life.
But something happened. I was working almost all the time, spending close to zero money, I was invested in crypto at the time in the best season it has seen, and I had an absurd amount of money. But had absolutely no utility from that money. That's because I've always been a minimal spender.
I've been a stoic from the day I was born even before I knew what stoicism was. There is absolutely no value I get out of spending money beyond my needs and a few wants that are cheap. And I really think that is the case for almost anyone if they really inspect what gives them value.
So then the question is, what am I actually getting out of work? What marginally improves in my life? And ultimately that lead me to a deeper question of what is value. As someone who was once very obsessed with economics I thought I knew the answer. But that was in the abstract, and for other people. But when it came to myself and the concrete question "what is value" right now, I didn't know. What I did know is work wasn't producing it. I still don't know 100% but have 80% of the hints, but one thing is for sure. What actually produces real human value is outside of work. Whatever it is its always outside of work.
Remember that the purpose of your life is to live, not to work. Work is so you can live. By the time you exit this world the goal really is to have gotten as many hours in life as possible, not hours of work. For most there is something less general that they want to maximize like time with their family, but the point still stands. The point being there is nothing lazy about aggressively pursuing what produces the most value for you. Prioritization is not lazy. Aggressive prioritization is very much not lazy.
So this all seems kind of obvious. So where are people making errors? One is mentality. People want to be hard workers. I think they should want to be. But people need to consider their life as a form of work because its just pursuing the thing that gives them the most value.
The other is that people are too focused on money and status.
The richest person of all is the person who spends the least amount of time at work. Most of us aren't rich so that's not our life. But if having the newest car is more important than your time then you are going to waste your life away. You should be trying to minimize your expenses. If time is money, then every dollar you spend, or at least every dollar spent foolishly, is life thrown away in exchange for more time at work.
The other issue is most don't really have control of their time in general. Most people aren't in a position to say I saved well, I think I'll go to work less this week. I have two comments about that.
One is that maybe you should put some effort into arranging that for yourself. If we are talking about time at home that's a matter of life organization and one of those things that don't come just because you snap your fingers. It's one of those things that are more effected by long term planning and decision making at cross roads. But if you have your values put in the correct order you are more likely to end up making the decision that leaves you with more time. But you can also force yourself into those kinds of cross roads. If you start applying to things your life just might get shaken up a bit, and in it there will be opportunities to apply deeper values than what you did in the past.
The second comment is that money is additive so even if you don't have control over your time now you should still save like it's going to impact your time. Because it will. Just further down the road.
The other error people make is some, not everyone, don't take their life outside of work seriously enough. They waste every second they have outside of work because they don't know what to do with it. It makes sense for someone to spend more of their time at work if they produce more value at work than in their life. So the other key to spending more time out of work is to be more productive. Be organized about it. If organization multiplies how much can get produced in an hours time at work, then it does the same thing in your life. It makes sense for you to spend time where there is the highest marginal increase in value. If you want to spend less time at work you need to compete. Make your time so valuable outside of work you can't afford the loss of value. Then your hours will naturally slim.
The next thing people ought to focus on is their hourly value over their net income, and they should work to improve it. If you want to work as little as possible and view work as an act of survival, you would want to achieve that survival in as little time as possible. The best way to improve that is education. I would rather make top ten percentile hourly and bottom twenty five percentile income. You actually improve your hourly income more from time outside of work than at work anyway. Depending on how you spend your time of course.
Look. USD is just a token someone printed. If you exchange your life away chasing it as if it has value in and of itself, you just got taken and your life disappeared as a result of your stupidity. USD has no value. Money has no value. They are just tokens representing time, and more specifically time away from work. If you don't put some effort in pursuing the real end product and are too focused on the intermediate token you are losing on the deal.