20 ms·

> The main warning I might just give to people is to keep proper distances between work and personal life I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As a mill

> The main warning I might just give to people is to keep proper distances between work and personal life I've been thinking about this a lot lately. As a millennial, I've tied so much my self-worth into my career and recently, started questioning this belief and I think the next generation (i.e. Gen Z) might be on to something around quiet quitting, their generation placing extra emphasis on pursuing things that make them happy and viewing work as .... well, work.

flerchin 4y ago
LOL welcome to your thirties. Try to lean more towards the weird new hobby side of things, instead of the 20yo girlfriend side.
- swader999 4y ago
  Sage advice.
jraph 4y ago
Millennial too. Thought for thoughts then! For me, paid work is a means to achieve what I personally want to achieve. If I can achieve what I want during work hours that's great, stars are aligned. If not, work is just a way of getting the money I need to achieve what I want, and should never drain me. I don't care about career, I care about being paid enough to do what I want to do of my life. I won't sacrifice personal life for it. Work is a good chunk of the time so it should also be enjoyable as best as possible. Of course, advancing your carrier can help get paid even more / enjoy even better, if so it might be good thing to do. It's just that it's a means, not a goal, like it seemed to be for some of our parents or grand parents.
komali2 4y ago
Millennial here as well, it's really excited to see our generation and the next generation reject "making money for someone else" as a way of finding meaning in life. I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this, regarding for example how the concept of "retirement" is terrifying. I was on a cruise recently and talking with a bunch of old people, and the subject often came up about how people were "finally taking the trips they always wanted to," or "finally exploring xyz hobby they never had time for." How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s, and then getting hopefully another 30 years to "enjoy life?" I mean I'm sure many people find enjoyment along the way but damn that just seems so depressing. Maybe it wasn't bad when that generation was working, I know many had a very nice quality of life for relatively less effort due to higher purchasing power and lower housing costs.
- itsmemattchung 4y ago
  > How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s Agreed. I'm all onboard with delayed gratification. I'm onboard with "putting in the work." But waiting (literally) decades before living it up... sounds totally backwards.
  - 4RealFreedom 4y ago
    The flip side is there are people out there that do everything they want now. A couple people I know have been doing that for quite some time. They're getting older now - they've raided their retirement, they don't have much in terms of savings, no assets. Life is getting more difficult for them as they get older. My advice would be to find some balance. Go on some great adventures within reason. There's no reason to buckle down entirely until you're 60 but be smart about it.
- itsmemattchung 4y ago
  > I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this Care to share some of your favorite findings?
  - komali2 4y ago
    Sorry I meant I'm writing blog posts about this. The topics are 1. Capitalism takes away your ability to be bored, at least mostly. You'll spend the majority of your time at work. You can be bored there, but not in a very productive way. Your boredom is a function of the company's failure to extract maximum value from you every hour you're there. My gf got laid off with a severance, her boredom is a gift, she can sit and be bored and in that way think about what her purpose is, why she likes being alive and what she wants to do with it. In that way capitalism steals purpose: your purpose day to day is to drive profits for a company. It's not explicitly evil or bad feeling when that happens, because the system rewards you in a million ways when you do tie your purpose to a company's profits. In what ways can people escape this to explore what their purpose might actually be? This isn't necessarily a new thought, I just wanted to explore it. 2. That "retirement" exists as a concept is terrifying for so many reasons, as listed above. It also creates a kind of cultural expectation of sacrificing the bulk of your life to "earn the right" to leisure... but some people are born into that right. That sucks. 