13 ms·

Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

198 points by asoli 9y ago

hellofunk 9y ago
I'm always amazed how I end up seeing long threads from HN users who read an article, but when I click on it, there is a pay wall. Are all those readers subscribers to these news sites?
- inteleng 9y ago
  If you hit the "web" button, you can usually bypass the wall. I was able to read the article just fine, even though I don't have a subscription. "Simultaneous consumption" is one of my new favourite phrases, actually.
- wyattpeak 9y ago
  Most of the sites show their content to archiving services. If you go to archive.is and enter the URL, you'll see the content.
  - pcf 9y ago
    Thanks, I wasn't aware of this.
- tlarkworthy 9y ago
  Economist works with JS disabled
- byte1918 9y ago
  On Firefox with uBlock Origin and I could read the whole article without any extra steps. And also yes, I agree, this post only has a few comments but others that have more and require a form of subscription to continue reading make me feel the same way.
- Markoff 9y ago
  I use Brave browser on Android and can see whole article.
- geff82 9y ago
  I use the private mode of a browser to get around article limits.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- sdenton4 9y ago
  Incognito mode is also a good bypass for N articles per month type paywalls.
  - hellofunk 9y ago
    Very good to know, thanks. I tried it and indeed you are correct.
- feelin_googley 9y ago
  https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-t... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why&num=1&prmd=ivns&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
- tomhoward 9y ago
  http://archive.is/AfhEN http://archive.is/AfhEN
- rufius 9y ago
  While there are ways to get around the paywall, the Economist is probably one of the few publications I’d say is absolutely worth paying for. That said - a lot of folks have access to sites like NYT and WSJ through work.
IThoughtYouGNU 9y ago
http://archive.is/AfhEN http://archive.is/AfhEN
- el_cid 9y ago
  creepy
sixhobbits 9y ago
I found this article really interesting and extremely well written. The excerpt below is a literary masterpiece.(other comments complain about paywall but on mobile I got "3 articles free" message. Not sure if they're A/B testing or if they're giving me free stuff because I'm in South Africa and they assume that online payments are hard here) "Leisure time is now the stuff of myth. Some are cursed with too much. Others find it too costly to enjoy. Many spend their spare moments staring at a screen of some kind, even though doing other things (visiting friends, volunteering at a church) tends to make people happier. Not a few presume they will cash in on all their stored leisure time when they finally retire, whenever that may be. In the meantime, being busy has its rewards. Otherwise why would people go to such trouble? Alas time, ultimately, is a strange and slippery resource, easily traded, visible only when it passes and often most highly valued when it is gone. No one has ever complained of having too much of it. Instead, most people worry over how it flies, and wonder where it goes. Cruelly, it runs away faster as people get older, as each accumulating year grows less significant, proportionally, but also less vivid. Experiences become less novel and more habitual. The years soon bleed together and end up rushing past, with the most vibrant memories tucked somewhere near the beginning. And of course the more one tries to hold on to something, the swifter it seems to go"
- sp527 9y ago
  Novel experiences slow down time while habitual behaviors speed it up. However, we are almost by definition creatures of habit. They're necessary in order to function efficiently. So you could argue there's a tension between living efficiently and living well. But most people never get far enough to worry about. Our world has been designed to lure people into poor behavioral loops like watching TV, browsing social media, and otherwise consuming aimlessly and mindlessly. Sadly, there appears to be a strong incentive to induce that kind of adverse behavior in users/customers.
  - hyperdimension 9y ago
    Well said. Reminds me of something I read, about memory tends to remember novel and interesting things. It went on to mention how seniors like to point out how quickly life goes by, but that that's just because they (generally) live such regimented and static lives, that there's nothing particular to remember or take note of, so the time just passes by them.
blowski 9y ago
Listen also http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb
taneq 9y ago
Because we've been sold the idea that there is someplace else to be, and that we should work as hard as we can to get there.
- davidjnelson 9y ago
  > we’ve been sold And believed the sales pitch, which was never true.
factsaresacred 9y ago
I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc) which, aside from being a great look at Japan, epitomizes the absurdity of exchanging our time for a salary that increasingly fails to cover the cost to live and leaves us without free time. 30,000 Japanese kill themselves each year due to work related stress. Great quote from the doc: Naoki:"You (the West) game me this f*cking Capitalist system 100 years ago..." Cameramen: "And now you're rich" Naoki: "Is this rich...is this a good system?" I hope - and expect - that one day offices are viewed in the same way we view the factories of the early industrial age: prisons of drudgery and misery. I'm not naive, civilization and its innumerable benefits (like actually being able to live past 65) has a cost. But the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled.
- bshepard 9y ago
  I agree with the sentiment, but respectfully propose that the office con is part of a larger and even more brazen : commodifying all of reality. Besides all of the relatively well-known ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land, commodification also greatly diminishes the development of what Marxists like to call "the productive forces" -- if not for this artificial system of value created to mask European conquest, we could easily be in some an unimaginably technologically advanced post-scarcity heterotopia right now.
  - jxub 9y ago
    I don't see how the capitalism was created to mask the European domination. I think it's just the result of going through the path of least resistance as the concepts of trade, money and globalization are all at play, and not of some intentional/evil cooperation. However, I imagine your point might be explained by some actions of East India Company or such, and I'm not well enough versed on that. Moreover, could you expand a bit on "ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land"? This sounds like a novel idea to me.
- 9y ago
fwn 9y ago
I'm not sure their psychological/cultural reasons translate very well to continental europe. The people that surround me in Germany have all the time they want. Besides that: > No one has ever complained of having too much of it. Isn't that just being bored? I'm sure I've heard people complaining about that.
