9 ms·

Really depressing. Between work, long commute, gym, and part-time grad school, I have 18 free hours a week out of 168. Makes me wonder what the hell I am doing

by plants 7y ago

Really depressing. Between work, long commute, gym, and part-time grad school, I have 18 free hours a week out of 168. Makes me wonder what the hell I am doing when I have other hobbies that I would love to be pursuing. Most of the time I simply don't have the mental energy to pursue much of anything in my 18 free hours. Sometimes I just need to turn my brain off. I find myself to lash out in weird ways when I am particularly stressed. For example, I am much more likely to spend a lot of money on something that seems like it has the potential to make me happy or book a vacation spontaneously. It seems like keeping my head on straight requires so much willpower that I can't save any for other aspects of my life. Who knew life was hard?

ianai 7y ago
I’m in the middle of a four day weekend. I’ll probably get absolutely nothing extraordinary done in it. Despite there being plenty of things I could be doing. The 40 hour work week is tyrannical.
- ido 7y ago
  Why do you have to "get something extraordinary done" on your time off? You don't have to be productive any waking moment.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    If you're not productive on your four-day weekends, and if you think your job isn't worth anything in the ultimate sense, you will wake up one day and be 79 without having done much of anything.
    - username90 7y ago
      Enjoying 79 stress-free years sounds better than having things to brag about on your gravestone.
      - TeMPOraL 7y ago
        Stress is orthogonal here. Many humans[0] naturally want to create, build and improve things around them. A typical job is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to that, especially if fruits of the labour only ever manifest as paycheck - hence the desire to do that in whatever free time that's left. -- [0] - I'd argue, all.
        paulcole 7y ago
        > [0] - I'd argue, all. Nope! I take no joy and have no interest in creating, building, and improving things. I like buying stuff, watching TV, scrolling through the Internet, and that’s more or less it. Just passing time until I die.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
      - CalRobert 7y ago
        79 years making stuff _I care about_ would be heaven, though.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      This. If you feel your dayjob is a pointless waste of effort, then the after-work time is all you have to do anything meaningful with your life. And I don't know if it's reality, or just artifact of society talking more about it at scale, but it seems to me that increasing amount of jobs is pointless, with neutral to net-negative impact on society. Including, or maybe especially in, our industry.
    - ikeyany 7y ago
      Your accomplishments don't mean anything in the ultimate sense anyway. Nothing is permanent. The universe will eventually cook itself to death. When it's your turn to go, how you feel about the matter will make no difference. So I say enjoy the 4 days off.
    - lagadu 7y ago
      Who cares about having done "anything"? I'll be dead anyway. What matters is that at 79 I've spent as much time as possible having fun by doing activities I find to be fun.
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- ikeyany 7y ago
  A four day weekend is very extraordinary in itself. Perhaps you need not do anything special to get the most out of it.
- allthecybers 7y ago
  > The 40 hour work week is tyrannical. If you are stating this seriously, I often wonder why there isn’t a great movement toward a reduction in working days/hours in the modern workplace. It’s kind of mind boggling to me why we have to trade most of our waking hours for the majority of the prime of our life to make a living wage. Modern society should be solving for this.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > I often wonder why there isn’t a great movement toward a reduction in working days/hours in the modern workplace. There are voices saying that. You can find some on almost every HN thread about work. This is a tricky topic, though, because our society has a deeply ingrained sense of deriving one's self-worth and status from the job they perform. A sentiment that was once critical to our survival - now, arguably, less so. > Modern society should be solving for this. There are attempts. 4-hour workweek. People (like myself) switching to remote work to reclaim time spent commuting. Individuals seeking FU money. Proposals of UBI. Regulations around paid vacations and parental leave. It's messy and slow-going, and things probably won't change until there is a cultural shift in our relationship with work we do.
