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Busyness leads to bad decisions

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31–40 of 88 posts

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#31

Can personally confirm. A while ago my car died, so I suddenly needed transport right now . I was considering renting a car, but my family loaned me an extra vehicle they had on hand that they keep around for just these emergencies. EDIT: No, there is absolutely no public transport out here. People who can't drive for whatever reason have a very hard time of it. I would have made a much worse decision if I had to pay…

>One of the many ways it's expensive to be poor.

These sort of time luxury, magnitude of free/disposable income, and free cognitive load (less stress, etc.) aspects are all too frequently overlooked when shunning the working poor and now, even many working middle class Americans.

I remember the sort of stress I had first starting out simply keeping up with utility bill payment schedules to avoid late fees. I had the luxury of enough assets and steady income that I quickly setup autopayments on my credit card and never had to think about it again.

I had relatives and friends who couldn't setup autopayment because they were never sure if they'd have enough in their account or ability to pay their credit card and had to strategically optimize when and what they'd pay. The amount of cognative load folks endure juggling many of these artificial constructs makes it difficult for them to pursue and seize opportunity when it arises to get ahead.

Arguments could be made as to why some should or should not be in such situations but this is just one example. I often think about how difficult it is to fit certain necessary things in my schedule and then remember I don't ride the bus in the work which dramatically reduces my commute time.

There are many such aspects people deal with daily and it can be daunting. If you're very wealthy, a lot of these problems you can throw relatively marginal money at and the problem is solved while focusing on furthering yourself.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#33
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect 'humans' is an attempt to avoid stereotyping/sexism - but some people certainly do if not enjoy actually being busy, enjoy talking about how busy they are and how little time they have. i.e. the enjoyment I think is in projecting a certain image of oneself; not necessarily actually embodying that image.

I'm not sure it's about enjoyment. At the extremes I suspect it's more of a compulsion.

There can be enjoyment too, either normal or masochistic.

Alleged accomplishment tickles reward centers in the brain. In most people, reward from repetitive tasks fades quickly, in some others it does not. (Perfect employees for assembly line. Except we have robots.)

A masochist instead may thrive on the discomfort of it.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is perfectly fine to be idle and bored; lay on grass and watch clouds or just do fishing... Not everyone comes from puritan american culture.

> puritan american culture [ => busy busy busy ] There's definitely something to that. Calvinistic thinking that labor is pious seems to have been a part of American workplaces forever, especially tech. It's even a part even of the stackoverflow ethos-- god help you if you ask a question without showing that you've "done the work" up front. But it's all over the place. Look at the China tech sector with their popular…

I think it's the "rugged individualism" ethos at play (although maybe that is a tangent of Calvinist thinking?) - the fear that if you ask questions you will come across as inferior to your colleagues and risk losing a promotion at best or a job at worst. It's quite terrible thinking and leads to isolation which compounds anxiety at work.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#35
post #31

Can personally confirm. A while ago my car died, so I suddenly needed transport right now . I was considering renting a car, but my family loaned me an extra vehicle they had on hand that they keep around for just these emergencies. EDIT: No, there is absolutely no public transport out here. People who can't drive for whatever reason have a very hard time of it. I would have made a much worse decision if I had to pay…

>One of the many ways it's expensive to be poor. These sort of time luxury, magnitude of free/disposable income, and free cognitive load (less stress, etc.) aspects are all too frequently overlooked when shunning the working poor and now, even many working middle class Americans. I remember the sort of stress I had first starting out simply keeping up with utility bill payment schedules to avoid late fees. I had the…

Very true. I always feel like that when people’s first recommendation for a problem is to get a lawyer. For a lot of people this is prohibitively expensive.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> assessing if they were actually important to begin with. I've found answering "Is this important?" very hard. I find it much easier to answer "What is the impact if I do this?"

You and me both buddy! I like your style.. and sometimes I ask myself other questions like will it matter to me in 10 hours, 10 days or 10 weeks? The longer into the future it matters to me, the more important it is to get done IMO :)

I'd phrase it differently: think what will it won't happen if you reorder the tasks, and how long it will take to achieve.

Mind that both are estimates and can change.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#37

"And humans enjoy feeling busy and productive." I have never enjoyed feeling busy.

I have the opposite, feeling busy means I am focused and doing meaningful challenging work

I guess you are in a good situation. My work often keeps me very busy but almost nothing of it is meaningful or challenging. It’s mainly just a repeat of the same thing.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#39
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The opposite is idleness, which we also do not particularly enjoy and will make ourselves play to avoid [...] It's a spectrum. Too busy or too idle for too long and we break. Nope, there's a hidden axis you're implicitly ignoring. It's possible to be active and "in flow" doing something without feeling "busy". So it's not just a 1-dimensional spectrum of whether one is idle or doing things, but also the psyche/atti…

Flow state can be a trap. You can accomplish a lot of task checkboxes that are irrelevant. This is exactly what the article talks about. You must ask questions on whether what you're doing has any value - ultimately for you or someone/something you value. And while in flow state you cannot ask such questions as they're not directly related to what you're doing. Company values are at least a few degrees removed from t…

> Flow is the same as hyperfocus physically, and overdoing will ultimately harm you physically ...

Flow is so hard to maintain that it's self limiting anyway.

I think there's little chance of overdoing flow when the entire social system is designed to keep us busy distracted and checking boxes.

Re: Busyness leads to bad decisions

#40

So the article mentions "that one study found people preferred giving themselves electric shocks rather than have nothing to do" which sounded like an interesting study. The link provided was to https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20548057 , and after searching I found this https://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/christopher.hsee/vita/Paper... which strangely doesn't mention electric shocks at all.

The study mentioned is "Just think: The challenges of the disengaged mind" https://science.sciencemag.org/content/345/6192/75

>Next, participants received our standard instructions to entertain themselves with their thoughts (in this case for 15 min). If they wanted, they learned, they could receive an electric shock again during the thinking period by pressing a button. We went to some length to explain that the primary goal was to entertain themselves with their thoughts and that the decision to receive a shock was entirely up to them. Many participants elected to receive negative stimulation over no stimulation—especially men: 67% of men (12 of 18) gave themselves at least one shock during the thinking period [range = 0 to 4 shocks, mean (M) = 1.47, SD = 1.46, not including one outlier who administered 190 shocks to himself], compared to 25% of women (6 of 24; range = 0 to 9 shocks, M = 1.00, SD = 2.32).

You can read the complete study here, https://wjh-www.harvard.edu/~dtg/WILSON%20ET%20AL%202014.pdf

I´m quite intrigued about the outlier who managed to shock himself every 4.7 seconds for 15 minutes straight. Was he trying to go for a record or just plain masochism...

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