- KozmoNau7 9y ago
  I think people who complain about being bored are simply scared of being alone with their thoughts. I don't mind doing "nothing" on a train or bus ride, it gives me time to slow down a little and just think to myself. I think this "gotta be busybusybusy" thing originated in the US, but it is definitely spreading. I see way too many people who are way too wrapped up in their careers or are constantly stressing about all the things they "have to do", and they forget to actually enjoy anything, because they're already mentally at the next thing. I love lazy Saturdays on the couch, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.
  - musage 9y ago
    > Well, apart from bureaucracy being anonymous in essence, every restless activity makes responsibility evaporate. There is an idiomatic expression in English: "stop and think". No person can think without stopping [first]. When you force someone into a restless activity, or they let themselves be forced into it, you will always have the same result. You will always have the problem that a sense of responsibility cannot form. It can only form in the moment in which one reflects -- not about oneself, but about what one is doing. -- Hannah Arendt (translation me, original here http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/114/194 http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/114/1... , audio here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_UvHhbZIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_UvHhbZIA ) And now for something completely different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjo2ggPRKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjo2ggPRKE Less isn't just sometimes more, and more isn't just sometimes less. Sometimes it's something else entirely: sometimes a little less is everything, and a little more is nothing.
- asoli 9y ago
  That's why the writer said that the scarcity of time is a problem partly of perception and partly of distribution.
Sylos 9y ago
> And lunches now tend to be efficient affairs, devoured at one’s desk, with an eye on the e-mail inbox. Alternatively, you do go into lunch break, because you have to network with colleagues or business partners.
KozmoNau7 9y ago
This "must be busy" mindset and 50+ hour work weeks is so utterly alien and wrong to me, and I'm glad I feel this way. I would never let a job get in the way of family and social experiences, in the way of my life. Relaxation and leisure time is absolutely non-negotiable for me, I would never give up on a concert or culinary experience or anything else for something as mundane as work. I think this mindset has also gifted me with more patience and more ability to not be bored, compared to most of my peers. Luckily, all of my friends share my mindset, anyone too work-obsessed simply doesn't fit in for long. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it very much.
- roma1n 9y ago
  Thanks so much for that :) I needed to hear that I'm not alone in this.
- mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
  Privelaged white older male identified. Not all of us find work mundane and not all of us can afford the luxury of leisure yet alone choice in friends. Congratulations and enjoying your laid back life!
  - dang 9y ago
    Personal attacks aren't ok here. Whatever substantive point you want to make, I'm sure you can make it thoughtfully and without stooping to this if you want to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- marak830 9y ago
  I am the same as you, alas I cannot afford not to work the hours I do (for which I have copped quite a bit of flack on HN about). I do wonder why people who can afford to spend time with their family and not work 60-70 hours per week, actually do. I can only imagine it would be that they really enjoy their work that much, or their in a culture such as here in Japan where you stay until the boss leaves - or else. (Not my situation, I'm a chef, stupid hours in my industry).
LandR 9y ago
My last job, I had so much more free time. I finished at 4 each day and sometimes took 3 hour lunches. Someone would text me in another city and ask if I could come through and meet them. I would often just walk out of work (it wasn't a problem) and go meet them. If it meant that I didn't get back to the office that day, so be it. There was lots of time spent with friends and family, it was great. My current job, I eat lunch at my desk and spend so much less time with friends and family. A couple of months ago I was working from 8AM to 3:30AM, then was back to the office for 8AM the following day. I make more money now, but I was so much happier before. I often think about just quitting work and taking a year or two off, just do me things and figure stuff out. What I want from life, what my prioritie are etc. But then I worry if you take that long off, how hard would it be to get back to work afterwards? Are employers even going to entertain my CV
- justaguyhere 9y ago
  I would often just walk out of work In one of my previous jobs, while leaving at 5:30 pm (started at 9 am), the CTO asks "half day today?", only half jokingly :(
  - jfoutz 9y ago
    I got in late, so i'm leaving early to make up for it.
- walkingolof 9y ago
  >But then I worry if you take that long off, how hard would it be to get back to work afterwards? Dont worry, its pointless, you must do what makes you happy, everything else will follow. 2 years is nothing, if the time is used to learn more about yourself or helping others, its a huge plus in a CV.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
- kace91 9y ago
  Been there, done that. I'm currently starting to work again. Honestly, the time off has been amazing (more than I expected), but it's hard to overstate how hard it is to readjust now. Employers haven't been a problem, it's about myself: I'm experiencing anxiety attacks for the first time in my life and I'm worried I'm going to slip into depression - something I've never gone through before. If you want my advice: If you've got some savings you can afford to spend, try to actively search for a job that is more bearable, and yet sustainable long term. It shouldn't require you leaving your current job until you find a new one, but rather you want your money to act as a mattress to fall back on if things go south so you can try new things. NEVER let your savings drop below a certain threshold, because going to work is way more manageable if you can tell yourself that you can walk away if you really need it. Once that possibility is gone you feel like a slave.
SomewhatLikely 9y ago
