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In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers

In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action stems to the industrial revolution when it was decided that workers should sell their time for a living. Before that we used to have task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, which you cant do more than once in a while, or harvest the fields, which you can't do until it's ripe. In general humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics versus 150 years of time controlling your action.

roncesvalles 2mo ago
The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc. This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die. Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.
- 2b3a51 2mo ago
  Interesting comment, but I'm thinking of the time scales involved. Farming 6 to 8 thousand years ago, simultaneous development in several areas. Before that millennia of hunter-gatherers (with technologies thrown in like stone shaping and metals?). Before that it is millions of years after chimps/bonobos/us diverged. Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
  - Avicebron 2mo ago
    >Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language? Look up David Harvey's work, I think it was less language and more certain economic patterns demanding acceleration.
    - deleted 2mo ago
      [deleted]
    - roncesvalles 2mo ago
      The time scales are long enough for evolution itself to play out. It's very plausible that the percent of the human gene pool that has the "restless builder" genes simply increased over time. Just consider how much of an advantage being technologically superior gives one party in a war.
walterbell 2mo ago
> 150 years of time controlling your action 15 years of social distracting your timed action 1 years of agents driving your untimed action
- da-x 2mo ago
  That, until the short moment where we all completely lose agency like in Pluribus
  - walterbell 2mo ago
    > all All minus 13, https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hive-mind-actually-works/ https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hi... the hive mind’s biggest weakness might just be the concept of “or” in a world that only understands “and.”
ip26 2mo ago
I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.
- kaonwarb 2mo ago
  Not in winter, for geographies that have serious winters.
  - jack_pp 2mo ago
    still need to feed the livestock multiple times a day, chop wood, fix stuff around the house
    - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2mo ago
      I think the difference is they're completable jobs. You work until it's done. At least for the day.
    - mlrtime 2mo ago
      You aren't chopping wood everyday. Hopefully that's been prepared. Feeding yes.
- sph 2mo ago
  There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No farmer obsesses with stimulant medication or correct dosage of modafinil to get through their daily work. And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.
sph 2mo ago
> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew. It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax. Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects
- N_Lens 2mo ago
  I’ve been contemplating giving up coffee for two years, sometimes wanting to switch to green tea alone, for the reasons you articulated. Hasn’t happened except for brief stretches, and I’ll mark my coffee free era as one of sustainable effort.
  - sph 2mo ago
    I'm kinda doing a self-experiment right now with coffee dosages, using how scatter-brained I feel during meditation as indicator. It's amazing how productive I believe I am when I drink coffee, yet my attention is all over the place and I think a lot of that feeling of productivity is placebo and/or chemically induced euphoria. Next I want to try tea to compare. One thing's for sure: I used to meditate best, for longer and deeper, when I was taking dexamfetamine medication and was abstaining from coffee. Caffeine for ADHD is overrated and I will gladly die on this hill.
iammjm 2mo ago
I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide
- Ray20 2mo ago
  >anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job For most of humanity's history, these tasks weren't so labor-intensive. So, evolutionarily, perception of these tasks evolved as a form of relaxation, not a job. It is like you have a full time job of every waking hour, but that job on 80% consist of scrolling tik-tok, hanging out with friends and playing sports
shellfishgene 2mo ago
It seems that at least for most women in those times every free minute was used to spin yarn, a job that was essentially never finished.
djaro 2mo ago
It's interesting how this compulsion to work spread even to people that don't need to do it. Just look at how many modern-day billionaires are still flaunting how many hours they work each week. Up to the modern era, work was not seen as an inherent virtue, and even something to be avoided. Even well into the modern era, Teddy Roosevelt went on multi day camping trips completely unconnected from civilization. Just imagine a world leader wanting to do that now.
- nradov 2mo ago
  Roman emperors routinely issued statements about how they were working so hard on behalf of their subjects that they barely had time to sleep. Evaluating the veracity of those statements is left as an exercise to the reader.
angrydev 2mo ago
If you enjoyed "4000 Weeks" historical analysis of labor I invite you to check out "Free Time" by Gary Cross. It expands on it greatly, taking it through the industrial age. Relevant to your comment Cross makes the case that another reason work was not done in excess was there were not many luxury goods to purchase. Only the extreme elites could afford what little there were. There was no real return on selling more of your time for money.
idoubtit 2mo ago
> task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, [...] or harvest the fields, [...] humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics The agricultural examples are not representative of the human past that forged our genetic structure. Hominins are about 5 millions years old. Humans, 2m years. Modern humans, 300k years. Agriculture appeared around 10k years ago in the Middle-East, later in other parts of the world. So most of the human past is about hunting and gathering. Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.
- aleqs 2mo ago
  > Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column. Could you expand/explain this more?
dguest 2mo ago
David Graeber goes into this a lot in "Bullshit Jobs". Farming will keep you very busy (as a few people have pointed out), but it's mostly caring for projects you personally own. As the title of the book suggests, Graeber is more concerned with why people don't seem to be content in hourly jobs, but he's an anthropologist not an economist so he says a lot about historical work too.

