5 ms·

> Where does this all come from? This is an honest question. Why are people working themselves to death in the US and having this crazy mindset that doing stuff

> Where does this all come from? This is an honest question. Why are people working themselves to death in the US and having this crazy mindset that doing stuff which puts you on the verge of a breakdown is good? When did this start? I believe it all started when the Church of Pavlina opened and easy access to personal development blog fueled by Ferris and others. The ubermensch was promoted. At the same time Amazon and Facebook showed that you could make it big or be a slave so.. fear of doom and american success stories à la "you too can do it if you want" ?

yitianjian 8y ago
Hey - I've never really heard about the "Church of Pavlina", and Google isn't really forthcoming. Do you mind explaining what you mean a bit?
- HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
  Steve Pavlina is/was a programmer turned motivational(?) speaker.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Sure (sorry about being cryptic). Steve Pavlina is one of the first superstar of the online self-help world (dating back to 2004 or 2006). It started with an article on a famous website for programmers (can't remember the name atm) about how he dig really deep with his first game and so others were playing catching up but he was raking in a steady monthly income (see where we are going and who would be interested ?). Then he started his personnal weblog (yeah, we used to call'em weblog in my days) about self help and how he experimented with polyphasic sleep (sleeping 3 or 4 hours a days in twenty minutes increment, see the kind of folks that would bite that bait ?). So far, so good. Then he went full crazy with psychic powers like talking to bird, being a telepath, reality shaping (aka the secret), etc. His article were 10 or 12 A4 pages long (wonder how that goes nowadays) and it was kind of mesmerizing to see all that happening in real time (I admit I got first intrigued with his time management article and I kept reading for the crazy). There was a funny experiment with polyamory and it ended with a divorce. See http://edificial.blogspot.com/2006/08/church-of-steve-pavlina.html http://edificial.blogspot.com/2006/08/church-of-steve-pavlin... for the church of pavlina and https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_Pavlina https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_Pavlina for links and stuff. Of course they guy was kinda successful (financially).
  - varjag 8y ago
    The overwork culture certainly predates blogs.
  - vinceguidry 8y ago
    His forums were a pure gold mine of fun. There was the same kind of diverse mix of people you'd see on a huge site like 4chan or Reddit, but it still felt really intimate. Like the Tucker Max forum but not quite as hyper-masculine.
helipad 8y ago
Isn't Tim Ferriss' belief the opposite of overworking? I thought that was the whole point of the 4-hour Work Week.
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  That's the theory. But isn't the premise that by working 8 hours a day à la Ferris you'd end up working 10 times more than the others in the rat race ? (at least that's the vibe I got back then). It's still about being super efficient though (4 super efficient hours a week. Let's be honest anybody who could do that would do it more than once a week).
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  The Four Hour workweek is a dream reached either by working really really really hard to build a business, or by basically strong-arming your employer into letting you work while you're relaxing on a beach. It's all right there in his book, but like anything that inspires people, most people read what they want to read and not the actual words on the page.
  - Regardsyjc 8y ago
    I think the key lesson in the 4 hour work week and skill you need to be a successful entrepreneur or capitalist is delegation and outsourcing. You need to learn how to scale yourself and your processes by hiring others and profiting from their labor. That's the key to the 4 hour work week and capitalism. You're not going to get the crazy results everybody wants until you learn how to build, hire a team, and profit off their hard work. The secret to this is that this doesn't require capital at all. You don't need anything to learn how to arbitrage, money, goods, or time.
    - AznHisoka 8y ago
      Where is the capital to pay the people you hire?
      - 8y ago

yitianjian 8y ago

Hey - I've never really heard about the "Church of Pavlina", and Google isn't really forthcoming. Do you mind explaining what you mean a bit?

HeyLaughingBoy 8y ago
Steve Pavlina is/was a programmer turned motivational(?) speaker.
johnchristopher 8y ago
Sure (sorry about being cryptic). Steve Pavlina is one of the first superstar of the online self-help world (dating back to 2004 or 2006). It started with an article on a famous website for programmers (can't remember the name atm) about how he dig really deep with his first game and so others were playing catching up but he was raking in a steady monthly income (see where we are going and who would be interested ?). Then he started his personnal weblog (yeah, we used to call'em weblog in my days) about self help and how he experimented with polyphasic sleep (sleeping 3 or 4 hours a days in twenty minutes increment, see the kind of folks that would bite that bait ?). So far, so good. Then he went full crazy with psychic powers like talking to bird, being a telepath, reality shaping (aka the secret), etc. His article were 10 or 12 A4 pages long (wonder how that goes nowadays) and it was kind of mesmerizing to see all that happening in real time (I admit I got first intrigued with his time management article and I kept reading for the crazy). There was a funny experiment with polyamory and it ended with a divorce. See http://edificial.blogspot.com/2006/08/church-of-steve-pavlina.html http://edificial.blogspot.com/2006/08/church-of-steve-pavlin... for the church of pavlina and https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_Pavlina https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Steve_Pavlina for links and stuff. Of course they guy was kinda successful (financially).
- varjag 8y ago
  The overwork culture certainly predates blogs.
- vinceguidry 8y ago
  His forums were a pure gold mine of fun. There was the same kind of diverse mix of people you'd see on a huge site like 4chan or Reddit, but it still felt really intimate. Like the Tucker Max forum but not quite as hyper-masculine.

helipad 8y ago

Isn't Tim Ferriss' belief the opposite of overworking? I thought that was the whole point of the 4-hour Work Week.

johnchristopher 8y ago
That's the theory. But isn't the premise that by working 8 hours a day à la Ferris you'd end up working 10 times more than the others in the rat race ? (at least that's the vibe I got back then). It's still about being super efficient though (4 super efficient hours a week. Let's be honest anybody who could do that would do it more than once a week).
vinceguidry 8y ago
The Four Hour workweek is a dream reached either by working really really really hard to build a business, or by basically strong-arming your employer into letting you work while you're relaxing on a beach. It's all right there in his book, but like anything that inspires people, most people read what they want to read and not the actual words on the page.
- Regardsyjc 8y ago
  I think the key lesson in the 4 hour work week and skill you need to be a successful entrepreneur or capitalist is delegation and outsourcing. You need to learn how to scale yourself and your processes by hiring others and profiting from their labor. That's the key to the 4 hour work week and capitalism. You're not going to get the crazy results everybody wants until you learn how to build, hire a team, and profit off their hard work. The secret to this is that this doesn't require capital at all. You don't need anything to learn how to arbitrage, money, goods, or time.
  - AznHisoka 8y ago
    Where is the capital to pay the people you hire?
    - 8y ago