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The Busy Person’s Lies

nytimes.com

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Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#51

Post by jacalata »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #49
jacalata wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the poor get handouts, the working poor get fines > many Walmart employees are on food stamps. Are you implying that Walmart employees are not 'working poor', or is the first sentence a dramatic over-generalization that doesn't contribute to the conversation?

Minimum wage Walmart employees are often working poor. Poverty depends on perspective. Most Revolution-Era Americans were living in what we today would call extreme poverty. But you can have a tv and a smartphone today and still be quite poor, because of the difference in consumer cost between things we need and things we don't need. www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/17/the-stuff-we-really-need-is-g…

Yes, I agree that Walmart employees are the working poor. I don't understand how you can recognise that and also argue for the validity of this statement

>There is a big difference between poor and working poor. The poor get handouts, the working poor get fines because they can't afford Obamacare. Then people wonder why the poor don't struggle their way to working poor.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#52

Post by garrickvanburen »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #40
lacampbell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

I used to make it on 6 hours a night, easily. Then I started college and it went up to 8, for some reason. Recently I stopped drinking. I'm back to 6.

In my experience, every beer adds 1 hour of sleep.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#53

Post by agentgt »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #21
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

It's worth noting that the writer of this piece isn't a New York Times employee; she's an author doing a guest spot. It seems unlikely that the typical NYT journalist lives a similar life.

Yes it is very similar to another guest spot writer who wrote about retiring in Manhattan: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/04/opinion/sunday/for-a-long-...

HN Comments here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12429693

Specifically my comment on the guest writer being fairly privileged: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12433360

...You know cause everyone can easily retire to Manhattan...

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#54

Post by jobu »

JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

As a parent of four kids myself, this seems ridiculously low:

"I spent a mere 9.09 hours weekly on housework and errands"

How is that possible? Housecleaner? Personal shopper? Nanny?

We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries, and that's not including clothes or haircuts etc.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#55

Post by Jtsummers »

jobu wrote: post #54
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

As a parent of four kids myself, this seems ridiculously low: "I spent a mere 9.09 hours weekly on housework and errands" How is that possible? Housecleaner? Personal shopper? Nanny? We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries, and that's not including clothes or haircuts etc.

Nanny and husband, per the article. She said she travels a lot for work, so travel weeks will also bring down the average significantly.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#56

Post by mbrameld »

lacampbell wrote: post #34
Jtsummers wrote: post #19

I did an analysis on my own time once, ignoring the breakdown of my work day and just focusing on overall time available: 1130-0000 - prepare for bed, relax 0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) 0600-0700 - stuff (shower, shave, personal email) 0700-1630 - work + lunch + commutes So I had 7 hours each day I was "leaving on the table". Most of it was spent on TV or video games, possibly socializing. I felt exhausted from work s…

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

The person was also exhausted every day, by their own admission. I feel pity, not jealousy.

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#57

Post by tboyd47 »

greenshackle2 wrote: post #17
tboyd47 wrote: post #12

The story seems to be that most people are under the delusion of being busier than they actually are, and if they just paid closer attention they would realize this. To me the far more interesting question is, why do we feel so busy? I've made the observation to my family on numerous occasions that the most stressful and exhausting work days for me are the least productive, those days when I'm just sitting at the com…

The same is true for me. Not having work at work leaves me more worn out. Or, possibly worse than having no work, having small amounts of annoying work, but nothing else. The worse is when all I have to do all day is this one annoying bug I havn't been able to figure out. It should take 2 hours to solve but it ends up taking three days. I'm most energized when I start a new project and I have lots of stuff to build.

Sounds like you're a programmer too. I wonder if any other professions have this problem.

Believe it or not, I have the opposite perspective. I'd rather spend a whole week debugging something in a gnarly legacy system than architect/build one from scratch. I like being able to say, "it wasn't working before; now it works," and then get on with my life, rather than live with the consequences of a hundred wrong turns. Different strokes, I guess!

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#58

Post by ChemicalWarfare »

jobu wrote: post #54
JPKab wrote: post #9

The author is clearly well into the upper-middle class financially, talking about nannies and "solo beach days" on both coasts. Wow, how out of touch is the typical New York Times writer these days. Poor and working class people have truly busy lives compared to professionals. We should all remember that.

As a parent of four kids myself, this seems ridiculously low: "I spent a mere 9.09 hours weekly on housework and errands" How is that possible? Housecleaner? Personal shopper? Nanny? We spend 6-8 hours each week shopping around trying to save money on just groceries, and that's not including clothes or haircuts etc.

We spend about an hour per day each on household chores not counting grocery shopping and non-everyday things like cleaning gutters or putting furniture together which I have some unopened Ikea boxes from 2 years back lol. Oh yea, no kids :)

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#59

Post by WillPostForFood »

jacalata wrote: post #51
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Minimum wage Walmart employees are often working poor. Poverty depends on perspective. Most Revolution-Era Americans were living in what we today would call extreme poverty. But you can have a tv and a smartphone today and still be quite poor, because of the difference in consumer cost between things we need and things we don't need. www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2016/08/17/the-stuff-we-really-need-is-g…

Yes, I agree that Walmart employees are the working poor. I don't understand how you can recognise that and also argue for the validity of this statement >There is a big difference between poor and working poor. The poor get handouts, the working poor get fines because they can't afford Obamacare. Then people wonder why the poor don't struggle their way to working poor.

I suspect you guys agree. I don't think he is saying there is a big difference in that they are both poor. The difference is that the poor are are being rewarded (transfer payments) while the working poor are being punished (they have to work, but still get fined, and pay taxes).

Re: The Busy Person’s Lies

#60

Post by Jtsummers »

mbrameld wrote: post #56
lacampbell wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

0000-0600 - sleep (roughly) I must admit I am always a bit jealous of people like you who can function on 6 hours sleep every day. After 3 days of that I am wreck.

The person was also exhausted every day, by their own admission. I feel pity, not jealousy.

I was exhausted mentally, not physically, from work. Which is why I've been able to maintain that and add in 2 hours (average) gym time each weeknight. Applying the same analysis to work allowed me to better manage those 8 hours a day as well, so my mental exhaustion from that almost entirely stopped.

Though I initially saw an increase in my time sleeping (to about 7 hours) when I started (and now, since I took a break out of laziness). After about 3-4 weeks, my body gets better conditioned to the level of effort and I go back to about 6 hours of sleep a night.

For context, my exercising is: 2x5k/week (~0.5 hour each), 2x1.5 hour BJJ class, 2x1 hour wrestling, 2x1 hour BJJ, 2x1.25 hour soccer games. So roughly 10.5 hours a week. Very physically exhausting to jump back into that full schedule, though I find the fatigue remarkably satisfying (knowing that it's been earned).

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