roncesvalles 2mo ago

The current pace of technological progress means that you cannot just sit and wait for the crops to grow. You need to constantly be learning a new skill on the side, diversifying your income streams, thinking and researching about how to optimize your costs and yields for the following year, etc. This is because there is no guarantee that you can keep living the same routine till the day you die. Also, humans are builders. Doing nothing and waiting for the seasons to change like cows in a field might not be in our DNA. Restlessness is our natural state, that's why we have all this stuff.

2b3a51 2mo ago
Interesting comment, but I'm thinking of the time scales involved. Farming 6 to 8 thousand years ago, simultaneous development in several areas. Before that millennia of hunter-gatherers (with technologies thrown in like stone shaping and metals?). Before that it is millions of years after chimps/bonobos/us diverged. Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language?
- Avicebron 2mo ago
  >Something accelerated the restlessness, perhaps language? Look up David Harvey's work, I think it was less language and more certain economic patterns demanding acceleration.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - roncesvalles 2mo ago
    The time scales are long enough for evolution itself to play out. It's very plausible that the percent of the human gene pool that has the "restless builder" genes simply increased over time. Just consider how much of an advantage being technologically superior gives one party in a war.

walterbell 2mo ago

> 150 years of time controlling your action 15 years of social distracting your timed action 1 years of agents driving your untimed action

da-x 2mo ago
That, until the short moment where we all completely lose agency like in Pluribus
- walterbell 2mo ago
  > all All minus 13, https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hive-mind-actually-works/ https://www.fanbolt.com/161001/pluribus-explained-how-the-hi... the hive mind’s biggest weakness might just be the concept of “or” in a world that only understands “and.”

ip26 2mo ago

I’m not sure where this idea came from that farming was idle and only industry required constant work. Every hundred-year old book I’ve ever read that features farming includes themes of how the farmer’s work never ends and runs from dawn to dusk.

kaonwarb 2mo ago
Not in winter, for geographies that have serious winters.
- jack_pp 2mo ago
  still need to feed the livestock multiple times a day, chop wood, fix stuff around the house
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 2mo ago
    I think the difference is they're completable jobs. You work until it's done. At least for the day.
  - mlrtime 2mo ago
    You aren't chopping wood everyday. Hopefully that's been prepared. Feeding yes.
sph 2mo ago
There's a lot to do on a farm, yet no farmer is expected to be working a full 8 hours a day, 40 hours a week, at moderate intensity. No farmer has to do something within the next hour or their boss shouts at them. No farmer has to feel bad, or need to catch up, if they have to take a day off unless it's planting season. No farmer has any qualm about ending a day early because they've done all they planned to do. No farmer obsesses with stimulant medication or correct dosage of modafinil to get through their daily work. And there's a huge difference between a subsistence farmer, which most of humanity has been for most of history, and intensive farming, which admittedly benefits from machines, but it's anyway a much more regimented industrial operation.

