Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that throwing in little quipits like that are an easy way to keep the discussion about your article as non-political as possible. It seems counter-intuitive, but if someone comes along and actually brings up the race issue, and it isn’t mentioned in the article, it’ll start a spiral of political/racial arguments that distract from the original article. These little remarks deflect most of it.
I guess the problem is that the author has brought it up in the article. Race has no place in this article and yet it's there.
I just don’t want to be busy anymore
71–80 of 463 posts
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#72As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
There's a weird fixation on productivity that gets drilled into our heads at a young age. It's beyond okay to not be running 100% all the time, regardless of what the paradigm espouses as value.
While at FAANG, I was at capacity every week. So a 'normal' week (which was actually quite rare), I expected to spend 35-45 hours in work + meetings.
But 75% of those weeks, some urgent issue would come up. Then you have an extra 15-25 hours of attending to the urgency, falling behind 5-15 hours on planned work, and then you spend all evening thinking about how to solve the Very Urgent Problem.
Even if you are good at compartmentalizing, you'll be confounded by redundant messages from middle managers asking you about the status of the Very Urgent Problem.
Taking a break / vacation means twice as much work for 1-3 weeks before the vacation, and 1-3 weeks after, as you must prepare for coverage for while you are out of office, and then catch up on what happened while you were gone.
Add in the death of a loved one, medical issue or even a string of minor problems and you're completely subjugate to external circumstances. This will lead to burnout, at a minimum.
As a younger person, this kind of environment made me feel important and necessary. Later I began to realize this is the opposite of the truth. Important and necessary people have the power to set their own terms.
I am not sure why things have evolved this way. I recently watched Koyaanisqatsi ('life out of balance') a film from the 80s about modernity and technology and found it as relevant as ever. However the busyness that used to be outwardly visible has now migrated into our minds and seems to be causing mass unhappiness and mental health issues.
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#73As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
What did you feel like at 30, 40 and 47 for comparison?
If it's different, what position / work did you do during those years vs what you do now? Software Engineer and IT is a pretty wide net.
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#74One of the things which quickly overwhelms me is just all the little stuff. Couple big ticket items? No problem. Long list of 5-20 minute items, or even worse, conversations of indefinite length? Exhausting.
1. A friend used to say "a human being can do 5 plus or minus 4 things" while holding his hand up and slowly closing one finger after the other ending up at 1. Your comment reminded me of that.
2. I can do a long list of 5-20 minute items. I can also do couple of big ticket items. Just not in the same day. I wish I knew that my Monday would be the long list and I would not mind. We have an on-call week, and that week I do not even pretend to look at big ticket items, but the challenge is that the small things do not stop appearing even when it is not the on-call week.
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#75One of the things which quickly overwhelms me is just all the little stuff. Couple big ticket items? No problem. Long list of 5-20 minute items, or even worse, conversations of indefinite length? Exhausting.
I work for a big company (F500), and one thing that always bothers me is the out of nowhere Slack messages that are three paragraphs long, by someone I have never met within the company. If I start helping them right away, they are happy to keep me online for the next hour while my flow is gone, god knows where. I am trying to find the nicest way to say: "This should be an e-mail conversation, please send email.", bu…
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#76As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
There's a weird fixation on productivity that gets drilled into our heads at a young age. It's beyond okay to not be running 100% all the time, regardless of what the paradigm espouses as value.
Bertrand Russell wrote about this in In Praise of Idleness
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#77As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
I’m younger than you, had the same issue and solved it by working less and doing more outside. Lifting weights in the sun, mountain biking, golf, surfing. In understand this is a luxury not everyone can afford but what I do now is work from about 6-9am, go out during the day until about 3, work 4-6. Which if you add it up is still a solid 5 hour day. For whatever reason it just makes me more productive and sleep bett…
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#78"Adulthood in the modern age is just telling yourself 'next week won't be so bad'. Over and over. Until you die"
Other than adulthood being postponed about a decade how is that any different than it was was at any other time in history?
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#79As a 54 year old Software Engineer, who has had a nice IT career for over 26 years, I'm spent. This is coming from someone who has always had a growth mindset and had a really hard time sitting still. I used to loathe naps and felt like I was missing out if I took one. Now, I take a one hour nap almost daily and I'm finding that after 1pm I'm basically fried (I start working around 7AM). I'm not sure what to do about…
I just didn't realize I was burnt out by the world in general.
Re: I just don’t want to be busy anymore
#80"To keep reading this story, get the free app or log in." Apparently, what you have to say isn't important. Or else you would have chosen a blogging platform that isn't hostile to readers.
YMMV, but on Android in Chrome app, long press and "open in incognito tab" made it readable for me. Also, seems poster is not OP. In a side note, I would love it if HN links were color-coded or otherwise marked as free, closed-garden, soft paywall, or paywall.
"You have 2 free member-only stories left this month."