    - etherealG 7y ago
      When you say "our society", do you mean USA? I know the approach to work in France where I live is vastly different. Most people I talk with consider work to be a means to an end, and life being much more about the things you do besides your job.
  - oarabbus_ 7y ago
    Well the discussions here are not exactly from a random sampling of individuals. Many people in HN are programmers, meaning that their productivity does not scale linearly with time. That is, you may get a considerable amount of work done in 4 hours, and the proceeding 4 hours may yield hardly any progress at all. Any knowledge worker can relate. But in a lot of industries, there is a lower bound of hours that need to be worked. I used to work in the medical device industry, and hospitals, and also have some real estate company experience. I can assure you in my experience, a 40-hour workweek was by no means unreasonable in these industries. If you're working in Semiconductors or Finance or Law or most industries out there, you really do need to be physically present and working 6-8 hour days.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  I have 168 free hours a week at the moment and I am still somehow getting nothing extraordinary done :)
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  "Tyrannical" is an absurd way to frame the 40-hour workweek. The vast majority of people in the world aren't tech workers where productivity and time spent have a nonlinear relationship. Having been on both sides of the coin, calling a 40-hour work week "tyrannical" screams "ivory tower". Those of us in law and medicine (not to mention numerous people in early-stage startups) would get a great laugh out out of that characterization.
- bordercases 7y ago
  What else do you think you could be doing with your time? I used to feel the same way up until the point when I clarified my goals and broke them down into small accumulative chunks, and ignored any goals which obviously couldn't be dealt with before the others. I feel like I'm getting plenty done at that point even though the marginal increment of effort every day looks more modest.
em-bee 7y ago
i got similar numbers and thought, wow, 16 hours is actually quite a lot of time. that's two work days worth. seriously how much time do you spend on your hobbies? i have several casual hobbies that only take a few hours a week each. if i'd spend 2 hours each day on a hobby i'd call that intensive and i'd think that spending that much time is unusual unless it's maybe a music instrument you are learning.
- em-bee 7y ago
  another way to look at it is that 2 days of free time is 2/5th of your worktime. that's almost half a job worth. if you spend 5 years in a job, then that's 2 years worth of free time. imagine what you can do with all of that.
  - watwut 7y ago
    Build a burnout and depression cause you lack downtime. 18 hours per week for showering, shopping, cleaning, catching up with friends, eating, cooking and reading is not that extraordinary much.
    - em-bee 7y ago
      oh yes, burnout and depression, also procrastination can really eat up your time. and worst of all, you don't really know where the time is going. it just disappears.
maccard 7y ago
Onr of the recurring points I saw here was people with 60+minute commutes bring the most jaded - would you consider moving?
- cerberusss 7y ago
  As soon as you get kids, moving gets to be more complicated. I don't want to uproot my child when she's rooted so well at this school.
  - maccard 7y ago
    That's a very fair point - I don't have kids and didn't consider that. Another option to consider would be changing job to reduce the commute? There seems to be a link between commute time and general unhappiness in this thread, and nobody seems to consider shortening their commutes really.
    - cerberusss 7y ago
      Yeah, something has to be done about commuting. Personally, I start really early and avoid the worst of the traffic jams. Plus, I can work in my own office, close to home. I don't have to be at the client their office every day of the week.

