Head to head: All work and no play ...

Are we spending too much time at work and losing out on life? No, says self-made millionaire Firoz Kassan. Yes, argues IT consultant and downshifter Brian Dean

"I work from seven in the morning until nine in the evening every day and most weekends. Life is about working hard and playing hard. I enjoy work. I work for myself. As long as you're sincere in what you do, that's what matters. There's no point in sitting around: life's too short. The world is becoming increasingly competitive. With free movement of labour in Europe now it's going to get worse, with people coming in who are prepared to work harder. You have to stay one step ahead of the others.

It will be tougher for our children. They won't be able to get away with having a bad education. I come from Tanzania, my parents were Indians. I had seven O-levels, but if you didn't speak proper English you ended up working in a hotel or a take-away. My first job was as a cleaner in a B&B. A few months later, I rented a fish and chip shop in Brixton, and lived in a room above it. After a year or two I sold that and rented a B&B in Olympia at a very high rent. Then I bought the lease on the house next-door. Now I own three hotels in London with more than 1,000 rooms. I'm also in the middle of a deal to buy Oxford United Football Club. It's been an ambition of mine to run a football club. There's no money in it but I like football and it will be a challenge.

Being a hotelier is a 24-hour-a-day, seven-days-a-week job. A lot of the time I wish I could be like everybody else, but you've got 1,000 people staying in your property and you worry about them.

My wife and I finalised our divorce a few days ago; we've been going our separate ways for a while. We'd been married for 25 years. I've just come back from a cruise holiday in the Caribbean with my three daughters, which was not for long enough. They are the only reason I take a holiday."

Firoz Kassan owns two Holiday Inn hotels and the London Park Hotel

"Presenteeism is not natural. People should spend as little time as possible at work. We live by an idea that is out of date: the Protestant work ethic. The concept was created at the beginning of the industrial revolution in an attempt to get people to work in factories. People were accustomed to taking a day off every holy day, and the factory owners found it difficult to make them come in and work consistently. The idea that you had to suffer to be virtuous was translated into, `You have to work to be virtuous.'

Technology is a big part of the issue: we're constantly getting more from less, so why are we working more? Production output has trebled in the last decade, but no one's benefiting. The old ideas are carrying on and nobody's questioning them, the idea that to be virtuous you must work, work, work. In fact, productivity increases among people who work less hours. During the Edward Heath government we had a three-day week, but productivity was the same. A study by Proctor & Gamble showed that people working reduced hours are significantly more productive.

I work in IT as a systems analyst. About five years after joining the rat race I started feeling extremely frustrated. I had 20 days' paid leave a year but I needed more. I asked my boss for some unpaid leave and he looked at me as if I was mad. I left and took a year off. Now I work as a contractor, six months on and six off.

If you ask most people whether they enjoy their work they say yes. But if you ask them if they'd still do it if they didn't have to, they say no. By definition an enjoyable thing is something you'd do whether you were paid or not. If people started admitting they didn't enjoy their jobs we'd have a much healthier situation."

Brian Dean is a systems analyst and edits `Anxiety Culture' magazine

Interviews by Cathy Cooper