6 ms·

"And humans enjoy feeling busy and productive." I have never enjoyed feeling busy.

AstralStorm 7y ago
The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid. It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Some people do not perceive this, they're either workaholics or aboulics. Tiredness and boredom are good things evolved to prevent damaging ourselves. If you ignore these you get burnout on one end, but no idea what is the opposite called.
- throwaway72873 7y ago
  It is perfectly fine to be idle and bored; lay on grass and watch clouds or just do fishing... Not everyone comes from puritan american culture.
  - whitebread 7y ago
    Not every American feels like it isn’t okay to be idle and bored. I guess you haven’t been following the real noise about moving to a four day workweek in America. Can we leave the sweeping, judgmental comments on the drawing room floor?
    - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
      Yet the reality is Americans do work long hours. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/12/americas-white-collar-workers-cant-escape-office/602989/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/12/americas-white-collar-w... You might not realise it but this stuff gets exported to the rest of the world. I frequently see American lobbyists on British TV pushing a low regulation agenda with the intention to weaken workers rights.
      - ThalesX 7y ago
        I was working for a project with a small company in Scandinavia. For those unaware, Scandinavia as a region in Europe is very much pro socialist policies and pro work-life balance. We got two consultants from the US of A and that was a hell of a month, constantly pushing us to overwork our employees, saying that we need to show them the carrot on the stick. Their idea was that people will work for 80 hours per week out of their own initiative because life is all about money made and time saved. Whenever we would argue anything, they would start almost chanting Wolf of Wall Street style: "Time & money!". I've never felt more relieved to have someone leave as when they got back to the US. It took us almost half a year to get back on track after that whole shebang and the CEO still has nightmares of how much was payed for them to come there and bro up the place. I was intending to write a short message but it turned into a little rant. What I mean to say is that yes, I believe you are correct and this American way of doing business is pushed around the world in what I think is a real bad direction for work-life balance.
        ssivark 7y ago
        If you/your CEO/folks from your company could write an article/blog post about the experience, it would be a great resource to share and point people to — to seed discussion. Please consider :-)
  - crispyambulance 7y ago
    > puritan american culture [ => busy busy busy ] There's definitely something to that. Calvinistic thinking that labor is pious seems to have been a part of American workplaces forever, especially tech. It's even a part even of the stackoverflow ethos-- god help you if you ask a question without showing that you've "done the work" up front. But it's all over the place. Look at the China tech sector with their popular 9-9-6 workweek. Is that an import from Western Calvinist thinking? I'm not sure, maybe? Whatever the case, "busyness" certainly has been exploited to serve "the man" and not "god".
    - Juliate 7y ago
      I think China has a well enough set of different traditions to gather from (that perhaps have common antique roots), rather than having been influenced by US' or European's puritanism currents. :)
    - mtberatwork 7y ago
      I think it's the "rugged individualism" ethos at play (although maybe that is a tangent of Calvinist thinking?) - the fear that if you ask questions you will come across as inferior to your colleagues and risk losing a promotion at best or a job at worst. It's quite terrible thinking and leads to isolation which compounds anxiety at work.
      - gerbilly 7y ago
        > rugged individualism Rugged individualism was probably never a thing. The first thing that settlers did when they moved west was to create towns and communities. Anyone believing otherwise should try to live in the equivalent of the 19th century west without the support of a town and the services it provides. (I.e.: no blacksmith, no doctor, no general store, no post office, no telegraph...)
    - the_af 7y ago
      > god help you if you ask a question without showing that you've "done the work" up front I think that's different. It's not about puritan work ethic or whatnot, it's about showing the minimum respect for the people you're asking to make an effort for you. Questions which don't show any effort [1] are shunned in tech circles, and this isn't something particular to StackOverflow. And there's a good reason for it: many are asked by "help vampires" [2], people who will burn honest answerers with pointless, ill-researched questions with no follow-up, no useful feedback or even a thank you. Extreme help vampires will even ask the same question repeatedly, apparently too lazy to even see it has been answered already. Some of them just want people to do their homework for them, free. Once or twice may not seem much, but if you don't cut them short, they'll overrun your community. The mere act of thinking how to phrase a question well, showing you've made all the research you could before finding yourself at a dead end, is often enough to actually find the answer for yourself! So the StackOverflow community may be a bit trigger-happy, but I completely understand why they'd be upset at people lazy enough to not even bother to formulate their questions clearly. [1] "How to ask questions the smart way": http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [2] "What is a help vampire": http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/ http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/
  - matwood 7y ago
    I don't like being busy, but I also like to be doing something active. I can only watch a couple episodes of a show before I have to create something or work with my hands or exercise. I don't think this has anything to do with a puritan culture. BTW, no fishing I've ever done has been idle or boring. Fishing is generally a lot of work.
- ssivark 7y ago
  > The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid [...] It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Nope, there's a hidden axis you're implicitly ignoring. It's possible to be active and "in flow" doing something without feeling "busy". So it's not just a 1-dimensional spectrum of whether one is idle or doing things, but also the psyche/attitude experienced when doing those things. The corresponding analogue to idleness is "leisure", where it is possible to enjoy idling or acting without coherent purpose. It takes a particular kind of anemic perspective to ignore the experiential axis, and just consider the axis corresponding to "things done" or "output produced". For a more detailed exposition on what goes into achieving a "flow" state, I recommend checking out Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's book titled Flow. For more on "leisure", I recommend Bertrand Russell's essay In praise of idleness.
