Downshifting: Contending with Internalized Work Devotion in the Quest for Free Time

Abstract

How do individuals sustain a counternormative reduction in work hours in cultures that equate worth with work devotion? This dissertation investigated this question through a longitudinal qualitative study of 47 U.S. workers who voluntarily downshifted by significantly reducing their paid work hours to prioritize free time. Drawing on 125 interviews conducted over approximately one year per respondent, I developed a process model of downshifting as an underinstitutionalized identity transition. Downshifters initially experienced relief and strengthened self-direction after stepping away from time-intensive work. Over time, however, they encountered a persistent meaning deficit: although their days were more spacious and enjoyable, they struggled to evaluate their time as meaningful in the absence of work’s familiar structure, recognition, and markers of progress. As they attempted to rebuild meaning through leisure, community, and alternative pursuits, they gradually recognized what I term normative sediment—culturally valorized standards of meaning centered on productivity, achievement, and visible contribution embedded within the ideal self. This recognition revealed a tension between their aspirations for greater free time and the internalized standards by which they continued to judge themselves, generating ambivalence. For some respondents, this ambivalence prompted a recommitment to work-centered standards, leading them to return to more time-intensive work and restore coherence through closure of identity growth. For others, ambivalence became something to live with and learn from; they cultivated alternative standards of meaning while remaining in ongoing exploratory growth and extended liminality. This dissertation makes three primary contributions. First, it reconceptualizes work–life balance as a problem of meaning rather than role conflict, shifting attention from tactical boundary management to how individuals renegotiate the standards by which they evaluate and legitimize free time. Second, it extends identity transition theory by theorizing normative sediment, demonstrating how internalized cultural norms constrain counternormative change even when external demands are reduced. Third, it reframes ambivalence not merely as a transitional discomfort but as a potential resource that enables sustained identity exploration in underinstitutionalized transitions. Together, these findings illuminate why working less is difficult to sustain in work-centered societies: reducing work hours is not only a behavioral adjustment, but an ongoing effort to renegotiate deeply sedimented standards of meaning.