Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any advise for how to work outside if 1. It's boiling hot 2. Air is dangerously polluted 3. No swimming pools in the vicinity 4. Mosquitoes in the parks and gardens will give you dengue
Emigrate.
Where to?
Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
81–90 of 179 posts
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
With today's technologies it's absolutely possible to work outside: A lengthy meeting where your role is a listener? - jogging Programming? - park, garden, beach Make breaks, walk, swim, run, enjoy fresh air, no need to stay indoors.
Any advise for how to work outside if 1. It's boiling hot 2. Air is dangerously polluted 3. No swimming pools in the vicinity 4. Mosquitoes in the parks and gardens will give you dengue
I don't know how people do this. I can't even work on the balcony, because it's either too bright, too hot, too cold or too loud. And it's in moderate climate.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#83Definitely believable since sustained stress is highly related to sustained blood pressure issues. Sustained stress onto your heart damages your heart and other organs such as kidney and your liver. Ask any doctor who has even remote specialization or expertise with heart disease. Stress is directly correlational to heart disease. If you do experience palpitation or risk of high blood, I recommend you regularly check…
At age 30 I worked 90 hr/s week for almost 5 months in my startup, then wound up in the hospital with the Flu. At my last job before retiring this year I worked 50 hrs/week minimum (sometimes 7 days a week for months in the past 5+ years) and I was still able to be successful, but I could see that at 63 I could no longer sustain that kind of pace without increasing my risk of dying. So I retired although I certainly could have worked for many years still (my employer was upset that I retired), but what's the point of killing yourself for someone else's benefit? I am in good shape, don't smoke or drink or do stupid things, but too much work can still get you—I am now older that every male in my dads side of the family got to be (they all died early or suffered massive strokes).
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#84I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroyi…
Ah yes, the good old "my anecdote trumps science" post on Hacker News. If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse. "Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the latest evidence were conducted for this study. Data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants were synthesized. The…
I think you’re confusing the map for the territory. The study pooled all workers together, but that doesn’t invalidate the hypothesis that certain types of workers were more affected. Unless the study explicitly broke out the purported subdivision, we can’t say for sure.
For example imagine 50% of workers are office workers. And say heart attack risk is twice as high for overworked office workers but 10% less for non office workers. The study would find a broad-based 40% increase in risk for all workers, despite OPs original hypothesis being exactly correct.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#85The Japanese even have a word for it: Karoshi. > which can be translated literally as "overwork death", […] The most common medical causes of karoshi deaths are heart attacks or strokes due to stress and a starvation diet. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karoshi
The Japanese and the Germans are something else with their brilliant words for random things.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#86My well-being, expectedly, increased when I stopped caring more about my projects than my clients did. What I was not expecting is that my quality of work remained constant or even improved while I was working fewer hours a day.
I was going to say something similar. I like working, probably work too much, and I care about my work. But, my natural disposition is not to stress too much over things that don't matter.
There are obviously times and certain items that do matter and require some stress to handle at that time, but day in and day out those should be rare events. I see people go on long arguments over the color of a button, or (as we see on HN a lot) argue over the minutia of a particular programming language. For the most part those things don't matter. Does the button have enough contrast to its accessible? Cool, let's move on. Go, Java, - I can sing the praises or yell the problems of many languages, but I've solved problems and delivered great value in everything from VB5 to php to c++. Does the language fit the problem space? Cool, let's move on.
This is a long way of saying that people blame hours working instead of how they approach work. Someone might work 4 hours/day, but if those 4 hours are super stressful every single day, that can't be a good thing.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not really related to your point, but the best parts of living in a foreign country are not the famous landmarks but rather going deep into the normal life. Anyone can see Yosemite if they visit, but few can develop the close relationships and fond memories where you’ve become a regular.
Agree. A bit off topic: living in a foreign country allows you to progressively discover those little differences in comparison to your own country: the way people say good morning, the way people wait (or not) for the light to turn green, paper bags or plastic ones for grocery shopping?... I find those popular places (e.g., Yosemite, Eiffel tower, etc.) to be the less interesting parts of foreign countries. But sure…
I find it hard to believe that anyone could visit Yosemite and not find it to be one of the best parts of the USA
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Any advise for how to work outside if 1. It's boiling hot 2. Air is dangerously polluted 3. No swimming pools in the vicinity 4. Mosquitoes in the parks and gardens will give you dengue
I don't know how people do this. I can't even work on the balcony, because it's either too bright, too hot, too cold or too loud. And it's in moderate climate.
Also not sitting at a proper desk with a full size keyboard, mouse and monitor will cause you all sorts of back/neck/arm/hand pain.
There's no such thing as sitting on a beach with a laptop coding. You can only do that for a few days at a time. People who say otherwise are lying.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sure, the heart attack itself was caused by a thrombosis that fully blocked the left coronary artery. It actually came on whilst I was doing my morning swim. Results wise I got lucky and got fixed with a stent early enough that there doesn’t seem to be any (noticeable) damage to the heart. Right now the doctors don’t know precisely why I got this clot. Other than having it I’m in good health with no signs of chronic…
Hope you recover well! Just concerning the breast stroke: I started to go swimming half a year ago and for lack of technique I did breast stroke instead of freestyle. After a couple months of 30min of swimming every day, I suddenly got terrible back pain during swimming (due the the backwards bent spine I guess). I started to learn freestyle and did not encounter the problems again. Just yesterday I did some breast s…
Breast stroke gave me really bad lower back pain. I surprised to hear that’s a common thing. I thought it was just me.
Re: Working over 55 hours a week associated with higher risk of stroke, heart attack
#90I would differentiate between “working” and “sitting in the office”. My grandfather was a passionate carpenter. His workweek was always at least 60 hours. Sourcing wood, visiting clients, organizing everything, etc. He was in good shape and died at 92 years age. Being forced to sit in the office 45 hours a week I don’t think that I reach age above 60 years. This sitting whole day in the noisy environment was destroyi…
Ah yes, the good old "my anecdote trumps science" post on Hacker News. If this happens on Hacker News, no wonder the rest of the world is even worse. "Two systematic reviews and meta-analyses of the latest evidence were conducted for this study. Data from 37 studies on ischemic heart disease covering more than 768 000 participants and 22 studies on stroke covering more than 839 000 participants were synthesized. The…
None of this stuff is definitive. A lot of self-directed craft work like trades and farming doesn’t have an easy “work” vs “not-work” mode.
They also are roles with a lot of agency and variation in schedule. A carpenter may be working 60 hour weeks in June, but is usually partially idle in January.