10 ms·

Weary of Work

136 points by Hooke 5y ago

0xTJ 5y ago
I know it's not helpful to just go "well duh" to things like this. That being said, I feel like that's pretty far from surprising. Menial repetitive things can be incredibly draining.
dugditches 5y ago
There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. Especially in the modern era, where lots of the remaining factories run 24/7 operations to stay open. A bigger issue in more modern factories is technology augmenting old analog processes and systems. So now you have the physical burden of the work, which is much faster since all the 'thought' is handled by automation. However now you're responsible for the labor and babysitting the automation(which can go awry often and quickly). I found it worse in the Winter, with the shorter days. Where sometimes you'd rarely see the sun in a month.
- routerl 5y ago
  There are various notions of "focus" in academia, many of which are associated with the "positive psychology" school. In sympathy with your observation, I've looked for studies of these phenomena. But I haven't yet seen any study about the difference between "focus" in contexts where the agent has deeply internalized complex skills (e.g. an athlete) versus "focus" in contexts where the agent is expected to deeply internalize seemingly arbitrary routines (e.g. a warehouse fulfillment worker). Needless to say, athletes are much more able to "focus" than warehouse workers. I suspect that it may be statistically significant that, in the athlete's case, their ability to "focus" is deeply related to how emotionally fulfilling their tasks are perceived to be. In other words, we should expect wildly divergent degrees of "ability to focus on work" depending on the type of work we are discussing. To me, this is the crux of the Developer Experience movement: give me meaningful work, and I'll give you inspired/concentrated labor; give me bullshit, fruitless, clickbait concerns, and I'll give you bare minimum effort.
  - sdsaga12 5y ago
    Well said. I think your observation about the centrality of meaning not only rings true in the specific case of developer experience but also echoes the meaning crisis endemic to modern American life. Put another way, the capacity for human accomplishment in the context of WWII or the Apollo Program boggles the mind somewhat less when you consider how much these projects meant to the people involved. The meaning vacuum is distorting the culture beyond bullshit jobs, too, as is increasingly visible in people losing themselves in ideology or hatred for The Other. For many, these feel like the most foundational things they have to believe in.
  - developer93 5y ago
    I would suggest as well that the components of athletics, e.g. running, is something that we're evolutionarily used to - being a better runner would mean you would be less likely to be eaten/more likely to eat. Arbitrary tasks have no evolutionary advantage to them, so there's no a) biological systems for getting good at them or b) positive emotional feedback to incentivise getting good at them. If we'd had the same factory work for millions of years, we might have some mechanisms to enjoy or get good at it.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      > evolutionary advantage > If we'd had the same factory work for millions of years, we might have some mechanisms to enjoy or get good at it. This is simply NOT how evolution works. It's not intelligent and does not super-optimize a species for some task. It's very chaotic and messy and constantly gets stuck into local minima/maxima where species are barely "good enough" to survive. Furthermore, it works only on a set of physical attributes. There isn't a set of genes for liking repetitive work, or pop music, or similar abstract psychological traits. This is why the infamous eugenics experiments of the 1940s could not develop superhuman psychological traits.
      - goodpoint 5y ago
        Please provide evidence to the contrary instead of silent downvotes.
- wrnr 5y ago
  I've had programming jobs like that
- crispyambulance 5y ago
  > There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. That can be true, depending on the context. But there's something about doing physical tasks that is satisfying and dignified. I used to bus tables when I first started working. It was certainly menial and low status, but there was camaraderie with others doing that job or similar ones. It felt good to do something real. And although it was physically exhausting to come home at 2am smelling of restaurant, it was easy to have a hard sleep and a total reset the next day. What is far more draining and harmful is menial cognitive labor without tangible meaning, working under arbitrary rules and oppressive oversight. Even if it's "easy" it can lead to burnout, to feeling that you don't matter or are invisible and replaceable like a commodity. These effects persist and last, there's no waking up in the morning and feeling a sense of "reset". I think some people just get crushed by this. I do. Others seem to thrive if they can find a headspace where they can do that job while being mentally checked-out.
  - biztos 5y ago
