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I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourc

• fwsgonzo 5y ago
  A close person suffered a stroke before 60 because of just that. It's the fastest way to die: Work in an office your whole life. Of course, now he's depressed and feels like he lost out on life by working too much, which is true. He started training really hard and got very fit. But the source of the depression will never go away.
  • thewarrior 5y ago
    Did the training start after the stroke or before ?
    • fwsgonzo 5y ago
      It was after the stroke. He really started enjoying mountain hiking and he still does. He keeps telling me that I need to take care of my body. That we aren't made for office life.
  • palimpsests 5y ago
    It sounds like you are describing the source of his depression as being his relationship to the memory and impact of what was, for him, relatively too much time working throughout his life. While the history here cannot be changed, the way he is relating to it can be changed. This is not necessarily very easy to do, but for most humans, a distinct possibility, with the right tools and resources. The source may be able to be de-potentiated, the emotional charge these memories carry in his system may be unwound, which can have a great effect on his quality of life.
• sverhagen 5y ago
  > Being forced to sit in the office I don't think it's the "sit[ting] in the office" part, rather it's the "being forced". If you love what you do, the mental strain of working long days is... at least different. You can still be physically destructive (skipping meals, skipping sleep). Unfortunately, many people do not love what they do, and I am so sorry for them.
  • newsclues 5y ago
    Physiologically our bodies are not optimized to sit all day and stare at screens.
  • agumonkey 5y ago
    I'd love to read / write about this. People talk about economy or material aspect of societies .. but when the spirit is not there everything plummets quickly. I feel like there's a lot more joy and output possible if we readjust a few things in how organizations operate.
• meheleventyone 5y ago
  The study doesn’t FWIW. Anecdotally I’m in my late-thirties, fit, don’t work crazy hours or live unhealthily and I had a heart attack a week ago today. Being sedentary obviously doesn’t help matters and I’d suspect in terms of risk factors working long hours without moving much is worse than working long hours whilst active but we can’t defend that with anecdotes.
  • deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  • ayushchat 5y ago
    Wow, I hope you're alright now. Can you share a bit more about what may be the reason for the heart attack? Your diet or fitness habits? I'm in my mid thirties, I think I'm fit, but constantly hear of "fit" people suffering heart attacks at this age.
    • meheleventyone 5y ago
      Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic disease associated with heart attacks. They also tested for genetic clotting conditions and I’m waiting on hearing back about immune system issues. The other suspected issue could be a undiagnosed hole between the two sides of my heart. Fitness wise I was swimming five days a week at a pretty good intensity. I’m pretty competitive so tend to push myself and as a sense of exertion my breast stroke pace is faster than most people’s freestyle. But this is just a local pool not some crazy swimming club. On top of that I make sure I do all the usual things like getting up from my desk regularly, take a walk at lunchtime and I have two young kids so usually we are going on hikes and bike rides at the weekend. I don’t smoke, I eat reasonably healthily, I don’t drink loads of coffee, I work from home, my job isn’t too stressful and so on. The only related history is that my father had a TIA aka “mini-stroke” at a similar age. I’m back at home now but was in hospital for five days. So far recovery seems to be going well, lots of resting with a couple of walks each day that get progressively longer. It’ll still be a few weeks before I’ll be doing anything more. Emotionally I still feel very raw, much more so than any of the other times I’ve knowingly come close to dying. I basically bottom out the risk factors for heart attack yet here we are.
• watwut 5y ago
  I dont think average stats really confirm that conclusion. People working in white collar professions have higher life expectancy then blue collar professions.
• novaRom 5y ago
  With today's technologies it's absolutely possible to work outside: A lengthy meeting where your role is a listener? - jogging Programming? - park, garden, beach Make breaks, walk, swim, run, enjoy fresh air, no need to stay indoors.
  • qolop 5y ago
    Any advise for how to work outside if 1. It's boiling hot 2. Air is dangerously polluted 3. No swimming pools in the vicinity 4. Mosquitoes in the parks and gardens will give you dengue
    • blocked_again 5y ago
      Emigrate.