  - fhennig 7y ago
    I found that a very nice observation! I've been struggling with stress lately and I feel like I'm surrounded by a culture where being busy is valued a lot, and people boast about how they stayed up very long to finish something, and it feels like that is a behavior that is reinforced. I really like tackling things on my own time, and I feel this "tunnelling" a lot and I don't like it at all. Sometimes it can be nice, but I feel like due to stress I tunnel too much. And I noticed that after being stressed for a while (weeks/months) it is very hard to come back and enjoy idleness. I think this is a problem in cultures with a "busy" work ethic.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    Flow state can be a trap. You can accomplish a lot of task checkboxes that are irrelevant. This is exactly what the article talks about. You must ask questions on whether what you're doing has any value - ultimately for you or someone/something you value. And while in flow state you cannot ask such questions as they're not directly related to what you're doing. Company values are at least a few degrees removed from this ultimate value. If you spend all the time in the flow state, you're likely are achieving nothing for your own goals, because you're not setting any. (Or worse, the goals are not thought out.) Flow is the same as hyperfocus physically, and overdoing will ultimately harm you physically, if not psychologically or socially first. It's also related to meditation. Like meditation it is not always beneficial, especially in excess. If this author has some other definition of flow, be careful, there might be a tautology or "no true Scotsman" involved.
- lukebuehler 7y ago
  > but no idea what is the opposite called Acedia
- P_I_Staker 7y ago
  You're making assumptions that aren't necessarily true. For instance, I'll avoid play in order to enjoy some idleness. I've figured out why I think; because I don't want to lose track of time, then have to go to work. The same reason I can sleep fine before my day off, but not before a work day. I don't even think I hate my job that much. I'm not really even working crazy hours; yet it still seems like there's no free time, and I don't want the little time available to fly by.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
romanovcode 7y ago
Exactly, best inner-feeling I have is when I know I don't have to do anything, literally anything. So I know I can do whatever I want.
OJFord 7y ago
I suspect 'humans' is an attempt to avoid stereotyping/sexism - but some people certainly do if not enjoy actually being busy, enjoy talking about how busy they are and how little time they have. i.e. the enjoyment I think is in projecting a certain image of oneself; not necessarily actually embodying that image.
- tonyedgecombe 7y ago
  I'm not sure it's about enjoyment. At the extremes I suspect it's more of a compulsion.
  - AstralStorm 7y ago
    There can be enjoyment too, either normal or masochistic. Alleged accomplishment tickles reward centers in the brain. In most people, reward from repetitive tasks fades quickly, in some others it does not. (Perfect employees for assembly line. Except we have robots.) A masochist instead may thrive on the discomfort of it.
_pmf_ 7y ago
> I have never enjoyed feeling busy. Clearly, you are not manager material. Managers like to flaunt their busyness. It's their essence, their halo.
thejackgoode 7y ago
I have the opposite, feeling busy means I am focused and doing meaningful challenging work
- Ididntdothis 7y ago
  I guess you are in a good situation. My work often keeps me very busy but almost nothing of it is meaningful or challenging. It’s mainly just a repeat of the same thing.
brianmcc 7y ago
Most people would surely agree that neither under- nor over-stimulation is ideal on any kind of long term basis. A 2 week project crunch can be exhilarating, but 6 months? No thanks! Similarly a few weeks of beach vacation can be wonderfully relaxing, but months, years of "doing nothing" will soon become boring.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  That's why you don't go to isolated places like Maldives (unless you are utterly addicted to diving and surfing) but rather Indonesia... you can spend years travelling around discovering places, culture, people, food etc. Met plenty of people stuck in travelling mode for years, but yeah they don't just lie around the beach (most of the time).
leggomylibro 7y ago
How about feeling idle with nothing to do but consider your own mortality? Not many people enjoy that, and Pascal wrote an interesting paper about it: http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html Personally, my main takeaway can be summarized by this passage: >And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.
- EGreg 7y ago
  What if you realize that distracting yourself from major things is foolish and your thoughts return to the topic every few hours a day? Have you figured anything out? Perhaps this can give you some practice every day: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
- gerbilly 7y ago
  > The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities The irony is not lost on me that the man in this anecdote is bringing untimely death to the hare, to distract himself from his own. Death probably feels just like you felt before you were born. Why not celebrate that there is anything to experience at all? It seems so improbable.
  - leggomylibro 7y ago
    Haha, yeah. But hunting is just one of the examples that Pascal uses because of the times, along with gambling and war. Metaphorically, that passion project or artistic pursuit that you can't quite explain a practical use for is more or less the same idea.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- bigred100 7y ago
  Some folks in fact think you should do that quite a bit. For example, this guy wrote quite a well-regarded (in his community) book about it: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1696-1787,_De_Ligorio_Alphonsus,_Preparation_For_Death_Part_1,_EN.pdf http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1696-1787,_De_Ligo...
hef19898 7y ago
Personally, I think there is a big difference between busy and occupied and lazy and idle. I love being productive / occupied, yet I hate being busy. And that has nothing to do with stress or pressure, but rather with impact. And yes, being busy resulted in a couple of less than perfect decisions on my behalf. The worst ones just for the sake of doing and deciding something.