    My first “real” job was dishwasher with extra kitchen duties as time allowed, and bussing if it got too busy for the waitresses to keep up. The chef was a hard-ass but had the work ethic to back it up. It was actually a pretty high status job for a 14 year old in a small town. Minimum wage plus a small but fair share of tips so if you had to hustle you knew it’d be rewarded. I couldn’t do that kind of work now physically, but it remains my favorite among the many jobs I’ve had.
- CRConrad 5y ago
  > There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. I wonder to what extent it's related to precisely the fact that physical labour is ever more seen as "menial".
BikiniPrince 5y ago
New report that water is wet. If you can operate in a career that is not menial labor you typically would do that.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I remember reading that Henry Ford didn't pay 5 dollars a day out of some deep insight or goodness in his heart but because people hated factory work. So he had to pay very good money for the time to find workers.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  He also was a good friend of Hitler.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
alfiedotwtf 5y ago
> A key event was the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Rather than restricting night work, the law created the right to “time-and-a-half” overtime pay, effectively ending the campaign to reduce hours. After that, both the number of hours Americans worked each week and the number of weeks they worked each year began to rise. Das Kapital by Karl Marx goes into great detail with UK's Factory Acts of the 1800s. It's mind boggling that before those laws, children as young as 8 were working 16 hours a day in British factories.
- WalterBright 5y ago
  Keep in mind that the world operated on subsistence farming before 1800, and children were put to work as soon as they could walk. Families had no choice. Analysis of the bones of pre-1800 American colonists show extreme overwork. They died young. Analysis of the bones of pre-Columbian Central American natives also showed extreme labor done by children. What eventually saved children from this was the rising productivity that came from industrialization.
  - BlueTemplar 5y ago
    This is somewhat misleading : if you use human height as a proxy for wellbeing, you will see that Victorian Britain was a particularly low point. So is studying early American colonists : they found themselves in particularly hostile territory, which they had no know-how about, with only unreliable support by ship.
    - WalterBright 5y ago
      The height problem was a result of the population outpacing the food supply. The height of Americans started skyrocketing in 1800, and this continued right up to WW2, when it leveled off. As historian Eugene Weber observed, America in 1800 was the first time in human history when enough food was produced to end the constant threat of famine. P.S. The pre-Columbian North American Indians didn't have it much better. Their bones show repeated episodes of famine.
greggman3 5y ago
I don't know my history. Are they saying that working in a factory was more fatigue inducing than working on a farm? Or just that working in a factory was fatigue inducing and not comparing it to other ways of living that were common at the time. In any case I'm glad I am fortunate not to work in a factory
- bobthepanda 5y ago
  The article makes no comparison to any other fields. Factories had pretty tough working conditions full of repetitive, dangerous work, and most of the things that rich world workers take for granted (weekends, an 8-hour week, even minimum amounts of breaks for toilets and lunch) were fought for with blood, sweat and tears. The article argues that the continued drive for ever-increasing productivity encouraged studies to figure out how to make workers less fatigued, in the best scenarios for workers' own benefit and in the worst scenario to try and squeeze them dry.
  - XorNot 5y ago
    The beautiful psychology of "this is boring and not that hard... Except if you slip up you'll be greviously injured" Digging a hole is hard work, but it's very difficult to hurt yourself doing it.
    - luckylion 5y ago
      > Digging a hole is hard work, but it's very difficult to hurt yourself doing it. Dying while digging a well is still happening where wells are dug by hand. People have accidents while cleaning their apartments, digging a hole deep enough to hit ground water has lots of dangers.
    - agumonkey 5y ago
      I did hole digging (more like trench picking actually) and it was the most arduous, laborious, straining, exhausting job I ever had to do, bar none. So hard you get to learn a lot of new adjectives. Picking is even an art form, because done badly.. most of the energy will backfire right into your hands and wrists. I was utterly surprised how fine you need to operate that mass to ensure your 8000 hits per day won't destroy you.
disabled 5y ago
