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Why I hate the weekends (2017)

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Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#121

Post by matwood »

drharby wrote: post #47
gnulinux wrote: post #9

This resonates with me. I love my work, I really like what I do, I think it's mentally challenging, interesting, and important for our world and civilization and I believe I'm compensated well enough. But it's tiring ok? And all I can ever do on weekends is lying on my bed watching netflix. I work 9 to 6 and work out intensely for 2 hours every week day. By the time it's saturday I'm both physically and mentally exha…

Your life isnt pathetic, youre focusing on what matters to you rn in life. >t. Same except managed to find energy to enjoy my weekends. The secret is healthy diet, 8 hours sleep, drinking water, and limit in alcohol

> The secret is healthy diet, 8 hours sleep, drinking water, and limit in alcohol

It's not really a secret. We all know this, but few execute (common theme in life?).

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#122

Post by Aeolun »

war1025 wrote: post #35
jamesmiller5 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't be surprised if I died alone. Everyone eventually dies alone, but do not let that sadden you. A full life is measured in the depths of sorrow from that truth, not in avoiding it.

Have you ever watched someone die? Dying is terrible, but there is definitely a difference between being surrounded by loved ones and being all alone or among strangers. "Everyone dies alone" is one of those things that is sort of technically correct, but has absolutely nothing to do with what people mean when they talk about dying alone.

The dying alone part isn’t so bad. It likely takes less than a week or so.

The sad part is the way there.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#123

Post by throwaway875u58 »

coldtea wrote: post #98

> Our lives are high maintenance. We need to maintain our relationships with our spouses, friends and family. We need to take care of ourselves with exercise, hygiene and so on. Our houses need to be kept clean and our fridge full of food. And to be able to do all that, we need work to make a wage so we can pay for what keeps us alive. Nothing that a short stint in the developing world doing a non-desk job for a mont…

Just because there are kids starving in Africa doesn't make me any less hungrier.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#124

Post by glangdale »

Consultant32452 wrote: post #94
glangdale wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Global 1% is a daft standard for, well, anything. Most of those $34k in a first world country are going to be spend chasing goods that are incredibly expensive by both historical and real world modern standards (positional goods and goods subject to Baumol's cost disease). This leads to a bizarre narrative (especially roping in 'historical standards') - "hey, your health care may be dire, your education is haphazard,…

You're comparing what's real to a fantasy you have in your mind. I'm comparing what's real to what's real. There's room for both. Utopian fantasy is nice because it helps us think about the future we want to build. But I don't understand why there seems to be no gratitude for where we are.

Yes, awareness of positional goods and Baumol's cost disease is usually the mark of a utopian fantasist.

You seem fixated on this schoolmarmish "gratitude" angle to the point that you don't want to think about not just the future we want to build but the actual prevailing situations in the countries we are living in now. Roping 'global' comparisons into discussions of first world disadvantage represents a subtraction from the level of understanding, not an acknowledgement of "what's real". As a cartoonish and extreme example, you can be a bum on the sidewalk in NY collecting 10x as much as an African subsistence farmer takes in, but your take won't buy you somewhere to live, health care, etc.

Excessive global/historical comparisons generally ignore the fact that you can't travel to the other side of the world (or hop in a time machine) to buy cheap goods and escape the local cost of positional goods. Somewhere in Vietnam, there's a teacher who could teach your kid computer science and math for a fraction of the cost of, say, NY. You could buy a mansion in the south of France circa 1850. So what?

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#125

Post by mymythisisthis »

bradlys wrote: post #79
rb808 wrote: post #36

Honestly I hate these self-absorbed, live-is-tough posts by Software Developers doing creative work in a nice air conditioned office. Get a real job, try milking a few hundred cows at 6am, work as a cop in a bad city, or outside in construction when its freezing or scorching hot. Not to mention doing it on a 20k wage with a few kids. I get it, figuring out how to get our software working can require a lot of thinking…

Eh. Been in more manual labor oriented jobs before. It's mindless. I'm far more exhausted after thinking all day than I am from physical labor. I've also found that once you fulfill the basics in Maslow's, you can be less happy or satisfied. Before you were too focused on just surviving so the idea of contentment and satisfaction wasnt much of a thing. I envy the mindless jobs. Those people always seem so much more h…

