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A friend of mine who fell for the "work hard forever" idea just wrote a lengthy post venting about what this did to her: when you spend all your free time worki

A friend of mine who fell for the "work hard forever" idea just wrote a lengthy post venting about what this did to her: when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. And you drift out of friend groups because of this. Your social skills atrophy, you have no idea how to try and make new friends on the rare occasions you pry yourself away from work. Work becomes your life. And even if your work is something you love to do, that never involves a toxic workplace or moral qualms or any other problems, there's still emotional needs work will never, ever fulfill.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
https://www.thebalancecareers.com/work-life-balance-and-juggling-glass-and-rubber-balls-2275864 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/work-life-balance-and-jugg... “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends and spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life." —- Bryan Dyson, then the President and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, delivering a commencement speech at Georgia Tech
- t-writescode 5y ago
  I hear more about the American hatred of redemption in that speech than the harmability of oneself from overwork. A person that has truly amended his relationships seems to have stronger ones than one who always had ‘fine’ ones, in many cases. Scrooge may not have become as beloved and loving a person without his repentance journey.
  - watwut 5y ago
    > A person that has truly amended his relationships seems to have stronger ones than one who always had ‘fine’ ones, in many cases. And in many cases, there is no amending anymore, cause other people got enough of it and trully moved on.And in even more cases, those seemingly strong relationships are actually noticeably damaged forever. They seem good because they are shelfes hanging together by sheer effort and often only out of inertia. No matter how repetant you are, you cant unhurt other people. Repetance is about you, but they in the meantime made own decisions. And if your plan from the start was to be repetant later to get back things you decided to sacrifice, it is smart from them to not accept it.
  - llampx 5y ago
    American hatred of redemption? [Citation needed] for sure. Relationships can survive a lot, but not every relationship can survive a lot, and sure there may be relationships that survive a lot of neglect but including those means you're falling for survivorship bias. A child that hasn't seen her parent in the formative years of childhood because they were too busy at work isn't going to be able to relate to her parent the same as a child who was able to. I see that with some of my acquaintances and their relationship with their father.
- username90 5y ago
  Friends and family bounce back as well. As you get more free time you go out and get new friends, or you contact your family or old friends again. The only problem is health, you don't really get that back easily. Of course it is harder to get them back than the keep them constant, but the same applies to jobs as well, the longer you have been without a job the harder it is to get back, but it is still not that hard.
  - brailsafe 5y ago
    Friends and family don't bounce back though, you need to repair them, glue them back together etc..
  - theriddlr 5y ago
    Elderly family members might die before you retire. Spending time with your child when they are all grown up won't make up for missing out on their formative years.
PragmaticPulp 5y ago
There's a difference between working hard with balance and working hard to the point of excluding everything else in life. > when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. If we consider a strict 40-hour maximum workweek on one end of the spectrum and what your friend is describing (100-120 hour workweek that leaves zero time for anything else), there's still a huge middle ground. We don't have to choose between working so hard that our entire lives fall apart or not ever doing hard work at all. Many of us do work longer weeks when necessary, balanced with a healthy dose of social activity and things we enjoy. If someone is working so much that they lose all of their friends and even their social skills, something else is going on. Burning yourself out and withdrawing from society isn't what people mean when they say "hard work". Like the author said, balance is important. Your friend's struggle wasn't necessarily with hard work, but with a complete lack of balance.
- Scarblac 5y ago
  I work a strict 40 hour work week, but I hardly know anybody else who works that much in my social group in the Netherlands. 32 is far more common; I think only about 4 of the 80 people in the company I work for work the full 40. I only work this much because my wife is jobless. So it's strange to see it described as the low end of the scale. I'd pick 24 hours per week.
  - mettamage 5y ago
    We Dutchies have one of the best flexible part-time work systems available I think. I think that because when I read HN or read job postings from other countries, or ask US people then I'm noticing that 40 or 40+ hours is much more common. I've noticed that a 4 day work week has outsized mental health benefits compared to 5 days. Especially when your free day is at Wednesday. There's only so much "damage" a consecutive 2 days of work can do. That break on the Wednesday is truly a life saver. With that said, I'm noticing that if you want to upskill and immerse, then 5 days is better, but it comes at a cost, which is: not having a lot of time for much else since a lot of free time is actually spend on recuperation from the work day! That cost isn't there when you work 4 days since recuperation happens much faster. Also, if you have remote possibilities at work, you can basically start doing what Tim Ferriss wrote in the 4 hour work week years ago. It's quite easy to travel and see the world in this mode. I guess even with kids? You have 3 whole days per person to figure stuff out. Well perhaps not anymore, but being able to determine your own work location is always beneficial (even if all you want to do is go to the office). I think with a 3 day work week something even strangers happens. You're now capable of completely living a second live that can truly eclipse your work week (e.g. 4 day "work" weeks in your other life). I haven't experimented with this though. A lot of fun can be had when you and your significant other both work 3/4 days per week :) It won't make you rich, but the upside is that you get to enjoy life now and practice your mind every now and then at work ;-) In that sense, I think Dutch people that truly fine tune this with regards to their needs, location expensens and so on can live a really rich life.
symlinkk 5y ago
This is where I’m at. I have no idea how to make friends as an adult.