I deal with chronic, severe fatigue due to 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. This is what generally helped me manage my fatigue: The ultimate resource for dealing with fatigue is the book called "Energityvene" ("Energy Thieves") [1] which is only printed in Norwegian. It covers pretty much every single fathomable situation in terms of people dealing with fatigue, such as disabled people and high-performing professionals. It covers all types of fatigue, whether it be physical or mental. Most importantly, it gives actionable solutions for all of the above categories for people in various situations. Unfortunately, this is the only source that covers it from A to Z. The book helped me tremendously and was life changing. I found it by searching across the web, using key words, and found a bunch of useful Norwegian PDFs, such as these [2][3]. Since it was mostly all related to a book in Norwegian, I found a bookstore that sold an eBook version of "Energityvene". I converted the book to a .docx file using Calibre [4], and then I uploaded it to IBM Watson Language Translator [5], and had the .docx translated to English. I then read it and it changed my life. Also, chronobiology [6] is a big deal and makes a huge difference, if you understand it and study it. Knowing your chronotype (circadian rhythm pattern) and calibrating your life around it makes a huge difference. Here are a bunch of useful PDFs about chronobiology [7]. Interestingly, I use light therapy (different sorts of therapeutic lighting) calibrated around the time of day, for my chronotype, to manage my energy levels consistently, so my circadian rhythm stays the same. So, I use a wake-up light (to wake up in the morning), a special light at my desk (mid-day), a sundown lamp (during dusk/evening), and night-time lighting (no bright lights). I monitor the light levels I am exposed to throughout the day (lux levels) so it is a precise and prescriptive amount of light. With respect to finding your chronotype, you may need an actigraph watch to determine your chronotype. The Geneactiv actigraph watch does this, and also measures your lighting levels [8]. It costs around $200. You also need to practice resting, just as hard as you work. Figuring out how to do that is hard if you have a strong type A personality, but you can do it. Be creative. Sleep is critical, and is unfortunately extremely underrated. I also record my sleep every night with an OpenBCI EEG recorder [9], using 16 channels. It is effectively a home sleep lab [10]. When I wake up in the morning I run scripts (mostly from GitHub) to see how well I slept, and also to see the sleep staging patterns. This also helps me see if I am going to get out of my circadian rhythm. [1] Energityvene: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34138256-energityvene https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34138256-energityvene [2] DuckDuckGo Search-filetype:pdf "Energityvene": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22... [3] DuckDuckGo Search-filetype:pdf "Energityvene" site:kognitiv.no: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22+site%3Akognitiv.no&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22+... [4] Calibre (Software): https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ [5] IBM Watson Language Translation, Translating Documents Information: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-document-translator-tutorial https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=languag... [6] Chronobiology Information: http://www.chronobiology.ch/ http://www.chronobiology.ch/ [7] Peer-Reviewed Chronobiology Journal Articles: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Achronobiology.ch+filetype%3Apdf&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Achronobiology.ch+filetype%3... [8] GeneActiv Actigraph: https://www.activinsights.com/technology/geneactiv/ https://www.activinsights.com/technology/geneactiv/ [9] OpenBCI Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI [10] Home Sleep Lab Information: https://www.spisop.org/openbci/ https://www.spisop.org/openbci/
spodek 5y ago
I recommend James Suzman's recent book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, which examines our relationship with work from our evolutionary beginnings to modern day. The interplay of most of our human past from before agriculture, that revolution, the industrial revolution, and our beliefs about economics and distribution of scarce resources or abundance will likely change your views about how much to work and where to get satisfaction in life. A big takeaway is that much of what many of us believe are human traits are more products of an economic system we choose than our basic wiring. Ignorance of other systems keeps us from seeing we can change our beliefs.
- disabled 5y ago
  Thank you so much for the recommendation! I am reading it right now! It is an awesome and engaging read! :-)
monkeydust 5y ago
This just reaffirms my belief that automation is net a good think for society and humanity although I do fear that the benefits will not be equally distributed without changes to taxation and introduction of UBI. Both of these will happen, just matter of time.
- intricatedetail 5y ago
  Each robot should be paid at least minimum wage taxed at 100% minus wear and tear and that should be redistributed across unemployed.
  - FredPret 5y ago
    Define "robot". If it's a clear one-to-one of a human job lost and a robot being slotted in, fine. But modern factories are full of processes being monitored and executed automatically. Is a conveyor belt a robot? What about a giant, complex machine that monitors itself to an extent and can execute a series of actions?
    - intricatedetail 5y ago
