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The compelling case for working less

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Re: The compelling case for working less

#21

Post by eecc »

ekianjo wrote: post #10
spyckie2 wrote: post #7

I'm convinced that our decision for how much effort to exert on work is not governed by the rational part of our brain. It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. H…

＞ It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. You don't know if you'll have a job 10 years from now. If you have kids you know you need a bunch of cash to make sure they get a re…

> Not everyone is "living in the moment"

Nor is everyone obsessed with being winners, of the moral high ground as in this case.

Sure working your ass off 80h/w will make you a penny or two more but you may die in the process and will have to sacrifice something to make time.

My father passed away with 200+ days of unspent holiday, and I cannot remember a moment with him. I for sure won’t make the same mistake

Re: The compelling case for working less

#23

Post by b0rsuk »

One of older articles linked from HN said the very name "stress" is wrong, because it conjures incorrect expectations. That you can forever endure a certain level of pressure, but will break after a certain point.

The term "stress" comes from the world of physics. Instead, the article argued, stress resistance is like a muscle. To develop it, you need to exercise it a bit, then STOP. As someone who made working out his hobby, I know rest is an essential part of training. Newbies often utter nonsense like "I will do pushups 7 days a week". It works for the first few days, then you get overtraining and your performance falls below normal.

Re: The compelling case for working less

#25

Post by pfooti »

creep wrote: post #2

Doing nothing does not literally mean to do nothing. Strolling through the streets is meditative. Apart from mental rest, staring out the window gives processing time for the subconscious. I'm a student, and I feel uncomfortable with the expectation I am under to perform constantly, to "use my potential" "constructively". And often I have this expectation of myself. But I get my best ideas from just lying awake in be…

I am not sure what field you are in, and I wish you the best of luck, but that kind if tenure track, teacher-centric position is exceedingly rare.

I had a tenure track job - in addition to teaching classes I loved teaching to amazing students, I had to chase grant money to pay for research that wasn't particularly interesting, but made a case for spending money, so the uni could get their overhead. The research I enjoyed and was good at was small ethnographic studies - you can't really spend a million dollars doing that. I also had to do service (review journal articles, run programs, volunteer at the national level), and of course publish or perish. In fact, the only part teaching played in my job was that I had to maintain a bare minimum in course evals, or I'd get fired. That was it - good teaching couldn't overcome the papers I didn't write.

Later, I landed a lecturer position elsewhere, and that was precisely the kind of job you're talking about: teaching interesting classes. I was paid basically a pittance, but enough that I could pay the bills, and my workload wasn't ridiculous, unlike what you normally hear about adjunct positions.

Unfortunately, the uni had to limit my term to three years, because if they kept me for four they were required to offer me security of employment (tenure for lecturers). SoE would have meant real retirement benefits and a much more competitive salary. To date, this particular lecturer position has rotated staff every two to three years (for decades) because they don't want to have to have a SoE lecturer.

I now work outside of academia. I miss teaching and being relaxed (especially during my lecturer stint), but like I said - those jobs are vanishingly rare.

Re: The compelling case for working less

#26

Post by manmal »

laurieg wrote: post #13
spyckie2 wrote: post #7

I'm convinced that our decision for how much effort to exert on work is not governed by the rational part of our brain. It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. H…

> Humans are happy if they are relatively well off compared to what they know. So true. I have enough money to pay for my apartment, hobbies, new technology etc. I know that a lot of my friends earn 3 times my salary and to be frank, it eats me up inside. I have not yet found a good way to combat this feeling.

There is this saying that your income should be the mean of your five closest friends’ salaries - is it different for you?

Re: The compelling case for working less

#27

Post by ElysianEagle »

spyckie2 wrote: post #7

I'm convinced that our decision for how much effort to exert on work is not governed by the rational part of our brain. It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. I also think overwork is a byproduct of a globally connected society. H…

I read a really interesting book that talked about precisely this (among other things), ie, how in the past people were content to be known in their little circle for whatever expertise they possessed, but now, with the internet and globalization, you're always reminded of how much better any number of other people elsewhere are.

This is the book:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1929774761/?tag=greebookgrou-20

Re: The compelling case for working less

#28

Post by Swizec »

b0rsuk wrote: post #23

One of older articles linked from HN said the very name "stress" is wrong, because it conjures incorrect expectations. That you can forever endure a certain level of pressure, but will break after a certain point. The term "stress" comes from the world of physics. Instead, the article argued, stress resistance is like a muscle. To develop it, you need to exercise it a bit, then STOP. As someone who made working out h…

And yet professional athletes can train for several hours every day. Sometimes twice.

Doing a couple pushups every day won’t kill ya.

Being stressed every day however might.

Re: The compelling case for working less

#29

Post by ekianjo »

ako wrote: post #20
ekianjo wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

＞ It's part primal - fear of insecurity and belonging to a social structure - part ego - accomplishment as confirmation of existence and your salary as a concrete number to compare favorably to others - and part culture and habit. You forget a big part I think: planning for your future. You don't know if you'll have a job 10 years from now. If you have kids you know you need a bunch of cash to make sure they get a re…

"Fear of insecurity" was mentioned, and quoted by you.

It's not just fear of insecurity. I mentioned planning for your kids' future, which is not about insecurity at all.

Re: The compelling case for working less

#30

Post by manmal »

mimo84 wrote: post #3

How many of us are reading this article while "at work"? Just me? I don't think so. I open HackerNews four or five times a day and I read some of the articles. Right now I am in a company where I have to work at least 43 hours a week. Needless to say that I don't feel rested as I used to and my productivity is way lower compared to the past and I get distracted longer and more often than before.

I don’t think that there are many people who can code in a concentrated manner for more than, say, 6 hours per day. There are days when I manage 8 hours of actual coding, but those are not my favorite ones - I only do those under immense deadline pressure, and with all the interruptions it means sitting at a screen for 10-12 hours. Such days leave me exhausted for 2-3 days after. Not sure why, but the brain is a muscle after all, and it can get sore.

I got sidetracked.. what I mean is that you need HN, Facebook etc to prevent you from using too much of that precious brain power. Maybe this is different for other areas of work, but IMO it should make not much of a difference whether you are forced to stay at work for 35 or 45 hours - you just will procrastinate more.

Update: Added “more than”.

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