by plants 7y ago

ianai 7y ago

I’m in the middle of a four day weekend. I’ll probably get absolutely nothing extraordinary done in it. Despite there being plenty of things I could be doing. The 40 hour work week is tyrannical.

ido 7y ago
Why do you have to "get something extraordinary done" on your time off? You don't have to be productive any waking moment.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  If you're not productive on your four-day weekends, and if you think your job isn't worth anything in the ultimate sense, you will wake up one day and be 79 without having done much of anything.
  - username90 7y ago
    Enjoying 79 stress-free years sounds better than having things to brag about on your gravestone.
    - TeMPOraL 7y ago
      Stress is orthogonal here. Many humans[0] naturally want to create, build and improve things around them. A typical job is a nearly insurmountable obstacle to that, especially if fruits of the labour only ever manifest as paycheck - hence the desire to do that in whatever free time that's left. -- [0] - I'd argue, all.
      - paulcole 7y ago
        > [0] - I'd argue, all. Nope! I take no joy and have no interest in creating, building, and improving things. I like buying stuff, watching TV, scrolling through the Internet, and that’s more or less it. Just passing time until I die.
        deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
    - CalRobert 7y ago
      79 years making stuff _I care about_ would be heaven, though.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    This. If you feel your dayjob is a pointless waste of effort, then the after-work time is all you have to do anything meaningful with your life. And I don't know if it's reality, or just artifact of society talking more about it at scale, but it seems to me that increasing amount of jobs is pointless, with neutral to net-negative impact on society. Including, or maybe especially in, our industry.
  - ikeyany 7y ago
    Your accomplishments don't mean anything in the ultimate sense anyway. Nothing is permanent. The universe will eventually cook itself to death. When it's your turn to go, how you feel about the matter will make no difference. So I say enjoy the 4 days off.
  - lagadu 7y ago
    Who cares about having done "anything"? I'll be dead anyway. What matters is that at 79 I've spent as much time as possible having fun by doing activities I find to be fun.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
ikeyany 7y ago
A four day weekend is very extraordinary in itself. Perhaps you need not do anything special to get the most out of it.
allthecybers 7y ago
> The 40 hour work week is tyrannical. If you are stating this seriously, I often wonder why there isn’t a great movement toward a reduction in working days/hours in the modern workplace. It’s kind of mind boggling to me why we have to trade most of our waking hours for the majority of the prime of our life to make a living wage. Modern society should be solving for this.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > I often wonder why there isn’t a great movement toward a reduction in working days/hours in the modern workplace. There are voices saying that. You can find some on almost every HN thread about work. This is a tricky topic, though, because our society has a deeply ingrained sense of deriving one's self-worth and status from the job they perform. A sentiment that was once critical to our survival - now, arguably, less so. > Modern society should be solving for this. There are attempts. 4-hour workweek. People (like myself) switching to remote work to reclaim time spent commuting. Individuals seeking FU money. Proposals of UBI. Regulations around paid vacations and parental leave. It's messy and slow-going, and things probably won't change until there is a cultural shift in our relationship with work we do.
  - etherealG 7y ago
    When you say "our society", do you mean USA? I know the approach to work in France where I live is vastly different. Most people I talk with consider work to be a means to an end, and life being much more about the things you do besides your job.
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  Well the discussions here are not exactly from a random sampling of individuals. Many people in HN are programmers, meaning that their productivity does not scale linearly with time. That is, you may get a considerable amount of work done in 4 hours, and the proceeding 4 hours may yield hardly any progress at all. Any knowledge worker can relate. But in a lot of industries, there is a lower bound of hours that need to be worked. I used to work in the medical device industry, and hospitals, and also have some real estate company experience. I can assure you in my experience, a 40-hour workweek was by no means unreasonable in these industries. If you're working in Semiconductors or Finance or Law or most industries out there, you really do need to be physically present and working 6-8 hour days.
ubercow13 7y ago
I have 168 free hours a week at the moment and I am still somehow getting nothing extraordinary done :)
oarabbus_ 7y ago
"Tyrannical" is an absurd way to frame the 40-hour workweek. The vast majority of people in the world aren't tech workers where productivity and time spent have a nonlinear relationship. Having been on both sides of the coin, calling a 40-hour work week "tyrannical" screams "ivory tower". Those of us in law and medicine (not to mention numerous people in early-stage startups) would get a great laugh out out of that characterization.
bordercases 7y ago
What else do you think you could be doing with your time? I used to feel the same way up until the point when I clarified my goals and broke them down into small accumulative chunks, and ignored any goals which obviously couldn't be dealt with before the others. I feel like I'm getting plenty done at that point even though the marginal increment of effort every day looks more modest.

em-bee 7y ago

i got similar numbers and thought, wow, 16 hours is actually quite a lot of time. that's two work days worth. seriously how much time do you spend on your hobbies? i have several casual hobbies that only take a few hours a week each. if i'd spend 2 hours each day on a hobby i'd call that intensive and i'd think that spending that much time is unusual unless it's maybe a music instrument you are learning.

em-bee 7y ago
another way to look at it is that 2 days of free time is 2/5th of your worktime. that's almost half a job worth. if you spend 5 years in a job, then that's 2 years worth of free time. imagine what you can do with all of that.
- watwut 7y ago
  Build a burnout and depression cause you lack downtime. 18 hours per week for showering, shopping, cleaning, catching up with friends, eating, cooking and reading is not that extraordinary much.
  - em-bee 7y ago
    oh yes, burnout and depression, also procrastination can really eat up your time. and worst of all, you don't really know where the time is going. it just disappears.

maccard 7y ago

Onr of the recurring points I saw here was people with 60+minute commutes bring the most jaded - would you consider moving?

cerberusss 7y ago
As soon as you get kids, moving gets to be more complicated. I don't want to uproot my child when she's rooted so well at this school.
- maccard 7y ago
  That's a very fair point - I don't have kids and didn't consider that. Another option to consider would be changing job to reduce the commute? There seems to be a link between commute time and general unhappiness in this thread, and nobody seems to consider shortening their commutes really.
  - cerberusss 7y ago
    Yeah, something has to be done about commuting. Personally, I start really early and avoid the worst of the traffic jams. Plus, I can work in my own office, close to home. I don't have to be at the client their office every day of the week.