Frederick W. Taylor and the congruence of active leisure & work

ABSTRACT This article, through the use of a case study focused on Frederick W. Taylor, shows how the issue of mastery with people engaged in their work can be a significant factor connecting a person’s work and leisure worlds. As a labourer, then gang boss in a steel mill, Taylor “developed” stratagems piecemeal to solve the problems that he faced in working in industrial factories. The issue of time became fundamental in his thinking and led to his becoming a manager and “The father of Scientific Work Management”. Concurrently his leisure pursuits grew from nightly runs to becoming a champion tennis player, to becoming an Olympic golfer, to fashioning his own tennis racket and golf clubs while experimenting over years with many varieties of seeds in an attempt to create “the one best” type of grass for putting greens. His work life never stopped. There is not time and then spare time, J. B. Priestley wrote and Taylor became adept at “Managing all his Time”. His life experience may be seen as an illustrative case of how work (of an engaged nature) and what mindset one comes to embrace at work can be replicated in one’s leisure time physical activities.