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Ask HN: Alternatives to work/life balance?
I think work/life balance is a faulty concept and doesn't characterize what many of us, especially in tech and startups want or need. We love our work and aren't trying to balance our work again our lives and don't buy into that dichotomy anyway.
Has anyone come up with or found any really effective alternative mental models?
EDIT: an indicative quote from The Fifth Discipline:
"There is also another, in some ways deeper, movement toward learning organizations, part of the evolution of industrial society. Material affluence for the majority has gradually shifted people’s orientation toward work— from what Daniel Yankelovich called an “instrumental” view of work, where work was a means to an end, to a more “sacred” view, where people seek the “intrinsic” benefits of work. “Our grandfathers worked six days a week to earn what most of us now earn by Tuesday afternoon,” says Bill O’Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance. “The ferment in management will continue until we build organizations that are more consistent with man’s higher aspirations beyond food, shelter and belonging. Moreover, many who share these values are now in leadership positions. I find a growing number of organizational leaders who, while still a minority, feel they are part of a profound evolution in the nature of work as a social institution. “Why can’t we do good works at work?”"
- creepydata 9y agoSo you're saying you want to make your work your life? How about "my work is my life," or "I'm married to my job?"
- Kinnard 9y agoI don't buy the dichotomy between work and life, and maybe those ideas should be thrown out altogether. The whole notion of 'work' is flawed.
- creepydata 9y agoNo it isn't, "work" is what I do because I have to and "life" is everything else. I have no idea what sort of response you're looking for.
- Kinnard 9y agoThat's how you feel. Not everyone else does. There's a pretty compelling quote from the first chapter of The Fifth Discipline: "There is also another, in some ways deeper, movement toward learning organizations, part of the evolution of industrial society. Material affluence for the majority has gradually shifted people’s orientation toward work— from what Daniel Yankelovich called an “instrumental” view of work, where work was a means to an end, to a more “sacred” view, where people seek the “intrinsic” benefits of work. “Our grandfathers worked six days a week to earn what most of us now earn by Tuesday afternoon,” says Bill O’Brien, former CEO of Hanover Insurance. “The ferment in management will continue until we build organizations that are more consistent with man’s higher aspirations beyond food, shelter and belonging. Moreover, many who share these values are now in leadership positions. I find a growing number of organizational leaders who, while still a minority, feel they are part of a profound evolution in the nature of work as a social institution. “Why can’t we do good works at work?”" Senge, Peter M. (2010-03-25). The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization (pp. 4-5). The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. Kindle Edition.
- jlangemeier 9y agoThis doesn't really answer the main question that is being asked of you by a variety of people: What, in general terms, are you looking to define or accomplish when you're talking about an "Alternative to work/life balance?" Are you talking about altruism through the office, or is it more about time-spent between the work and the rest of life? What goal, are you looking to accomplish with this, or any, alternative? The general premise of work-life balance is finding a level of deference between the thing that makes you money and the things you get to do with that money when not attempting the goal of making the money. This interest in a different motivating factor, "good works at work," while noble is NOT an alternative to work-life balance, but a supplement. Investment in your "higher calling" may be with your church group, volunteering, donations, etc; and some offices do community outreach as parts of their team processes, but I'm not seeing it as a direct alternative to work-life balance. If YOU are wanting to motivate YOUR work through a higher purpose or need, then by all means go ahead. You're given the station to do so through the income that you are afforded through your work. But I'm very much NOT motivated to donate my time to some corporate goal of altruism, because a corporation doesn't do anything for free.
- HelloNurse 9y agoWork/death balance. How much and in which ways do you want to die of overwork and burn yourself out?
- itamarst 9y agoOf course management will try to sell you your job as "higher aspiration" or a "sacred" goal (drink the startup kool-aid!). Means you'll work harder and longer and bargain less. They will also happily fire you, lay you off or cut your wages when times are bad. And then your lower aspirations (food, shelter) will suffer too. Which is not to say you shouldn't enjoy your job, or aim to do fulfilling meaningful work. But doing one thing to exclusion of all others is not healthy. It's not productive, either - work/life balance will make you more productive: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/10/work-life-balance-software-engineer/ https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/11/10/work-life-balance-so...
- Kinnard 9y agoI think you're thinking with the framework of contemporary corporations and 'employment' structures. I think many of us need to look outside of that box. I've found there are organizations that are actually working toward higher aspirations, I don't think this is always or even often a bait-and-switch tactic which is what your 'kool-aid' comment implies. Where's the implication that 'work' is only one thing? My work is almost certainly TOO varied.
- creepydata 9y agoIn other words, you have hobbies.
- itamarst 9y agoIf you can start an organization with a fundamentally different power structure (and maybe cooperatives could fit the bill) that seems maybe possible. If you're working for a normal company, you're just deluding yourself. I quite like the people I work for... but it's still in part an economic relationship, they have investors, and we might run out of money. So there are circumstances where I will need to find a new job. So my current job better not be my religion however much I like its goals or my coworkers. Just because the organization works towards something meaningful doesn't mean it should consume your life. You still become distorted as a human if you don't have time just for playing, and friends, and family. It's called workaholism, and it's not a good thing.