As long as there are marginal gains to be made from working an extra hour I don't see this changing. Imagine if one country decided to change from a 40 hour work week to a 20 hour work week. If this decreases their GDP from producing less output, then they become economically weaker, their standard of living in terms of purchasing power is diminished, and the tax base is decreased. I think the biggest reason we don't see more leisure time is the same reason wild animals don't see much leisure time: competition. At the international level, countries which produce more are more powerful, and at the domestic level other things being equal an individual who produces more will command a higher income, which translates to gaining a bigger slice of the economic pie and the additional power that confers. I suspect many of the people on hacker news could easily live on half the income they make, but we choose not to, because we prefer the extra affordances of working full time or more.
- tonyedgecombe 9y ago
  Interestingly, for the workers mentioned in the article there are no marginal gains because they are salaried. I suspect it has more to do with our inability to measure modern work, instead we use a poor proxy for productivity, keeping your seat warm.
- guntars 9y ago
  It's just people being wired to compare their lives with other's. Humans evolved in small groups with hierarchies where your "rank" compared to others could mean the difference between life and death. Not so much these days, but the habit is still there. Luckily, we also evolved big brains that let us override almost any instinct and with a bit of effort we can be perfectly happy with any slice of the pie. P.S. I'm somebody that gave up a large fraction of my salary to be able to work part time and travel the country. It's been worth it so far.
- Karrot_Kream 9y ago
  This is fairly inconsistent with countries with riding inequality, such as the US. If anything, rising inequality shows that rather than there being a gradual curve of salary proportional to hours worked, there are tiers of salary and not much in the middle.
hliyan 9y ago
I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to correction). My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing. The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more wealth is a waste. Inflation, I believe, is a big component of this view. What would happen if we keep inflation near-zero? Is slow growth really a bad thing?
- noelsusman 9y ago
  The overwhelming majority of businesses don't have investors to care about. Ignoring that, investors demand growth because that's basically the definition of investing. If businesses don't want to be pressured to grow then they don't have to take money from people who want growth. Removing inflation wouldn't stop people from chasing growth. People want to make more money. 2% annual inflation changes the calculations a bit (towards more proactive investing), but in a world of 0% inflation people would still want to make money. They would just be a bit more conservative since there's no penalty for holding. And yes, slow growth is a bad thing. Our population is growing. The pie has to be grown if we don't want living standards to nosedive.
- XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
  I agree that there are likely negative social consequences from inflation, but the idea that inflation is the reason a business can't reach a steady-state because of inflation seems to ignore Red Queen[1] like affects. Something I've noticed a lot in tech is that companies will spend a huge amount of money to push new features that aren't core to the business and to launch new products that frequently fail. I've always viewed these as attempting to prevent competition from emerging rather than trying to compensate for inflation.
  - api 9y ago
    No idea why you are being downvoted. A Red Queen's Race is exactly what's going on. Even without much currency inflation there is constant pressure for businesses to outgrow each other because... well... everyone else is doing it! It's exactly like the constant arms race that occurs between nations and forces them to constantly spend trillions of dollars on weapons that will mostly never be used.
collyw 9y ago
There is a lot more bureaucracy built into the systems we have to deal with these days as well (David Gaerber's "Utopia of Rules" is a good read on this). I have a lot of stuff to do, and was kind of getting on top of it recently. I needed to renew my driving license here in Spain. I needed two appointments (trying to fit them around work). I have been given a temporary license for the time being and am waiting on the new one to be posted. I noticed that the temporary paper has my name spelled wrong, so there is a good chance I will need at least one more appointment just to get that typo fixed when the plastic version comes through. I guess another factor is the changing nature of jobs. Certainly in IT you need to devote at least some time to keeping up with new tech or you will become obsolete. I find this especially frustrating when a lot of the "new" is just a rehash of stuff from 30 years ago. Its also why I hate fronted work, as the ecosystem is a constantly changing mess.
omalleyt 9y ago
Societies compete with each other like organisms. Successful societies propagate. Primary dimensions of competition are demographics, economics, and military. Thus the history of social organization is necessarily a history of extracting ever-more value from the labor of society's members. Keynes and others seem to have labored under the delusion that the history of social organization is a history of ever-increasing happiness for society's members.
ekr 9y ago
(this is only a very quick and dirty exposition.) Humans, like every other organism on this Earth, have been shaped by evolution, which has instilled a set of adaptations into them. Like most other species, there is a competition for mates, reproduction opportunities and resources within the sexes. So, along the ages, humans have acquired a set of adaptations that "maximize" wealth, status, (whether they still work in the current environment as opposed to the ones in which these adaptations evolved is another question). So, in essence, humans who tended to work more, tended to obtain more resources/wealth thereby becoming more attractive reproductive prospects. You also get more opportunities to help fellow tribe members, improving your status within your community etc. In other words, a highly competitive arms race has emerged. However, only in recent times, intellectual work has become more common, where the size of the input is not proportional to the quality of the output. There is another dimension to this. Many humans today work in corporate environments where there is an intense competition for advancing in a rigid hierarchical structure. These advances are strongly correlated with income growth, and power and control over many work-related issues, which is strongly related to status. In these environments, it is often difficult to actually measure the output quality and quantity of each human, partly because there is little incentive to do that, partly because people doing the measurement are not the most technically knowledgeable in the field, but mostly because they are humans themselves and thus have their own interests (namely improving their reproductive prospects themselves, so they need to forge allegiances that stabilize their positions etc). Promoting the most capable worker is sometimes outside their interests. So in this environment, many other cues are used to evaluate the worth of employees, many completely unrelated to their capabilities and work. So, marketing oneself becomes an important aspect in this economy. One clear way to signal to others that you are very dedicated to the company and an important employee is to spend more time at the office than the others. Busyness is a signal of importance/status and value to the company. Of course, people actually interested in performing high quality intellectual work will know that time spent on a task is only one (minor) factor ...
