4 ms·

Thanks for sharing. >Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap. Yeah, this is something people don't realize until they're it in. It's not fun.

Thanks for sharing. >Just doing nothing sounds awesome. It's not. It's crap. Yeah, this is something people don't realize until they're it in. It's not fun. Humans long to be needed. >but I didn't have the courage to jump This is one of those things I personally have trouble wrapping my head around, but I know it happens. Kudos for getting it done.

hbn 4y ago
My days at work where I'm actively engaged in a task and feel like I got something done fly by, whereas the days where I have nothing to do and I'm refreshing HN all day are not only boring but draining. Ironic that doing nothing makes you feel like you have no energy at the end of the day.
- rgifford 4y ago
  I guess it's all relative. To be honest, I would be over the moon to never "work" again. Don't wanna be needed, don't wanna have to report to anyone, don't wanna be part of a pyramid scheme earning some CEO or founder 50% of company payroll. I could very happily set and achieve little goals for the rest of my life -- in video games, education, little creative pursuits, and hobbies -- and never once look back. Really don't care for externally set goals or validation.
  - xboxnolifes 4y ago
    I agree with you, but I also feel there is a huge difference between not working and doing nothing at work. The latter is way more draining to me.
    - cm2012 4y ago
      Yeah it's the middle area that's a killer.
    - theonething 4y ago
      Yes, the latter has a big guilt factor involved which for me, weighs me down heavily.
    - rgifford 4y ago
      Yeah, bullshitting is draining. I wonder, why? Sisyphus was condemned to aimlessly push a rock forever, but isn't that basically just the human condition? Most of us convince ourselves we're doing something, but it's narrative. Very little materializes, very rarely as intended. We like feedback and certainty in the face of randomness -- it's the attraction to slot machines. But musicians rarely predict their most popular songs (and sometimes come to hate 'em), founders toil away pivoting for years before they stumble on something that works (but most give up first), artists often only have their work recognized posthumously. I'm drawn to characters like Jerry in Parks and Rec or Stanley in the Office because they embrace the rock. They aren't revolutionizing or disrupting. In a certain way they're really very heroic. They meet the soul-crushing apathy and uncertainty of their place in the universe head on without complaints, excuses or lies. Though mocked and derided as lazy, incompetent fools they steadily carry on. They're stoics in a modern bureaucratic context. And really there's a certain beautiful zen to that. It's very unrelatable for me and, I assume, most of the tech world.
  - imtringued 4y ago
    It's still company time. You don't get to play video games. The draining part is pretending to work. It's not like you get a private office and nobody ever sees you. You have to go the weekly meetings and tell them about how much you worked on X which you didn't. If you could convince the company to make you a part of a mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as long as it benefits the company then I don't think anyone would object to it from a mental health perspective.
    - Fredej 4y ago
      > mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as long as it benefits the company This is my lived reality right now. It's not necessarily super fun in the long run. It can get draining to work on new thing after new thing, only for it to get shut down because it doesn't _quite_ fit the company strategy or they can't find anywhere internally to anchor it. Plenty of good ideas have died that way. That said, I think it also heavily depends on the company. If the work you're doing is directly feeding into the development pipeline, it sounds like fucking heaven. Mine, however, is not.
  - ChuckMcM 4y ago
