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 to work, I could dedicate more time to reading, writing, learning new skills, working on my own side projects, getting enough sleep, exercising, cooking, etc. Work just sucks the very soul out of me, and at the end of the day, I don't really want to do anything. Only on weekends and holidays do I feel much more energetic and motivated to do the things I listed previously, which evaporates by Monday.
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 set to work on what field of your choosing.
Working on something that doesn't interest you just for the sake of technology is not something that will ever make you happy. If you truly have no interest in anything then that's another problem on itself.
I struggled to find meaning in my work for the first few years of my career. I used to lie (unknowingly) to myself "I love my job", "I am passionate about my job", "It's my passion" and I was always disappointed.
That is until one day, after many years and barring many details, I decided to tell myself that "I push buttons on a company laptop in exchange for money and I happen to somewhat like it from time to time". I immediately became better at my job as it improved my mental health. I started seeing my work for what it was.
As for "passion", I started looking elsewhere for it and eventually found it. I can't make living from it, but that's another story.
> I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?)
I mean, this obviously depends on the kind of product - is it some biotech to make someone's life better, or is it a gambling website tuned to suck the most out of whales? As engineers we're much better placed than most people to do something meaningful with our work, and sticking with a job where you don't see that value is a pity. But if you just don't care about building something for someone else... maybe you should change that? As you say, there's little choice in whether you have to do it (unless you win the lottery or something), why not make a goal out of it and get some enjoyment out.
> I don't care about the products we build for someone else (why should I?)
This mindset is how you kneecap your career. You’ve pigeonholed yourself into the foot soldier category when it becomes immediately obvious to managers that you aren’t thinking about what’s actually good for the company.
You may already know this, but it needs to be explicitly called out that taking that approach to your business relationship with your employer defines the relationship.
I have been in places where I not only didn't give a shit about the product, but it was against what I believed ethically or morally. In those cases I managed to find pride in my own small piece of it and ignored the bigger picture. I'm lucky to work in a place now where I really believe in and use the product, and the same kind of soul-suckiness you're describing is far more tolerable.
Making money for someone else is inherently soul-sucking though, at the end of the 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.
I've found that by caring about the product, I can deliver higher quality results and charge a premium rate for doing it. Additionally, the quality of the work leads to good reviews and referrals, increasing demand (and lowering cost of sales) which ultimately increases my rate / profit.
The grass is always greener. Plenty of people become depressed once they stop working. The excitement of a hobby comes out of a balance with the struggle of work. Not everybody. If you like try taking extended time off to see where you land.
> 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?)
You should care a bit, because ultimately whatever we produce ends up directly or indirectly used by other human beings. That is at least my motivation to care about the product - thinking about that person on the other side that will be directly affected in their daily life by the choices I make.
I feel like I could've written this. I've even been feeling this more strongly lately and talking to friends about it. I just wish I could live my life and stop needing to work so I could have money.
If you care about the products, the emotional investment in your work might propel your income, which is the reason why you're working in the first place, so ostensibly a follow-on goal of that might be to raise your income.
Have you considered the posibility of doing a rewarding job (other than money). I think is possible sometimes, often it might be less money involved, but imagine that your work allows you to work in what you enjoy and in your free time, er r …you just rest or do more of what you enjoy.
Dude, you are absolutely not being productive in the 12 hours of indentured servitude. You need to find a new job.
The people at your current job aren't your friends. They've let you arrange to give away a full 50% your life (most of what's left must be occupied by sleep, pissing, shitting, eating, and paying bills). Not a single person in your life has said anything or tried to get you out of the office earlier?
You should have at least one friend who cares about your wellbeing and doesn't view you as an object to be exploited without limit.
This deserves to be upvoted more. Trading your life for financial gain has diminishing returns. You'd think everybody's goal would to be free of servitude.
And then for this person to feel all this emotional pain over using their meager free hours training themselves to be even more profitably exploited. Our prisons really are created in our own minds.