- patrickxie 9y ago
  what other ways can we use to measure worker's output quality and quantity other than the easily quantifiable factor of "time"?
newnewpdro 9y ago
Everywhere Americans look they're pressured to consume more, achieve more, live beyond their means, go into debt (student loans, car loans, home mortgages), and have a family on top of it all while saving for some fabled retirement and college tuition for the kids. If you unplug and simplify your life, don't bother with pursuing a family, you'll see how disincentivized to be busy you are and how absurdly everyone else appears to be living. But if you pursue all the things your competitors are pursuing, you'll find yourself having to acquire similar levels of resources. There's not enough to go around for _everyone_ to have that amount of excess, hence it must be fought over. Basically what you have is a non-violent (most of the time) resource competition determining who gets how much of what in what order, where the participants aren't even pursuing a specific quantity - they're just after as much as possible while they're still able, MORE. edit: After writing the above, I remembered this short video from the 90s, semi-related. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk
davidjnelson 9y ago
> Writing in the first century, Seneca was startled by how little people seemed to value their lives as they were living them—how busy, terribly busy, everyone seemed to be, mortal in their fears, immortal in their desires and wasteful of their time. He noticed how even wealthy people hustled their lives along, ruing their fortune, anticipating a time in the future when they would rest. Living fully in this moment now feels way underrated.
arun_dev 9y ago
Most people are not busy, they are pretending to be busy in work, life, social-media. If you look carefully we have plenty of time to enjoy the phenomena of life.
Rainymood 9y ago
I'm an academic. If I get in 3-4 hours of deep work I'm done for the day and can relax.
arca_vorago 9y ago
Honestly it's about ownership of homes and debt levels. If you aren't in massive debt and you own your home, small efforts can easily pay off other costs and you can live a comfortable life. If you lose your job but you own your house and have a small amount of savings (most don't), at least you won't get evicted... And because wages are so artificially depressed by the suprarich, it takes two jobs to support a life far too often. Noam Chomsky talks about how at the beginning of the industrial revolution the people were skeptical of the 6-9 job that payed a pittance as essentially not much better than chattel slavery, the only difference being you got to go home at night. This is about class warfare, this is about the oligarchs fucking us all constantly and consistently while we do nothing because the people we expect to do something (the government) are corrupted, blackmailed, coerced, and lobbied into the ground until they break to the oligarchs will (which is why there is truly only one party at the moment, the oligarchs party). Add on top of that the unconstitutional private banking conglomerate known as the fed and the 16th amendment, and you have a recipe for runaway inflation, devaluation of purchasing power, and increases in poverty, homelessness, and work hours needed to support the cost of living per area. Jackson was a piece of shit when it came to the natives, but that far too often overshadows the importance of his effort to fight the banks. (Also, him beating the brits with marines, sailors, militiamen and pirates is a movie I want to make someday.) Shades of Smedley Butler if you ask me. Anyone remember that? Oh yeah, they don't teach you in public school that a bunch of facist corporate oligarch banker types tried to attempt a coup on the American government via a Marine Corps general who double-crossed them and reported it all to congress all in ~1933? Oh yeah, they blacked out the names until John Spivak published them. (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_Committee#Deleted_Text https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_C...) (http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-NewMasses.pdf http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-NewMasses.pd...)
8bitsrule 9y ago
If 'busy' means that your time is filled with things to do, that -can- be a good thing. My impression is that before technology, media, communications, health, and rising standards of living life was -a lot- more boring. Every day on the 'net I see that hundreds of people who've not only found specialized, fascinating topics, but finally have someone to talk to about them. Sure beats taking anti-depressants. To the extent that busy means 'paying for all this stuff I have to have': how much of it do I really need? Are we victims of 'have to have' obesity? I'll just gently suggest that, for many in the West, the answer is yes.
projektir 9y ago
My current guess is that a large part of this is the increase in various amounts of "chores" to manage, and this potentially increases with more wealth. Bills to pay, insurances to get, appointments to make, this or that government obligation to fulfill, monitoring credit report and data breaches, investing money here or there, getting real estate... + other things, like continuous learning, information collection, designing exercise schedules, designing diet systems... With the persistent threat that if you mess these up there will be trouble. Related to this, I wonder if the proliferation of these things is why conscientiousness is currently strongly associated with success. I've seen highly intelligent people have significant failures in their lives because they simply couldn't efficiently manage the bureaucracy that it seems it is assumed you can just manage automatically, which very much does not seem to be the case. In reality, I think the current small (and large) task management load is simply too large for most people to properly handle, and wealth doesn't particularly help with all this because it doesn't directly increase the mental load surface... unless you outsource the work somewhere else...

