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Is full-time work bad for our brains?

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Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#131

Post by Moshe_Silnorin »

reedlaw wrote: post #120
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the younger generation, I doubt it. Korea is a wonderful country full of extremely bright and nice people. But they're caught in an education arms race that is legitimately terrifying. Kids are schooled with incredible tenacity from 9 to 5 and then once they are finished school they attend night classes and weekend classes. I think putting a much higher weight on fluid intelligence over crystallized in…

9 to 5 school sounds like a breeze compared to China. Kids in China are doing 7 to 7 while in middle school (with piles of homework to do during lunch break and in the evening). In high school there is no leaving campus except for once a month.

9 to 5 followed by night classes and weekend classes, which include large amounts of homework. That is their normal school has homework and their separate night/weekend school also assigns homework. It seems basicly comparable.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#132

Post by quantumhobbit »

goodcanadian wrote: post #128
quantumhobbit wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work in research physics and recall hearing a similar story, probably embellished with each retelling. The version I heard had the staff complying with the order and working 9-5, then management complains that no observations are being made at night.

Well, in this case, I personally received the memo. Knowing my co-workers, however, I highly doubt anyone actually changed their behaviour due to it. Other, similar, management antics included scheduling meetings first thing in the morning and complaining that the telescope operators never showed up.

Haha. I have no problem believing that this has happened at several different observatories.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#133

Post by mintplant »

quantumhobbit wrote: post #132
goodcanadian wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, in this case, I personally received the memo. Knowing my co-workers, however, I highly doubt anyone actually changed their behaviour due to it. Other, similar, management antics included scheduling meetings first thing in the morning and complaining that the telescope operators never showed up.

Haha. I have no problem believing that this has happened at several different observatories.

I mean, this is the internet—it could very well be the same one!

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#134

Post by nsm »

adrianN wrote: post #10
up_and_up wrote: post #7

This is why companies need to be "results driven" vs "face-time driven". "What did you deliver this week? This month? This quarter?", should be the only relevant question in the workplace, managers included.

That doesn't matter. It will just lead to an increase in workload until you don't manage to finish all your tasks.

I believe Robin Hanson's "Age of Em" takes this to its logical conclusion if we consider economics above everything else.

http://ageofem.com/

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#136

Post by JamesBarney »

Mahn wrote: post #31

Could it be that there is some selection bias in this study? I don't mean to say the conclusions are wrong per se, but I would think that people working very few hours (unemployed?) or too many hours (factory workers?) are typically less educated than those in the middle, which could explain the IQ disparity.

I don't think factory workers are more likely to work 40 hours weeks than white collar workers.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#137

Post by Hydraulix989 »

reedlaw wrote: post #120
Moshe_Silnorin wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the younger generation, I doubt it. Korea is a wonderful country full of extremely bright and nice people. But they're caught in an education arms race that is legitimately terrifying. Kids are schooled with incredible tenacity from 9 to 5 and then once they are finished school they attend night classes and weekend classes. I think putting a much higher weight on fluid intelligence over crystallized in…

9 to 5 school sounds like a breeze compared to China. Kids in China are doing 7 to 7 while in middle school (with piles of homework to do during lunch break and in the evening). In high school there is no leaving campus except for once a month.

It is common for high-achieving US high schools to do similar hours too.

My alarm was set to 6:15 AM (I optimized it so I could sleep in as late as possible -- perfected the art of getting ready in 15 minutes because I was in such a zombified state of sleep deprivation every morning), got to school at 7 AM trying my best to concentrate for the next 8 hours on fast-paced AP honors coursework.

School ended at 3 PM, and that didn't mean "time to go home" -- a full plate of after school activities lasted until 7 PM (I did cross country and track so that meant running 6+ miles).

When I got home, I had 5+ hours of homework (most of the work was busywork and not helpful prep for the AP tests, either -_-) to do, and I need at least an hour of time for mental sanity to decompress and play Counter-Strike right before bedtime, often this ended up being 2 or 3 hours, perpetuating the cycle. I would have lost my mind otherwise...

Weekends were spent catching up on sleep, studying for the SATs, and finishing the huge backlog of homework that accumulated during the week, but that's when I didn't have to travel several hours by bus to all-day track meets on Saturdays.

I'm doing a startup now, and it's not NEARLY as much work as American top tier college-bound high school.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#138

Post by JamesBarney »

tomdell wrote: post #89

Work is too ambiguous and complex of a concept to directly state that 25 hours a week is optimum over a certain age. It seems like this article is partially premised on research done on assembly line workers, who are, as far as I'm aware, actually working and doing physical labor for most of the time they're at work. I wonder how well this applies to mental labor? Beyond that, as some people have already commented, w…

Why do you think it's premised on assembly line workers. I don't see that anywhere. I think you might be mistaken.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#139

Post by rifung »

cubano wrote: post #64

I'm 50yo and am still learning new shit everyday...just a month ago I bit the bullet and learned enough javasc...excuse me ECMAScript, to be pretty damn dangerous :) Over the past weekend I learned docker and am now running containers all over the place...these aren't trivial things and the speed of which I'm picking stuff up is as fast, if not faster, then it has ever been for me. The point is I am 10 years older th…

> my anecdotal experience goes against this research

There are several things wrong with your argument.

Even if we ignore the fact that you aren't talking about your IQ, the fact that you learned docker or JS despite working doesn't even go against the study: you need to compare your speed of learning after working vs while not working. Knowing only how fast you can learn after working full time isn't enough to draw a conclusion after all..

Also, it's debatable how difficult it is in terms of raw intelligence to learn JS and Docker. It could be argued that using new tools is more constrained by knowledge than by intellectual ability, and this is especially the case if you've learned similar things before, like another imperative language.

Re: Is full-time work bad for our brains?

#140

Post by executesorder66 »

ashark wrote: post #23
jrcii wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always wonder what percentage of corporate America's time is spent looking busy or alt-tabbing between a spreadsheet and solitaire when the boss walks by. If you could quantify it I bet the amount of waste is staggering.

Protip: plain text Project Gutenberg books in quarter-screen Tmux panes (under `less`, or your preferred command line text reading tool) looks almost like real work from all but the closest inspection. Less of a waste of time that Facebook/HN/Solitaire/whatever. Fortunately I've only ever worked one place where that was super-useful, and only briefly. Got three novels read while also completing my work and doing a bu…

Excellent idea. Time to catch up on my backlog of old phrack and 2600 articles.
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