11–20 of 77 posts
” Perhaps following the lead of other Scandinavian countries, where a six-hour workday is common.” Not in Sweden. 40h per week here means fulltime.
John Maynard Keynes published an interesting paper in 1930. "Economic possibilities for our grand children"
He also said that in the long run we are all dead so I'm not sure I'd trust him to have the best interests of our 'grandchildren' at heart.
What is your impression of mortality?
I'm possibly going to go against the grain here but I'll speak my truth...6 hours honestly feels like too little time and isn't necessarily something to celebrate. If I only worked for 6 hours and 4 days I'd lose my mind. I've tried it and I didn't like it one bit. May be that's just me but I enjoy my work so much I wish there were 25 hours.
Couldn't you work 6 hours "for the man", and then work on a project of your own choosing, for whatever reason you wanted? (a side project, the next unicorn, some spare cash, something OSS, something for charity, or just because)
The devil will make work for idle hands.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You seriously enjoy your work so much that you don't have anything you would rather be doing? Not even a side project? You must be working on the coolest thing ever.
I work for myself as a mobile and wed dev so I have my clients who pay my bills and several apps I'm working on in parallel.
Especially for piecemeal labor, after getting to the point where you maintain your baseline level of skill (say, 10 hours/week?), it seems like each marginal hour will have less productivity than the previous. It probably never drops to negative, unless we're talking 80 hour weeks.
It's less clear to me that the same is true of so-called knowledge workers. Or, at least, the baseline is much higher. My bet would be that an engineer who only works 10 hours/week is going to be less productive, on an hourly basis, than one who works 20 hours/week. I'm not sure what the inflection point would be, though.
I think a better model would be having a year or two of relatively long workweeks (40 hours a week) to be followed by a year or two of vacation and education, instead of 20 hours/week consistently.
Another approach would be decreasing the retirement age. I'm less a fan of this, as too many people end up depressed and lost after they leave the workforce. Plus, it's a raw deal for people who die before they retire.
I wonder what a plausible model for productivity by hours work is, and whether it varies by occupation. Especially for piecemeal labor, after getting to the point where you maintain your baseline level of skill (say, 10 hours/week?), it seems like each marginal hour will have less productivity than the previous. It probably never drops to negative, unless we're talking 80 hour weeks. It's less clear to me that the sa…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He also said that in the long run we are all dead so I'm not sure I'd trust him to have the best interests of our 'grandchildren' at heart.
Well he’s not wrong. We’re all dead at the end. What is your impression of mortality?
I don't think it should be assumed that less time at work is necessarily preferable. What will people do with all their additional spare time? Sure, they might spend their days learning art, history, philosophy. They might take up writing poetry, painting or learning the piano. Or, they might vegetate in front of the TV, take up drinking as a hobby, argue with strangers online and slowly decay into existential nihili…
One can just as well "vegetate" as an employee to a boss; indeed, we know that the nature of the current work setup is such that many come home drained from work all day, sit in front of the TV, take up drinking as a hobby, argue with strangers online (see me, now), decay into nihilism, etc, all the same.
The purpose of life isn't to work; the purpose of life is the other things, the fun and play.
Just looking over her Wikipedia article it's not clear to me she's ever been involved in managing a business.