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The conclusion came to me is that extreme working and extreme no-working are both bad in the long run. All you need is a work-family-life balance. I am also gl

• Aperocky 5y ago
  > slowly or quickly realize that you are just a regular human being like everybody else. The earlier the better, one of the best revelation that I had is that 'nobody actually cares about me that much'. So much of the peer/social pressure are self inflicted.
  • fullshark 5y ago
    Well hopefully you surround yourself with a smallish circle of people who care about you! But yes all your high school / college classmates / coworkers are off living their lives and not thinking about you.
• p1esk 5y ago
  Work, spouse, kids, the traditional way of life have been explored and chosen by human being for at least thousands of years. Vast majority of people did not “choose” all that throughout human history. There was zero alternative. They had to work to survive. If you want to make your argument you should only look at those who were born rich enough to not have to work.
  • kebman 5y ago
    People didn't really work that hard during the Medieval period. It was pretty chill. Play some chess with your bro. Work your ass off in the field or else no food. Get hounded by people in all-metal coats of arms. Back to playing chess with your bro. Wifey did the dishes anyway. Ooops here she is, better get my ass down to the field and till some earth, or I have to sleep in the barn!
    • kebman 5y ago
      You guys are no fun.
  • temp8964 5y ago
    Of course people can choose not having spouse or kids. What do you mean there is zero alternative? There are people born rich enough to not have to work, but do they live a happy life by not working all the way?
    • p1esk 5y ago
      What do you mean there is zero alternative? For most of the human history, for vast majority of the people, choosing not to have spouse and kids would mean choosing not to have sex, e.g. to become a monk. Also, the societal pressure to choose a traditional way of life if you were poor was a lot higher.
      • ipaddr 5y ago
        Not at all, the oldest profession is sex worker for a reason. Paying for sex is an option to being a monk.
    • chromanoid 5y ago
      Choice comes in various flavors. A single woman was very vulnerable some decades ago. While single men had it better there were and are still many stereotypes that affect your life. Just read the parts about feeling disconnected to many old friends. Imagine that a thousand times when you look at the past.
      • temp8964 5y ago
        The whole point is that when you have more and more choices , you can't escape your psychological needs as a human being. You can have sex with random strangers with protection from modern technology, but they don't provide the same intimacy you need from your spouse. You can live alone with single wage, but it does not fulfil your psychological needs can only be gained from living with a family.
    • kerkeslager 5y ago
      > Of course people can choose not having spouse or kids. What do you mean there is zero alternative? You're doing that thing where you claim there's freedom of choice because you're ignoring the punishment inflicted on one choice. The choice not to commit to a long-term relationship has had severe financial implications for centuries, especially if you are female. Until the invention of effective birth control, the choice to not have children meant giving up much of heterosexual sex. While there are still problems, the ability to have healthy heterosexual sexual relationships without children is largely solved by modern birth control. But I would argue that the choice to not marry is still financially punished pretty severely, though perhaps not as much as in centuries past. > There are people born rich enough to not have to work, but do they live a happy life by not working all the way? You're asking this as if it's a rhetorical question, but it's not. Being a rock climber, I've met plenty of Trustafarians who haven't done a lick of work in their lives, and are quite happy being skiing, surfing, or rock climbing bums. The flipside, is when I've met people who tried not working and said they didn't like it, that has always been coupled with a profound lack of imagination or self-awareness. I distinctly remember a post on HN where someone took a week off and just played World of Warcraft for the entire week, and when he found this unfulfilling he concluded that not working wasn't for him. It should be no surprise that a lifestyle with no physical activity or direct human interaction is dissatisfying--this isn't proof that work is a necessary part of human happiness, it's just proof that giving up work without replacing it with something better doesn't succeed.
• Taylor_OD 5y ago
  Yeah I'd love to be FI but even more I'd love to make what I make now and only work three days a week. Having more Me days then Employer days would really change my life.
