Dan Pink says that's nonsense. We actually do live to work, he says.

Social trend analyst, bestselling author and former White House speech writer, Dan Pink turns on its head the traditional approach to life, leisure, pleasure and most of all, to work.

"Pleasure and work are linked. People who know that from the start, like Richard Branson, Michael O'Leary, are lucky. Some people working in so-called 'creative jobs' know it. Obviously a routine job, is not pleasure, but those jobs are rapidly heading East and those people's minds . . .

the employees and the employers, have to be set new tasks and better ways of joining up their whole mind."

Because most of us see work as drudgery, sometimes dressed-up and dazzling, but none the less a nuisance, we never look up, he claims. Our working life becomes what our 17-year-old selves believed it would be: a queue for the aimless idyll of retirement.

Challenging that view is an important first step on the path from labour economic theory to personal satisfaction. That's really where success hangs out, says Pink.

And real success straddles what we do at work and at home. "There should not be that Mason Dixon line, because even when at leisure human beings thrive on achievement and a feeling of having done something well.

That's why huge companies like 3M and Google, for instance, let people spend a day a week doing the things they enjoy . . . because they'll more often than not do productive, enjoyable things they're good at and increase profits for the company at the same time."

I wonder if, given every Friday to ourselves, we'd really engage our minds in pursuits to benefit our employers. Is there a cultural dimension to his philosophy and is the Irish labour market ready?

Speaking to the Sunday Tribune last week, the Washington-based author of Free Agent Nation and A Whole New Mind admits there are some jobs where, given space, everyone would be found in the nearest hostelries.

"You don't just announce a huge shift and lots of freedom. You prepare the way, you invite creative activity, you give it time and trust It's better to design the systems this way from start up, obviously, than introduce it later."

Giving a taster of his presentation to the 'Leaders in London' conference later this week, Pink's premise is that people love working and that work needs to change in order to "capture that love".

Pink underlines his theory with economics.

"Abundance, Asia, and automation mean that everything is going to change swiftly and forever and those who don't pay homage to new ways, will fail. In the future, artists, designers, creators and inventors will be the sought-after recruits."

And people who are willing to tap into these aspects of their personalities will be the ones who bring success to companies and be the soughtafter recruit, he believes.

At last, will the ubiquitous MBA get its comeuppance?

"Oh, that's already happened in the States. People with Masters in Fine Arts and other creative areas are rapidly taking graduate places from MBAs. We already know the business planning. We're a wrung up now, looking to differentiate and use design and empathy to sell stuff, not just endsmeans oriented skills."

Abundance, according to Pink, has resulted in us having all the things we need and now we want them with bows on. "People spend 50 on a toilet brush, because it looks nice. They could get one for 6. Abundance of cheap functional goods means high end design-led products are in demand. For that, you need a design-aptitude.

"Asia has billions of people. They're ready, willing, educated and cheaper. Work that can be done elsewhere will be done in Asia, not Ireland, not Britain, or the US."

Finally, he cites automation. "We humans have much to recommend us but when it comes to rule-based logic, calculation and sequential thinking . . . the mainstay of many jobs . . . computers are better, faster, stronger."

They don't take dodgy days off or moan about the air conditioning, either.

"My point is that these economic factors will influence how things are done, and that the way to meet these challenges is not to keep trying to win the race against time by doing out dated things, but to adopt new ways of thinking;

mainly about work itself."

Jobs will go to India, where there will be the largest English speaking community in the world by 2010, and computers will take over. We all like fancier design, but won't new products and services come our way, just as they have previously done, and only the more routine jobs get lost?

"No. In the longer term, not just routine tasks but knowledge tasks will go too.

What lawyers and accountants do can be done both by contract work to Asia and by computers. What we need to do and business leaders need to face up to is to mark out our point of differentiation. If it's the aesthetic, then we need to up our design IQ.

"We need to bring qualities other than the 'right brain' logic, rational ones into the fray." Those are the qualities expounded in A Whole New Mind . . . and outlined in his Leaders in London lecture.

Play, design, story, symphony, empathy and meaning are the senses Pink insists should be searched for when next recruiting as well as the human qualities which are desperately seeking expression in all of us, and it's their very repression which makes us ill and causes social unrest.

"They're perfectly normal human capabilities, but due to being undervalued in our overtly rationalist and logicdriven world, the muscle just needs to flex a little to get back in working order.

"So, what I am saying is that there is an opportunity here to re configure work and our understanding of work, so that people engage with it more productively and businesses align personal satisfaction with business success.

"There's drudgery in the land of milk and honey too, there's no state without an element of it, but more people get more satisfaction by achieving things than they do by idleness. There's a huge gap in the market here for work . . . it just has to be approached differently."

Speaking this week at the Leaders in London summit alongside such leading figures as Colin Powell, Richard Branson, INSEAD's Renee Maubaurgne and Bob Geldoff, Pink is one of the key notes speaking in a very impressive line up.

The two he most wants to hook up with are Bob Geldoff and Richard Branson.

"They both display play in everything they do, they are having fun, they seek meaning in what they do. They never thought work would be dead time, and Richard Branson . . . being left handed and, crucially important, dyslexic . . . is the embodiment of my theory. He has a hyper muscle in the right side of the brain, where innovation and big picture thinking freefloats, which allows him bypass some of the 'must do it this way' thinking."

And our Bob? "He's having serious fun, doing seriously meaningful, innovative, empathic pleasurable work."

It's no longer work when you do it the right way, maybe that's the way to sell this . . .

erase the word 'work' and see what we can do?

Patricia Murray is a work and organisation psychologist.

Daniel Pink will be speaking at the Leaders in London International Leadership Summit 2006 from 29th . . . 30th November. For more information please visit www. leadersinlondon. com