      The metric could be how many human beings a particular device can replace. If a conveyor belt could be replaced by 10 people working in shifts where at any given time 5 people work, then the machine should be paid 5x minimum wage.
      - FredPret 5y ago
        One skilled engineer and a few mechanics operating and maintaining a network of conveyors can move a boatload of stuff in a day. They use this tech as leverage. If they replace, say, five hundred people with carts, we can say that the conveyors replaced 495-ish people. But the carts replace probably another x people. And the gloves the workers wear. And their boots. The factory is probably climate controlled, which helps immensely. Simple clipboards with paper do so much to keep the wheels of industry turning. Even safety goggles contribute to productivity. Which of these technologies have to ge “paid”, and how much? This isn’t a simple approach at all, and very easy to game by production facilities.
ctdonath 5y ago
I’d like to see such discussion/analysis in context of objective baseline of an individual eliciting sustenance out of raw nature, such as John Plant’s “Primitive Technology” series - hard work for mundane results, the base starting point and ongoing alternative to whatever studies address. There seems an axiomatic assumption that “post scarcity economy” really is a thing, that a viable alternative to any system is a life of perfunctory “work” and relative leisure. Reality is: the natural starting point is eking sustenance out of dirt & growth, and all systems are an attempt to better that productivity/efficiency. Without establishing that objective baseline, discussion of worker productivity is enticing but unproductive.
jacksonkmarley 5y ago
I've worked in any number of crappy labouring type jobs and the main difference between 'bearable' and 'fuck this' was most often bosses who believed in constantly giving everyone the hurry-up. Going at your own pace feels like a superpower when you're not used to it. Being tired at the end of the day was pretty normal for most of the labouring jobs I've had, but it mostly felt like a simple exchange, my effort for money to live. Varying levels of sucky conditions were part of the weighing up against rate of pay. Overtime was just another weighing up, inconvenience of the extra hours or weirdly timed shift against higher pay. Those simple calculations didn't usually seem unfair, until some jerk tried to get free money for himself or the company by pushing everyone to do more than they felt comfortable. Not only because of physical discomfort, but the underlying stress of always being pressured. It's totally understandable why bosses think thats a good idea, while at the same time I hate it like poison. Obviously that problem is not restricted to manual labour, but I guess it is the one of the most easily replaceable resources, and you don't have much leverage, so it shows up often there.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  I have also worked physically demanding jobs but none of them phatigued me like writing software for eight hours.
  - jacksonkmarley 5y ago
    I think there's some analogue between the sore body and physical tiredness after physical labour workdays, and the mental fatigue and dull brain after all-day intense coding. Both are quite unpleasant if they overwhelm you, but there are ways to mitigate both types of effects if you are in a position to manipulate your workday and/or your free time. Snapping yourself out of those states is pretty important IMO. I've had varying success with things like sport or general exercise, it really takes willpower to overcome sometimes though. Work in progress still for me.
    - wildrhythms 5y ago
      Or perhaps the concept of the 8-hour work day lends itself neither to physical nor mental well-being?
datavirtue 5y ago
All I could think of while reading this is Amazon packers not wanting to pee because it will "affect their numbers."
tppiotrowski 5y ago
> In a 1930 article in Scientific American, Donald A. Laird, the director of the Colgate Psychology Laboratory, pronounced the “poor emotional adjustment of the individual” the “most treacherous and insidious source” of worker fatigue. Mary T., a thirty-five-year-old sales clerk at Macy’s, represented a “typical case.” Because she had been complaining of tiredness for six years, her employers had given her repeated leaves with pay. Finally, the store psychiatrist easily found “emotional causes for her chronic fatigue state.” She had few friends, was very jealous of her married sister, and had poor relationships with her parents, with whom she still lived. After explaining that she had been “seeking pity and sympathy through appearing tired,” the psychiatrist “planned a scheme of emotional reeducation for her.” With that help, her mental health improved and “her chronic fatigue disappeared.” This is a fascinating topic. I have felt like programming can be psychologically overwhelming. You doubt your choices, you worry if there’s bugs or if it will scale, and if there’s a security exploit you’ve introduced or could possibly lose customer data or bring down the service for millions of users. All that can be emotionally exhausting. A ‘no blame’ culture might actually create a better work environment than shorter hours.

