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Fuck being productive

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Re: Fuck being productive

#281

Post by nly »

throwaway2037 wrote: post #271
nly wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rent isnt a "hedonic treadmill". Neither is food or energy. These are the 3 areas seeing the most inflation right now. Rents in London are up 20% in a year, food almost the same, and energy ...well, everyone knows what has happened to energy. The average Londoner is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent, so saving 2/3rds is already impossible. Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still…

You can rewrite as: The average ${global_alpha_city_dweller} is paying almost 40% of their take home pay on rent There is nothing particular about London in this context. What about New York City or Sydney or Hongkong or Singapore? Pretty much the same. (Tokyo is an odd duck.) Also, this: Even as one of the lucky ones earning a top 1% salary, I _still_ pay 40% of my take home pay on a mortgage Frankly, you overborrow…

The alternative to "overborrowing" was paying the same amount, or more for a similar property, in rent, or for both me and my partner to commute in from much further out. The latter would still not comd off any better due to the ludicrous cost of public commuter transport.

Re: Fuck being productive

#282

Post by hiepph »

rorroe53 wrote: post #201
danny_taco wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main reason we all work for someone else is for money but there is something to be said about the things we build at work and not caring about them. This is something that took me a long time to realize but you need to stop thinking about software as a field and start thinking of it as a skill set. From there figure out what interests you. Wildlife, economics, vehicles, etc. or whatever, and then use your skill s…

I agree. I find it highly pointless to spend one's leisure time learning new tech stacks, working on hobby projects just so that you can show them to an employer. Finding actual real-world problems that you care about to solve, that's way more satisfying. Intrinsic motivation beats extrinsic motivation.

I loathe the process of grinding some questions or stacks for interviewing. At some points in my life, I decided to learn what I love and pick a suitable company instead. Not every has the desire to work at a certain company for the quote status.

Re: Fuck being productive

#284

Post by mcv »

> Working hours are 07:30-17:30

That's 10 hours a day! That's too much. You can't be productive for such a long time. Well, the occasional day you can, when inspiration hits and you're really in the flow, but on days that you aren't, sometimes you just need to go home early.

One of the great things about working from home is that you don't have to pretend to be working 8+ hours per day anymore. It's more about the stuff you get done than about looking the part. When I feel burned out, I can actually play a game during the day. When inspiration hits, I can work in the evening. It does blur the lines between private life and work, and that's certainly a risk, but being able to use my time more effectively makes up for that. My productivity has gone up.

Anyway, 10 hours a day is too much. 8 hours per day is too much. 5 days a week is too much. I think 32 hour work weeks or less should become normalised. According to Keynes, we should have been working 15 hour weeks by now. And apparently hunter-gatherers also working only 15 hours a week. The problem is that we don't enjoy the benefits of our increased productivity anymore, and all the profits go to the people at the top.

And expecting to also be productive on private projects after such long work hours? Yeah, that's not going to work. I agree with that part of the article. But I wish people did have more time and energy after work to spend on private projects.

Re: Fuck being productive

#285

Post by hiepph »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #115

Work at work, enjoy life outside of work. Have real weekends and evenings and use them to reset your brain. Allowing your brain to reset is an essential part of being productive. Your short term memory gets in the way of solving problems sometimes. And your brain actually does useful things while you sleep. I've lost count of how solutions to seemingly tricky issues just pop in my head after a good night sleep or aft…

I learned a tip to not feel "guilty" for resting in the evening or at weekends: resting is also a part of the work. It allows the body to prepare energy for the next working session, much like exercising.

Re: Fuck being productive

#286

Post by mcv »

klabb3 wrote: post #246
incahoots wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what you've laid out here is invaluable. My skill-set is mostly geared towards sysadmin work, and I loathed working for corporate places, being on-call, dealing with immediate emergencies (which were all superficial), stressed over attending bullshit meetings. I saw my local library was looking for a sysadmin, it did come with a pay cut, but damn if it isn't a quarter of the responsibilities, fulfilling work,…

This sounds awesome! > it did come with a pay cut > a quarter of the responsibilities […] and I write my own schedule […] it shortened my commute You should factor that into the pay calculation. It’s possible you didn’t get paid less per time-effort.

In the end, money is just a means of exchange by which we try to buy happiness. Well, food and shelter first, but once you've got those covered, it might be more efficient to work for happiness directly instead of trying to buy it with money made on a soul-sucking job.

Re: Fuck being productive

#287

Post by mcv »

k8sToGo wrote: post #59
zikduruqe wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The only reason I go to work is for money. Don't forget healthcare being tied directly to being employed. If it was not for that, people could purse their passions versus what they have to do just because.

I live in Europe and I still have to go to work.

Yeah, it's not like we pursue our passions more than Americans, but the hole we fall into if we lose our jobs, or when anything bad happens to us, is a lot less deep than in the US.

Re: Fuck being productive

#288

Post by mcv »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #251
sBqQu3U0wH wrote: post #15

Honestly, I do feel somewhat similar. I work a normal 8-hour day and I am not obsessed with productivity nor I am some kind of anti-work activist, but it just feels like such a waste of time. The only reason I go to work is for money. I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?), nor the technologies used (each of which brings its own challenges and frustrations). If I didn't need to go t…

> I work a normal 8-hour day I'm "around on Teams/Slack" for ~7 hours a day but I 100% have not worked 8 hours a day in years. Am I the only one? Am I the minority? Am I the majority? If I go to 60 minutes of meetings a day, it's a lot. If I write 80 lines of code, it's a lot. If I research 1-2 production issues, it's a lot. If I write 20 Teams messages/3 e-mails, it's a lot.

Ages ago, someone (I forgot who) argued that nobody really worked more than 2 hours a day. Most of the rest of our work is either waiting, hanging around, or pointless busywork. I'm sure it's not true for every job, but I'm pretty sure there's a lot of unnecessary inefficiency in our work.

On the other hand, lots of people like those inefficiencies: a chat at the watercooler, talking about how your weekend was, etc. And those are certainly better for your mental health than the pointless meetings some managers would love to pad your schedule with.

Re: Fuck being productive

#289

Post by mcv »

deprecative wrote: post #219
isoprophlex wrote: post #75

> Working hours are 07:30-17:30 That's not a job my dudeperson, that's a gulag

Work being 10 hours isn't that far off. In the US you work, generally, 9 to 9 1/2 or so a day. I'd call them approximately comparable. Sure, it's a little egregious but not that far beyond "normal" for me as an American.

That doesn't make it healthy. 9 hours is too much. 8 is too much.

100 years ago, lots of people, including in the US, fought hard to limit working hours to a 40 hour work week. Keynes even argued that because of increased productivity, we should now be working only 15 hours per week. It's incredibly sad to see how all these accomplishments of the past have been squandered (especially in the US, but not just there). We desperately need a new labour movement.

Re: Fuck being productive

#290

Post by mcv »

PeterStuer wrote: post #263

Another way to look at this is that this person spends 45% of his free time on a commute. That is insane, yet a reality for many. Is 'the office' realy worth that much?

I work from home and am really happy with that. My wife got a new job recently (vice-director of something) and spent 6 hours in traffic yesterday. I feel a bit guilty for encouraging her to take this job.
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