sph 2mo ago

> In "Four thousand weeks" by Oliver Burkeman, he breaks down that this obsession with action Great book, but I have pinned down my obsession with action to my daily single cup of coffee habit. The idea of relaxation doesn't exist. When I sit down, it takes a minute before my brain desperately tries to find something to do. Guilt soon overcomes me. Even in the extreme anhedonia of the first days of caffeine withdrawal, I am able to glimpse a state of mind where idleness is both natural and restorative. I strongly feel that my creativity suffers because I am unable to allow my mind to drift, daydream, laze around on the couch without immediate goals other than the contemplation of life. Too bad I am too brain-washed (and lazy) to go through the unpleasant mental phase to drop the brew. It is no wonder that our caffeine-addicted society is all about action, and we are unable to truly relax. Necessary disclaimers given the topic and the constant disinformation: yes, I have ADHD. No, caffeine does not relax anyone's brain due to its mode of action, and any claim of doing so is misunderstanding the chemical pathways involved. The vast majority of us are too addicted and not self-aware enough to notice the effect coffee has on our lives, yet are ready to claim it's the miracle brew that only has positive side-effects

N_Lens 2mo ago
I’ve been contemplating giving up coffee for two years, sometimes wanting to switch to green tea alone, for the reasons you articulated. Hasn’t happened except for brief stretches, and I’ll mark my coffee free era as one of sustainable effort.
- sph 2mo ago
  I'm kinda doing a self-experiment right now with coffee dosages, using how scatter-brained I feel during meditation as indicator. It's amazing how productive I believe I am when I drink coffee, yet my attention is all over the place and I think a lot of that feeling of productivity is placebo and/or chemically induced euphoria. Next I want to try tea to compare. One thing's for sure: I used to meditate best, for longer and deeper, when I was taking dexamfetamine medication and was abstaining from coffee. Caffeine for ADHD is overrated and I will gladly die on this hill.

iammjm 2mo ago

I think it’s way older than that. Evolution is all about adaptation and survival. When thick armour and large sharp teeth get replaced by soft skin and abstract thinking, anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job of every waking hour. Everything else is luxury and almost an act of mini-suicide

Ray20 2mo ago
>anticipating danger and mitigating it and preparing for it becomes a full time job For most of humanity's history, these tasks weren't so labor-intensive. So, evolutionarily, perception of these tasks evolved as a form of relaxation, not a job. It is like you have a full time job of every waking hour, but that job on 80% consist of scrolling tik-tok, hanging out with friends and playing sports

shellfishgene 2mo ago

It seems that at least for most women in those times every free minute was used to spin yarn, a job that was essentially never finished.

djaro 2mo ago

It's interesting how this compulsion to work spread even to people that don't need to do it. Just look at how many modern-day billionaires are still flaunting how many hours they work each week. Up to the modern era, work was not seen as an inherent virtue, and even something to be avoided. Even well into the modern era, Teddy Roosevelt went on multi day camping trips completely unconnected from civilization. Just imagine a world leader wanting to do that now.

nradov 2mo ago
Roman emperors routinely issued statements about how they were working so hard on behalf of their subjects that they barely had time to sleep. Evaluating the veracity of those statements is left as an exercise to the reader.

angrydev 2mo ago

If you enjoyed "4000 Weeks" historical analysis of labor I invite you to check out "Free Time" by Gary Cross. It expands on it greatly, taking it through the industrial age. Relevant to your comment Cross makes the case that another reason work was not done in excess was there were not many luxury goods to purchase. Only the extreme elites could afford what little there were. There was no real return on selling more of your time for money.

idoubtit 2mo ago

> task-oriented jobs, like milking the cows, [...] or harvest the fields, [...] humans are more evolved to this kind of work given our 200'000 years of task-based genetics The agricultural examples are not representative of the human past that forged our genetic structure. Hominins are about 5 millions years old. Humans, 2m years. Modern humans, 300k years. Agriculture appeared around 10k years ago in the Middle-East, later in other parts of the world. So most of the human past is about hunting and gathering. Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column.

aleqs 2mo ago
> Apart from this detail, I wonder if there are well established scientific argument that make that "genetics of behavior" the main factor in our modern behavior. At first glance it looks like a wild theory, created by a journalist who wrote self-help books and held a psychology column. Could you expand/explain this more?

dguest 2mo ago

David Graeber goes into this a lot in "Bullshit Jobs". Farming will keep you very busy (as a few people have pointed out), but it's mostly caring for projects you personally own. As the title of the book suggests, Graeber is more concerned with why people don't seem to be content in hourly jobs, but he's an anthropologist not an economist so he says a lot about historical work too.