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Why are Adults so busy?

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Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#371

Post by rpeden »

patates wrote: post #201
pps43 wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> from someone older, who was in the 80s There was the same amount of time, but it was allocated differently. There were phone calls. If somebody calls you on the phone, you stop doing what you're doing and talk to them. Apart from that, time was scheduled in larger chunks, with fever context switches. You watch a movie start to finish, not a bunch of 2 minute Youtube videos. You spend an evening printing photos in t…

What wouldn't I give to have such attention span! I can't even watch a movie these days (months? um, years?). Yesterday I alt-tabbed to chrome and opened HN while hearing the movie that I was in the middle of watching. Yes, I have a PC connected to my TV! What is wrong with me?! I want to be able to read a non-technical book fully and I can't and I'm very unhappy about this whole situation.

If you can, try reading The Shallows by Nicholas Carr. It's not perfect, but it will get you thinking about how and why your attention span got to be the way it is. It will also give you hope, because you'll realize that it's totally within your power to change it (and rather quickly, too).

Your message started with "What wouldn't I give to have such attention span!", and it turns out that you don't need to give all that much. Getting started is difficult, though.

If you do start down this path, consider reading Deep Work by Cal Newport to give you some ideas about how you can use the focus and concentration abilities you're building. Again, it's not perfect, but if you take the book as a list of suggestions rather than a strict prescription of what you should do, you'll probably find that you can adapt its lessons to make your life better.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#372

Post by branchless »

cortesoft wrote: post #279
branchless wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The land is the price. Maintenance is not much. They exploit the system, no way do most add the value they derive. They are parasites forcing up costs.

Ok, so we do away with private property ownership... How do you determine who gets to live where? Can I just build my house wherever I want? Can I block your doorway with a house I build right in front of yours?

No you have land value tax instead of income tax to redistribute gains from land.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#373

Post by morgante »

Actually, I have found that my (young) adult life is the best time of my life and I have a giant excess of free time.

I'm very lucky to be able to command a high hourly rate for software consulting. So I can work Seriously, people always act as though students have an easy life. In my experience, I was much busier and less happy when I was in college. Not to mention that real work is, for me, much more meaningful than the fake work which constitutes most "education."

Also, technology really has reduced a lot of these time demands. If you're still manually paying bills or balancing your finances, you really need to automate that. There's no reason to spend more than 15 minutes a week on that sort of thing.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#374

Post by branchless »

kesselvon wrote: post #284
randomdata wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Try explaining rent to kids. When it comes to kids, we often call it sharing. Billy has a toy truck you want to play with. You have a action figure he wants to play with. If you each share what you have, then everyone is happy. That is all rent is. Billy has a house, you have cash. He wants to play with cash, and you want play house. If you each share what you have with each other, everyone is happy. Pretty simple.

Sharing is a two-way transaction with the object being returned. Rent is one way, as the landlord isn't giving you your rent back.

Also rent is a proxy for labour. You are labouring and then handing it over via a medium of exchange to your landlord who does very little work. He doesn't have to because our banks and govt allow exploitation through land.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#375

Post by orbitur »

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #264
anexprogrammer wrote: post #236

Well this is clearly written by someone without committments and children. Young adults used to be having children. With young kids around, the laundry and responsibility for dependents figures become hours daily, not weekly. When they're a bit older there's less cleaning but now you're running them around more and ensuring they meet their commitments. With more gadgets, chemicals and domestic appliances we've just i…

With young kids around, the laundry and responsibility for dependents figures become hours daily, not weekly. I started dropping off our laundry at my local laundromat about 6 years ago, it immediately improved my quality of life. Now if only they would put it away for me.

So they wash, dry, and fold your clothes for you? I've only seen/heard of places where you throw in coins and return for your things later.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#376

Post by petra »

sapphireblue wrote: post #288
wolfgke wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder how much more free time we would have, if only 10% of workforce that currently does web/mobile/game apps (including myself) would apply their skills to automating their daily life with simple robots. The skills for building a robot are quite different from the skills for building "classical" software. For example for classical software one can do correctness proofs/analysis, while for robots one can only d…

>The skills for building a robot are quite different from the skills for building "classical" software. I'd object that on the contrary, arduino and http://www.espruino.com/ require mostly the same skills (plus some basic maker-tier hardware skills which are easy to gain). For example Espruino is programmed in javascript. I have bought ESP8266 boards for 3.5$ each and with espruino firmware that gives me a wifi-enabl…