The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid. It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Some people do not perceive this, they're either workaholics or aboulics. Tiredness and boredom are good things evolved to prevent damaging ourselves. If you ignore these you get burnout on one end, but no idea what is the opposite called.

throwaway72873 7y ago
It is perfectly fine to be idle and bored; lay on grass and watch clouds or just do fishing... Not everyone comes from puritan american culture.
- whitebread 7y ago
  Not every American feels like it isn’t okay to be idle and bored. I guess you haven’t been following the real noise about moving to a four day workweek in America. Can we leave the sweeping, judgmental comments on the drawing room floor?
  - tonyedgecombe 7y ago
    Yet the reality is Americans do work long hours. https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/12/americas-white-collar-workers-cant-escape-office/602989/ https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/12/americas-white-collar-w... You might not realise it but this stuff gets exported to the rest of the world. I frequently see American lobbyists on British TV pushing a low regulation agenda with the intention to weaken workers rights.
    - ThalesX 7y ago
      I was working for a project with a small company in Scandinavia. For those unaware, Scandinavia as a region in Europe is very much pro socialist policies and pro work-life balance. We got two consultants from the US of A and that was a hell of a month, constantly pushing us to overwork our employees, saying that we need to show them the carrot on the stick. Their idea was that people will work for 80 hours per week out of their own initiative because life is all about money made and time saved. Whenever we would argue anything, they would start almost chanting Wolf of Wall Street style: "Time & money!". I've never felt more relieved to have someone leave as when they got back to the US. It took us almost half a year to get back on track after that whole shebang and the CEO still has nightmares of how much was payed for them to come there and bro up the place. I was intending to write a short message but it turned into a little rant. What I mean to say is that yes, I believe you are correct and this American way of doing business is pushed around the world in what I think is a real bad direction for work-life balance.
      - ssivark 7y ago
        If you/your CEO/folks from your company could write an article/blog post about the experience, it would be a great resource to share and point people to — to seed discussion. Please consider :-)
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  > puritan american culture [ => busy busy busy ] There's definitely something to that. Calvinistic thinking that labor is pious seems to have been a part of American workplaces forever, especially tech. It's even a part even of the stackoverflow ethos-- god help you if you ask a question without showing that you've "done the work" up front. But it's all over the place. Look at the China tech sector with their popular 9-9-6 workweek. Is that an import from Western Calvinist thinking? I'm not sure, maybe? Whatever the case, "busyness" certainly has been exploited to serve "the man" and not "god".
  - Juliate 7y ago
    I think China has a well enough set of different traditions to gather from (that perhaps have common antique roots), rather than having been influenced by US' or European's puritanism currents. :)
  - mtberatwork 7y ago
    I think it's the "rugged individualism" ethos at play (although maybe that is a tangent of Calvinist thinking?) - the fear that if you ask questions you will come across as inferior to your colleagues and risk losing a promotion at best or a job at worst. It's quite terrible thinking and leads to isolation which compounds anxiety at work.
    - gerbilly 7y ago
      > rugged individualism Rugged individualism was probably never a thing. The first thing that settlers did when they moved west was to create towns and communities. Anyone believing otherwise should try to live in the equivalent of the 19th century west without the support of a town and the services it provides. (I.e.: no blacksmith, no doctor, no general store, no post office, no telegraph...)
  - the_af 7y ago