136 points by Hooke 5y ago

0xTJ 5y ago

I know it's not helpful to just go "well duh" to things like this. That being said, I feel like that's pretty far from surprising. Menial repetitive things can be incredibly draining.

dugditches 5y ago

There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. Especially in the modern era, where lots of the remaining factories run 24/7 operations to stay open. A bigger issue in more modern factories is technology augmenting old analog processes and systems. So now you have the physical burden of the work, which is much faster since all the 'thought' is handled by automation. However now you're responsible for the labor and babysitting the automation(which can go awry often and quickly). I found it worse in the Winter, with the shorter days. Where sometimes you'd rarely see the sun in a month.

routerl 5y ago
There are various notions of "focus" in academia, many of which are associated with the "positive psychology" school. In sympathy with your observation, I've looked for studies of these phenomena. But I haven't yet seen any study about the difference between "focus" in contexts where the agent has deeply internalized complex skills (e.g. an athlete) versus "focus" in contexts where the agent is expected to deeply internalize seemingly arbitrary routines (e.g. a warehouse fulfillment worker). Needless to say, athletes are much more able to "focus" than warehouse workers. I suspect that it may be statistically significant that, in the athlete's case, their ability to "focus" is deeply related to how emotionally fulfilling their tasks are perceived to be. In other words, we should expect wildly divergent degrees of "ability to focus on work" depending on the type of work we are discussing. To me, this is the crux of the Developer Experience movement: give me meaningful work, and I'll give you inspired/concentrated labor; give me bullshit, fruitless, clickbait concerns, and I'll give you bare minimum effort.
- sdsaga12 5y ago
  Well said. I think your observation about the centrality of meaning not only rings true in the specific case of developer experience but also echoes the meaning crisis endemic to modern American life. Put another way, the capacity for human accomplishment in the context of WWII or the Apollo Program boggles the mind somewhat less when you consider how much these projects meant to the people involved. The meaning vacuum is distorting the culture beyond bullshit jobs, too, as is increasingly visible in people losing themselves in ideology or hatred for The Other. For many, these feel like the most foundational things they have to believe in.
- developer93 5y ago
  I would suggest as well that the components of athletics, e.g. running, is something that we're evolutionarily used to - being a better runner would mean you would be less likely to be eaten/more likely to eat. Arbitrary tasks have no evolutionary advantage to them, so there's no a) biological systems for getting good at them or b) positive emotional feedback to incentivise getting good at them. If we'd had the same factory work for millions of years, we might have some mechanisms to enjoy or get good at it.
  - goodpoint 5y ago
    > evolutionary advantage > If we'd had the same factory work for millions of years, we might have some mechanisms to enjoy or get good at it. This is simply NOT how evolution works. It's not intelligent and does not super-optimize a species for some task. It's very chaotic and messy and constantly gets stuck into local minima/maxima where species are barely "good enough" to survive. Furthermore, it works only on a set of physical attributes. There isn't a set of genes for liking repetitive work, or pop music, or similar abstract psychological traits. This is why the infamous eugenics experiments of the 1940s could not develop superhuman psychological traits.
    - goodpoint 5y ago
      Please provide evidence to the contrary instead of silent downvotes.
wrnr 5y ago
I've had programming jobs like that
crispyambulance 5y ago
> There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. That can be true, depending on the context. But there's something about doing physical tasks that is satisfying and dignified. I used to bus tables when I first started working. It was certainly menial and low status, but there was camaraderie with others doing that job or similar ones. It felt good to do something real. And although it was physically exhausting to come home at 2am smelling of restaurant, it was easy to have a hard sleep and a total reset the next day. What is far more draining and harmful is menial cognitive labor without tangible meaning, working under arbitrary rules and oppressive oversight. Even if it's "easy" it can lead to burnout, to feeling that you don't matter or are invisible and replaceable like a commodity. These effects persist and last, there's no waking up in the morning and feeling a sense of "reset". I think some people just get crushed by this. I do. Others seem to thrive if they can find a headspace where they can do that job while being mentally checked-out.
- biztos 5y ago
  My first “real” job was dishwasher with extra kitchen duties as time allowed, and bussing if it got too busy for the waitresses to keep up. The chef was a hard-ass but had the work ethic to back it up. It was actually a pretty high status job for a 14 year old in a small town. Minimum wage plus a small but fair share of tips so if you had to hustle you knew it’d be rewarded. I couldn’t do that kind of work now physically, but it remains my favorite among the many jobs I’ve had.
CRConrad 5y ago
> There is something very draining about 'menial' physical labor. I wonder to what extent it's related to precisely the fact that physical labour is ever more seen as "menial".