3. Capitalism may have weaponized and pillaged the desire to be a part of something greater. Similar to 1, there's probably a natural human desire to "be a part of something greater" (heard in countless interviews of people that do otherwise kinda strange things like join violent militaries or participate in cults or allow themselves to be hazed to join frats). When you join a company, that desire is cannibalized to feed the needs of the corporation. Your day to day energy to spend on being a part of your local community is instead directed to the needs of a company who is possibly transnational and who even could be directly harming your community, by for example dumping trainfuls of harmful chemicals in your backyard. Corporations and corporate culture have been very good at directing the desire to have a common goal and be working together on something, but did they invent these techniques or just pillage them? Is project management something unique to capitalism? What happens if you get a big group of people who aren't having these energies directed by a profit minded project manager, what will they do in their own communities to find meaning? What happens when you take a highly skilled project manager and put them in a situation where there's no profit to be made, what kind of projects and organization will they dream up? This because I do a lot of anarchistic direct action and communal work and am always thinking about managing goals, projects, tasks, needs, and etc in situations where there's no profit motive. I'm also working on a blog post about how tf to get the 80 different web dev aligned emacs major modes to all respect a .editorconfig file and another one journaling my family's visit to Taiwan so realistically I'm spinning way too many plates....
AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago
Millenials still had cause to buy into the Regan-era story of hard work and hyper capitalism leading to a glorious future for the common person. Zoomers have never been able to buy into that lie because they were born into a world where it is so obviously untrue.
- DrThunder 4y ago
  Zoomers aren't even old enough to determine that yet. They're in their early 20's at most and no one that age has the experience to definitively say anything regarding this. The alternative to hard work is doing nothing and that certainly will get you no where at all. The idea that a younger generation might have had it slightly better (which I think is pretty subjective anyway, previous generations have all had their fair share of bad shit) so you won't do anything to get ahead is just asinine.
  - namaria 4y ago
    You're putting forward a false dichotomy. Not buying into the ethics of 'work hard for a company, they make money, you make money and that is a self evident net positive' is quite reasonable. There is no need to resort to name calling for people who don't buy into this narrative. There is quite a lot more to live, and to being a good person, then pouring your all into paid work. And it is plain to see there was a nice party from 1960 to 1980s and we're the cleanup crew. A working person could support a family, buy a home before 30 and have hobbies 50 years ago. Now that sounds like a bad joke.
    - DrThunder 4y ago
      You're putting forth a strawman. Where did I mention anything about a company??? Who did I call names? "A working person could support a family, buy a home before 30 and have hobbies 50 years ago." Try not living on the coast near your favorite coffee shop and you too can achieve this. It's almost like those generations didn't expect to have a beach front condo in LA with every tech gadget available. That's because one person worked. What do you think happens economically when both parents in a family start working? This is basic economic principle.
rejectfinite 4y ago
>around quiet quitting Please do not use this phrase. Working 9-5 is called "doing your job" IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch...
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  > IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch... Similar in the US, I've never actually seen an office that works 9-5, despite that being the phrase. It's always 8:30-5 or 8-5. It may once have been A Thing here in the US, with a 30-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks coming out of a total of eight hours at work, since there are legally-mandated break periods for ordinary wage or hourly workers—but it seems like everyone's "exempt" now and so has far less legal protection, plus I'm sure enforcement's nearly non-existent. I assume it did actually exist, once, though, for "9-to-5" to have entered the language to begin with.
- BrandoElFollito 4y ago
  9 to 18 in France, mostly. Time for lunch is usually in the 30-45 min but this is by choice. Quite a lot of people stay after 18, mainly because of historical/ tradition reasons.
Mountain_Skies 4y ago
The leading edge of Gen Z has taken to concepts like quiet quitting, but they still seem to have tied their personal lives to their jobs, often having few physical world friends outside of the workplace and still falling for the "we're a family" line, even if now they want to play to part of kid who doesn't take out the trash if their allowance isn't high enough (which it might not be). Doubt that's healthy and seems a lot like the recreation of a dysfunctional family.
autokad 4y ago
The success of this approach hinges on the assumption that no one else is doing it. However, even those who quietly quit still rely on others to provide the goods and services they desire. There is a concern that this could lead to a snowball effect and result in food scarcity and famine, but the timeline for such an outcome is uncertain. In terms of adding extra items to improve their happiness, it appears that this strategy is generally ineffective. Despite their efforts, the quiet quitters I met do not appear to be any happier

flerchin 4y ago

LOL welcome to your thirties. Try to lean more towards the weird new hobby side of things, instead of the 20yo girlfriend side.