I would guess the work they're doing isn't what you'd expect. From their site -
> Majored Japanese Language at university currently working at a Japanese company as a Japanese translator in Turkey and also, at the same time, self-studying web development slowly as it is my dream to be a developer.
If they're working towards the dream many of us are blessed enough to be living right now, I have a hard time telling them to slow down. I admire that kind of work ethic, honestly.
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 after a long weekend.
And you can learn on the job. No need to do that outside work hours. And trying to learn stuff when you are tired after a long day is hard. It makes you more tired, you learn slower, it's frustrating, and you are setting yourself up for being less productive the next day because of it.
Make time for learning stuff, demand time for it even and put it in your calendar or just sneak it in. Get your boss to support you.
Try working smarter, not harder. If it feels like monkey work automate it. It's more fun and you get more productive by doing less. Frees up some time to do more interesting things.
If your work is not interesting to you, you are in the wrong job anyway. But assuming it is, you should make the most of it in terms of making it rewarding (and not just in the money sense).
Sounds like massive cope. If we don’t like work perhaps we can change it without waiting on favors to be handed down to us. Your boss won’t help unless market conditions force their hand.
The work conditions you mentioned (free weekday nights and the weekend) were fought for by organized workers and are very new, why stop there?
I don't think we'll even keep those conditions if that's what we're satisfied with. We already see that in tech with Slack, uncompensated on-call, salaried overtime expectations set during hiring or onboarding, the expectation that prospective hires spend their free time on training projects, etc
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.
Yeah, just wait till you're in your fifties and feel like you're also running out of time to do things! For example: "how many more growing seasons do I have to try this or that tomato" or "should I learn Spanish?". On the plus side kids are out of your hair.
At some point it dawns on you that unless you make some special effort, you're only gonna see your favorite movie or listen to your favorite album or eat your very favorite food or see such-and-such person or go to [place you really like] a disturbingly small count of times before you kick it.
That almost sounds like you did not really enjoy raising your kids? I find that's a taboo thing to say, and if that's what you meant, I appreciate you saying so.
As an adult second-language learner, my advice is not to even bother learning a second language unless you have to, or would love to. You can get proficient quickly, but much of the language's beauty will lie in the subtleties which will take decades of effort to learn.
And there's the accent, which you'll never lose.
The best time to learn a language is between 0 and 10 y.o.
I'm the one who posted that post on bearblog and I want to make something clear. My working hours are from 7:30-17:30. But transportation takes an hour in the morning and an hour(at least) in the evening. So I added that two hours too because those two hours are no use to me. I can't do anything in those transportation hours.
I might not have made this part clear, sorry for that.
But yeah, I know that working time is still too much. But I don't live in a country where I can find a job whenever I want. I have to stick to it because I have not much choice.
What is your timezone, and area of expertise? Maybe you can try getting into a remote gig, with less crazy working hours? We use a lot of offshore labor at $CORPO_OVERLORD, at somewhat more normal work hours.
Dude, you are a thinking like an idiot. Spend some time with your wife FFS. Who cares about being productive or playing fucking video games. Your wife ranked at the bottom of you list next to generic friend. You need to reconsider whats actually valuable to you. You need some soul searching
I'm a hyper-productive person, but productivity for productivity sake is literally pointless.
All productivity is a means to an end. You are producing something, by definition. What is that and why?
While I do have an "emotional itch" to work on "something" most of the time, I don't leave work to go do more work just for the sake of it. There are specific things that I want to produce because it makes me happy. If I don't work on those things, then it's not that I feel guilty, it's that I feel a void in my life.
In the past I have had so many hobbies and not enough time to dedicate to them all. I would get bored of one and move to another. Some might view that as recreation, but they were always making and producing something. For the last couple of years my wife and I have been performing magic as semi-professionals and as I find myself feeling less and less enthusiastic about modern technology after 25 years in the industry, I'm starting to see a scenario where I retire from tech and we take a major risk and go all in professionally. That can't happen if we don't put the work into it today. Not that you or anyone else should, but there's purpose and motivation behind the decision to produce that.