198 points by asoli 9y ago

I'm always amazed how I end up seeing long threads from HN users who read an article, but when I click on it, there is a pay wall. Are all those readers subscribers to these news sites?

inteleng 9y ago
If you hit the "web" button, you can usually bypass the wall. I was able to read the article just fine, even though I don't have a subscription. "Simultaneous consumption" is one of my new favourite phrases, actually.
wyattpeak 9y ago
Most of the sites show their content to archiving services. If you go to archive.is and enter the URL, you'll see the content.
- pcf 9y ago
  Thanks, I wasn't aware of this.
tlarkworthy 9y ago
Economist works with JS disabled
byte1918 9y ago
On Firefox with uBlock Origin and I could read the whole article without any extra steps. And also yes, I agree, this post only has a few comments but others that have more and require a form of subscription to continue reading make me feel the same way.
Markoff 9y ago
I use Brave browser on Android and can see whole article.
geff82 9y ago
I use the private mode of a browser to get around article limits.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
sdenton4 9y ago
Incognito mode is also a good bypass for N articles per month type paywalls.
- hellofunk 9y ago
  Very good to know, thanks. I tried it and indeed you are correct.
feelin_googley 9y ago
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why?utm_source=pocket&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=pockethits https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-t... http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why&num=1&prmd=ivns&strip=1&vwsrc=0 http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:/...
tomhoward 9y ago
http://archive.is/AfhEN http://archive.is/AfhEN
rufius 9y ago
While there are ways to get around the paywall, the Economist is probably one of the few publications I’d say is absolutely worth paying for. That said - a lot of folks have access to sites like NYT and WSJ through work.

IThoughtYouGNU 9y ago

http://archive.is/AfhEN http://archive.is/AfhEN

el_cid 9y ago
creepy

sixhobbits 9y ago

I found this article really interesting and extremely well written. The excerpt below is a literary masterpiece.(other comments complain about paywall but on mobile I got "3 articles free" message. Not sure if they're A/B testing or if they're giving me free stuff because I'm in South Africa and they assume that online payments are hard here) "Leisure time is now the stuff of myth. Some are cursed with too much. Others find it too costly to enjoy. Many spend their spare moments staring at a screen of some kind, even though doing other things (visiting friends, volunteering at a church) tends to make people happier. Not a few presume they will cash in on all their stored leisure time when they finally retire, whenever that may be. In the meantime, being busy has its rewards. Otherwise why would people go to such trouble? Alas time, ultimately, is a strange and slippery resource, easily traded, visible only when it passes and often most highly valued when it is gone. No one has ever complained of having too much of it. Instead, most people worry over how it flies, and wonder where it goes. Cruelly, it runs away faster as people get older, as each accumulating year grows less significant, proportionally, but also less vivid. Experiences become less novel and more habitual. The years soon bleed together and end up rushing past, with the most vibrant memories tucked somewhere near the beginning. And of course the more one tries to hold on to something, the swifter it seems to go"

sp527 9y ago
Novel experiences slow down time while habitual behaviors speed it up. However, we are almost by definition creatures of habit. They're necessary in order to function efficiently. So you could argue there's a tension between living efficiently and living well. But most people never get far enough to worry about. Our world has been designed to lure people into poor behavioral loops like watching TV, browsing social media, and otherwise consuming aimlessly and mindlessly. Sadly, there appears to be a strong incentive to induce that kind of adverse behavior in users/customers.
- hyperdimension 9y ago
  Well said. Reminds me of something I read, about memory tends to remember novel and interesting things. It went on to mention how seniors like to point out how quickly life goes by, but that that's just because they (generally) live such regimented and static lives, that there's nothing particular to remember or take note of, so the time just passes by them.

blowski 9y ago

Listen also http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb

taneq 9y ago

Because we've been sold the idea that there is someplace else to be, and that we should work as hard as we can to get there.

davidjnelson 9y ago
> we’ve been sold And believed the sales pitch, which was never true.

factsaresacred 9y ago

I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate (http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc) which, aside from being a great look at Japan, epitomizes the absurdity of exchanging our time for a salary that increasingly fails to cover the cost to live and leaves us without free time. 30,000 Japanese kill themselves each year due to work related stress. Great quote from the doc: Naoki:"You (the West) game me this f*cking Capitalist system 100 years ago..." Cameramen: "And now you're rich" Naoki: "Is this rich...is this a good system?" I hope - and expect - that one day offices are viewed in the same way we view the factories of the early industrial age: prisons of drudgery and misery. I'm not naive, civilization and its innumerable benefits (like actually being able to live past 65) has a cost. But the notion that sitting in traffic each morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever pulled.

bshepard 9y ago
I agree with the sentiment, but respectfully propose that the office con is part of a larger and even more brazen : commodifying all of reality. Besides all of the relatively well-known ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land, commodification also greatly diminishes the development of what Marxists like to call "the productive forces" -- if not for this artificial system of value created to mask European conquest, we could easily be in some an unimaginably technologically advanced post-scarcity heterotopia right now.
- jxub 9y ago
  I don't see how the capitalism was created to mask the European domination. I think it's just the result of going through the path of least resistance as the concepts of trade, money and globalization are all at play, and not of some intentional/evil cooperation. However, I imagine your point might be explained by some actions of East India Company or such, and I'm not well enough versed on that. Moreover, could you expand a bit on "ethical and psychological problems with selling and buying time and land"? This sounds like a novel idea to me.
9y ago

fwn 9y ago

I'm not sure their psychological/cultural reasons translate very well to continental europe. The people that surround me in Germany have all the time they want. Besides that: > No one has ever complained of having too much of it. Isn't that just being bored? I'm sure I've heard people complaining about that.