  • dorchadas 5y ago
    This is the biggest reason I'll likely stay a teacher. I get plenty of 'me' days and, in a low CoL area, a decent enough salary. Sure, I'll likely never retire early (which was a goal of mine for a long time) and there are downsides, but it's better than how I see myself handling the alternative.
    • Taylor_OD 5y ago
      I've got a lot of family in the education space. They get paid shit money but having a solid two months off every year is pretty appealing.
      • dorchadas 5y ago
        Yep, exactly. I counted it up one time and I get 75 days off, not counting weekends. Plus 10 sick days and 2 personal days. It's really hard to beat that. And, being in one of the better paid districts in a low CoL area, well it isn't really all that bad (the culture around education is awful, but that's partially the result of admin and I think it can be changed slowly but surely). Find something I can do remotely part-time throughout the year and I'd honestly be set. Plus student loan forgiveness means I might actually get to own a house by the time I'm 35ish.
• dcolkitt 5y ago
  What's interesting is the radical change over the past century, from a life of pure leisure being the mark of the aristocratic upper class to the lumpenproletariat. I love how Downton Abbey conveys this now alien concept to us early on by having the Dowager Countess ask "what is a 'weekend'?". The perfect modern counter-balance is the classic line from Office Space: "Well, you don't need a million dollars to do nothing, man. Take a look at my cousin. He's broke, don't do Shit!"
  • bambax 5y ago
    Work as purpose is a rather novel idea. Max Weber is really helpful here, and his seminal book, while published in 1905, seems more relevant than ever. It used to be that you worked just as much as you needed to, to sustain yourself. So much so that raising wages would immediately result in people working less, as they could earn the same amount of money with less work. Then at some point work became a "calling" and working as hard as possible viewed as respectable, desirable and commendable. I still think this is insane. There are so many things to do, so many things to think/dream about. So many moments to just do nothing and stare at nature. I don't have time for work.
    • barrkel 5y ago
      You can make an analogy with the theory of the firm (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_the_firm). More workers = more transaction costs. Twice as many people working half as many hours is more expensive; it's more efficient to employ people full time. You'd expect this to crowd out many part-time jobs, jobs that aren't autonomous and low-context. That is, fast food cook, delivery driver, cleaning jobs etc. can be done part-time, but it's much harder to find shorter hours for white-collar work.
    • temp8964 5y ago
      No. "Work as purpose" is an observation, maybe a new observation (not sure about that). It's not like that a scholar invented an idea, then the mass followed the idea and the idea changed everyone's life. No scholar has this kind of magic power. Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs is called a theory. In its nature, it's a framework of psychological conceptions based on observations. It's not like Maslow tells people what they need and the human beings on this planet start to pursue their needs based on Maslow's demand. Yes. People want to work less, but people can't just wonder around without purpose for a long time. When you find your purpose, and start to spend your time on it, you are "working" on that purpose. Nobody says work = work for a boss.
• ausbah 5y ago
  sorry but what? work & family over the past 70-200 years is vastly different from work & family before them (most of human history). the focus of former for most everyone was just to survive; you worked (probably sustenance farming) to survive, you married for resources, you had children to help with work, etc. modern work and family is vastly different because work isn't solely motivated by the need for survival, many people today are privileged enough to think about other motivating factors like meaning, prestige, and satisfaction. only now do people had the ability to question things like how they structure relations and relationships, and find what works for them I think trying to extrapolate in the way you are is flawed
  • temp8964 5y ago
    Yes. there are changes in technology and economy, but not in basic human needs. There might be less people work for survival, and more for higher needs, but it does not change the basic structure of human needs (see Maslow's hierarchy of needs). I don't see how this point out what flaw I may have.
• baby 5y ago
  Sorry but I still don’t see the point in having kids or how it’s necessary for a happy life. People don’t make kids because it makes them happy. People make kids because they’re wired to do so.
• konschubert 5y ago
  I think there is huge a difference between working because you have to, and working because you want to.