I don't live for the sake of my employer and I'm not motivated by money (at least not at this stage in my career, I have enough). There are things I want in my life that I will never get if I don't work towards them. Sometimes I am too tired, and that's a good signal that I'm not resting enough. But every single "productive" thing that I do, be it for my employer or myself, has a motivation behind it. No one should feel pressured to produce something just for the sake of producing (unless they are living parasitically off of the efforts of others but that is a whole different conversation).
Next step: reading Charles Bukowski and just absolutely not giving a f*ck. I always seen him as the ultimate slacker and hoped some of that energy will trickle down to me when I was being workaholic.
To my limited knowledge, "Don't try" is to say do something that you don't need effort to start doing, something that doesn't feel like a chore to you, something that you are passionate about.
He also mentioned going hungry a lot for his passion.
I don't think that someone who perseveres through all that is a slacker, but again, my understanding is limited.
I'm incredibly lucky in that I live 5 minutes away from the office. I work 7.5 hours a day, Monday to Friday. Every day I got a ton of time to dedicate to things I like... and yet, many times I feel drained from crunching code every day... It's been like 8 months since I worked on a personal project... lately all I do is play Breath of the Wild... But I feel pretty good about it, I think I relate to this fuck-being-productive culture more and more every day... or maybe I'm just depressed... don't know.
Yeah. Anyone who is blessed with this kind of motivation needs to quit their job and work full time on "being productive" toward their own goals. As someone with technical skills they have a high-leverage opportunity as a maker and builder. They shouldn't waste it by selling it to someone else for pennies on the dollar.
Granted if you have a family to provide for, and a life outside work, then you might be "working to live," and entrepreneurship is a needless risk that won't bring additional satisfaction. But if you're at the point that you're stressing over your productivity during the three hours of time you have to yourself each day, then that probably means you don't have much of a life outside work anyway. So it would be better to eliminate the work that is draining your energy, and replace it with pursuit of your own goals. Then you'll have those three hours to yourself, and you'll have spent the whole day being productive. It will be a net gain overall.
The first step is realizing that the risk of quitting your job is much lower than you think. Once you come to terms with that, it will be much easier to quit and begin building something important to you. There are so many opportunities for builders to produce value, raise money, get customers, and generally make themselves more useful, and therefore more fulfilled, than they ever could be while working for someone else. Take advantage of those opportunities while you can. If you fail, try again, or worst case scenario you can revert to your wage slavery.
I would be more generous and I think he's very much aware of it, since he wrote about how awful his commute is. It's a nearly insurmountable obstacle for most folks.
Same. Working in almost hours of the day can burn us out, especially with the intellectual jobs in IT industry.
Mental health should be more concerned and the "work-life balance" term needs to be brought to the discussion. Also, do not let the "overthinking" in.
By the way, I'm doing my 9-to-5 job for several years as a software engineer and still learning new stuff everyday. It's not the best but I'm enjoying my life. Just relax. =))
I think this is all a misconception about what "productive" really means. It means making progress towards some goal.
If you're some temporarily embarrassed billionaire, then the startup grindset is quite productive towards your goal.
If filling your life with momentary happiness is your goal, then playing videogames is quite productive towards your goal.
If you're a good little worker bee or someone at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is holding your family hostage, then clocking in 18 hours a day/7 days a week at $BIGTECH is quite productive towards your goal.
If you're religious, then going to church, improving your behavior/mindset, etc. are quite productive towards your goal.
It just all comes down to: What do you want out of life? What do you see as the purpose of life? The purpose of your life? Looking at this problem any other way is just deferring your personal philosophy, beliefs, and values to someone else—someone who probably doesn't care one bit about you and what you want.
Here's my free advice on the internet (aka worth nothing). Don't be productive, be accumulative.
If every day you do one thing that makes thing easier going forward, gives you another option, makes a job easier in the long term, adds a skill, gets you a reference or a connection, pay a dividend or royalty, etc.. in the long run you will be fine.
