The work–leisure dichotomy is the conceptual separation of activities in a society. Some societies assume, for the large part of the population which is in a condition of employee, a separation between "work

Employment

Employment is a contract between two parties, one being the employer and the other being the employee. An employee may be defined as:- Employee :...

" and "leisure

Leisure

Leisure, or free time, is time spent away from business, work, and domestic chores. It is also the periods of time before or after necessary activities such as eating, sleeping and, where it is compulsory, education....

". This idea was invented with the industrial revolution

Industrial Revolution

The Industrial Revolution was a period from the 18th to the 19th century where major changes in agriculture, manufacturing, mining, transportation, and technology had a profound effect on the social, economic and cultural conditions of the times...

. From this perspective, work is considered as the main activity and "one's duty

Duty

Duty is a term that conveys a sense of moral commitment to someone or something. The moral commitment is the sort that results in action and it is not a matter of passive feeling or mere recognition...

", consisting of the labor given to an employer. "Leisure", a label with derogatory connotation attached to everything else outside work, is instead considered of marginal importance and frivolous.

A famous argument against this dichotomy

Dichotomy

A dichotomy is any splitting of a whole into exactly two non-overlapping parts, meaning it is a procedure in which a whole is divided into two parts...

, is that the separation between what you are ("leisure") and what you do ("work"), generates psychological disorders, alienation

Social alienation

The term social alienation has many discipline-specific uses; Roberts notes how even within the social sciences, it “is used to refer both to a personal psychological state and to a type of social relationship”...

and detachment to life.