Abstraction for robots isn't a unique idea(see ROS.org) . And i think it's part of the reason we see growth in robots sold for businesses. But The constraints(cost/size/safety/envirnment complexity) are so much bigger in the home - so probably the tech isn't yet mature enough.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#377

Post by shandor »

cortesoft wrote: post #283
shandor wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh my god yes. I generally put a price tag on everything I do. Depending on ones salary it might be anything from 20 to 300 per hour. Then, if I see myself "making a loss" according to that calculation, I start paying for someone else to do the thing. Or, like in your gas example, definitely fill up on my side of the border.

I do the same calculation, but it isn't quite as simple as making sure you save more money than time spent * salary per hour. For one, you can't just work more hours whenever you want, in however small of chunks you want. If something takes ten minutes, it's not like you could just choose to work for your salary for those ten minutes. Second, not all work is equal, and you can't do all work for an infinite amount of…

I have a feeling that we're talking about a little different things.

My meaning was that I rigorously try to put a price tag on my free time, just like my minutes are counted and paid for at work. This really helps me to put many priorities straight immediately. Like GP's "oh hey let's fetch gas from 39 mins away to save a penny" example, it is usually very easy for people to give zero value for their own time when making such decisions. Putting a virtual price tag for that extra 25 mins helps to prioritize those things in life that are all lumped under the category of "free time"; family, kids, friends, just relaxing at sauna, whatever.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#378

Post by nradov »

makomk wrote: post #337
brightball wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The biggest issue with both that and the single drum units another comment mentioned is that if there's more than one load you still have to be on stand by to put it in, so you're only saving time on the transfer of a single load. For the single drum units, you lose the ability to wash 1 load while another is drying. The perk is that you can throw a load in when you leave for work and it will be done when you get bac…

Though, given how... interesting the reliability is on dryers and especially single-drum washer-dryers, it's probably best not to leave them on while you're out if you want your house to be there when you get back.

Yes my relatives had a house fire caused by an unattended clothes dryer, probably something to do with the exhaust (exact cause couldn't be determined). I wouldn't leave a dryer running when I'm not there.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#379

Post by eitally »

jdimov10 wrote: post #13

The article doesn't really answer the question. It says adults are busy because they have too much stuff to do (duh..) But "why" is still a good question, and it remains unanswered. The answer is that, as we grow up, we tend to develop the belief that our well-being needs to be justified somehow. In other words, we start to believe that we are not by default worthy of living a good, joyful, care-free, abundant life..…

I think reading The Little Prince should be required approximately every five years from college graduation until end of life. It's far too easy to fall into a "daily grind", where one operates in a zombie-like mode executing a lot of minute tasks that are mostly devoid of any legitimate impact.

Re: Why are Adults so busy?

#380

Post by jandrese »

nradov wrote: post #266
sapphireblue wrote: post #245

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I also wonder how we manage to stay busy given that most home tasks (dishwashing, laundry, cleaning (roombas) and even cooking - see multicooker devices) are already automated, with "doing laundry" meaning merely loading and unloading the washing machine. I think you have a good point about idle time being gadgeted away. Also I think there is a tremendous potential in automation of physical labor (including remaining…

Dishwashers only save a little time. Most dishes still have to be rinsed in the sink first or else the leftover food plugs up the machine. And then putting away dishes takes just as much time. Doing laundry is a lot more than loading and unloading. If you have small children then you have to check everywhere for stains and apply something like Spray 'n Wash first. And then folding takes a lot of time. (There is a fol…

> Dishwashers only save a little time. Most dishes still have to be rinsed in the sink first or else the leftover food plugs up the machine. And then putting away dishes takes just as much time.

If this is the case your dishwasher sucks. Other than knocking big chunks (bones, cobs, etc...) into the trash there's no need to pre-rinse dishes on a competent machine.

I do agree that dishwashers don't save as much time as you would hope, but they do help. Handwashing and drying is slow.

The laundry machine is absolutely faster than beating your clothes against the washboard, but yes, it doesn't check for stains and it is still a big time sink.

Roombas suck. No argument there. Vacuuming a room is actually pretty quick, it's picking up all of the stuff first that takes forever when you have kids.

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