* Fuck being productive with the aim of making someone else wealthier.
Downtime is productive. It recharges you, allows you to background-process your thoughts, fulfills your mind if you're doing something you love, makes you healthier if you're doing something active. Being productive in service to yourself is totally fine.
When I was younger, I tried to spend as much of my free time as possible learning things that would enhance my career. New programming languages, frameworks, etc, things like that.
Eventually I realised that doing what is basically your job in your free time is fucking exhausting.
Nowadays I try to spend that time learning things which won’t enhance my career. Gardening, cooking, woodwork, much less stressful and more fulfilling imo
Its hard to have a fulfilling job. Too many the managers try and make you feel like you are either fighting off an invasion or reloading between waves, no rest no reward just keep up the pace. All that effort you put in frequently has nothing lasting happen after with it. Reset tomorrow with more piled on your plate like today never happened.
Meanwhile, with these other things you do get fulfillment because you see directly the fruits of your labor investment. You garden and get food and a beautiful environment. You cook and get a wonderful meal. You woodwork and get something beautiful or functional or both. You work out or do sports and you see your body develop and improve. In all cases, you are getting better at something or producing things and taking full advantage of it. You get this sense of progression like you are skilling in an RPG except the benefits are tangible.
If that's your thing, I'm totally cool with it - if you need to watch TV or play video games to decompress, that's fine. I personally get really anxious when I'm "wasting" time and would rather learn something (math, computers, music, something) or do something (housework, yardwork, something) with my "spare" time and I can't help but notice that me not spending time doing what other people consider "leisure" activities really irks a lot of people. Like, to each their own, you know?
> I personally get really anxious when I'm "wasting" time
One could argue that this is the problem. Not that you spend your time doing activities others wouldn't consider leisurely, but that you feel compelled to because otherwise you become "really anxious." Some anxiety can be a propulsion, but too much can be a pathology. I'm certainly not fit to evaluate your own, but by your own words I'd suggest it's possibly worth further reflection.
You misunderstand. He is like you. He felt anxious when he wasn't being productive so he spent his free time studying or whatever. But at some point maybe that stops working for you. Maybe you just don't have energy left and need a break. That happened to him and the important realization is that then you also have to let go of that anxious feeling, because if you aren't gonna be productive you might as well have fun. It's easy to say "to each their own" if it hasn't happened to you (yet): not actually feeling like being productive while still having that anxious feeling. So what I'm trying to say is: It's good to be productive but being driven by anxiety is maybe not something you should view as a fundamental character trait of yours.
This might be decoupled from productivity anxiety, but my theory is that there are different types of "fun".
There's the "simple carbohydrate" fun of, say, an action game, which is immediate, easy, but low-nutrition and, enjoyed overlong, makes me feel empty inside.
Then there's the "complex carbohydrate" fun of learning something new or working on a project, which is more fulfilling and interesting but also work -- mentally taxing -- and, enjoyed overlong, burns me out.
> I personally get really anxious when I'm "wasting" time and would rather learn something
What happens when you get to such a state where you simply cannot NOT waste time? E.g. your job becomes so soul-sucking that you have no mental energy left? Might you be then the author of the post? Hmm.
I keep a guitar at work and when I'm hung up, I'll close my door and noodle for a bit. It's surprising just how often once I'm able to stop thinking about a problem, the answer appears.
Makes so much sense. What do we even get after working like robot for 30 years? We don't have retirement benefits, we would've barely paid for a house if we could afford one. All this for making the CEOs and capital owners even more rich.
Also who decides the metrics of "Productivity"? If we listen to our bosses and CEOs we would ruin our mind, body and personal relationships while they generate intergenerational wealth.
I get the impression from others who have worked for Japanese companies that even tbt 12 hours at work aren't super productive; the long hours are a performance to show loyalty to the company.
I have a hard-pressed belief that long commutes are extremely detrimental. Even if you work long hours, if the commute is no more than 15 minutes, it ain't so bad when you get home and you still have plenty of time for everything else. The commute here is the problem, not the work. No shit you're tired. You're working an entire day and traveling 3 hours.