    > god help you if you ask a question without showing that you've "done the work" up front I think that's different. It's not about puritan work ethic or whatnot, it's about showing the minimum respect for the people you're asking to make an effort for you. Questions which don't show any effort [1] are shunned in tech circles, and this isn't something particular to StackOverflow. And there's a good reason for it: many are asked by "help vampires" [2], people who will burn honest answerers with pointless, ill-researched questions with no follow-up, no useful feedback or even a thank you. Extreme help vampires will even ask the same question repeatedly, apparently too lazy to even see it has been answered already. Some of them just want people to do their homework for them, free. Once or twice may not seem much, but if you don't cut them short, they'll overrun your community. The mere act of thinking how to phrase a question well, showing you've made all the research you could before finding yourself at a dead end, is often enough to actually find the answer for yourself! So the StackOverflow community may be a bit trigger-happy, but I completely understand why they'd be upset at people lazy enough to not even bother to formulate their questions clearly. [1] "How to ask questions the smart way": http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html [2] "What is a help vampire": http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/ http://slash7.com/2006/12/22/vampires/
- matwood 7y ago
  I don't like being busy, but I also like to be doing something active. I can only watch a couple episodes of a show before I have to create something or work with my hands or exercise. I don't think this has anything to do with a puritan culture. BTW, no fishing I've ever done has been idle or boring. Fishing is generally a lot of work.
ssivark 7y ago
> The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid [...] It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Nope, there's a hidden axis you're implicitly ignoring. It's possible to be active and "in flow" doing something without feeling "busy". So it's not just a 1-dimensional spectrum of whether one is idle or doing things, but also the psyche/attitude experienced when doing those things. The corresponding analogue to idleness is "leisure", where it is possible to enjoy idling or acting without coherent purpose. It takes a particular kind of anemic perspective to ignore the experiential axis, and just consider the axis corresponding to "things done" or "output produced". For a more detailed exposition on what goes into achieving a "flow" state, I recommend checking out Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi's book titled Flow. For more on "leisure", I recommend Bertrand Russell's essay In praise of idleness.
- fhennig 7y ago
  I found that a very nice observation! I've been struggling with stress lately and I feel like I'm surrounded by a culture where being busy is valued a lot, and people boast about how they stayed up very long to finish something, and it feels like that is a behavior that is reinforced. I really like tackling things on my own time, and I feel this "tunnelling" a lot and I don't like it at all. Sometimes it can be nice, but I feel like due to stress I tunnel too much. And I noticed that after being stressed for a while (weeks/months) it is very hard to come back and enjoy idleness. I think this is a problem in cultures with a "busy" work ethic.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  Flow state can be a trap. You can accomplish a lot of task checkboxes that are irrelevant. This is exactly what the article talks about. You must ask questions on whether what you're doing has any value - ultimately for you or someone/something you value. And while in flow state you cannot ask such questions as they're not directly related to what you're doing. Company values are at least a few degrees removed from this ultimate value. If you spend all the time in the flow state, you're likely are achieving nothing for your own goals, because you're not setting any. (Or worse, the goals are not thought out.) Flow is the same as hyperfocus physically, and overdoing will ultimately harm you physically, if not psychologically or socially first. It's also related to meditation. Like meditation it is not always beneficial, especially in excess. If this author has some other definition of flow, be careful, there might be a tautology or "no true Scotsman" involved.
lukebuehler 7y ago
> but no idea what is the opposite called Acedia
P_I_Staker 7y ago
You're making assumptions that aren't necessarily true. For instance, I'll avoid play in order to enjoy some idleness. I've figured out why I think; because I don't want to lose track of time, then have to go to work. The same reason I can sleep fine before my day off, but not before a work day. I don't even think I hate my job that much. I'm not really even working crazy hours; yet it still seems like there's no free time, and I don't want the little time available to fly by.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

