Work is a good excuse around which to build your life. The excuse approaches perfection in occupations such as programming which is getting paid for what would basically be your hobby. And―as any excuse―it is, as lovingly ever-favoured by your mind, easily used to avoid facing things in life, and edges in yourself. Staying busy is the opposite of having enough. It is doing versus being. When you do, you're trying to achieve something. When you be, you're liable to realise that you aren't missing anything, and that the keys to your life are found within yourself. People need both flavours but work rarely offers the latter.
Why do we work so hard?
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Re: Why do we work so hard?
#142Read more Bukowski books, who knows maybe slowly you will heal yourself from this addiction.
Also a great read How to Be Idle/Tom Hodgkinson
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#143Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
The suggestion to ignore academic studies of the lives of people in medieval Europe because they contradict your experience of villages in 21st century China does not make sense.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#144Excellent article; at 3,860 words, it's a bit long, but recommended. Here's a much shorter response, with more pathos: "Oh. And if your reading this while sitting in some darkened studio or edit suite agonizing over whether housewife A should pick up the soap powder with her left hand or her right, do yourself a favour. Power down. Lock up and go home and kiss your wife and kids." -- Linds Redding, "A Short Lesson in…
It's too long because he likes to write, lives to write, and writes to live.
All the more reason it should have been shorter.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#145Earlier quoted context omitted.
> With religion absent in many people's lives, not much has stepped in to take up the slack Given the obsession with hard (in fact over-) work in the English-speaking world and European north tends to be commonly treated as an artifact of the "Protestant work ethic" this seems pretty off-base.
Islam's view on work is balanced. Simply it's a mean to live financially independent, not a life purpose. This idea can be seen in the commitment to the five must-be-on-time prayers during the day. No work should cause the prayers to be postponed. Ironically, through the last century, there is a "modern" Islamic speech that preaches "hard work ethics" (the western way) among other western values. It will be funny if…
That "balance" doesn't seem to be contributing much to the economies of Muslim-majority countries, and their living standards, though, does it?
Except for those nations sitting on abundant oil reserves, the Muslim world is chaotic, unproductive and has terrible human rights / freedom of expression.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#146I 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…
Here's a crazy idea: stop overworking. Being a CTO doesn't mean you have to work long hours.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Islam's view on work is balanced. Simply it's a mean to live financially independent, not a life purpose. This idea can be seen in the commitment to the five must-be-on-time prayers during the day. No work should cause the prayers to be postponed. Ironically, through the last century, there is a "modern" Islamic speech that preaches "hard work ethics" (the western way) among other western values. It will be funny if…
That "balance" doesn't seem to be contributing much to the economies of Muslim-majority countries, and their living standards, though, does it? Except for those nations sitting on abundant oil reserves, the Muslim world is chaotic, unproductive and has terrible human rights / freedom of expression.
You have to be very careful to tease out correlation from causation here. In the Middle Ages the Islamic world was significantly ahead of the West in these regards. For a bunch of historical reasons (ineffectiveness of Ottoman Empire for several hundred years, World War I) most of the Islamic world is indeed behind first-world countries.
But that's also like blaming Christianity for the problems in Central America or Central Africa. Religion is only a small factor.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#148I 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…
Of course it could happen - there's nothing inherent that keeps you from downshifting and enjoying your life more. Even if you're truly addicted to work, addictions can be beaten. I have to admit I find articles like this completely perplexing. As soon as I achieved a little bit of professional success, I dropped full-time work like a hot rock, and I don't miss it at all.
The vast, vast majority of people cannot simply "drop" full-time work. If I dropped full-time work, I'd have to move myself any my family away from the Bay Area, where all our connections and friends are. That's kind of an unacceptable lifestyle change for my family.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#149I 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…
Fwiw I grew up in Colorado and love it so much but live in Bay Area now. I too am trying to get to back to Denver. If you want to start a company there let me know! :-)
I'm in the Denver area. I just left a startup here to become an independent consultant. There's a really solid tech community in Denver/Boulder.
Re: Why do we work so hard?
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
Interesting thoughts. 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. When people find a diet or an exercise regimen that works for them, they love to talk about it. I don't think it purely comes down to boasting. I agree that people with deeper wisdom will often be less eager to boast or force their values on others. But I a…
That works great until you realize that other people often have different value systems. What you're super proud of may be deeply offensive to another person. Just think about how saying "I'm a Googler, and proud of the work I do" might go over for a CS student vs. how it goes ever for the journalist who's struggling to make a living because Google has commoditized the news business. In practice, what usually happens…
Get Work Done Syndrome is truely a modern notion entirely absent from the laissez faire peasent farmers of yonderyear who tilled soil in return for a long glass of summer wine at the end and maybe a 20 minute long smoke of fine tobacco. Modern notions of work involve McDramas taking place in every western household where first world problems really are a truely despotic problem indeed. Master slave relationships engender this and it leads to a domestic tilling of the soil in the fields of suburbia, working for McJobs with a McPay. The kind of real work; that of some spiritual understanding, or mastering the body, or doing shadow work of the mind; 'Dumping all your ailments on a plate for those to ponder' is entirely absent in the west, where it is assumed that only those more credentialed shall offer answers, and none else. The East as far as I have gathered might have these problems just not as severe, and I worry about the encroachment & americanisation of the Eastern mindset and rich traditions and approaches to everyday existential crises.