KozmoNau7 9y ago
I think people who complain about being bored are simply scared of being alone with their thoughts. I don't mind doing "nothing" on a train or bus ride, it gives me time to slow down a little and just think to myself. I think this "gotta be busybusybusy" thing originated in the US, but it is definitely spreading. I see way too many people who are way too wrapped up in their careers or are constantly stressing about all the things they "have to do", and they forget to actually enjoy anything, because they're already mentally at the next thing. I love lazy Saturdays on the couch, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.
- musage 9y ago
  > Well, apart from bureaucracy being anonymous in essence, every restless activity makes responsibility evaporate. There is an idiomatic expression in English: "stop and think". No person can think without stopping [first]. When you force someone into a restless activity, or they let themselves be forced into it, you will always have the same result. You will always have the problem that a sense of responsibility cannot form. It can only form in the moment in which one reflects -- not about oneself, but about what one is doing. -- Hannah Arendt (translation me, original here http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/114/194 http://www.hannaharendt.net/index.php/han/article/view/114/1... , audio here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_UvHhbZIA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jF_UvHhbZIA ) And now for something completely different: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjo2ggPRKE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOjo2ggPRKE Less isn't just sometimes more, and more isn't just sometimes less. Sometimes it's something else entirely: sometimes a little less is everything, and a little more is nothing.
asoli 9y ago
That's why the writer said that the scarcity of time is a problem partly of perception and partly of distribution.

Sylos 9y ago

> And lunches now tend to be efficient affairs, devoured at one’s desk, with an eye on the e-mail inbox. Alternatively, you do go into lunch break, because you have to network with colleagues or business partners.

KozmoNau7 9y ago

This "must be busy" mindset and 50+ hour work weeks is so utterly alien and wrong to me, and I'm glad I feel this way. I would never let a job get in the way of family and social experiences, in the way of my life. Relaxation and leisure time is absolutely non-negotiable for me, I would never give up on a concert or culinary experience or anything else for something as mundane as work. I think this mindset has also gifted me with more patience and more ability to not be bored, compared to most of my peers. Luckily, all of my friends share my mindset, anyone too work-obsessed simply doesn't fit in for long. I am a slacker, and I enjoy it very much.

roma1n 9y ago
Thanks so much for that :) I needed to hear that I'm not alone in this.
mrhappyunhappy 9y ago
Privelaged white older male identified. Not all of us find work mundane and not all of us can afford the luxury of leisure yet alone choice in friends. Congratulations and enjoying your laid back life!
- dang 9y ago
  Personal attacks aren't ok here. Whatever substantive point you want to make, I'm sure you can make it thoughtfully and without stooping to this if you want to. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
marak830 9y ago
I am the same as you, alas I cannot afford not to work the hours I do (for which I have copped quite a bit of flack on HN about). I do wonder why people who can afford to spend time with their family and not work 60-70 hours per week, actually do. I can only imagine it would be that they really enjoy their work that much, or their in a culture such as here in Japan where you stay until the boss leaves - or else. (Not my situation, I'm a chef, stupid hours in my industry).

LandR 9y ago

My last job, I had so much more free time. I finished at 4 each day and sometimes took 3 hour lunches. Someone would text me in another city and ask if I could come through and meet them. I would often just walk out of work (it wasn't a problem) and go meet them. If it meant that I didn't get back to the office that day, so be it. There was lots of time spent with friends and family, it was great. My current job, I eat lunch at my desk and spend so much less time with friends and family. A couple of months ago I was working from 8AM to 3:30AM, then was back to the office for 8AM the following day. I make more money now, but I was so much happier before. I often think about just quitting work and taking a year or two off, just do me things and figure stuff out. What I want from life, what my prioritie are etc. But then I worry if you take that long off, how hard would it be to get back to work afterwards? Are employers even going to entertain my CV

justaguyhere 9y ago
I would often just walk out of work In one of my previous jobs, while leaving at 5:30 pm (started at 9 am), the CTO asks "half day today?", only half jokingly :(
- jfoutz 9y ago
  I got in late, so i'm leaving early to make up for it.
walkingolof 9y ago
>But then I worry if you take that long off, how hard would it be to get back to work afterwards? Dont worry, its pointless, you must do what makes you happy, everything else will follow. 2 years is nothing, if the time is used to learn more about yourself or helping others, its a huge plus in a CV.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
kace91 9y ago
Been there, done that. I'm currently starting to work again. Honestly, the time off has been amazing (more than I expected), but it's hard to overstate how hard it is to readjust now. Employers haven't been a problem, it's about myself: I'm experiencing anxiety attacks for the first time in my life and I'm worried I'm going to slip into depression - something I've never gone through before. If you want my advice: If you've got some savings you can afford to spend, try to actively search for a job that is more bearable, and yet sustainable long term. It shouldn't require you leaving your current job until you find a new one, but rather you want your money to act as a mattress to fall back on if things go south so you can try new things. NEVER let your savings drop below a certain threshold, because going to work is way more manageable if you can tell yourself that you can walk away if you really need it. Once that possibility is gone you feel like a slave.

