Long-term unemployment leads to disengagement and apathy

I don't care what our ancestors did before the invention of time keeping devices. If I only sleep when drowsy, I get on a weird schedule. I'll stay up late tinkering, not getting distracted, and find it's 2am and still not be drowsy. When I do finally sleep at like 4am, the next day is off and I stay up until 6am. And so on and so forth.T gets bad. So I (try to) put myself to bed on a schedule, and things are generally better.

A slavish adherence to a schedule might be unhealthy, but so's a 100% impulse driven one. We're humans, not lizards, driven only by instinct, hunting for food on the savannah. We buy our food from the supermarket and have concepts like money and time and consent. The invention of the lightbulb extends the useful part of the day, so if we want to live as our ancestors did, we'd have to give that up and rise with the sun and live in darkness after night has fallen.

Personally, I'm not willing to live like that except for camping trips/similar.

Nine AM Monday morning meetings aren't my favorite either, but they're part of living in our modern society, some have opted out and are happier for it, but not everyone would be. Scheduling is a tool to help with the coordination problem of doing things with other people. Unless your all live together and get on the same schedule and have also the same cadence for sleep/tinkering/eating, you'll want to coordinate. a time for lunch and sleeping so that paired tinkering can happen.

Lack of structure, schedule and discipline can really tear people up psychologically.

My last job, 2020-2024, was 100% WFH. My first role was on an exact schedule, 3 days a week. I found myself falling asleep during work and I was caught, too. Then I transitioned to a role with a flexible schedule. They paid lip service to shift schedules, but in reality, I clocked in/out whenever I could, and as long as work was done and hours were clocked, nobody batted an eyelash. And I hated it. But I loved it. Because I couldn't sit still at home, I found myself leaving my desk constantly, getting hungry or sleepy just after clocking in, or my insomnia presented an opportunity for long graveyard shifts where nobody was on Slack. No meetings, no cameras, no dress code. All this was detrimental to my work ethic and my attitude. It's not easy to feel like a professional in my living room wearing pajamas. So I do not recommend WFH unless you are highly disciplined and independently capable.

Mental hospitals and other rehab facilities impose rigid structures and schedules on the residents. You'll know what time they're waking you up, what time to eat, when to do hygiene, when medication is coming, and the groups/events that are planned. Patient improvement, often attributed to medication, is often thanks to the peace of mind, and lack of uncertainty, brought by all that discipline.

Being on a schedule like a train timetable may be unnatural. But even agrarian societies clung to their timepieces and calendars to tell them when and how to work on the farm, to care for animals, and to prepare for climate changes. I don't know about you, but I enjoy being asleep when it's dark, awake when the Sun is out, and sometimes I go a little crazy because I forget that stores and businesses have hours, and may be closed if I don't check before heading out.

The world around us is scheduled and programmed, and I don't know, perhaps unemployment is an opportunity to cut loose and make our own time, but for me it's crazymaking. Someone who's on a cruise ship or hanging out at a beach resort may feel differently. If you're unemployed and actively interviewing, do you schedule interviews, or do you just say "I'll be in when I finish eating and traffic is light"??? It would seem in our best interest to continue observing a schedule, so that inertia doesn't kill our employability.

I also find that I am a better worker when I can estimate how long a task will take, how much I can get done in a typical shift, and how to prioritize my time so that management is satisfied with my output and productivity.

I worked as a receptionist for two years, and boy howdy, I learned how to be jack-of-all-trades, and multitasked according to business demands, but at the end of the day, I had to pop everything off the stack of my desk and clear it off entirely before I could lock up and leave the office, so you can be sure that I anticipated quitting time. That was indeed unnatural for me: I am someone who starts things I can't finish, leaves windows open for weeks, makes a mess on the floor and runs out of energy to clean it up again. So the opposite experience at work was quite welcome, and helped me achieve better results outside of work.

Sometimes a manager will tolerate a certain level of theft by an employee, for various reasons. But they'll never promote the thief to a position of trust, and the thief will never realize why he doesn't get promoted.

The beautiful thing about the apathy is that if things turn around, you'll be able to use it to ask for whatever rate sounds most ridiculous and see if it sticks, because you won't be so hung up on yourself. You'll also be less likely to abuse yourself on your employers behalf for the privilege. Especially if you've got a glimpse at how much money gets screwed away on one-off transactions that make your manager look good, you'll understand it's in your best interest to try and get as much as you can out as quickly as possible, just keep increasing one of the digits until it seems unreasonable, and then see if it turns out to be :) You'll be happy you asked for me whether you turn out to do well and love the place, or you get laid off next time or your landlord decides to sell, if you're part of the cohort of millennials and lower priced out of stability.

I think modern work-life tears people up psychologically, to a point where they think wanting to sleep during the day, eat during the day, and not wanting to work and not wanting to sit at a desk.

I argue all the above is natural tendencies!

Though I entertain that certain schedules can be healthy - rising and sleeping with the sun, sorting hygiene upon waking.

I really question the modern way of working since moving to a 4 day work week. I think we are all cucked into accepting that working during all the waking hours at a screen should be the norm 72% of the week with only 14% of your waking hours relaxing