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Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work. Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more
by Shivetya 13y ago
Sixty hours is fine when you enjoy your work.
Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days, the conveniences of a modern society allow us to choose more free time should we want it, all you have to do is venture outside of our comfortable environments and you will find people wishing 60 was the max.
Having grown up on a farm all I can say is, you don't notice it unless the wrong stuff keeps piling up. Its amazing how energized you feel when you enjoy the work and don't have idle time to worry.
- StavrosK 13y agoIt's a bit easier when your job doesn't require you to think all the time. You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings.
- hueving 13y ago>You get really depleted after a few hours, and you need more rest than the physical fatigue farm work brings. Do you have a source for that? I find it highly unlikely that the human body needs less rest after spending 10 hours a day performing manual labor than it does after a few hours of programming.
- Ma8ee 13y agoNot the human body, but the human brain.
- 001sky 13y agoYes, the body is amazingly adept at subliminalizing the motor-co-ordination of physical work. Truly creative, mental work actually takes a different approach. This is why traditional academic architecture is the way it is. And why even artists can suffer through periods of burnout and "creative block". This is not to diminsh the role of back-breaking labor in any way, but just to highlight the underlying issue. Its comparing apples and pine-apples.
- nickbauman 13y agoI remember reading a while back a study that revealed people who do exhaustive mental work are less tolerant of hard physical labor. I think this speaks to the notion that there is no real mind-body separation (or simply you brain is part of your body).
- toomuchtodo 13y agohttp://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/easing-brain-fatigue-with-a-walk-in-the-park/ http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/03/27/easing-brain-fatigu...
- einhverfr 13y agoThe best way I find to deal with the depletion is to go do something physical for a bit. Gardening is good for that, and working from home makes that easy. I have known a few other IT folks who work from home to find this as well. It's anecdotal but it's interesting nonetheless.
- notastartup 13y agoYou just blew past the whole industrial revolution process and the marginalization of wage workers. Working on the farm with labor intensive work is totally different from the mentally taxing and stressful tech work environment. That's a whole different topic.
- enraged_camel 13y ago>>Sixty hours a week was a short week in the old days Yes, and then the labor movement happened and we made very good progress as a society towards something more sane and sustainable.
- epsylon 13y agoSixty hours a week is fine if the only thing you enjoy is your work.
- aestra 13y agoDepends on what you mean by the old days. It is thought that hunter gathers had the most leisure time in history. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Original_affluent_society
- beedogs 13y agoSixty hours a week was a short week in the old days Back when we "employed" children and didn't have maternity leave? I don't think there are any reasons to hearken back to those days.