    I hope that you reach this point (not having to work) sooner rather than later. It is funny though, the number of people I know who got there and then went back to work for "the man" again. Not for the money, but for having people they could hang out with and talk about things with. They sometimes find happiness working for a company where they have the freedom to be completely honest because "losing your job" isn't a threat that bothers them. In the US managing health care is annoying, of course if you can live without working in the US then you can likely live as an ex-pat in a country that has decent health care included. It has its own set of tradeoffs (languages, community, Etc.) And for some the "little goals" start to feel dishonest, kind of like knowing that you could do "anything" with your remaining life and you are doing little goals you made up for "fun." I know it doesn't sit well with people who were raised to "make a difference" and "be the change." Giving back can be rewarding, mentoring younger people, people who are coming up the ladder. Working with organizations staffed with volunteers brings its own set of quirks. Sometimes "prima donna" doesn't quite capture it :-). At some point you really internalize "hmm, I'm going to be dead and do I care what others think of how I spent these years?" Facing mortality sometimes re-arranges what is, and what is not, important to you. Depending on how close one sees the "finish line" that can be either empowering or depressing. Often a little of both.
- smaudet 4y ago
  If you have something to do the job is worthwhile. If its busywork, at least you get paid. If you don't have either of those things, the boss/work is not worth anyone's time, you're better of taking training and quitting. Meanwhile hopefully the market/regulation sorts itself, and your boss loses his job, because someone does something worthwhile elsewhere.
- JakeTheAndroid 4y ago
  When I was a kid I went to work with my dad sometimes. He owned his own painting/handyman company. One of these work trips had a lot of work but very little an 11 year old could really do. I spent most of my day doing nothing, and it felt like the longest day of work in the world. I was tired, bored, and felt like I had actually worked all day. My dad said "sometimes having no work feels like more work doesn't it?" and honestly, yeah. Sometimes that really is the case. A few years ago I had a tech job where they straight up didn't have work for me to do. For the first month it was amazing. But after a few months a day of doing nothing was completely draining. And my dads words rang in my head again, and I was like damn that as true now as it was when I was 11. Doing nothing is shockingly hard mentally. We need to be engaged in stuff day to day, and without that engagement it seems like we spend a lot of energy trying to find something to do.
  - cowvin 4y ago
    I was a summer intern at a big defense company for one of my first summer jobs. They gave me some fairly simple work but not enough to fill my day. I ended up reading a lot of books for a large chunk of my day. =/
majkinetor 4y ago
I do not have that problem. Last time it happened to me, I started learning medicine seriously, entire day on the job. Now I am pretty good, I can handle myself and my family, and I managed to fix several chronic problems of myown and several nasty things in others. Before that, when it happened again, I was developing big framework in arcane programming language. All the things I did due to the 'not having anything to do on the job' are very valuable to me now. However, nobody was grumpy at me at any time.
- halkony 4y ago
  I'm interested in medicine for basically the reason you mentioned, understanding some of my chronic problems. What are good sources for learning more about how my body works and how to fine tune it?
kyleblarson 4y ago
This makes me think of the Silicon Valley scene where the guys are just sitting on the roof "resting and vesting". "Lunch? Arby's on El Camino I'll drive. Nah let's walk it'll take longer."
- sopooneo 4y ago
  My question for that situation is: why even show up? Is there some token importance to you coming through the front door every morning where failing to do so will get you fired thus eliminating your stock options?
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    I expect it's a case of needing to be there in case the wrong person starts asking questions or snooping around. Like checking badge-swipe logs.
  - VLM 4y ago
    A remarkable number of jobs are about putting fires out. Is someone responsible available for that revenue generating, or loss preventing, "thing", that has a high enough uptime to not attract anyone's wrath? OK then.
  - shortstuffsushi 4y ago
    At least in the case of the scene from the show, it's likely just for the sake of having people to spend this "dead" time with rather than being alone. Possibly also the latter as well, though.
  - JackFr 4y ago