Not saying you should be doing anymore, just saying it's okay to not be productive after traveling that much on top of a full work day. If it makes you feel better I work from home and recently had to travel for a customer. 2 hours each way, and I only worked 7 hours at the customer and it was the most exhausted I had been in months.
If the commute is no more than 15 minutes, you are losing 30 minutes there and back every day, which is 10 hours every month, almost a waking day every month. Its still lost time. This is without counting the time lost in preparing for getting out of the house, settling in at work, and then doing the exact opposite when commuting back. Make each 10 minutes if you are someone who gets up and going very fast. You are now up to 1 hour lost every day, 20 hours every month. Almost and entire day or two waking days...
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.
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.
We need 4DWW - Four Day Work Week. This would give all of us the much-needed day to catch up on administrative stuff, so we can have our weekends back for relaxing. We will have time for side projects again.
If doing cool stuff at home is what drives you, there is only so much time you’ll spend aimlessly binge watching Netflix or playing games, before this drive wakes up and brings you back to do interesting things again.
This is not how it works for me. When I was unemployed, I was absolutely not bored, having time to finish projects I've shelved left and right, however useless they were. Doing things in the off-hours with a 9-to-5 job is much, much harder. With the energy of the day already gone, and the also very human need to just sit down and relax, there's just not much one can do.
I really hope to eventually do something that allows me to earn money, and have enough time to both tinker and relax, without running the risk of being exhausted come next morning.
Absolutely, indeed frak being productive. It's a Ponzi scheme, you have to keep grinding so you can land your next job that might be slightly better (and often is not). And we're talking in your free time, not even during the work hours.
How about some new propaganda?
"Work maximum 5h a day and the other 3h you will donate to your employer if they are kind and give you good atmosphere and money"?
I think 5h of work is a ton in SWE.
IF you can focus, isolate important work and put hard 5 hours... kid you are going places. If not, you will not be going places while putting 10 hours, I think.
I am increasingly hostile to the cult of productivity. I understand that a competitive environment calls for these sorts of sacrifices, but we should at least stop fetishizing it.
Live a simple life, make enough money, then focus on other things. You've met your weekly quota, your bills are paid. Now go play.
When you're on your death bed, you won't be thinking "I wish I spent more time at work, closing tickets".
If you spend 50% of that at work, you have spent 50% of it at work. Probably the most productive 50%.
The entire point of working for someone else is to attain enough money that you don't need to any more and you can treat it as more of an optional thing. If you're not doing that then unless you really enjoy your job burnout is inevitable.
> The entire point of working for someone else is to attain enough money that you don't need to any more and you can treat it as more of an optional thing.
If that were the singular goal/point, then most people should simply give up working entirely because they'll never reach it. They're working their own version of the sunk cost fallacy.
Sure - it sucks doing self-learning and working in your own time but when else are you supposed to polish your skills beyond what work projects give you latitude to do?
For example I was in a tech company where XMPP was the core of every one of our products. There were almost no REST based APIs in the company and we had our own protocols and APIs which made much of what I did very specific and non transferable. Day in and out I worked with XML, asynchronous messaging and increasingly niche tooling as XMPP became less and less relevant and HTTP based APIs like REST-JSON and WebSockets displaced it.
It wasn’t hard to move jobs but it wasn’t easy either. I had to spend a month or so in my own time learning REST, JSON, WebSockets and Spring MVC in order to pass interviews.
I think constant productivity culture leads to burnout but there’s got to be a middle ground between doing nothing after hours and hustling non-stop.
Interestingly, lately, I find myself totally unable to do "nothing" -- to be unproductive by the description given in the article.
The perspective of spending 1 or 2 hours playing videogames or watching entertainment (movies, series) became terribly boring to me. I can only think of that as a loss of time: I wouldn't be a better person at the end of it.
