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Work/life balance should be difficult

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Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#41

Post by zepto »

Ancapistani wrote: post #33
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…

I agree with this, but “work” is an utterly terrible word to use to describe it.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#42

Post by nostrademons »

ehutch79 wrote: post #32
amw-zero wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Work is generally a proxy for survival. Do you agree that you need to eat in order to survive?

Filling out TPS reports is not a survival skill

Not all work involves filling out TPS reports. A lot of workplaces have completely automated this aspect. And you should feel free to quit jobs that haven't for jobs that have; by doing so, you're making the economy more efficient.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#43

Post by golemotron »

dvt wrote: post #4

> Withdrawing from either side is pure lose. Disagree. Withdrawing from family is a pure loss. Who cares about work. Maslow is a red herring here. You hunt for food for your family , you build shelter for your family , it all goes back to your local community. "Work" in the Silicon Valley (and more generally corporatist) sense, has nothing to do with community, with making a better life, or with family, just pure pro…

Some people aren't family oriented. They find more meaning in work and, despite the all of the attempts to devalue work in the blog and this response, it's ok. We don't have to judge people who make that choice because we prefer another.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#44

Post by antisthenes »

Ancapistani wrote: post #33
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…

That's too vague and inaccurate to be meaningful.

What people need is to be able to channel their energy into something productive, whether it be learning, hobbies, helping others in a meaningful way, or maybe some sort of self-improvement in terms of health.

I suppose you could put all of that under the vague umbrella of "work", but for the purpose of having a conversation that's not arguing about semantics, work is what most people do to generate an income to support their life goals and activities.

> Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here.

I've also gone through a few such periods, in between jobs. Best time of my life. Even though I didn't accomplish a whole lot during it that you could put on paper and call work. Learned a few things, improved friendships, and did a little room remodel.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#47

Post by d23 »

slg wrote: post #3

The headline makes article feels incomplete. We are told why the life side of the equation is important without any real mention of the value of work. It feels like the conclusion I am supposed to come to is that the balance is easy as work should always defer to life. Why shouldn't I put in the minimum amount of effort into work that gets me to a comfortable lifestyle outside of work?

I can't make sense of this article. Did the dad stop working as much? Keep on working as much? Work more? The intro makes it seem like he learned to work less, but then the rest makes it seem like he didn't.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#48

Post by aulin »

Ancapistani wrote: post #33
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…

That's not work, that's life. The opposite of working is not idling, it is spending your time in activities that realize your self without being constrained by the survival struggle.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#49

Post by ravitation »

Ancapistani wrote: post #33
kelseyfrog wrote: post #24

> We need work. Not sure I follow. It's amazing how these little bits of social knowledge ferment the flavor of the story. It's a lot like learning to taste beer or wine. Once you take the time to sit down and learn to pay attention to your senses, you can identify things like acetaldehyde, diacetyl, and mercaptans. It's fun teaching people how to sense things they weren't aware of before. The author seems to have do…

> "We need work" is a social fact, nothing more, and it's only true as much as it's believed to be true. Having gone through a handful of periods of a few months where I wasn’t working and was also not engaged in an existential struggle for survival, I have to disagree here. Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life. It needn’t be employment, but “work” is a fair way to describe it. I can spend…

> Personally, I know that I need a focus for my intellectual life.

Would your abilities feel stretched by being a cashier? How about a janitor? Waiter?

These jobs are what "work" actually is for most people. I think most people could go without doing those things.

Intellectual stimulation, or goals that stretch one's abilities, don't have to come from work (and for most people those things and "work" are hardly related at all). Therefore, saying we (as humans) "need" work is generally incorrect (at least for the reasons you stated) since most people don't even get what you say we "need" from work anyway.

Re: Work/life balance should be difficult

#50

Post by black6 »

amw-zero wrote: post #22
dvt wrote: post #4

> Withdrawing from either side is pure lose. Disagree. Withdrawing from family is a pure loss. Who cares about work. Maslow is a red herring here. You hunt for food for your family , you build shelter for your family , it all goes back to your local community. "Work" in the Silicon Valley (and more generally corporatist) sense, has nothing to do with community, with making a better life, or with family, just pure pro…

But say that we didn't have business or currency, and you had to go and get food for your family. Wouldn't you have to make sacrifices even then? There might be an emotional situation going on at home, but if the food supply was dwindling that is also an immediate problem. If anything, businesses have allowed us to spend way more time with family than we would if we actually had to hunt / farm / gather for food. Our…

> If anything, businesses have allowed us to spend way more time with family than we would if we actually had to hunt / farm / gather for food.

That is untrue. There is ample evidence that hunter-gatherer societies have more leisure time than industrialized societies. Just to name two sources I've recently read: Harari covers it in Sapiens, and before that Mumford covered it in Technics and Human Development.

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