SomewhatLikely 9y ago

As long as there are marginal gains to be made from working an extra hour I don't see this changing. Imagine if one country decided to change from a 40 hour work week to a 20 hour work week. If this decreases their GDP from producing less output, then they become economically weaker, their standard of living in terms of purchasing power is diminished, and the tax base is decreased. I think the biggest reason we don't see more leisure time is the same reason wild animals don't see much leisure time: competition. At the international level, countries which produce more are more powerful, and at the domestic level other things being equal an individual who produces more will command a higher income, which translates to gaining a bigger slice of the economic pie and the additional power that confers. I suspect many of the people on hacker news could easily live on half the income they make, but we choose not to, because we prefer the extra affordances of working full time or more.

tonyedgecombe 9y ago
Interestingly, for the workers mentioned in the article there are no marginal gains because they are salaried. I suspect it has more to do with our inability to measure modern work, instead we use a poor proxy for productivity, keeping your seat warm.
guntars 9y ago
It's just people being wired to compare their lives with other's. Humans evolved in small groups with hierarchies where your "rank" compared to others could mean the difference between life and death. Not so much these days, but the habit is still there. Luckily, we also evolved big brains that let us override almost any instinct and with a bit of effort we can be perfectly happy with any slice of the pie. P.S. I'm somebody that gave up a large fraction of my salary to be able to work part time and travel the country. It's been worth it so far.
Karrot_Kream 9y ago
This is fairly inconsistent with countries with riding inequality, such as the US. If anything, rising inequality shows that rather than there being a gradual curve of salary proportional to hours worked, there are tiers of salary and not much in the middle.

hliyan 9y ago

I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to correction). My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing. The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more wealth is a waste. Inflation, I believe, is a big component of this view. What would happen if we keep inflation near-zero? Is slow growth really a bad thing?

noelsusman 9y ago
The overwhelming majority of businesses don't have investors to care about. Ignoring that, investors demand growth because that's basically the definition of investing. If businesses don't want to be pressured to grow then they don't have to take money from people who want growth. Removing inflation wouldn't stop people from chasing growth. People want to make more money. 2% annual inflation changes the calculations a bit (towards more proactive investing), but in a world of 0% inflation people would still want to make money. They would just be a bit more conservative since there's no penalty for holding. And yes, slow growth is a bad thing. Our population is growing. The pie has to be grown if we don't want living standards to nosedive.
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg 9y ago
I agree that there are likely negative social consequences from inflation, but the idea that inflation is the reason a business can't reach a steady-state because of inflation seems to ignore Red Queen[1] like affects. Something I've noticed a lot in tech is that companies will spend a huge amount of money to push new features that aren't core to the business and to launch new products that frequently fail. I've always viewed these as attempting to prevent competition from emerging rather than trying to compensate for inflation.
- api 9y ago
  No idea why you are being downvoted. A Red Queen's Race is exactly what's going on. Even without much currency inflation there is constant pressure for businesses to outgrow each other because... well... everyone else is doing it! It's exactly like the constant arms race that occurs between nations and forces them to constantly spend trillions of dollars on weapons that will mostly never be used.

collyw 9y ago

There is a lot more bureaucracy built into the systems we have to deal with these days as well (David Gaerber's "Utopia of Rules" is a good read on this). I have a lot of stuff to do, and was kind of getting on top of it recently. I needed to renew my driving license here in Spain. I needed two appointments (trying to fit them around work). I have been given a temporary license for the time being and am waiting on the new one to be posted. I noticed that the temporary paper has my name spelled wrong, so there is a good chance I will need at least one more appointment just to get that typo fixed when the plastic version comes through. I guess another factor is the changing nature of jobs. Certainly in IT you need to devote at least some time to keeping up with new tech or you will become obsolete. I find this especially frustrating when a lot of the "new" is just a rehash of stuff from 30 years ago. Its also why I hate fronted work, as the ecosystem is a constantly changing mess.

omalleyt 9y ago

Societies compete with each other like organisms. Successful societies propagate. Primary dimensions of competition are demographics, economics, and military. Thus the history of social organization is necessarily a history of extracting ever-more value from the labor of society's members. Keynes and others seem to have labored under the delusion that the history of social organization is a history of ever-increasing happiness for society's members.

ekr 9y ago

(this is only a very quick and dirty exposition.) Humans, like every other organism on this Earth, have been shaped by evolution, which has instilled a set of adaptations into them. Like most other species, there is a competition for mates, reproduction opportunities and resources within the sexes. So, along the ages, humans have acquired a set of adaptations that "maximize" wealth, status, (whether they still work in the current environment as opposed to the ones in which these adaptations evolved is another question). So, in essence, humans who tended to work more, tended to obtain more resources/wealth thereby becoming more attractive reproductive prospects. You also get more opportunities to help fellow tribe members, improving your status within your community etc. In other words, a highly competitive arms race has emerged. However, only in recent times, intellectual work has become more common, where the size of the input is not proportional to the quality of the output. There is another dimension to this. Many humans today work in corporate environments where there is an intense competition for advancing in a rigid hierarchical structure. These advances are strongly correlated with income growth, and power and control over many work-related issues, which is strongly related to status. In these environments, it is often difficult to actually measure the output quality and quantity of each human, partly because there is little incentive to do that, partly because people doing the measurement are not the most technically knowledgeable in the field, but mostly because they are humans themselves and thus have their own interests (namely improving their reproductive prospects themselves, so they need to forge allegiances that stabilize their positions etc). Promoting the most capable worker is sometimes outside their interests. So in this environment, many other cues are used to evaluate the worth of employees, many completely unrelated to their capabilities and work. So, marketing oneself becomes an important aspect in this economy. One clear way to signal to others that you are very dedicated to the company and an important employee is to spend more time at the office than the others. Busyness is a signal of importance/status and value to the company. Of course, people actually interested in performing high quality intellectual work will know that time spent on a task is only one (minor) factor ...