Being able to better smash buttons, faster, at the right timing -- watching a story unfold on screen -- these used to be a great source of joy "before". But today, it seems all so dull; my intellect or my body doesn't get any better by doing that. Instead, reading whatever book on ML or even on an obscure programming language or technique, or spending time at the gym, or listening to a lecture on math or physics, sound so much more appealing to me.
I cannot spend time anymore just sitting, it literally upsets me. Anybody feeling the same?
Could be the influence of excessive corporativism as the article suggests, where every second we don't spend creating the proverbial 'value for the shareholders' we have no reason to exist. Slowly it leaks into private life until one cannot relax anymore and can only do productive things constantly or feel guilty about it. Or maybe it's about desperately trying to become that better more capable person we once foolishly promised ourselves we'll be, while we visibly age and wonder which day will be our last wondering "is this really all there is to life?".
I got laid off and told myself i would hustle to get something be or start a business.
Instead i surf every day and go hiking and cook meals for my gf. Couldn't be happier. The hustle part will have to wait until i get through this phase.
I'm at a cross roads because I'm trying to sort out an intern program.
On one end, I don't want to work too hard now that I'm old. However, I don't have to work too hard as I worked crazy hard for a long decade with massive growth and discipline saving.
When I reflect on interns, I want to hire people that are willing to suffer for the craft. I feel it is morally wrong to encourage a low key lifestyle in the young as it wastes potential.
At core, the question I'm asking is how to find people that desire greatness in life.
I had similar thoughts for a while. What helped me was instead of aiming to make all of the time outside work productive (3-4 hours) just aim for under an hour. For me, 40 min of producitivity per day outside of work makes me feel accomplished. You can actually get a lot done in that span of time like do some exercise, practice an instrument, read an article... (pick one per day and cycle through the week). Not much immediate gratification, but over the years it adds up to a tonn of personal development. Plus with a 40-min window you don't feel guilt about abandoning your other family duties etc.
Reminded me of Bartebly the Scrivener and “I would prefer not to”, but also Byul-Chun Han and “Burnout Society”. A very short summary of the latter is that in our day and age we exploit ourselves on behalf of people who would in previous decades exploit us. But of course the author explores both reasons and consequences of this phenomena.
Amen. This also subtly highlights a huge negative to being forced to work in an office, commute times. I was in the same boat, 2.5hrs or so of commuting per day made my 8hr day a 10.5hr day and made my blood boil. Started working from home and my blood pressure went down and I got happier AND had more time to myself.
I worked on a hay farm for several years before going back to school and majoring in psychology and then abandoning that and becoming a software engineer. Never found my passion. I don't give it a shit about any of the work I do. But anything is better than working on a hay farm.
I am working full time , then try to preparing for senior software engineer interviews in evenings for a new job plus side projects. It is really exhausting. There is just so much peer pressure to create something amazing, be at a great job with top pay.
You have working hours and you have non-working hours. I don't see the upside in punishing yourself for not working during non-working hours. Those hours are for you. The proper way to look at this is 'be productive during the time you've allotted.'
I have a different understanding of being productive - and it's not about working harder.
It's more about being smart at work and life (find the best tools for you, discover how your own brain works and find lifehacks - including food - to exploit the best from it).
If you feel this way and you have the option, an easy solution is to make less money and/or take a job you like that involves learning and self-improvement.
I realize not everyone has the opportunity, but I think a lot of people would be much happier earning less.
What everyone is feeling is their wealth is being stolen by inflation. Ideally, the time you trade during working hours, in exchange for money, should make you wealthy but due to the insane inflation it doesn't.
We all need a reason to be productive. We have placed these jobs above our own well being. That doesn't sound very healthy at all. I would suggest finding something you are passionate about. It may take a while.
Very few of us in society do work that truly matters. Work is like a colouring book: A complete waste of your time (though work might be less fun, YMMV).
It would be lovely to give up the charade of the importance of work.
You're saying we shouldn't spend literally all of our waking hours like productive robots and actually spend some time enjoying life? I'm just hearing this now for the first time.