      • 6ue7nNMEEbHcM 5y ago
        Where to?
    • 6ue7nNMEEbHcM 5y ago
      I don't know how people do this. I can't even work on the balcony, because it's either too bright, too hot, too cold or too loud. And it's in moderate climate.
      • CodeGlitch 5y ago
        Also not sitting at a proper desk with a full size keyboard, mouse and monitor will cause you all sorts of back/neck/arm/hand pain. There's no such thing as sitting on a beach with a laptop coding. You can only do that for a few days at a time. People who say otherwise are lying.
        • jliptzin 5y ago
          A few days? I wouldn’t be able to do it for 1 hour probably
• bserge 5y ago
  My grandfather was a carpenter. Died at a good old age... with missing fingers, arthritis, back problems. I fucked my knees working in construction, actually every single person I know in that line of work has health problems. Wear and tear is just part of existence, at least an office job gives you the choice to keep physically healthy without overusing your body. Tbf, it's possible to do it in a trade, too, but it's much more rare because people are usually pushed to the limit (and many take some weird sadomasochistic pride in that).
  • Frost1x 5y ago
    >Wear and tear is just part of existence, at least an office job gives you the choice to keep physically healthy without overusing your body. That entirely depends on time requirements and stress levels. When you need to work 50-60 hours in a week and/or have high stress, exercise may be a 'choice' but there are many who it's not a choice for. After a long or stressful week, I absolutely cannot get energy and motivation to exercise appropriately. I usually want to do absolutely nothing but relax and do incredibly low mental/physical stress activities. If you have a lot of these sort of weeks, no matter how much of a choice exercise may be, it's not a viable choice for many people. It's not a matter of laziness, when times are relaxed I get a good bit of healthy exercise and living habits in. When stress is high they all suffer.
    • bserge 5y ago
      True, but the same applies to physical jobs. And you'd think that you "exercise" at work, but no, using the same muscles over and over again for 8-12 hours a day seems to have different effects than exercising properly for 1-2 hours a day. Exercising in the morning and then going to the job made me feel much better, but after a while I was too tired to wake up. After a day of mental work, biking, stretching and basic exercises (no weights or anything) is "low effort", sort of, because it's the brain that's tired but the muscles are fine. It's hard to start, but I feel refreshed after ~30 minutes. But yeah, 50-60 hours a week is just bad, no matter what job it is.
  • Taylor_OD 5y ago
    Well and for most people its harder to drag themselves to a work site or even an office and do something physical than it is to drag themselves to a desk and move their fingers a bit.
• onion2k 5y ago
  My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. [...] He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. A friend of mine had to get a new carpenter to work on his house when the previous one died of a heart attack aged 45.
  • lnsru 5y ago
    My grandfather did 90% of work in his own workshop. No work on somebody’s house. There were injuries on fingers, but he died with all of them in place. If I remember it right, only 2 nails were gone.
    • onion2k 5y ago
      Maybe that had an impact, but maybe it didn't. We don't know. Taking a single data point and extrapolating from it ("Carpentry is safer than desk work because look at my grandfather") isn't useful.
      • tekknik 5y ago
        Maybe? Most likely. Easily, heat is problematic for heart health. then there’s enjoyment. perhaps his grandfather enjoyed working in a woodshop. someone laying siding is likely just making ends meet.
        • onion2k 5y ago
          The problem lies in the assumption that work you enjoy is better for your health than work you don't enjoy. I question that assumption. They're both work, they both take the same toll on your body, but one releases a neurotransmitter to tell you it's fun. Why would that difference make it healthier?
          • tekknik 5y ago
            For the same reason laughing helps you live longer. Walking around constantly miserable does take a toll on your body.
• pessimizer 5y ago
  I spent 76 hours/week working in a factory for a while as a machine operator and on the line. I guarantee you it's not healthier in the long term than programming work or stock trading at a desk and in conference rooms for 45 hours a week.
