111–120 of 141 posts
Chicken-egg situation really. At least _some_ of the unemployed are just disengaged and apathetic, at least where I'm from. But we don't need science to tell us humans need purpose and to feel they have some social value. The problem is more fundamentally the industrial era idea of a "job" as something you "have". Just "be" and "do"
Chicken-egg situation really. At least _some_ of the unemployed are just disengaged and apathetic, at least where I'm from. But we don't need science to tell us humans need purpose and to feel they have some social value. The problem is more fundamentally the industrial era idea of a "job" as something you "have". Just "be" and "do"
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Is your response meant to be satirical in nature? > Otherwise I eat when hungry, tinker until distracted, sleep when drowsy Dog, that’s how it’s MEANT TO BE. Being on a schedule is unnatural. Really have another think about your response
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 don…
So do schools. So does the military. Those are structures of control.
There are a variety of opinions pro and con on control and well-being.
> But even agrarian societies clung to their timepieces
Agriculture doesn't require timepieces. For thousands of years we farmed without them. Timepieces originated with religious practices, fwiw, as more control mechanisms.
> 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.
The "good little worker" who follows instructions, does everything on schedule, and exhibits small timed movements/tasks is an invention of the industrial revolution so that workers could be treated as controlled cogs in machines.
Some people respond "well" to these control mechanisms. Some don't. They're all really recent changes in the way humans do things, though.
I’ve taken two in recent years, spring-fall 2021, when the world (nyc) was reopening after a year locked in my apartment and expanded unemployment was paying enfough to get by so I wanted to reconnect with the world. And spring-now 2024, where right after getting laid off I fell into fractional contract work that pays enfough to get by, but less than a living and has reduced the urgency to find something else when all I hear is how
Both cases, I’ve ended up a bit directionless, lost, and alone (although this time less than last), and with a strain placed on my marriage not because of money, but because I’ve started leaning on my wife too much for my source of meaningful human contact. And after a day of her slogging through that at work, she doesn’t always want to be “on” and have thought provoking conversations or do activities together.
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For what it's worth, as someone who doesn't need to work on a daily basis (made enough in my 20s), extended periods of unemployment can quite easily lead me down a similar path to the one that the article describes. If you slip into a pattern of not waking up at a reasonable time, staying indoors and not exercising, not making attempts to socialise, etc, then it can be quite easy to throw your brain chemistry out of…
> For what it's worth, as someone who doesn't need to work on a daily basis (made enough in my 20s), extended periods of unemployment can quite easily lead me down a similar path to the one that the article describes. When I was younger I missed the boat on a very successful local startup. The people who graduated a few years before me and joined the company at the right time exited with multi-million dollar equity.…
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I think the model of staying at a single employer for your whole career then getting a pension is a better model than our current layoff and job hopping every 2-years just to keep up with inflation. Special knowledge of the product is lost, and it takes a lot of time to get up to speed on a new product. Then again, most modern products are throw away garbage that barely lasts two years anyway.
What is you make a poor choice of job early in your career? What if your chosen employer runs into bad economic conditions and needs to shrink itself to match? What if something comes up with family and you need to move to a different state? . The 401k model is much less fragile if life goes less then perfectly.
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I save 90% of my income, and work freelance. My experience may be unusual but it has been the opposite. When I have a job time blurs togethor. I stop drawing, and exercising and learning math. Pressure builds. Eventually I finsh and that stage ends and a rennaissance begins. I am only a clear deep thinker when unemployed. When I am captured by the salient sense of daily responsibility and income, mental exercise is a…
Same. Self motivation may be related to dopamine receptor rate and sensitivity which are a genetic trait.
This need for agency is not rational, and cannot be reasoned with. You cant offer it trades of money or favor, and it seems that it is absolutely incapable of being fooled. It asks not for agency over others, but only that what an individual does each day is self driven.
It probably has very different influence on someone whos goals naturally synchronize with those around them, rather than naturally invert.
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This isn't complicated. People like the feeling of doing productive work. If you are independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want. Hobbies or volunteering, among other things, fill that need. If you are employed, you get that reward with your paycheck at least. Ideally the work itself is also rewarding, providing the satisfaction of doing something productive. This is why people can be happy doing rewarding wo…
> If you are unemployed and looking unsuccessfully for work, you have no income reward and no work accomplishment reward. If you receive unemployment benefits or UBI of some sort in that situation, it's more of a reminder that "you suck, you can't even find a job, everyone else has to support you" than anything rewarding. So you're saying that you think the chronic long-term effects found in the study are not from ha…
I guess what I'm trying to say is that a job is just a useful proxy for measuring how people feel they are contributing to society, but it's an imperfect one.
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If an employee can do two jobs at once nobody can work 16 hours a day and be focused all the time. heck, most people can't even do 8 hours of focused work. i am not paying you to sit on a chair, but to actually pay attention. if you do two full time jobs, you are not doing the work at the required focus. sure, there may be jobs where that doesn't matter, and there are jobs that are paid full time but aren't actually…
Can you measure their performance? If so, I assume you expect a certain volume of work from your employees. If they keep up with that volume without paying their full attention, why is that your problem? If they aren’t doing their jobs it’s a completely different story, and I don’t blame you for your worry, but frankly what business of yours is it how they get the job done IF they do it to your desired standard? I’m…
some work is not about volume but about quality. and exactly the fact that the work can not be measured is the problem. some work can not be done effectively when you are tired, and some work is even dangerous. driving for example. paying attention to safety and security requires you to be a wake and able to focus.
as a programmer i have good days and bad days, and noone can say whether my work is the best i can manage or is slacking because i have a second job. and if i am spending more than my market rate salary as a programmer affords then i need to change my lifestyle, not get a second job.
in germany for example the laws for the maximum time of work an employee is allowed to do in a day covers all jobs. two full time jobs would simply not be possible because you are required to have 11 hours of break between two workdays.
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This isn't complicated. People like the feeling of doing productive work. If you are independently wealthy, you can do whatever you want. Hobbies or volunteering, among other things, fill that need. If you are employed, you get that reward with your paycheck at least. Ideally the work itself is also rewarding, providing the satisfaction of doing something productive. This is why people can be happy doing rewarding wo…
> People like the feeling of doing productive work. No, societal conditioning from birth has taught people that if they aren't doing productive work, then they're worthless people who don't deserve happiness. We can break away from this nonsense. While the retirement age has indeed been going up lately, there are still older folks who could retire on their savings and 401ks and pensions, but they don't, because they…
I have a different take that doesn't necessarily put those in conflict. I think we are hardwired to have our status tied to our value to our tribe. When feel like we are no longer valued, our limbic system starts acting up. We feel anxious and stressed because our evolutionary brain is worried we'll get thrown out of the tribe. Unfortunately, in a modern society many have conflated value to mean a job. That's why I think some of those people who can retire continue to work. But the solution isn't to just replace "productive work" with more leisure time. I think that can also lead to bad outcomes when the other necessary parts of well-being are left unaddressed. I think people need* "productive work" that leads them to feel valued, but it doesn't have to be a wage/salary job.
* there's obviously large variance at the individual level, probably associated with certain personality traits. E.g., people who are high on the conscientiousness trait may need more industrious activities than others to have high levels of well-being