We are living in the midst of what technology experts call the ‘4th industrial revolution.’ With the development of a new ‘cyber-spatial’ reality of algorithms, advanced robotics, and an explosion of data, rapidly evolving technological advances will further blur the lines between digital and physical reality, transforming the nature of how humans work.

As we face these new realities in the coming decades, how do we adapt and evolve our humanity in a way that leads to more human flourishing? This article explores a forgotten concept with ancient roots that could be the key to the future of work and more importantly to the future of human civilization.

Earlier in 2019, scientists photographed for the first time a black hole 55 million light years away from Earth. Black holes, regions of space where the gravitational effect is strong enough that even light cannot escape, are some of the most mysterious of all phenomenon in our universe. The discovery not only took the work of advanced technologies like super-computing, machine learning, and multiple long-range telescopes positioned throughout the globe, but also the work of hundreds of researchers from countries from around the world.

Commentators have talked about the complexity of the discovery, the feat of scientific collaboration, and the power of these new technologies. However, what has been under reported is the incredible fact that this photo captured a physical demonstration of the theory of general relativity first imagined as possible in the mind of Albert Einstein over one hundred years ago. The human imagination perceived the existence of a phenomenon that took over one hundred years of analysis and observations to confirm.

Einstein’s theory of general relativity was of course informed by a brilliant analytical mind and years of learning complex mathematics and scientific theories articulated by other geniuses like James Clerk Maxwell and Max Planck. However, without a developed imagination and an approach to thinking that utilized this part of his consciousness, scientists might have never made this groundbreaking discovery.

What if the secrets of Einstein’s creativity and these monumental discoveries hold clues for the future of work? We live in an age of incredible innovation emerging at an exponential rate. Our human world is about to be changed in ways so fundamental one has to look back to the discovery of fire or the invention of art to the see parallels of scale in the change to our experience of reality. Our lives, our work, the way we raise our children will be completely transformed.

The fusion of various technological advances, described by Klaus Schwab as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’, is a melding of physical, biological, and digital objects to create a new ‘cyber-spatial reality’. This wave of technological advances is disrupting every industry and transforming, potentially for good and for bad, our systems of business, manufacturing, and government. In the past, our understanding of industrial robots was limited to large, clunky machines doing routine tasks at a contained car manufacturing facility. In the future, given that our lives and our objects are immersed in layers of data and geographical coding, these robots will be let out of the cage and into our human habitats as driver-less cars, delivery drones and even inside our bodies as surgical nanobots. Already, artificial intelligence, paired with human intelligence, is using the sea of data that we swim in to analyze, predict, and influence our behaviors.

In the context of the future of work, some researchers and economists have launched global warnings of the replacement of human workers by artificial intelligence and robotics, while others point to past industrial revolutions (steam, mass production and digital) that destroyed some jobs but then later created new, better paying jobs. Regardless of which experts one reads or listens to, the general consensus is that we will experience significant short-term shocks in our labor markets and that the spoils of the next economy will likely go to those that have financial capital, innovation skills, and high levels of brain power to adapt.

As we face this rapid change, how do we adapt and evolve our humanity in a way that leads to more flourishing? Many experts are talking about reskilling of workers, which is extremely important, but what if we are missing a bigger opportunity to build these new skills on something more foundational? One answer to this complex puzzle of the future of work could paradoxically be hidden in a word that has lost its meaning to modern ears: leisure.

For many, the word leisure conjures images of retirees in leisure suits, overweight deadbeats playing video games in their mom’s basement, or just the absence of work. For my generation, the idea of the absence of work sounds like the end we dread most: unemployment. We are the generation that has made work into a religion described eloquently by Derek Thompson as ‘workism.’ Unlike my grandparents’ generation, who survived the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, work is no longer just about providing sustenance for survival. In contrast, our generation of highly independent and globally mobile workers look to work to provide what family, religion and locality provided to our grandparents: our identity, our sense of purpose, and our place to find community.

This elevation of work as the sole source of flourishing would sound bizarre to our civilisational ancestors. Aristotle, a polymath known for his incredible diligence and intellectual productivity, writing at least eleven books on diverse subjects as physics, politics and poetry, said ‘we are un-leisurely in order to have leisure.’ Basically, work is for leisure. But what did he mean by the word leisure?

For Aristotle and for great thinkers before our current modern age, leisure was not just the absence of work. It definitely did not mean idleness or acedia, an ancient concept that meant the worst of all outcomes for humans: a despairing refusal to act and be oneself. Rather Aristotle and later philosophers like Joseph Pieper defined leisure as ‘an attitude of mind, a condition of the spirit, an inner calm, a receptive attitude that allows us to experience the whole of nature in a spirit of wonder.’ While we may not experience this attitude now, we may remember what it felt like from our earliest memories of childhood or in our interactions with children. Wonder is something we deeply long for, something that has been lost in our age of ‘attention’ grabbing technology, sleepless nights and ‘total work.’ If we open ourselves to the creative power of this word, we can explore a new maxim: ‘the purpose of work is leisure and the purpose of leisure is wonder.’ Wonder sparked the creation of the great cathedrals and their flying buttresses that in turn spurred the development of modern engineering. Wonder inspired Leonardo da Vinci to paint masterpieces, develop new scientific disciplines, and imagine a future of human flight, solar powered technology, and computational machines. With these examples, we begin to see that wonder is the source of all great art and science, the regenerative font of human civilization.

Returning to Einstein, we can see with new eyes the power of leisure and wonder to transform his work. From a young age to his final years as a famous scientist, Einstein developed his imagination using leisurely breaks in his analytical work to explore new possibilities through creative thought experiments and visual contemplation of the mysteries of the universe. According to Einstein’s biographer Walter Isaacson, he learned this approach to thinking during his formative years at a Swiss village school based on the educational philosophy of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who taught students to visualize concepts and connect an abstract idea to their own personal experiences of reality via their imaginations.

From his Autobiographical Notes, Einstein recounted how he built the foundation of the theory of special relativity when he was only 16 years old while visualizing himself pursuing a light beam traveling through space. From this imaginative exercise, he created novel ideas on the relationship between time, matter, and space that had no basis in experience or in contemporary mathematical knowledge, but it was “intuitively clear” to him. This clarity was enough to spark over 100 years of innovation in science and technology.

In reflection of his scientific achievements, Einstein stated, “When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of imagination has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge… knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution. It is, strictly speaking, a real factor in scientific research.”

If we want to thrive in the future of work, we need a suite of social innovations to fully develop our unique human capabilities of imagination to match the analytical powers of AI. We have to face reality: we cannot out-analyze AI and we cannot compete with the computational power of quantum computing. Our modern educational and training efforts to turn humans into memorizing and analyzing machines is outdated and not fit for purpose. Numerous ‘future of work studies’ have found that the in-demand skills of the future will be creativity, originality, and complex problem solving, all human capabilities originating in the human imagination. Given this change in the nature of work, we need a total paradigm shift that reimagines the ancient human practices of leisure, celebration, and philosophical contemplation that have been used for millennia to develop the receptive powers of our imagination. We need a return to wonder.