5 ms·

Hours of commuting and working per week: (2 + 8) * 5 = 50. Hours of living on weekdays per week, exclude sleep: 6 * 5 = 30. Hours of living on weekends per we

by meric 11y ago

Hours of commuting and working per week: (2 + 8) * 5 = 50. Hours of living on weekdays per week, exclude sleep: 6 * 5 = 30. Hours of living on weekends per week, exclude sleep: 32. Total hours living per week: 62 Total hours working per week: 50 You're right, it's not an even 50% split. There's 6 hours of free time a day, plus 32 hours on the weekend. Three nights a week I watch a movie or a couple of episodes on netflix (90 minutes), I play an hour or two of games (90 minutes), I write code for another hour or two (90 minutes), and the rest of the time is spent eating dinner. Two nights a week, I forgo gaming and netflix to hangout with family and friends. I still manage to code. It may be on the train, but I do it. And there's the weekend. You know what? I have a good life, and fucked or not, I am grateful for it. If a company is paying you for your time, what do you expect to be doing, if not to do what the company wants you to do? If you want to not do what others want you to do, and still receive a regular pay check, that's called taking on welfare.

bobwaycott 11y ago
Now you've moved the goalposts from your original 28% figure (2 days out of 7) to trying to defend a stupidly made point by drilling into a hourly breakdown. You can't have it both ways. An even 50/50 split would be working no more days than you live--taking the day itself as the unit of measure. By the week, that means recognizing there's something inherently off with the notion that it's at all balanced to exchange 5 days to an employer so you can get 2 days to yourself in return. If you want to make yourself feel better by counting how many hours you can squeeze out of a day for yourself, that's fine. I doubt I'm the only person who thinks that is no way to live. In contrast to your example that, to me, seems insanely driven by the tyranny of the clock, a different take: There are 365 days per year. When I decided years ago I wanted to achieve work-life balance, that left 182 days for working. By the typical American work week, if I was working a job, I'd be expected to surrender 251 days (for 2016). That's 70 days too many. So, there are 183 days of free time per year. Some of those days, I binge-watch Netflix. I don't even know how much time that totals. Some days, I play games all night until the sun comes up. Some days, I dabble with some code related to something I want to play around with, experiment, learn, rebuild, whatever. Some days, I see the computer and say, "Fuck you, computer. It's gorgeous outside." I wake up whenever by body wakes up. I shower. Grab some food or a meal shake. Head to the gym for a couple hours. Maybe take a nap, read, or just sit and breathe. Some days I'm just sick of being at home, so I leave. I'm not counting any hours here, so I call up some friends out of town and say I'm coming their way for a couple days. I head out of state. I leave the country. I think of who I haven't seen in a while and get together with them. > If a company is paying you for your time, what do you expect to be doing, if not to do what the company wants you to do? If you want to not do what others want you to do, and still receive a regular pay check, that's called taking on welfare. That's an oddly binary and ideologically ridiculous notion you have there. As if there are no other ways to exist and subsist besides welfare and doing what others want you to do to receive a paycheck. I mean, come on. This is HN. This place exists for people who don't want to do what others want them to do in exchange for a paycheck. P.S. I never said you shouldn't be grateful for having a good life. I think it's great when people recognize how good they have things, and are genuinely grateful for it. I was picking on a very subtle but important nuance in your original statement that I felt important to highlight. It's fine if you don't get the nuance, or don't care for it. For me, I like to remember where the agency and empowerment lies in my life. I'd never be able to stand a situation in which I actually had to think that an employer gave me a couple days of my life on the weekends before coming back to work.
- meric 11y ago
  I agree with you, 183 days definitely is a more relaxed way to live. My point was if people wanted to work on their company's stuff 4 days a week and improve their technical knowledge 1 day a week, they ought to negotiate a 4 day work week rather than demand they be paid for the time they're doing their own things. I understand you don't like the sound of 'employer gave you. But what I said was jobs give you two days off. If you can find one that gives you 183 days off then, great! Main point aside, I think it's important to realise our entire lives are given to us by the circumstances and fate of the universe itself. My job is one part of the universe.

by meric 11y ago

bobwaycott 11y ago

Now you've moved the goalposts from your original 28% figure (2 days out of 7) to trying to defend a stupidly made point by drilling into a hourly breakdown. You can't have it both ways. An even 50/50 split would be working no more days than you live--taking the day itself as the unit of measure. By the week, that means recognizing there's something inherently off with the notion that it's at all balanced to exchange 5 days to an employer so you can get 2 days to yourself in return. If you want to make yourself feel better by counting how many hours you can squeeze out of a day for yourself, that's fine. I doubt I'm the only person who thinks that is no way to live. In contrast to your example that, to me, seems insanely driven by the tyranny of the clock, a different take: There are 365 days per year. When I decided years ago I wanted to achieve work-life balance, that left 182 days for working. By the typical American work week, if I was working a job, I'd be expected to surrender 251 days (for 2016). That's 70 days too many. So, there are 183 days of free time per year. Some of those days, I binge-watch Netflix. I don't even know how much time that totals. Some days, I play games all night until the sun comes up. Some days, I dabble with some code related to something I want to play around with, experiment, learn, rebuild, whatever. Some days, I see the computer and say, "Fuck you, computer. It's gorgeous outside." I wake up whenever by body wakes up. I shower. Grab some food or a meal shake. Head to the gym for a couple hours. Maybe take a nap, read, or just sit and breathe. Some days I'm just sick of being at home, so I leave. I'm not counting any hours here, so I call up some friends out of town and say I'm coming their way for a couple days. I head out of state. I leave the country. I think of who I haven't seen in a while and get together with them. > If a company is paying you for your time, what do you expect to be doing, if not to do what the company wants you to do? If you want to not do what others want you to do, and still receive a regular pay check, that's called taking on welfare. That's an oddly binary and ideologically ridiculous notion you have there. As if there are no other ways to exist and subsist besides welfare and doing what others want you to do to receive a paycheck. I mean, come on. This is HN. This place exists for people who don't want to do what others want them to do in exchange for a paycheck. P.S. I never said you shouldn't be grateful for having a good life. I think it's great when people recognize how good they have things, and are genuinely grateful for it. I was picking on a very subtle but important nuance in your original statement that I felt important to highlight. It's fine if you don't get the nuance, or don't care for it. For me, I like to remember where the agency and empowerment lies in my life. I'd never be able to stand a situation in which I actually had to think that an employer gave me a couple days of my life on the weekends before coming back to work.

meric 11y ago
I agree with you, 183 days definitely is a more relaxed way to live. My point was if people wanted to work on their company's stuff 4 days a week and improve their technical knowledge 1 day a week, they ought to negotiate a 4 day work week rather than demand they be paid for the time they're doing their own things. I understand you don't like the sound of 'employer gave you. But what I said was jobs give you two days off. If you can find one that gives you 183 days off then, great! Main point aside, I think it's important to realise our entire lives are given to us by the circumstances and fate of the universe itself. My job is one part of the universe.