Amirah boards the bus with a sigh of relief. It is 9.30 at night and she has just left the office. In half an hour she will be home and can fall into bed. But then her phone alerts her to an email from her boss: there is a problem with the contract they are writing. She must sort it out before tomorrow morning, or else!

Amirah works incredibly hard for her law firm - but others work harder still. A recent survey¹ found that junior lawyers at the London office of a US company, Kirkland & Ellis, started work on average at 9.14am and finished at 11.28pm.

That adds up to over 70 hours a week, even though the legal limit in the UK is 48. And according to one lawyer interviewed for the survey: "When things are busy, or you're on a deal, you're effectively on call the whole time, including weekends."

Yet some people take pride in working insane hours. Professor Sally Maitlis of Oxford University argues² that this obsession stems from the "ProtestantA Christian religious movement that began in Europe in the early 16th Century. work ethic": the 16th Century idea that working hard showed that you were a good Christian. The Industrial RevolutionA period of sudden, rapid industrialisation that transforms a country from an agricultural to an industrial economy., with its emphasis on efficiency, took it further. 

The 1980s saw it boosted by the unbridled capitalismA form of economy characterised by private property and competition between companies. that Ronald ReaganThe 40th US President. and Margaret ThatcherBritain's first female prime minister and the longest-serving prime minister of the modern era. encouraged. "It's even worse now," says Professor Anat Lechner of New York University,³ "because we put tech entrepreneurs who barely sleep on a pedestal."

Work, writes Justine Toh in The Observer, is not a bad thing in itself: "It's a means of providing for ourselves and those we love... it's a route to dignity and skill, and a necessary contribution to the common good."

But, she says, "the good of work gets warped in a 24/7 global economy," where advanced communications mean that you need never stop. She quotes from a book called The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives. Its author, Jonathan Malesic, talks of the "ceaseless, obsessive American work ethic" as a kind of demon: "We are a society almost totally under its power."

Toh notes that, according to Judaism and Christianity, God created the world in six days and then rested on the seventh. Having a day off allows us to look at "the wonders of the world around us and, for some of us, up to God, and linger over the gratitude we feel".

It used to be illegal for most shops in Britain to open on Sunday. That was changed by a new law in 1994, though large shops still cannot open for more than six hours.

The law was opposed by churches, shop workers' unions and other people who believed that Sunday should be kept as a day of rest. HarrodsA large, expensive department store in London. declared that for the sake of its employees it would never open on a Sunday - but soon changed its mind.

Now it and other KnightsbridgeAn area of London known for its wealth. businesses are calling for restrictions on Sunday opening hours to be scrapped. They argue that it would bring in an extra £300m a year and create 2,000 jobs. "It doesn't cost the government anything to implement it," says the group's head, Steven Meday, "so we see it as a win-win."⁴

Yes: It blinds us to the things that really matter, like spending time with our family and appreciating the wonders of the natural world. Work should be a means to an end, not an end in itself.  

No: For many people, work is what makes their lives worthwhile. If you have been endowed with a particular skill, you have a moral obligation to exercise it as much as possible. Idleness is the real vice.

Or... We need to find time for rest, but not simply the kind that recharges us for work. The right kind, Justine Toh argues, helps us to remain human and recognise what we are working for.