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Why do we work so hard?

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Re: Why do we work so hard?

#121

Post by thenomad »

burgessaccount wrote: post #35

This will sound moralistic, and I don't mean it that way, but I think this relates to our general lack of clear values as a society. With religion absent in many people's lives, not much has stepped in to take up the slack and say "what really matters is being a good person" or "what really matters is wisdom" or "what really matters is family". So we're left with the messages we ARE getting, which are from a combinat…

I see that sort of message a great deal in the "Lifestyle design" communities.

A lot of the nomad-entrepreneur / lifestyle-design / ISV / four-hour-work-week culture values time with family, for example, very highly, and is actively working toward prioritising that over work.

It's one of the reasons I like that culture. It's also one of the reasons I like HN, because there's a significant minority of those folk here.

Interestingly, this ties into your comment further down the thread:

"To me, it has always seemed like, if I had something figured out, that had made me happy, i would WANT to share it, if it could help others."

A lot of people in the above communities do exactly that - but they tend to subsequently get decried as con artists, snake oil salesmen, or whatever, by people who believe they're selling an impossible dream.

Of course, there are also some genuine snake-oil salesmen out there. But I've generally found the population is lower than is commonly assumed.

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#122

Post by Al-Khwarizmi »

jasonkester wrote: post #110
buf wrote: post #7

I moved to SF in 2008 as a poor college grad. Since then, I've spent all of my time in startups. It's an unhealthy addiction and it's going to kill me. I was the third engineer at Eventbrite, and I spent years working many extra hours. After 4 years, it felt like I worked 10 years. I quit and moved to Europe to try to leave the startup scene, but a month later, I found myself the CTO of a startup in London. The addic…

There's a term for this called "revealed preferences." If you keep saying "I wish I could work sane hours" but actually keep making decisions to work insane hours, chances are you actually really just want to work insane hours. I spent a lot of time being confused by this, listening to perfectly healthy young people with good paying jobs and no attachments telling me "I wish I could just drop everything and go travel…

These people may also be stuck in a local optimum, though. There are plenty of examples of people that finally do drop everything and go traveling or make some other deep change in their life, and end up much happier. But making that kind of decisions is not easy.

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#123

Post by erikb »

dood wrote: post #116
erikb wrote: post #104

I like the explanation, but I don't like the idea of telling everybody that things where different in the past. When most people were farmers they also worked more than 12 hours a day, since you need to take care of such a big place. When most people were factory workers people also worked more than 12 hours because the boss thought it would make him more money if you worked more (and with simple, mechanical work tha…

Things were different in the past. Most people's lives involved far more leisure than today, for long stretches of the medieval period. source: http://groups.csail.mit.edu/mac/users/rauch/worktime/hours_w...

You don't need to read papers. There are still preindustrial villages in many countries on this planet. And I can tell you from being to some in China that these people work more. Yes they have longer food breaks, but they also have much shorter sleep breaks at least than I can physically manage (5-6 hours, with 30 minutes for shower and going to work). And they don't have leasure breaks like watching two hours of tv before going to bed. The tv is always running in the background but only the elderly and little children sit directly in front of it.

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#125

Post by thaumasiotes »

nostrademons wrote: post #45
burgessaccount wrote: post #35

This will sound moralistic, and I don't mean it that way, but I think this relates to our general lack of clear values as a society. With religion absent in many people's lives, not much has stepped in to take up the slack and say "what really matters is being a good person" or "what really matters is wisdom" or "what really matters is family". So we're left with the messages we ARE getting, which are from a combinat…

Nah, it's that folks who get their values from other folks are the only ones who bother to tell other folks how well they're doing at achieving their externally-gifted values. If your goal is to make a lot of money but you decided that was just your goal, why bother to tell anyone you've achieved it? (Indeed, it can be very counterproductive to tell other people.) If your goal is to be a good husband & father, then w…

> If your goal is to be a good husband & father, then what does it matter what anyone besides your wife & kids think of you?

Well, other people can still interfere with your goal. For example, they might throw you in jail.

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#126

Post by ianamartin »

ArkyBeagle wrote: post #75
burgessaccount wrote: post #35

This will sound moralistic, and I don't mean it that way, but I think this relates to our general lack of clear values as a society. With religion absent in many people's lives, not much has stepped in to take up the slack and say "what really matters is being a good person" or "what really matters is wisdom" or "what really matters is family". So we're left with the messages we ARE getting, which are from a combinat…

Doesn't sound moralistic at all. It sounds like an appeal to analysis of sources of information. I don't see how you can go wrong. We went from Eisenhower to Kennedy in a few years. I think this, and the fact that people move too much are largely the whole story. See also Peter Whybrow for more on this.

>>>the fact that people move to much

???

I'm really curious about what you mean by this. Would you please elaborate?

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#128

Post by jjoonathan »

justinjlynn wrote: post #113
zendotech wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you mean 500K$ usd, used.

At that point, there isn't much difference in terms of affordability for your average person.

I think you underestimate how much those of us struck RF fever (a lifelong affliction with no cure) are willing to spend on the hobby. Some common price points I've seen in home labs: $15k oscilloscopes, $10k signal generators, $6k logic analyzers, etc. $50k would be a high-end home lab, but home-lab territory nonetheless. It's affordable on an engineer's salary -- many of us semi-regularly spend more on things like nice cars and "living in SF."

$500k, OTOH, isn't, unless you're particularly well off for an engineer. So you need to find an employer to purchase the toys for you. Looks like madengr has done well on that front :-)

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#129

Post by mseebach »

nether wrote: post #67
lquist wrote: post #11

You are fettered," said Scrooge, trembling. "Tell me why?" "I wear the chain I forged in life," replied the Ghost. "I made it link by link, and yard by yard; I girded it on of my own free will, and of my own free will I wore it. -Dickens

“I think that New York [City] is the new model for the New Concentration Camp where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves where the inmates ARE the guards and they have this pride in this thing they’ve built. They’ve built their own prison and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners and as a result, they no longer have – having been lobotomized – the capacity to…

If you remove literally every single property that makes a prison a prison, then New York is just like a prison. Got it.

If you need to model large numbers of other people as suffering from severe mental health issues to make your world view fit, chances are it's your world view that's wrong. But that's no fun.

Re: Why do we work so hard?

#130

Post by agentgt »

It has been discussed many times why work makes us happy and the most compelling is flow: https://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow?la...

It was also covered in the documentary "Happy".

I actually was thinking the article would discuss more in detail this or even just put a citation (he cited Keynes and Marx) but instead it went on a long personal anecdotal comparison after comparison.

I also was hoping the author would discuss the developing trend of people working from home and how that relates but.. nope.

IMO the article was too long for my liking. A fairly disappointing read.

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