- gls2ro 9y agoI don't know how to actually answer your question. First I can recommend an essay of _Bertrand Russell: In Praise of Idleness_. Not because what he says is true because it is more a reflection or a philosophical enquiry than a demonstration of something so it cannot be true of false in itself. But because it might provide some questions to ask about the source of ideas behind the concept of how we do work. Second: related to a new mental model. I think in order to have a new mental model there should be a problem (a crisis) with the existing one. What is the existing model? A possible speculation (in IT) based on common mainstream ideas: - There is/was a general move from seeing jobs/work as means to live to "making a dent in the universe" or "changing the world" - There is/was a supporting atmosphere of believing that work can happen anytime and anyplace - we have access to what we need to work from everywhere and every time we want to - There is/was a general idea that everybody should love what they are doing and should want to do that all the time - There is/was a large support for work from home, which (at least symbolistically) means that work and home are not antagonistic concepts - There is/was (maybe not majority) support and focus on spreading concepts of: one should hang together with one's peers afterwork, one should go to hackathons in weekends, one should read more about technology during personal time, one should come early to the office or one should leave late ... - Now the outsiders are seen as being the ones who are saying that after work they are not doing programming but something unrelated to IT Based on the mainstream ideas above then one possible logical conclusion could be that: (in general) we are not moving toward a work/life balance but to work being the main activity of the day and life being a complement. What I agree with is that we don't yet have a name or a good understanding of the current model works - what what it is (which is not work/life balance). And it might be that we don't have such understanding because we are in a transition period. Historically I think we passed through multiple periods for the vast majority of people: 1. When there is not life after work (and no concept of happiness, well-being ...) - from the dawn of humankind until manufacturing era 2. A period when the focus was on the life after work. When people were working to have money to spend after work. In this case it did not matter what kind of work was. It matter how much time one spent there and how much money could bring it. I think it lasted up until 70s - 80s. 3. A period of high purpose - let's called it "enlightenment" - when people wanted to "make a dent in the universe", "want to change the world" and basically everybody was talking about passion, ideas, .... 4. Now - a period of unrest or anxiety about the future In the end I think there is one subject we are not talking about and I think it might define how we explore the topic you are providing and that subject is a question to ask ourselves: What is a GOOD life? Where GOOD is a personal concept including morals/ethics, happiness/well-being, tranquility, being content with life, but in the same time a concept defined or imposed by society. edit: formatting
- alltakendamned 9y agoHere's a relevant article that might be a good read for you: https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/09/11/theodor-adorno-work-pleasure-gadgeteering/ https://www.brainpickings.org/2015/09/11/theodor-adorno-work...
- Kinnard 9y agoThanks for sharing! Beautiful paragraph: "In a magnificent essay titled “Work and Pleasure,” Adorno dissects one of the most perilous such modern myths — the tyranny of work/life balance. Just a few years after his compatriot Josef Pieper — an obscure German philosopher of extraordinary prescience — argued for reclaiming the dignity of leisure amid a culture of workaholism, Adorno examines the psychosocial origin of the toxic work/life divide that fractures our inner wholeness."
- Kinnard 9y agoReally, thank you. The language here is pretty spot on, I've been looking for this for a long time. "But the notion that the two spheres must be kept apart in order not to contaminate each other with their separate priorities and aspirations — something Adorno terms a “bi-phasic pattern of life” — is one immensely limiting of our humanity: While the advice may offer advantages in terms of economic rationalization, its intrinsic merits are of a dubious nature. Work completely severed from the element of playfulness becomes drab and monotonous, a tendency which is consummated by the complete quantification of industrial work. Pleasure when equally isolated from the “serious” content of life, becomes silly, meaningless and sheer “entertainment” and ultimately it is a mere means of reproducing one’s working capacity, whereas the real substance of any non-utilitarian activity lies in the way it faces and sublimates reality problems: res severa verum gaudium [true joy is a serious thing]. This, Adorno argues, is one of many maxims inherited from the earlier development of middle-class society, which no longer serve us or apply to the technological and sociological realities of our daily lives, yet ones to which we continue subscribing." "I have always found the notion of compromising — particularly when it comes to this unfair tradeoff of work and life — to be a double-edged sword of meaning: on the one hand, a compromise implies reaching a happy medium between two conflicting needs; on the other, to compromise requires the trimming off of excess in one area in order to alleviate a deficit in the other, which invariably means compromising — in the sense of undermining — the area deemed excessive. And yet, as Anaïs Nin memorably remarked her passionate case for the importance of excess in creative work, such compromising hardly benefits us in the end." "Good work like a good marriage needs a dedication to something larger than our own detailed, everyday needs; good work asks for promises to something intuited or imagined that is larger than our present understanding of it. We may not have an arranged ceremony at the altar to ritualize our dedication to work, but many of us can remember a specific moment when we realized we were made for a certain work, a certain career or a certain future: a moment when we held our hand in a fist and made unspoken vows to what we had just glimpsed."
- shoo 9y agoThis book may be a relevant read: "Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work"
- thatwebdude 9y agoThat's the second time this has come up in the last few days on HN. That must mean something.
- mbrock 9y agoIndoors vs outdoors; focusing vs relaxing; earning vs spending; customers vs family; profit vs nonprofit; etc.
- RUG3Y 9y agoIt sounds like you're young and you know everything. The geezers harping on about "work-life-balance" and protesting all-nighters and weekend sessions don't have a clue. Just because you're fresh and excited right now doesn't mean that you're not susceptible to burnout. It can and will creep up on you much faster than you think. If you don't believe me, you can try it! I realize this sounds a little mean. It's my opinion, and I sincerely hope it's wrong and I wish you the best.
- Kinnard 9y agoI feel like you're referencing a work/rest balance, I'm not opposed to that. I'm religious about taking one day off a week. But work/rest alternation seems very different from work/life balance to me.