    I knew the head of a trading desk at a Wall St. bank. The bank wanted to fire him but didn’t want to pay his deferred compensation. He was not interested in “negotiating” - the money was his and they had no cause for termination. (The ultimate reason was that a new divisional head had come in and the two of them hated each other.) He had no trading authority, had his direct reports taken away from him and he was forbidden to speak to customers. He was the most cheerful guy in the world. He’d read the newspaper and then play video golf on his computer. My boss asked him why he bothered still coming in. He said his lawyer advised him to continue to come in, do everything asked (within reasonable constraints of his job title) and not to be disruptive. After about six weeks, they caved and paid him out.
myrmidon 4y ago
Sorry for sidetracking, but is "... until they're it in" idiomatic? Because I love the phrase, but I'm not a native speaker, and unable to coax google into clearing this up. Would you use this in written form only or when speaking too? (third opinions are also very welcome!)
- ethanbond 4y ago
  I think this is a typo. “Until they’re in it” is the correct phrasing.
  - everydayentropy 4y ago
    "Until they're in it" totally is a phrase that makes sense and I would say can be idiomatic. OP if you read my previous comment, then that does not apply to the phrase that ethanbond corrected.
- everydayentropy 4y ago
  This phrase doesn't make sense at all stand alone. I couldn't find the context either. Safe to say that no, not idiomatic. And if you use this phrase as quoted people will be very confused and have no idea what you're trying to communicate.
- halkony 4y ago
  I think a more appropriate idiom would be "in the thick of it", adapted here to be "until they're in the thick of it." It communicates that you're in the middle of something chaotic/stressful like a jungle. The phrase is very natural for native speakers.
maerF0x0 4y ago
> Humans long to be needed. Between personal survival and tribal survival (a sort of partial gene survival pattern) It makes a lot of sense. until recently (and even currently in some places). If you do nothing you freeze, starve, and fail to attract a mate for procreation. Until recently if you were not a net contributor to the tribe, you risked being ejected. We likely have hardwired circuits that ensure we are actively contributing (ie needed).
didgetmaster 4y ago
I am at the end of my career (already stopped working for someone else, just working on my own projects now) and as I look back at the various jobs I had; the ones that were engaging were also the most rewarding. I had two short stints with government jobs (one working part-time while in college and once for a major defense contractor) and they were terrible. Strict rules prevented anyone from doing things that were fun and productive. At the end of the year, we once ran out of 'funded projects' and we were forced to work on trivial matters while tracking our time in 30 minute increments. It was painful to find a way to clean your desk for 2 hours. We would have a long meeting where nothing was really discussed just to have a few hours to charge to some check box item. This went on for several weeks. The best jobs were the ones I had freedom to build what I though the customer wanted. I would sometimes work until 10pm not realizing that quitting time occurred hours earlier (I was still single at the time otherwise my wife would have interrupted). Startups can be some of the best places to let your creative juices flow. They are not the most stable for guaranteed income, but they can be very rewarding in other ways.
nunez 4y ago
> This is one of those things I personally have trouble wrapping my head around, but I know it happens. Kudos for getting it done. I think a lot of it boils down to these factors: - SUNK COST FALLACY. A lot of people work at one place for many, many years. When you're happy, your natural inclination is to not look around. So when the ball drops and things change, you long for the good old days and stay hoping for the things that kept you around to come back. Concurrently, your resume stale and you begin to forget what interviewing was like. As a result, when you finally realize "Oh my! I hate this fucking place!" you feel stuck. - FEAR/LACKING SELF-WORTH. Maybe you have kids, a mortgage, a fancy remodel you're paying for, whatever. You are scared that your skills aren't attractive to employers. You're also scared you'll get found out and fired for treason or something. So you make do. (I was scared of this for a bit. The truth is, everyone knows when everyone is looking. "I'm feeling unwell" is the oldest lie in the book, most of the time.) - FEAR OF CHANGE. "What if the new place sucks as much as this place?" This one's actually valid, but to that I say "What have you got to lose, except leaving a place you ALREADY KNOW is awful? Worst case, you leave and try again, which you can do now because you rock at interviewing!"

