Is the purpose of life work or recreation?

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If I spend all my time having fun and building my career, is that wasting of life?

Or if I spend all my time at work and not having fun, is that wasting my life?

If recreation is the purpose of life than work is just a means to fund recreation.

If career is the purpose of life than recreation is just a means to rest so I can work more effectively.

Which of those is true?

As I see it, none when taken as a literal absolute.
But then my view is affected by that I see neither work nor recreation as The Purpose of life.
And while we're talking words, the meaning of life and purpose of life can be seen as the same or different things, true.
There are some who have said the purpose of life is to find meaning in life.
Which raises the question of what counts as meaning in life.
And then the answer to what counts as meaning and purpose is intimately entangled with which spiritual beliefs a person may have if any.
But I figure it safe to say that a meaning of, purpose of, life when looked at as a moral thing is to contribute, to assist, to uplift, to improve: what can you do to grow yourself and to help others have better lives?
So, the thing to do is see how your choices of work and recreation further that purpose.

I believe altruism offers everyone a common purpose in life...

But then each of us gets to choose between altruism and egoism while looking for a sense or feeling of happiness, contentment, fulfillment, validation and so on...and thus are our choices related to work, recreation and all else perceived and made.

@OP Neither.
The purpose of life is to grind you down, it doesn't matter one whit which of those (or any other approach) you take to try to avoid being ground down, life will continue and fulfill its purpose.

Who and/or what do you allege ever established that?

maybe life just doesn't have a purpose and we work and have fun just to fill our time and get the illusion of purpose which will lead to think that the purpose of life is actually just to fill your time

Find something you like to do and do it, then the border between work and recreation disappears.

That's not quite how I think of it. I don't fill my time with purposes, my time just gets filled automatically.

It doesn't matter what I do, my time is filled with something. Even if that something is a waste of time. The awful thing is not trying to fill time but trying to prioritise what I should do first.

I'm terrible with time management. I waste a lot of time that should be spent on practical tasks, both at home and at work.

Of course I have recreational time but I even fail at time management during recreational time. I end up choosing the easiest form of recreation instead of the most rewarding recreation. E.g. Facebook or novel? I usually go for Facebook. Socialising or websites? I usually go for websites.

If I could be less lazy during recreational time I could engage in more rewarding forms of recreation. The trouble is that puts a lot of pressure on me, even during my free time.

In a sense it means my free time is not really free if I pressure myself to fill it with only the most rewarding (not easiest) forms on recreation.

In answer to your question:

Both.

One needs money to have fun, though, unfortunately.

Sometimes, work IS fun. Sometimes, fun is work.

You will get different answers depending on whom you ask or which source it originates.
According to research into the deepest possible levels of para-normal phenomenon, the two reasons I find to be the most-consistent are to (1) Learn as MUCH as you can and (2) to be able to learn to love everyone and everything no matter what for whom and what they are. Also (3) another frequent reason given for the purpose of the existence of this particular material-realm is in order to give the inhabitants of this dimension the opportunity to learn about what is often called Karma and that all of our actions have a consequence... that basically, what we or our servants output to others comes back to us at some point in the future, and thus the primary important lesson seems to be to learn to stop doing harm and to stop being complicit to doing any kind of harm upon others lest we suffer the «karmic» consequences.

This. Find your passion, your "calling" and do it, whatever it may be.

I don't have a passion. I thought I could make my passion practical asceticism but that didn't work out.

I don't even have a recreational passion anymore, let alone a work passion.

I keep feeling like I'm just on the edge of finding the solution to my problem, like it's just on the tip of a my mind. A tantalising thought just out of reach.

A: "Life."
Delusional other persons trying to convince me otherwise are additional evidence.

The purpose to life is to work hard 24x7x365 until you drop dead. You are not to take pleasure of any kind, nor any kind of remuneration. Once you drop dead you are expected to get back up, and start working hard again. Lather, rinse, repeat, for eternity.

You might have misunderstood my question. I was not asking how you became convinced, I am asking who or what do you allege had established life as something to "grind you down" in the first place.

It's a false dilemma. You need a little bit of both.

When working, ask yourself "who am I doing this for?"

There is a fault in the Protestant work ethic, it can really get people to act irrationally. Something similar appears in some Asian cultures.

You need to find out what works for you, not for everyone else. There is no general answer. Ask a tribesman in the Amazon jungle this question, and he'll probably look at you like you have two heads.