patrickxie 9y ago
what other ways can we use to measure worker's output quality and quantity other than the easily quantifiable factor of "time"?

newnewpdro 9y ago

Everywhere Americans look they're pressured to consume more, achieve more, live beyond their means, go into debt (student loans, car loans, home mortgages), and have a family on top of it all while saving for some fabled retirement and college tuition for the kids. If you unplug and simplify your life, don't bother with pursuing a family, you'll see how disincentivized to be busy you are and how absurdly everyone else appears to be living. But if you pursue all the things your competitors are pursuing, you'll find yourself having to acquire similar levels of resources. There's not enough to go around for _everyone_ to have that amount of excess, hence it must be fought over. Basically what you have is a non-violent (most of the time) resource competition determining who gets how much of what in what order, where the participants aren't even pursuing a specific quantity - they're just after as much as possible while they're still able, MORE. edit: After writing the above, I remembered this short video from the 90s, semi-related. [1] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk

davidjnelson 9y ago

> Writing in the first century, Seneca was startled by how little people seemed to value their lives as they were living them—how busy, terribly busy, everyone seemed to be, mortal in their fears, immortal in their desires and wasteful of their time. He noticed how even wealthy people hustled their lives along, ruing their fortune, anticipating a time in the future when they would rest. Living fully in this moment now feels way underrated.

arun_dev 9y ago

Most people are not busy, they are pretending to be busy in work, life, social-media. If you look carefully we have plenty of time to enjoy the phenomena of life.

Rainymood 9y ago

I'm an academic. If I get in 3-4 hours of deep work I'm done for the day and can relax.

arca_vorago 9y ago

Honestly it's about ownership of homes and debt levels. If you aren't in massive debt and you own your home, small efforts can easily pay off other costs and you can live a comfortable life. If you lose your job but you own your house and have a small amount of savings (most don't), at least you won't get evicted... And because wages are so artificially depressed by the suprarich, it takes two jobs to support a life far too often. Noam Chomsky talks about how at the beginning of the industrial revolution the people were skeptical of the 6-9 job that payed a pittance as essentially not much better than chattel slavery, the only difference being you got to go home at night. This is about class warfare, this is about the oligarchs fucking us all constantly and consistently while we do nothing because the people we expect to do something (the government) are corrupted, blackmailed, coerced, and lobbied into the ground until they break to the oligarchs will (which is why there is truly only one party at the moment, the oligarchs party). Add on top of that the unconstitutional private banking conglomerate known as the fed and the 16th amendment, and you have a recipe for runaway inflation, devaluation of purchasing power, and increases in poverty, homelessness, and work hours needed to support the cost of living per area. Jackson was a piece of shit when it came to the natives, but that far too often overshadows the importance of his effort to fight the banks. (Also, him beating the brits with marines, sailors, militiamen and pirates is a movie I want to make someday.) Shades of Smedley Butler if you ask me. Anyone remember that? Oh yeah, they don't teach you in public school that a bunch of facist corporate oligarch banker types tried to attempt a coup on the American government via a Marine Corps general who double-crossed them and reported it all to congress all in ~1933? Oh yeah, they blacked out the names until John Spivak published them. (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_Committee#Deleted_Text https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_C...) (http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-NewMasses.pdf http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-NewMasses.pd...)

8bitsrule 9y ago

If 'busy' means that your time is filled with things to do, that -can- be a good thing. My impression is that before technology, media, communications, health, and rising standards of living life was -a lot- more boring. Every day on the 'net I see that hundreds of people who've not only found specialized, fascinating topics, but finally have someone to talk to about them. Sure beats taking anti-depressants. To the extent that busy means 'paying for all this stuff I have to have': how much of it do I really need? Are we victims of 'have to have' obesity? I'll just gently suggest that, for many in the West, the answer is yes.

projektir 9y ago

My current guess is that a large part of this is the increase in various amounts of "chores" to manage, and this potentially increases with more wealth. Bills to pay, insurances to get, appointments to make, this or that government obligation to fulfill, monitoring credit report and data breaches, investing money here or there, getting real estate... + other things, like continuous learning, information collection, designing exercise schedules, designing diet systems... With the persistent threat that if you mess these up there will be trouble. Related to this, I wonder if the proliferation of these things is why conscientiousness is currently strongly associated with success. I've seen highly intelligent people have significant failures in their lives because they simply couldn't efficiently manage the bureaucracy that it seems it is assumed you can just manage automatically, which very much does not seem to be the case. In reality, I think the current small (and large) task management load is simply too large for most people to properly handle, and wealth doesn't particularly help with all this because it doesn't directly increase the mental load surface... unless you outsource the work somewhere else...