swader999 4y ago
Sage advice.

jraph 4y ago

Millennial too. Thought for thoughts then! For me, paid work is a means to achieve what I personally want to achieve. If I can achieve what I want during work hours that's great, stars are aligned. If not, work is just a way of getting the money I need to achieve what I want, and should never drain me. I don't care about career, I care about being paid enough to do what I want to do of my life. I won't sacrifice personal life for it. Work is a good chunk of the time so it should also be enjoyable as best as possible. Of course, advancing your carrier can help get paid even more / enjoy even better, if so it might be good thing to do. It's just that it's a means, not a goal, like it seemed to be for some of our parents or grand parents.

komali2 4y ago

Millennial here as well, it's really excited to see our generation and the next generation reject "making money for someone else" as a way of finding meaning in life. I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this, regarding for example how the concept of "retirement" is terrifying. I was on a cruise recently and talking with a bunch of old people, and the subject often came up about how people were "finally taking the trips they always wanted to," or "finally exploring xyz hobby they never had time for." How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s, and then getting hopefully another 30 years to "enjoy life?" I mean I'm sure many people find enjoyment along the way but damn that just seems so depressing. Maybe it wasn't bad when that generation was working, I know many had a very nice quality of life for relatively less effort due to higher purchasing power and lower housing costs.

itsmemattchung 4y ago
> How terrifying is that, busting ass from your 20s to mid to late 50s Agreed. I'm all onboard with delayed gratification. I'm onboard with "putting in the work." But waiting (literally) decades before living it up... sounds totally backwards.
- 4RealFreedom 4y ago
  The flip side is there are people out there that do everything they want now. A couple people I know have been doing that for quite some time. They're getting older now - they've raided their retirement, they don't have much in terms of savings, no assets. Life is getting more difficult for them as they get older. My advice would be to find some balance. Go on some great adventures within reason. There's no reason to buckle down entirely until you're 60 but be smart about it.
itsmemattchung 4y ago
> I'm chewing on a lot of blog posts about this Care to share some of your favorite findings?
- komali2 4y ago
  Sorry I meant I'm writing blog posts about this. The topics are 1. Capitalism takes away your ability to be bored, at least mostly. You'll spend the majority of your time at work. You can be bored there, but not in a very productive way. Your boredom is a function of the company's failure to extract maximum value from you every hour you're there. My gf got laid off with a severance, her boredom is a gift, she can sit and be bored and in that way think about what her purpose is, why she likes being alive and what she wants to do with it. In that way capitalism steals purpose: your purpose day to day is to drive profits for a company. It's not explicitly evil or bad feeling when that happens, because the system rewards you in a million ways when you do tie your purpose to a company's profits. In what ways can people escape this to explore what their purpose might actually be? This isn't necessarily a new thought, I just wanted to explore it. 2. That "retirement" exists as a concept is terrifying for so many reasons, as listed above. It also creates a kind of cultural expectation of sacrificing the bulk of your life to "earn the right" to leisure... but some people are born into that right. That sucks. 3. Capitalism may have weaponized and pillaged the desire to be a part of something greater. Similar to 1, there's probably a natural human desire to "be a part of something greater" (heard in countless interviews of people that do otherwise kinda strange things like join violent militaries or participate in cults or allow themselves to be hazed to join frats). When you join a company, that desire is cannibalized to feed the needs of the corporation. Your day to day energy to spend on being a part of your local community is instead directed to the needs of a company who is possibly transnational and who even could be directly harming your community, by for example dumping trainfuls of harmful chemicals in your backyard. Corporations and corporate culture have been very good at directing the desire to have a common goal and be working together on something, but did they invent these techniques or just pillage them? Is project management something unique to capitalism? What happens if you get a big group of people who aren't having these energies directed by a profit minded project manager, what will they do in their own communities to find meaning? What happens when you take a highly skilled project manager and put them in a situation where there's no profit to be made, what kind of projects and organization will they dream up? This because I do a lot of anarchistic direct action and communal work and am always thinking about managing goals, projects, tasks, needs, and etc in situations where there's no profit motive. I'm also working on a blog post about how tf to get the 80 different web dev aligned emacs major modes to all respect a .editorconfig file and another one journaling my family's visit to Taiwan so realistically I'm spinning way too many plates....