I've worked both. I always laughed at the ditch diggers when they complained about it being hard work (try writing reports to deadlines that have to be perfect). It was mindless work, ditch digging, tough on the body, but not hard. The ditch diggers do need to retire when 55, as their bodies are burnt out. But the job wasn't 'hard'. I firmly believe that we need to change society, a 3 to 4 day work week, with 1 or 2 days of free education. The ditch digger needs to learn a new skill for when they hit 55, the office workers need to relax and get their hands dirty doing mechanics.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#126

Post by rootusrootus »

My technique is to remember where the job ranks in my "give a shit about" list and it's not as high as you might assume. I am not irreplaceable, and either is my job. So I try to give a good value for the work I'm paid to do, but at the end of the workday I flip the switch, as it were, and my life is my own. I am militant about not letting my job control me. I am polite but firm with coworkers and managers, and they respect my off-hours time, and I respect theirs. We all have families so that probably helps.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#127

Post by chrononaut »

nathan_f77 wrote: post #53

Some possible solutions: 1) Ask for a 30 hour work week, or find a company that can offer this. Your salary should still be high enough to aim for a comfortable retirement at 65. 2) Adopt a more frugal lifestyle and increase your savings rate. You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income. It should be very possible to do this with a backend developer's salary over a period of 10…

> You need to save a few million dollars to retire with $40-$80k in investment income. It should be very possible to do this with a backend developer's salary over a period of 10-15 years,

How would a few million be possible? What is your contextual salary for this position, and their expected expenses?

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#128

Post by matwood »

_mqpu wrote: post #12

I used to work a 4-day week (a true 32-hour week, not 4 x 10 or something) and it was the greatest thing I've ever done. All the "weekend stuff" you can do on your extra day, and get two full days off. I can't believe how great it was.

Just working at home gives all these benefits. No commute saves tons of time. An hour or so at lunch lets you do most of the normal house chores. I end up working more from home, but with so much less stress. And, when I stop working I can go right into leisure time.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#129

Post by Aeolun »

antibland wrote: post #105
gnulinux wrote: post #9

This resonates with me. I love my work, I really like what I do, I think it's mentally challenging, interesting, and important for our world and civilization and I believe I'm compensated well enough. But it's tiring ok? And all I can ever do on weekends is lying on my bed watching netflix. I work 9 to 6 and work out intensely for 2 hours every week day. By the time it's saturday I'm both physically and mentally exha…

Unsolicited advice usually makes me feel worse about a given discomfort in my life. Do others really think I haven't considered these simple remedies? Most people assume that, if someone is in a bad way and sharing their experience, they possess the armchair wisdom to save them.

I imagine they think you have tried most of them. But from experience, even if someone telling me to go do sports was getting really tiresome after a while. I was still looking for other things I could try.

Re: Why I hate the weekends (2017)

#130

Post by glangdale »

matwood wrote: post #118
gnulinux wrote: post #9

This resonates with me. I love my work, I really like what I do, I think it's mentally challenging, interesting, and important for our world and civilization and I believe I'm compensated well enough. But it's tiring ok? And all I can ever do on weekends is lying on my bed watching netflix. I work 9 to 6 and work out intensely for 2 hours every week day. By the time it's saturday I'm both physically and mentally exha…

I can relate to your schedule, but you have to break it up. Working out every day is great, but 2 hours of 100% intensity is tough. It's okay to do a light run on some days. The Zen concept here is you want to fill everyday with as much as possible without impacting your ability to do the same tomorrow. Think of your life as a marathon instead of sprint. What hours would you need to keep to exercise and work every si…

+1 for BJJ as a exercise/social thing.

2 hours a day of solo gym exercise is pathological unless you have some really good reason to be doing it and it's making someone happy. Which it clearly isn't.

It's possible to get to 'intermediate' powerlifter level on about 2-3 hours a week. There are of course many other goals, but 12 hours a week in the gym is almost certainly reaching diminishing returns for almost any of the goals I can think of (with the possible exception of really hardcore bodybuilding or endurance work).

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