hbn 4y ago

My days at work where I'm actively engaged in a task and feel like I got something done fly by, whereas the days where I have nothing to do and I'm refreshing HN all day are not only boring but draining. Ironic that doing nothing makes you feel like you have no energy at the end of the day.

rgifford 4y ago
I guess it's all relative. To be honest, I would be over the moon to never "work" again. Don't wanna be needed, don't wanna have to report to anyone, don't wanna be part of a pyramid scheme earning some CEO or founder 50% of company payroll. I could very happily set and achieve little goals for the rest of my life -- in video games, education, little creative pursuits, and hobbies -- and never once look back. Really don't care for externally set goals or validation.
- xboxnolifes 4y ago
  I agree with you, but I also feel there is a huge difference between not working and doing nothing at work. The latter is way more draining to me.
  - cm2012 4y ago
    Yeah it's the middle area that's a killer.
  - theonething 4y ago
    Yes, the latter has a big guilt factor involved which for me, weighs me down heavily.
  - rgifford 4y ago
    Yeah, bullshitting is draining. I wonder, why? Sisyphus was condemned to aimlessly push a rock forever, but isn't that basically just the human condition? Most of us convince ourselves we're doing something, but it's narrative. Very little materializes, very rarely as intended. We like feedback and certainty in the face of randomness -- it's the attraction to slot machines. But musicians rarely predict their most popular songs (and sometimes come to hate 'em), founders toil away pivoting for years before they stumble on something that works (but most give up first), artists often only have their work recognized posthumously. I'm drawn to characters like Jerry in Parks and Rec or Stanley in the Office because they embrace the rock. They aren't revolutionizing or disrupting. In a certain way they're really very heroic. They meet the soul-crushing apathy and uncertainty of their place in the universe head on without complaints, excuses or lies. Though mocked and derided as lazy, incompetent fools they steadily carry on. They're stoics in a modern bureaucratic context. And really there's a certain beautiful zen to that. It's very unrelatable for me and, I assume, most of the tech world.
- imtringued 4y ago
  It's still company time. You don't get to play video games. The draining part is pretending to work. It's not like you get a private office and nobody ever sees you. You have to go the weekly meetings and tell them about how much you worked on X which you didn't. If you could convince the company to make you a part of a mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as long as it benefits the company then I don't think anyone would object to it from a mental health perspective.
  - Fredej 4y ago
    > mini skunkworks team with the freedom to do anything as long as it benefits the company This is my lived reality right now. It's not necessarily super fun in the long run. It can get draining to work on new thing after new thing, only for it to get shut down because it doesn't _quite_ fit the company strategy or they can't find anywhere internally to anchor it. Plenty of good ideas have died that way. That said, I think it also heavily depends on the company. If the work you're doing is directly feeding into the development pipeline, it sounds like fucking heaven. Mine, however, is not.
- ChuckMcM 4y ago
  I hope that you reach this point (not having to work) sooner rather than later. It is funny though, the number of people I know who got there and then went back to work for "the man" again. Not for the money, but for having people they could hang out with and talk about things with. They sometimes find happiness working for a company where they have the freedom to be completely honest because "losing your job" isn't a threat that bothers them. In the US managing health care is annoying, of course if you can live without working in the US then you can likely live as an ex-pat in a country that has decent health care included. It has its own set of tradeoffs (languages, community, Etc.) And for some the "little goals" start to feel dishonest, kind of like knowing that you could do "anything" with your remaining life and you are doing little goals you made up for "fun." I know it doesn't sit well with people who were raised to "make a difference" and "be the change." Giving back can be rewarding, mentoring younger people, people who are coming up the ladder. Working with organizations staffed with volunteers brings its own set of quirks. Sometimes "prima donna" doesn't quite capture it :-). At some point you really internalize "hmm, I'm going to be dead and do I care what others think of how I spent these years?" Facing mortality sometimes re-arranges what is, and what is not, important to you. Depending on how close one sees the "finish line" that can be either empowering or depressing. Often a little of both.
smaudet 4y ago
If you have something to do the job is worthwhile. If its busywork, at least you get paid. If you don't have either of those things, the boss/work is not worth anyone's time, you're better of taking training and quitting. Meanwhile hopefully the market/regulation sorts itself, and your boss loses his job, because someone does something worthwhile elsewhere.
JakeTheAndroid 4y ago
When I was a kid I went to work with my dad sometimes. He owned his own painting/handyman company. One of these work trips had a lot of work but very little an 11 year old could really do. I spent most of my day doing nothing, and it felt like the longest day of work in the world. I was tired, bored, and felt like I had actually worked all day. My dad said "sometimes having no work feels like more work doesn't it?" and honestly, yeah. Sometimes that really is the case. A few years ago I had a tech job where they straight up didn't have work for me to do. For the first month it was amazing. But after a few months a day of doing nothing was completely draining. And my dads words rang in my head again, and I was like damn that as true now as it was when I was 11. Doing nothing is shockingly hard mentally. We need to be engaged in stuff day to day, and without that engagement it seems like we spend a lot of energy trying to find something to do.
- cowvin 4y ago
  I was a summer intern at a big defense company for one of my first summer jobs. They gave me some fairly simple work but not enough to fill my day. I ended up reading a lot of books for a large chunk of my day. =/

majkinetor 4y ago

I do not have that problem. Last time it happened to me, I started learning medicine seriously, entire day on the job. Now I am pretty good, I can handle myself and my family, and I managed to fix several chronic problems of myown and several nasty things in others. Before that, when it happened again, I was developing big framework in arcane programming language. All the things I did due to the 'not having anything to do on the job' are very valuable to me now. However, nobody was grumpy at me at any time.

halkony 4y ago
I'm interested in medicine for basically the reason you mentioned, understanding some of my chronic problems. What are good sources for learning more about how my body works and how to fine tune it?

kyleblarson 4y ago

This makes me think of the Silicon Valley scene where the guys are just sitting on the roof "resting and vesting". "Lunch? Arby's on El Camino I'll drive. Nah let's walk it'll take longer."