toomuchtodo 5y ago

https://www.thebalancecareers.com/work-life-balance-and-juggling-glass-and-rubber-balls-2275864 https://www.thebalancecareers.com/work-life-balance-and-jugg... “Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling some five balls in the air. You name them - work, family, health, friends and spirit - and you're keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls - family, health, friends and spirit - are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life." —- Bryan Dyson, then the President and CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises, delivering a commencement speech at Georgia Tech

t-writescode 5y ago
I hear more about the American hatred of redemption in that speech than the harmability of oneself from overwork. A person that has truly amended his relationships seems to have stronger ones than one who always had ‘fine’ ones, in many cases. Scrooge may not have become as beloved and loving a person without his repentance journey.
- watwut 5y ago
  > A person that has truly amended his relationships seems to have stronger ones than one who always had ‘fine’ ones, in many cases. And in many cases, there is no amending anymore, cause other people got enough of it and trully moved on.And in even more cases, those seemingly strong relationships are actually noticeably damaged forever. They seem good because they are shelfes hanging together by sheer effort and often only out of inertia. No matter how repetant you are, you cant unhurt other people. Repetance is about you, but they in the meantime made own decisions. And if your plan from the start was to be repetant later to get back things you decided to sacrifice, it is smart from them to not accept it.
- llampx 5y ago
  American hatred of redemption? [Citation needed] for sure. Relationships can survive a lot, but not every relationship can survive a lot, and sure there may be relationships that survive a lot of neglect but including those means you're falling for survivorship bias. A child that hasn't seen her parent in the formative years of childhood because they were too busy at work isn't going to be able to relate to her parent the same as a child who was able to. I see that with some of my acquaintances and their relationship with their father.
username90 5y ago
Friends and family bounce back as well. As you get more free time you go out and get new friends, or you contact your family or old friends again. The only problem is health, you don't really get that back easily. Of course it is harder to get them back than the keep them constant, but the same applies to jobs as well, the longer you have been without a job the harder it is to get back, but it is still not that hard.
- brailsafe 5y ago
  Friends and family don't bounce back though, you need to repair them, glue them back together etc..
- theriddlr 5y ago
  Elderly family members might die before you retire. Spending time with your child when they are all grown up won't make up for missing out on their formative years.

PragmaticPulp 5y ago

There's a difference between working hard with balance and working hard to the point of excluding everything else in life. > when you spend all your free time working/studying, and constantly turn down invitations to go do stuff with friends, people stop inviting you to things. If we consider a strict 40-hour maximum workweek on one end of the spectrum and what your friend is describing (100-120 hour workweek that leaves zero time for anything else), there's still a huge middle ground. We don't have to choose between working so hard that our entire lives fall apart or not ever doing hard work at all. Many of us do work longer weeks when necessary, balanced with a healthy dose of social activity and things we enjoy. If someone is working so much that they lose all of their friends and even their social skills, something else is going on. Burning yourself out and withdrawing from society isn't what people mean when they say "hard work". Like the author said, balance is important. Your friend's struggle wasn't necessarily with hard work, but with a complete lack of balance.

Scarblac 5y ago
I work a strict 40 hour work week, but I hardly know anybody else who works that much in my social group in the Netherlands. 32 is far more common; I think only about 4 of the 80 people in the company I work for work the full 40. I only work this much because my wife is jobless. So it's strange to see it described as the low end of the scale. I'd pick 24 hours per week.
- mettamage 5y ago
  We Dutchies have one of the best flexible part-time work systems available I think. I think that because when I read HN or read job postings from other countries, or ask US people then I'm noticing that 40 or 40+ hours is much more common. I've noticed that a 4 day work week has outsized mental health benefits compared to 5 days. Especially when your free day is at Wednesday. There's only so much "damage" a consecutive 2 days of work can do. That break on the Wednesday is truly a life saver. With that said, I'm noticing that if you want to upskill and immerse, then 5 days is better, but it comes at a cost, which is: not having a lot of time for much else since a lot of free time is actually spend on recuperation from the work day! That cost isn't there when you work 4 days since recuperation happens much faster. Also, if you have remote possibilities at work, you can basically start doing what Tim Ferriss wrote in the 4 hour work week years ago. It's quite easy to travel and see the world in this mode. I guess even with kids? You have 3 whole days per person to figure stuff out. Well perhaps not anymore, but being able to determine your own work location is always beneficial (even if all you want to do is go to the office). I think with a 3 day work week something even strangers happens. You're now capable of completely living a second live that can truly eclipse your work week (e.g. 4 day "work" weeks in your other life). I haven't experimented with this though. A lot of fun can be had when you and your significant other both work 3/4 days per week :) It won't make you rich, but the upside is that you get to enjoy life now and practice your mind every now and then at work ;-) In that sense, I think Dutch people that truly fine tune this with regards to their needs, location expensens and so on can live a really rich life.

symlinkk 5y ago

This is where I’m at. I have no idea how to make friends as an adult.