Work and Leisure

Serious leisure, volunteerism, quality of life 205dislikes and disappointments, which each participant must confront in someway. For instance, a volunteer board member may not always feel like attendingboard meetings, occasionally have his or her ideas rejected when there, beasked to perform a disagreeable task from time to time, and still regard thisactivity as highly satisfying – as (serious) leisure – because it also offerscertain powerful rewards.Optimal leisure lifestyleAn optimal leisure lifestyle is the deeply satisfying pursuit during free time ofone or more substantial, absorbing forms of serious leisure, complementedby a judicious amount of casual leisure (Stebbins 2000). A person finds anoptimal leisure lifestyle by engaging in leisure activities that individually andin combination realise human potential and enhance quality of life. Given themultitude of effects of the Information Age in which many people now live,one of them being to reduce the significance of their paid employment(Rifkin 1995), they now have to confront, often for the first time, what theyreally want to do in their free time. Casual leisure, as respite, was the mostcommon trade-off when work dominated their lives. But, now, with fewerhours on the job and less interesting and more stressful work to do whilethere, these people could well become interested in searching for more substantialleisure than they had heretofore. Certainly they have reached a pointin life where pursuing an optimal leisure lifestyle is a realistic option, wherethey can take charge of enhancing their own personal well-being.People searching for an optimal leisure lifestyle strive to get the best returnthey can from use of their free time. What is considered ‘best’ is, of course, amatter of personal definition; a quality of optimal leisure lifestyle predicatedon the person’s awareness of the great range of potentially available leisurepossibilities. Thus people know they have an optimal leisure lifestyle when,from their own reasonably wide knowledge of feasible serious and casualleisure activities and associated costs and rewards, they can say they haveenhanced their well-being by finding the best combination of the two types.People enjoying an optimal leisure lifestyle are thus aware of other appealingcasual and serious activities, but nonetheless sufficiently satisfied withtheir present constellation of activities to resist abandoning them or adoptingothers. Still, this could change in the future, as an activity loses its appeal, theperson loses his or her ability to engage in it, or new activities gain attractiveness.From what I have observed in my own research, people with optimalleisure lifestyles seem to sense that, at a given point in time, if they try to dotoo much, they will force a hectic routine on themselves, risk diluting theirleisure, and soon become unable to participate fully in what they have chosen.Optimal leisure lifestyle is a new concept in the study of leisure. Its strengthis that it examines, not leisure activities – the usual approach in leisure studies– but leisured individuals who pursue casual and serious leisure activities