sopooneo 4y ago
My question for that situation is: why even show up? Is there some token importance to you coming through the front door every morning where failing to do so will get you fired thus eliminating your stock options?
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I expect it's a case of needing to be there in case the wrong person starts asking questions or snooping around. Like checking badge-swipe logs.
- VLM 4y ago
  A remarkable number of jobs are about putting fires out. Is someone responsible available for that revenue generating, or loss preventing, "thing", that has a high enough uptime to not attract anyone's wrath? OK then.
- shortstuffsushi 4y ago
  At least in the case of the scene from the show, it's likely just for the sake of having people to spend this "dead" time with rather than being alone. Possibly also the latter as well, though.
- JackFr 4y ago
  I knew the head of a trading desk at a Wall St. bank. The bank wanted to fire him but didn’t want to pay his deferred compensation. He was not interested in “negotiating” - the money was his and they had no cause for termination. (The ultimate reason was that a new divisional head had come in and the two of them hated each other.) He had no trading authority, had his direct reports taken away from him and he was forbidden to speak to customers. He was the most cheerful guy in the world. He’d read the newspaper and then play video golf on his computer. My boss asked him why he bothered still coming in. He said his lawyer advised him to continue to come in, do everything asked (within reasonable constraints of his job title) and not to be disruptive. After about six weeks, they caved and paid him out.

myrmidon 4y ago

Sorry for sidetracking, but is "... until they're it in" idiomatic? Because I love the phrase, but I'm not a native speaker, and unable to coax google into clearing this up. Would you use this in written form only or when speaking too? (third opinions are also very welcome!)

ethanbond 4y ago
I think this is a typo. “Until they’re in it” is the correct phrasing.
- everydayentropy 4y ago
  "Until they're in it" totally is a phrase that makes sense and I would say can be idiomatic. OP if you read my previous comment, then that does not apply to the phrase that ethanbond corrected.
everydayentropy 4y ago
This phrase doesn't make sense at all stand alone. I couldn't find the context either. Safe to say that no, not idiomatic. And if you use this phrase as quoted people will be very confused and have no idea what you're trying to communicate.
halkony 4y ago
I think a more appropriate idiom would be "in the thick of it", adapted here to be "until they're in the thick of it." It communicates that you're in the middle of something chaotic/stressful like a jungle. The phrase is very natural for native speakers.

maerF0x0 4y ago

> Humans long to be needed. Between personal survival and tribal survival (a sort of partial gene survival pattern) It makes a lot of sense. until recently (and even currently in some places). If you do nothing you freeze, starve, and fail to attract a mate for procreation. Until recently if you were not a net contributor to the tribe, you risked being ejected. We likely have hardwired circuits that ensure we are actively contributing (ie needed).

didgetmaster 4y ago

I am at the end of my career (already stopped working for someone else, just working on my own projects now) and as I look back at the various jobs I had; the ones that were engaging were also the most rewarding. I had two short stints with government jobs (one working part-time while in college and once for a major defense contractor) and they were terrible. Strict rules prevented anyone from doing things that were fun and productive. At the end of the year, we once ran out of 'funded projects' and we were forced to work on trivial matters while tracking our time in 30 minute increments. It was painful to find a way to clean your desk for 2 hours. We would have a long meeting where nothing was really discussed just to have a few hours to charge to some check box item. This went on for several weeks. The best jobs were the ones I had freedom to build what I though the customer wanted. I would sometimes work until 10pm not realizing that quitting time occurred hours earlier (I was still single at the time otherwise my wife would have interrupted). Startups can be some of the best places to let your creative juices flow. They are not the most stable for guaranteed income, but they can be very rewarding in other ways.

nunez 4y ago

> This is one of those things I personally have trouble wrapping my head around, but I know it happens. Kudos for getting it done. I think a lot of it boils down to these factors: - SUNK COST FALLACY. A lot of people work at one place for many, many years. When you're happy, your natural inclination is to not look around. So when the ball drops and things change, you long for the good old days and stay hoping for the things that kept you around to come back. Concurrently, your resume stale and you begin to forget what interviewing was like. As a result, when you finally realize "Oh my! I hate this fucking place!" you feel stuck. - FEAR/LACKING SELF-WORTH. Maybe you have kids, a mortgage, a fancy remodel you're paying for, whatever. You are scared that your skills aren't attractive to employers. You're also scared you'll get found out and fired for treason or something. So you make do. (I was scared of this for a bit. The truth is, everyone knows when everyone is looking. "I'm feeling unwell" is the oldest lie in the book, most of the time.) - FEAR OF CHANGE. "What if the new place sucks as much as this place?" This one's actually valid, but to that I say "What have you got to lose, except leaving a place you ALREADY KNOW is awful? Worst case, you leave and try again, which you can do now because you rock at interviewing!"