romanovcode 7y ago

Exactly, best inner-feeling I have is when I know I don't have to do anything, literally anything. So I know I can do whatever I want.

OJFord 7y ago

I suspect 'humans' is an attempt to avoid stereotyping/sexism - but some people certainly do if not enjoy actually being busy, enjoy talking about how busy they are and how little time they have. i.e. the enjoyment I think is in projecting a certain image of oneself; not necessarily actually embodying that image.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I'm not sure it's about enjoyment. At the extremes I suspect it's more of a compulsion.
- AstralStorm 7y ago
  There can be enjoyment too, either normal or masochistic. Alleged accomplishment tickles reward centers in the brain. In most people, reward from repetitive tasks fades quickly, in some others it does not. (Perfect employees for assembly line. Except we have robots.) A masochist instead may thrive on the discomfort of it.

_pmf_ 7y ago

> I have never enjoyed feeling busy. Clearly, you are not manager material. Managers like to flaunt their busyness. It's their essence, their halo.

thejackgoode 7y ago

I have the opposite, feeling busy means I am focused and doing meaningful challenging work

Ididntdothis 7y ago
I guess you are in a good situation. My work often keeps me very busy but almost nothing of it is meaningful or challenging. It’s mainly just a repeat of the same thing.

brianmcc 7y ago

Most people would surely agree that neither under- nor over-stimulation is ideal on any kind of long term basis. A 2 week project crunch can be exhilarating, but 6 months? No thanks! Similarly a few weeks of beach vacation can be wonderfully relaxing, but months, years of "doing nothing" will soon become boring.

saiya-jin 7y ago
That's why you don't go to isolated places like Maldives (unless you are utterly addicted to diving and surfing) but rather Indonesia... you can spend years travelling around discovering places, culture, people, food etc. Met plenty of people stuck in travelling mode for years, but yeah they don't just lie around the beach (most of the time).

leggomylibro 7y ago

How about feeling idle with nothing to do but consider your own mortality? Not many people enjoy that, and Pascal wrote an interesting paper about it: http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html http://stmaryvalleybloom.org/pascal-diversion.html Personally, my main takeaway can be summarized by this passage: >And those who philosophise on the matter, and who think men unreasonable for spending a whole day in chasing a hare which they would not have bought, scarce know our nature. The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities; but the chase, which turns away our attention from these, does screen us.

EGreg 7y ago
What if you realize that distracting yourself from major things is foolish and your thoughts return to the topic every few hours a day? Have you figured anything out? Perhaps this can give you some practice every day: https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1 https://existentialcomics.com/comic/1
gerbilly 7y ago
> The hare in itself would not screen us from the sight of death and calamities The irony is not lost on me that the man in this anecdote is bringing untimely death to the hare, to distract himself from his own. Death probably feels just like you felt before you were born. Why not celebrate that there is anything to experience at all? It seems so improbable.
- leggomylibro 7y ago
  Haha, yeah. But hunting is just one of the examples that Pascal uses because of the times, along with gambling and war. Metaphorically, that passion project or artistic pursuit that you can't quite explain a practical use for is more or less the same idea.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
bigred100 7y ago
Some folks in fact think you should do that quite a bit. For example, this guy wrote quite a well-regarded (in his community) book about it: http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1696-1787,_De_Ligorio_Alphonsus,_Preparation_For_Death_Part_1,_EN.pdf http://www.documentacatholicaomnia.eu/03d/1696-1787,_De_Ligo...

hef19898 7y ago

Personally, I think there is a big difference between busy and occupied and lazy and idle. I love being productive / occupied, yet I hate being busy. And that has nothing to do with stress or pressure, but rather with impact. And yes, being busy resulted in a couple of less than perfect decisions on my behalf. The worst ones just for the sake of doing and deciding something.