For some people the work gives them energy, or work itself is what motivates them. If you can find a job like that, you won't feel the need to fill gaps with needless productivity.
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.
More so if you have a family and are the primary provider. You need to take time out for yourself. No, that’s not selfish. It’s the oxygen mask rule on all airplanes - before taking care of others, you need to look after yourself. Be responsible to the degree you can maintain a sustainable (read healthy) balance.
It took me 20 years and a pandemic to realize that corporations (especially public corporations) are one tracked. They are non-living entities fuelled by the insatiable greed of some. Remember the old adage, I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable? Thanks to the increasing rich/poor divide - now everybody is miserable.
It’s the non-stop work culture, and for what? To sell more new phones and laptops to people, when the old ones work just fine?
But there is hope - with the increasing popularity of self-repair friendly legislations and the promotion of manufacturing jobs (the one thing I appreciate Trump for), we just might be able to save ourselves. As imperfect as Unions are, this was the reason for their existence - to keep the other side in check.
Sorry for going all over the place today. Just some things that have been on my mind lately. YOU mean something. YOUR life and well-being matters. Don’t do it for your loyalty - it means shit in most cases. To your boss it may matter a bit, but to the “company” - a made up non-living entity? Zilch. It is heartless and will show no emotion when making “hard” decisions.
/rant
PS: This is not the entire story. I did not get into the rabbit hole of influencers and online/social click-bait marketing that is thriving on FOMO.
Some comments were deferred for faster rendering.
sBqQu3U0wH|2 years ago
danny_taco|2 years ago
Working on something that doesn't interest you just for the sake of technology is not something that will ever make you happy. If you truly have no interest in anything then that's another problem on itself.
ksd482|2 years ago
I struggled to find meaning in my work for the first few years of my career. I used to lie (unknowingly) to myself "I love my job", "I am passionate about my job", "It's my passion" and I was always disappointed.
That is until one day, after many years and barring many details, I decided to tell myself that "I push buttons on a company laptop in exchange for money and I happen to somewhat like it from time to time". I immediately became better at my job as it improved my mental health. I started seeing my work for what it was.
As for "passion", I started looking elsewhere for it and eventually found it. I can't make living from it, but that's another story.
xenocratus|2 years ago
I mean, this obviously depends on the kind of product - is it some biotech to make someone's life better, or is it a gambling website tuned to suck the most out of whales? As engineers we're much better placed than most people to do something meaningful with our work, and sticking with a job where you don't see that value is a pity. But if you just don't care about building something for someone else... maybe you should change that? As you say, there's little choice in whether you have to do it (unless you win the lottery or something), why not make a goal out of it and get some enjoyment out.
zikduruqe|2 years ago
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.
kortilla|2 years ago
This mindset is how you kneecap your career. You’ve pigeonholed yourself into the foot soldier category when it becomes immediately obvious to managers that you aren’t thinking about what’s actually good for the company.
You may already know this, but it needs to be explicitly called out that taking that approach to your business relationship with your employer defines the relationship.
fswd|2 years ago
JohnMakin|2 years ago
Making money for someone else is inherently soul-sucking though, at the end of the day.
MuffinFlavored|2 years ago
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.
thelittleone|2 years ago
srcreigh|2 years ago
bojan|2 years ago
You should care a bit, because ultimately whatever we produce ends up directly or indirectly used by other human beings. That is at least my motivation to care about the product - thinking about that person on the other side that will be directly affected in their daily life by the choices I make.
chankstein38|2 years ago
2devnull|2 years ago
88913527|2 years ago
alfonsodev|2 years ago
For example just even learning enough social/negotiation skills, or influence to educate your clients to be oriented by results rather than hours.
That could be the key, then you can leverage "boring" technology, to solve real problems that matter.