BikiniPrince 5y ago

New report that water is wet. If you can operate in a career that is not menial labor you typically would do that.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I remember reading that Henry Ford didn't pay 5 dollars a day out of some deep insight or goodness in his heart but because people hated factory work. So he had to pay very good money for the time to find workers.

intricatedetail 5y ago
He also was a good friend of Hitler.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

alfiedotwtf 5y ago

> A key event was the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938. Rather than restricting night work, the law created the right to “time-and-a-half” overtime pay, effectively ending the campaign to reduce hours. After that, both the number of hours Americans worked each week and the number of weeks they worked each year began to rise. Das Kapital by Karl Marx goes into great detail with UK's Factory Acts of the 1800s. It's mind boggling that before those laws, children as young as 8 were working 16 hours a day in British factories.

WalterBright 5y ago
Keep in mind that the world operated on subsistence farming before 1800, and children were put to work as soon as they could walk. Families had no choice. Analysis of the bones of pre-1800 American colonists show extreme overwork. They died young. Analysis of the bones of pre-Columbian Central American natives also showed extreme labor done by children. What eventually saved children from this was the rising productivity that came from industrialization.
- BlueTemplar 5y ago
  This is somewhat misleading : if you use human height as a proxy for wellbeing, you will see that Victorian Britain was a particularly low point. So is studying early American colonists : they found themselves in particularly hostile territory, which they had no know-how about, with only unreliable support by ship.
  - WalterBright 5y ago
    The height problem was a result of the population outpacing the food supply. The height of Americans started skyrocketing in 1800, and this continued right up to WW2, when it leveled off. As historian Eugene Weber observed, America in 1800 was the first time in human history when enough food was produced to end the constant threat of famine. P.S. The pre-Columbian North American Indians didn't have it much better. Their bones show repeated episodes of famine.

greggman3 5y ago

I don't know my history. Are they saying that working in a factory was more fatigue inducing than working on a farm? Or just that working in a factory was fatigue inducing and not comparing it to other ways of living that were common at the time. In any case I'm glad I am fortunate not to work in a factory

bobthepanda 5y ago
The article makes no comparison to any other fields. Factories had pretty tough working conditions full of repetitive, dangerous work, and most of the things that rich world workers take for granted (weekends, an 8-hour week, even minimum amounts of breaks for toilets and lunch) were fought for with blood, sweat and tears. The article argues that the continued drive for ever-increasing productivity encouraged studies to figure out how to make workers less fatigued, in the best scenarios for workers' own benefit and in the worst scenario to try and squeeze them dry.
- XorNot 5y ago
  The beautiful psychology of "this is boring and not that hard... Except if you slip up you'll be greviously injured" Digging a hole is hard work, but it's very difficult to hurt yourself doing it.
  - luckylion 5y ago
    > Digging a hole is hard work, but it's very difficult to hurt yourself doing it. Dying while digging a well is still happening where wells are dug by hand. People have accidents while cleaning their apartments, digging a hole deep enough to hit ground water has lots of dangers.
  - agumonkey 5y ago
    I did hole digging (more like trench picking actually) and it was the most arduous, laborious, straining, exhausting job I ever had to do, bar none. So hard you get to learn a lot of new adjectives. Picking is even an art form, because done badly.. most of the energy will backfire right into your hands and wrists. I was utterly surprised how fine you need to operate that mass to ensure your 8000 hits per day won't destroy you.