  • Mandelmus 5y ago
    I think there are huge differences between being a carpenter and being an assembly-line worker though.
  • agumonkey 5y ago
    What was harmful for you ?
• freddie_mercury 5y ago
  Ah yes, the good old "my anecdote trumps science" post on Hacker News. If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse. "Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the latest evidence were conducted for this study. Data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants were synthesized. The study covered global, regional and national levels, and was based on data from more than 2300 surveys collected in 154 countries from 1970-2018." The study has nothing to do with sitting in an office, despite what you claim.
  • dcolkitt 5y ago
    I think you’re confusing the map for the territory. The study pooled all workers together, but that doesn’t invalidate the hypothesis that certain types of workers were more affected. Unless the study explicitly broke out the purported subdivision, we can’t say for sure. For example imagine 50% of workers are office workers. And say heart attack risk is twice as high for overworked office workers but 10% less for non office workers. The study would find a broad-based 40% increase in risk for all workers, despite OPs original hypothesis being exactly correct.
    • WhompingWindows 5y ago
      The parent comment shoots from the hip, though. He has one anecdotal case of a more active career living to 92, then he postulates his inactive career will lead him to an extremely early death (60 is young in modern economies). That's just not the depth of discussion HN is designed for, does this ignite curiosity or push the discussion further?
      • throwaway8581 5y ago
        Yes, it does. This is exactly how you pick holes at research. What factors didn't it look at? That helps us understand the limits of what we can deduce from the data. Can we think of an intuitive story about why those factors might have a causal relationship to the thing being measured? If so, we have especially good reason to be skeptical of any conclusions from the study that don't address that possible explanation. Somewhere in the last couple of decades, the SCIENCE WORKS, BITCHES people seem to have forgotten how real science is actually done. Intuition, anecdote, common sense, hunches are very important parts of the process.
• agumonkey 5y ago
  I have a few anecdotes like that: - 39h/week at a truck dismantling warehouse (very heavy duty stuff) I was fresh like a dolphin (was doing pushups during pauses to get ready for the next shift, pretty telling), had to leave after harassment, missed that job a lot. - part time gig as morning newspaper delivery, couldn't be easier on paper.. couldn't last more than 2 months due to very peculiar stress that driving and stopping constantly while running after the clock. It made no sense but it was incredibly harmful mentally and biologically. - clerk at a court house: constant passive aggressive colleague interactions, everybody is bored, nobody cares. Very often you end up with your gut twisted due to the absurdity of the environment or the petty bosses ordering you around to feel powerful. 'work' is a subtle topic, you need a quality task, with quality people. In which case it's not a job, it's a life, a pleasure, a source of pride and joy.
  • tomcam 5y ago
    Love those extremely varied anecdotes, esp and tragically the courthouse one. What was the nature of the harassment?
    • agumonkey 5y ago
      Very rare kind of ~boss, old timer mechanics who had a military style of management, which I don't mind as long as you don't lie, but he started accusing me of shit. And with his persona you'd quickly feel gutted every time he speaks to you. It was extremely petty stuff like not finding screwdrivers but he made it a humiliating session and insisted that you did a wrong job. In reality it was an open warehouse and people from other services come and go and take tools they need regularly. I knew that after the fact. Also colleagues ended up threatening me because I had the balls to complain about the lack of organization. A lesson in tribal dynamics. The court house is way sadder than this, people go there because it's public guaranteed job so paycheck motivation only, people some times would sigh at the simplest movement (grabbing a pen). It also has social implications.. this delays lawsuits by years. It's stockholm syndrom institutionalized.
      • tomcam 5y ago
• SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  My tinsmith workaholic grandfather had his first heart attack in his mid 50's and I've been watching him lose metaphorical and sometimes literal pieces of himself due to his poor cardiovascular health for the last 30-ish years. So does this mean that the two anecdotes balance out, or that it's possible we shouldn't consider single cases as data?