AnIdiotOnTheNet 4y ago

Millenials still had cause to buy into the Regan-era story of hard work and hyper capitalism leading to a glorious future for the common person. Zoomers have never been able to buy into that lie because they were born into a world where it is so obviously untrue.

DrThunder 4y ago
Zoomers aren't even old enough to determine that yet. They're in their early 20's at most and no one that age has the experience to definitively say anything regarding this. The alternative to hard work is doing nothing and that certainly will get you no where at all. The idea that a younger generation might have had it slightly better (which I think is pretty subjective anyway, previous generations have all had their fair share of bad shit) so you won't do anything to get ahead is just asinine.
- namaria 4y ago
  You're putting forward a false dichotomy. Not buying into the ethics of 'work hard for a company, they make money, you make money and that is a self evident net positive' is quite reasonable. There is no need to resort to name calling for people who don't buy into this narrative. There is quite a lot more to live, and to being a good person, then pouring your all into paid work. And it is plain to see there was a nice party from 1960 to 1980s and we're the cleanup crew. A working person could support a family, buy a home before 30 and have hobbies 50 years ago. Now that sounds like a bad joke.
  - DrThunder 4y ago
    You're putting forth a strawman. Where did I mention anything about a company??? Who did I call names? "A working person could support a family, buy a home before 30 and have hobbies 50 years ago." Try not living on the coast near your favorite coffee shop and you too can achieve this. It's almost like those generations didn't expect to have a beach front condo in LA with every tech gadget available. That's because one person worked. What do you think happens economically when both parents in a family start working? This is basic economic principle.

rejectfinite 4y ago

>around quiet quitting Please do not use this phrase. Working 9-5 is called "doing your job" IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch...

yamtaddle 4y ago
> IT in Europe here and we work 8-5 with 1h lunch... Similar in the US, I've never actually seen an office that works 9-5, despite that being the phrase. It's always 8:30-5 or 8-5. It may once have been A Thing here in the US, with a 30-minute lunch and two 15-minute breaks coming out of a total of eight hours at work, since there are legally-mandated break periods for ordinary wage or hourly workers—but it seems like everyone's "exempt" now and so has far less legal protection, plus I'm sure enforcement's nearly non-existent. I assume it did actually exist, once, though, for "9-to-5" to have entered the language to begin with.
BrandoElFollito 4y ago
9 to 18 in France, mostly. Time for lunch is usually in the 30-45 min but this is by choice. Quite a lot of people stay after 18, mainly because of historical/ tradition reasons.

Mountain_Skies 4y ago

The leading edge of Gen Z has taken to concepts like quiet quitting, but they still seem to have tied their personal lives to their jobs, often having few physical world friends outside of the workplace and still falling for the "we're a family" line, even if now they want to play to part of kid who doesn't take out the trash if their allowance isn't high enough (which it might not be). Doubt that's healthy and seems a lot like the recreation of a dysfunctional family.

autokad 4y ago

The success of this approach hinges on the assumption that no one else is doing it. However, even those who quietly quit still rely on others to provide the goods and services they desire. There is a concern that this could lead to a snowball effect and result in food scarcity and famine, but the timeline for such an outcome is uncertain. In terms of adding extra items to improve their happiness, it appears that this strategy is generally ineffective. Despite their efforts, the quiet quitters I met do not appear to be any happier