disabled 5y ago

I deal with chronic, severe fatigue due to 2 rare immune-mediated neurological diseases affecting my peripheral nervous system. This is what generally helped me manage my fatigue: The ultimate resource for dealing with fatigue is the book called "Energityvene" ("Energy Thieves") [1] which is only printed in Norwegian. It covers pretty much every single fathomable situation in terms of people dealing with fatigue, such as disabled people and high-performing professionals. It covers all types of fatigue, whether it be physical or mental. Most importantly, it gives actionable solutions for all of the above categories for people in various situations. Unfortunately, this is the only source that covers it from A to Z. The book helped me tremendously and was life changing. I found it by searching across the web, using key words, and found a bunch of useful Norwegian PDFs, such as these [2][3]. Since it was mostly all related to a book in Norwegian, I found a bookstore that sold an eBook version of "Energityvene". I converted the book to a .docx file using Calibre [4], and then I uploaded it to IBM Watson Language Translator [5], and had the .docx translated to English. I then read it and it changed my life. Also, chronobiology [6] is a big deal and makes a huge difference, if you understand it and study it. Knowing your chronotype (circadian rhythm pattern) and calibrating your life around it makes a huge difference. Here are a bunch of useful PDFs about chronobiology [7]. Interestingly, I use light therapy (different sorts of therapeutic lighting) calibrated around the time of day, for my chronotype, to manage my energy levels consistently, so my circadian rhythm stays the same. So, I use a wake-up light (to wake up in the morning), a special light at my desk (mid-day), a sundown lamp (during dusk/evening), and night-time lighting (no bright lights). I monitor the light levels I am exposed to throughout the day (lux levels) so it is a precise and prescriptive amount of light. With respect to finding your chronotype, you may need an actigraph watch to determine your chronotype. The Geneactiv actigraph watch does this, and also measures your lighting levels [8]. It costs around $200. You also need to practice resting, just as hard as you work. Figuring out how to do that is hard if you have a strong type A personality, but you can do it. Be creative. Sleep is critical, and is unfortunately extremely underrated. I also record my sleep every night with an OpenBCI EEG recorder [9], using 16 channels. It is effectively a home sleep lab [10]. When I wake up in the morning I run scripts (mostly from GitHub) to see how well I slept, and also to see the sleep staging patterns. This also helps me see if I am going to get out of my circadian rhythm. [1] Energityvene: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34138256-energityvene https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34138256-energityvene [2] DuckDuckGo Search-filetype:pdf "Energityvene": https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=+filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22... [3] DuckDuckGo Search-filetype:pdf "Energityvene" site:kognitiv.no: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22+site%3Akognitiv.no&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=filetype%3Apdf+%22Energityvene%22+... [4] Calibre (Software): https://calibre-ebook.com/ https://calibre-ebook.com/ [5] IBM Watson Language Translation, Translating Documents Information: https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=language-translator-document-translator-tutorial https://cloud.ibm.com/docs/language-translator?topic=languag... [6] Chronobiology Information: http://www.chronobiology.ch/ http://www.chronobiology.ch/ [7] Peer-Reviewed Chronobiology Journal Articles: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Achronobiology.ch+filetype%3Apdf&t=ffab&ia=web https://duckduckgo.com/?q=site%3Achronobiology.ch+filetype%3... [8] GeneActiv Actigraph: https://www.activinsights.com/technology/geneactiv/ https://www.activinsights.com/technology/geneactiv/ [9] OpenBCI Information: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenBCI [10] Home Sleep Lab Information: https://www.spisop.org/openbci/ https://www.spisop.org/openbci/

spodek 5y ago

I recommend James Suzman's recent book Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots, which examines our relationship with work from our evolutionary beginnings to modern day. The interplay of most of our human past from before agriculture, that revolution, the industrial revolution, and our beliefs about economics and distribution of scarce resources or abundance will likely change your views about how much to work and where to get satisfaction in life. A big takeaway is that much of what many of us believe are human traits are more products of an economic system we choose than our basic wiring. Ignorance of other systems keeps us from seeing we can change our beliefs.

disabled 5y ago
Thank you so much for the recommendation! I am reading it right now! It is an awesome and engaging read! :-)

monkeydust 5y ago

This just reaffirms my belief that automation is net a good think for society and humanity although I do fear that the benefits will not be equally distributed without changes to taxation and introduction of UBI. Both of these will happen, just matter of time.

