Why is everyone so busy? (2014)

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:18 PM UTC

milesvp wrote: post #76

marak830 wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am the same as you, alas I cannot afford not to work the hours I do (for which I have copped quite a bit of flack on HN about). I do wonder why people who can afford to spend time with their family and not work 60-70 hours per week, actually do. I can only imagine it would be that they really enjoy their work that much, or their in a culture such as here in Japan where you stay until the boss leaves - or else. (Not…

I suspect a lot of the long hours is actually a sort of productivity blindness. I've seen some research that suggests the people who most believe they're being effective working >40hrs/wk for more than 6 week stretches are the least likely to have positive net value after 40hrs. Worse is this compounds, such that working less hours in the short term do tend to result in less productivity, until one can recover from o…

Post by api » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:33 PM UTC

digi_owl wrote: post #74

api wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No idea why you are being downvoted. A Red Queen's Race is exactly what's going on. Even without much currency inflation there is constant pressure for businesses to outgrow each other because... well... everyone else is doing it! It's exactly like the constant arms race that occurs between nations and forces them to constantly spend trillions of dollars on weapons that will mostly never be used.

Frankly i see the pressure coming from the financial world. There is a massive, blinding, focus on quarterly profits and dividends. This leads to all kinds of hype cycles and cargo cults to try to goose the stock price, no matter how hail mary or unhealthy it is for the corporation in the long term.

Post by ryanwaggoner » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:37 PM UTC

api wrote: post #61

hliyan wrote: post #53

I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to correction). My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing. The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more wealth is a waste. Infla…

If we kept inflation close to zero (or negative) wealth would tend to concentrate in fewer and fewer hands, and the bias would be toward idle rentiers. People like property landlords would get unbelievably rich by collecting mandatory continuous rent payments. Since deflating currency holds or increases in value they'd have zero incentive to do anything with it other than hoard it. Eventually you end up with a landed…

Post by LeozMax » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:41 PM UTC

terrytrend wrote: post #68

factsaresacred wrote: post #20

I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate ( http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc ) which, aside from being a great look at Japan, epitomizes the absurdity of exchanging our time for a salary that increasingly fails to cover the cost to live and leaves us without free time. 30,000 Japanese kill themselves each year due to work related stress. Great quote from the doc: Naoki:"You (the West) game me th…

On the money. Fuck the 9-5 corporate work life. I've been doing this everyday for 12 years..and I'm about to blow my brains out. I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it everyday for the rest of your life.

Post by phkahler » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 4:55 PM UTC

jodrellblank wrote: post #81

phkahler wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> I do wonder why people who can afford to spend time with their family and not work 60-70 hours per week, actually do. I've found that being unhappy at home can lead to working late (even subconsciously). The thing is, these things are often related in subtle ways. If I were to over-generalize I might say that having poor boundaries is part of why they stay late, and a part of the problems they are avoiding at home…

I won't say I /work/ 60 hours a week, but there's times I spend 60 hours a week at work because it's simply more pleasant than anything else I have. And that's not subconscious, it's a very present tension between "ugh I shouldn't be here so much (but it's easy)" and "ugh I don't want to go home and face the reality I'm avoiding".