Why do people waste so much time at work?

To be honest, people pay me to do a job, but I am a fraud. I don't work for a living. Somewhere on a piece of paper my name is printed and it says that I will receive a sum of money each month in exchange for some effort at programming computers or some such thing, but I never really pay attention to it.

I program computers all day. It is quite an enjoyable pastime and I look forward to it almost all the time. Although it would seem like it is better to selfishly work on my own personal projects all the time, I have found that if I do things that other people like, it makes them very happy. I really enjoy making other people happy. It is fun.

I have not always thought this way. At one time in my life, I tried to limit the amount of things that I did for other people. I wanted to make sure that I always prioritised my goals above theirs. I would feel resentful if I were forced, through the circumstances of living, to do things that were not of my choosing. I demanded compensation. No matter how much compensation I received, though, it never seemed enough. Let's face it, I was giving up my time -- my life -- to further goals that were not my own. How much money should I receive to give up my life? I have never been able to answer that question.

I suppose there must have been a day where I changed. If there was, I can't recall it. Whatever happened, I started to realize that I was enjoying what I was doing. Not all of it, of course, but at least some of it. I went to my boss and I said, "If you have more things like this, can you please let me do it?" He was quite pleased to hear my question and readily agreed. Over time, I asked for more and more things that I enjoyed and my boss gave me more and more of those things. Eventually, virtually everything I was doing were things that I enjoyed.

There have been times where I was stuck in situations that I didn't enjoy. Most of the time it is because I lacked some skill to do a task, or because I lacked the ability to interact gracefully with certain people. These are big challenges for me. I enjoy challenges and I push myself to see if I can overcome them. Some days I give up and sleep, or play video games or cry. The next day I am usually ready to try again. I have crossed some big mountains this way and it is something that makes me very proud.

It has happened to me that I have found myself in situations where I just could not cope with what was going on. In those cases, I have simply gone somewhere else. I'm lucky because I live in a rich and free society where I can do what I please. I admit that I fully utilise this freedom and feel sad for others that can not do as I can do. Sometimes I feel a bit guilty, but should a seed planted in rich soil struggle because other seeds are not so lucky? I think there is no point in making life any harder than it already is. I will take my luck wherever I can get it.

In this way I have found that I can align myself so that people pay me and I do not work. I'm not saying it's easy. It has taken me decades to work out how to do it for myself. I just think that it isn't as hard as many people think it might be.

It is better to offer free health care that is paid via taxes/lower BI because it is cheaper to a society at large if people get regular checkups and fix problems earlier instead of waiting until the problem can no longer be ignored.

There is laziness and there is procrastination. Leaving that soda bottle on the floor is procrastinating picking it up; I'll still have to do it later. Having a small box to fill with soda bottles that I dump once every few weeks is laziness. Not making my bed when I'll have guest over or I need to make it before going to bed is procrastination. Not making it because there is no reason for it to be made before I get back into it is laziness (of course there are suprise visitors and such, but that is just cases where hueristical optimizations are imperfect).

Yep this exactly. Do you want to do 10x more work for the exact same amount of pay or do you want to stretch out the work by a half hour here and there, get it done but at a good relaxed pace when your creativity can be brought to full bear on the tasks?

Parkinson's Law, which was a sarcastic joke about bureaucracy, only really happens when employees are not engaged in their work or they're forced to be in the same spot for 8+ hours a day. I have 10 things to do within 2 week "sprints". Should I get everything done in a first week (maybe work a few hours on the weekend if need be) and then be tasked with more tasks and not get rewarded for this at all? Or should I just do 5 things the first week and have fun on the weekend and then finish the other 5 things later?

This is why hourly pay and salaries are crap. You aren't getting paid for value; you're getting paid to sit in a chair (even if you work remotely) and you're getting paid so that the competition doesn't hire you away.

> It's funny the people championing 'incentives for work', thereby turning 'redistribution of wealth' into some kind of mortal sin, simultaneously brand inheritance (redistribution of wealth by bloodright/nepotism) as a 'death tax' and act as if it's the worst thing ever.

I think you're conflating two ideas. Redistribution of wealth, in my understanding, means taking from Peter to pay Paul regardless of what Paul did. Inheritance on the other hand is Peter accumulated value (money) but decided to save it or invest it rather than outright spend it and gifted it forward.

The difference between the two is the level of coercion. In the former, the government is deciding who gets what from whom and how much in a roundabout way. In the latter, the individual who accumulated the value is deciding whom gets what and how much.

> in the same economy where others are born literally a millionaire without any basis in merit.

If the millionaires wish to remain millionaires, the money cannot be idle. It has to be invested in value producing activities that generate a return. If they just spend it, they won't be millionaires for long (see NFL stars going broke right after they get out of the league for an example).