intricatedetail 5y ago
Each robot should be paid at least minimum wage taxed at 100% minus wear and tear and that should be redistributed across unemployed.
- FredPret 5y ago
  Define "robot". If it's a clear one-to-one of a human job lost and a robot being slotted in, fine. But modern factories are full of processes being monitored and executed automatically. Is a conveyor belt a robot? What about a giant, complex machine that monitors itself to an extent and can execute a series of actions?
  - intricatedetail 5y ago
    The metric could be how many human beings a particular device can replace. If a conveyor belt could be replaced by 10 people working in shifts where at any given time 5 people work, then the machine should be paid 5x minimum wage.
    - FredPret 5y ago
      One skilled engineer and a few mechanics operating and maintaining a network of conveyors can move a boatload of stuff in a day. They use this tech as leverage. If they replace, say, five hundred people with carts, we can say that the conveyors replaced 495-ish people. But the carts replace probably another x people. And the gloves the workers wear. And their boots. The factory is probably climate controlled, which helps immensely. Simple clipboards with paper do so much to keep the wheels of industry turning. Even safety goggles contribute to productivity. Which of these technologies have to ge “paid”, and how much? This isn’t a simple approach at all, and very easy to game by production facilities.

ctdonath 5y ago

I’d like to see such discussion/analysis in context of objective baseline of an individual eliciting sustenance out of raw nature, such as John Plant’s “Primitive Technology” series - hard work for mundane results, the base starting point and ongoing alternative to whatever studies address. There seems an axiomatic assumption that “post scarcity economy” really is a thing, that a viable alternative to any system is a life of perfunctory “work” and relative leisure. Reality is: the natural starting point is eking sustenance out of dirt & growth, and all systems are an attempt to better that productivity/efficiency. Without establishing that objective baseline, discussion of worker productivity is enticing but unproductive.

jacksonkmarley 5y ago

I've worked in any number of crappy labouring type jobs and the main difference between 'bearable' and 'fuck this' was most often bosses who believed in constantly giving everyone the hurry-up. Going at your own pace feels like a superpower when you're not used to it. Being tired at the end of the day was pretty normal for most of the labouring jobs I've had, but it mostly felt like a simple exchange, my effort for money to live. Varying levels of sucky conditions were part of the weighing up against rate of pay. Overtime was just another weighing up, inconvenience of the extra hours or weirdly timed shift against higher pay. Those simple calculations didn't usually seem unfair, until some jerk tried to get free money for himself or the company by pushing everyone to do more than they felt comfortable. Not only because of physical discomfort, but the underlying stress of always being pressured. It's totally understandable why bosses think thats a good idea, while at the same time I hate it like poison. Obviously that problem is not restricted to manual labour, but I guess it is the one of the most easily replaceable resources, and you don't have much leverage, so it shows up often there.

datavirtue 5y ago
I have also worked physically demanding jobs but none of them phatigued me like writing software for eight hours.
- jacksonkmarley 5y ago
  I think there's some analogue between the sore body and physical tiredness after physical labour workdays, and the mental fatigue and dull brain after all-day intense coding. Both are quite unpleasant if they overwhelm you, but there are ways to mitigate both types of effects if you are in a position to manipulate your workday and/or your free time. Snapping yourself out of those states is pretty important IMO. I've had varying success with things like sport or general exercise, it really takes willpower to overcome sometimes though. Work in progress still for me.
  - wildrhythms 5y ago
    Or perhaps the concept of the 8-hour work day lends itself neither to physical nor mental well-being?

datavirtue 5y ago

All I could think of while reading this is Amazon packers not wanting to pee because it will "affect their numbers."

tppiotrowski 5y ago

> In a 1930 article in Scientific American, Donald A. Laird, the director of the Colgate Psychology Laboratory, pronounced the “poor emotional adjustment of the individual” the “most treacherous and insidious source” of worker fatigue. Mary T., a thirty-five-year-old sales clerk at Macy’s, represented a “typical case.” Because she had been complaining of tiredness for six years, her employers had given her repeated leaves with pay. Finally, the store psychiatrist easily found “emotional causes for her chronic fatigue state.” She had few friends, was very jealous of her married sister, and had poor relationships with her parents, with whom she still lived. After explaining that she had been “seeking pity and sympathy through appearing tired,” the psychiatrist “planned a scheme of emotional reeducation for her.” With that help, her mental health improved and “her chronic fatigue disappeared.” This is a fascinating topic. I have felt like programming can be psychologically overwhelming. You doubt your choices, you worry if there’s bugs or if it will scale, and if there’s a security exploit you’ve introduced or could possibly lose customer data or bring down the service for millions of users. All that can be emotionally exhausting. A ‘no blame’ culture might actually create a better work environment than shorter hours.