Do you often feel overwhelmed by work, constantly striving for more, and find that your professional life bleeds into your personal time? Do you question why society is so obsessed with working hard, or why our jobs have become so central to our identity, often at the expense of leisure and well-being?

"James Suzman on What Hunter-Gatherer Societies Teach Us About Work, Time, and Well-Being", from Personal Development ProSkills.training, offers a profound challenge to modern conceptions of work. This comprehensive 10-lesson, 13-page course, complete with graded assessments, draws on anthropologist Dr. James Suzman's extensive research and his book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots. In partnership with the Next Big Idea Club, this course provides a stark comparison between our contemporary approach to work and that of the Ju/'hoansi, a hunter-gatherer society in southern Africa, prompting you to rethink fundamental assumptions about work and life.

In this course, you will delve into:

• The Nature of Work and Human Purposefulness: Discover that all living organisms "work" in a fundamental physical sense, seeking and harvesting energy to organise, grow, and reproduce. Crucially, you'll learn that human work is unique because it is purposeful, driven by clear ambitions, a grasp of causality, imagination, and self-awareness. The course highlights that humans are distinguished by our infinite capacity to acquire and adapt skills across various contexts, a versatility key to our species' success and colonisation of diverse habitats. You’ll understand that we have an innate appetite for learning and crave the satisfaction of performing mastered skills, and that being deprived of this can lead to boredom and demoralisation.

• Challenging Modern Misconceptions:

  • Competition: You'll critically examine the common belief that "life is a competition" or "survival of the fittest," learning that this interpretation of evolution is flawed. Suzman reveals that natural ecosystems are complex networks of interdependence and cooperation (mutualism and commensalism). You'll see how even modern businesses operate within interdependent systems, striving for cooperative efficiency and "win-win" relationships, suggesting that work and life don't have to be a constant competition.
  • Scarcity: The course debunks the economic idea that humans naturally have unlimited wants and are driven by scarcity. Through the example of the Ju/'hoansi, who typically met their basic needs with only about 15 hours of work per week and enjoyed considerable leisure, you'll learn about "immediate return economies". Their modest material desires and belief in the environment's provision reveal that the worry about future resources is a cultural byproduct of the agricultural era, not human nature.
  • Hierarchy: Explore how hunter-gatherer societies, often "acephalous" with no formal leadership, exhibit a deep natural aversion to inequality and maintain fiercely egalitarian communities. You'll discover how self-interest is policed by communal mockery and teasing to ensure fair shares, suggesting that our modern ambition for social or professional status may actually stem from this underlying aversion to inequality.

• The Impact of Agriculture, Community, and Prosperity on Work:

  • Agriculture: Understand how the shift from hunting and gathering to farming, which involved more work and delayed returns, laid the cultural foundations for many of our economic norms, including the idea that hard work is a virtue and idleness a sin.

By exploring these insights, this course aims to loosen the "claw-like grasp that scarcity economics still holds over our working lives" and challenge our unsustainable preoccupation with economic growth. It offers a path to imagine new, more sustainable futures by harnessing our restless energy, purposefulness, and creativity to shape our destiny.

Enrol today to transform your understanding of work and discover how to build a better, brighter future for yourself and the planet!