Creating a nice feedback loop were you grow and create your craft so work becomes frustration free and time independent.
quijoteuniv|2 years ago
cmilton|2 years ago
D13Fd|2 years ago
musicale|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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scaramanga|2 years ago
The people at your current job aren't your friends. They've let you arrange to give away a full 50% your life (most of what's left must be occupied by sleep, pissing, shitting, eating, and paying bills). Not a single person in your life has said anything or tried to get you out of the office earlier?
You should have at least one friend who cares about your wellbeing and doesn't view you as an object to be exploited without limit.
Good luck, my dude.
sesteel|2 years ago
dougmwne|2 years ago
joenot443|2 years ago
> Majored Japanese Language at university currently working at a Japanese company as a Japanese translator in Turkey and also, at the same time, self-studying web development slowly as it is my dream to be a developer.
If they're working towards the dream many of us are blessed enough to be living right now, I have a hard time telling them to slow down. I admire that kind of work ethic, honestly.
jillesvangurp|2 years ago
And you can learn on the job. No need to do that outside work hours. And trying to learn stuff when you are tired after a long day is hard. It makes you more tired, you learn slower, it's frustrating, and you are setting yourself up for being less productive the next day because of it.
Make time for learning stuff, demand time for it even and put it in your calendar or just sneak it in. Get your boss to support you.
Try working smarter, not harder. If it feels like monkey work automate it. It's more fun and you get more productive by doing less. Frees up some time to do more interesting things.
If your work is not interesting to you, you are in the wrong job anyway. But assuming it is, you should make the most of it in terms of making it rewarding (and not just in the money sense).
wahnfrieden|2 years ago
The work conditions you mentioned (free weekday nights and the weekend) were fought for by organized workers and are very new, why stop there?
I don't think we'll even keep those conditions if that's what we're satisfied with. We already see that in tech with Slack, uncompensated on-call, salaried overtime expectations set during hiring or onboarding, the expectation that prospective hires spend their free time on training projects, etc
hiepph|2 years ago
zwieback|2 years ago
yamtaddle|2 years ago
tasuki|2 years ago
That almost sounds like you did not really enjoy raising your kids? I find that's a taboo thing to say, and if that's what you meant, I appreciate you saying so.
sharemywin|2 years ago
unknown|2 years ago
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Scubabear68|2 years ago
FredPret|2 years ago
And there's the accent, which you'll never lose.
The best time to learn a language is between 0 and 10 y.o.
dostoynikov|2 years ago
But yeah, I know that working time is still too much. But I don't live in a country where I can find a job whenever I want. I have to stick to it because I have not much choice.
_jdzr|2 years ago
isoprophlex|2 years ago
Best of luck, hang tight..!
tobbe2064|2 years ago
gspencley|2 years ago
All productivity is a means to an end. You are producing something, by definition. What is that and why?
While I do have an "emotional itch" to work on "something" most of the time, I don't leave work to go do more work just for the sake of it. There are specific things that I want to produce because it makes me happy. If I don't work on those things, then it's not that I feel guilty, it's that I feel a void in my life.
In the past I have had so many hobbies and not enough time to dedicate to them all. I would get bored of one and move to another. Some might view that as recreation, but they were always making and producing something. For the last couple of years my wife and I have been performing magic as semi-professionals and as I find myself feeling less and less enthusiastic about modern technology after 25 years in the industry, I'm starting to see a scenario where I retire from tech and we take a major risk and go all in professionally. That can't happen if we don't put the work into it today. Not that you or anyone else should, but there's purpose and motivation behind the decision to produce that.
I don't live for the sake of my employer and I'm not motivated by money (at least not at this stage in my career, I have enough). There are things I want in my life that I will never get if I don't work towards them. Sometimes I am too tired, and that's a good signal that I'm not resting enough. But every single "productive" thing that I do, be it for my employer or myself, has a motivation behind it. No one should feel pressured to produce something just for the sake of producing (unless they are living parasitically off of the efforts of others but that is a whole different conversation).
myth_drannon|2 years ago
On another note I really liked "How to Be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/623922.How_to_Be_Idle In case you get some guilt feelings.
PartiallyTyped|2 years ago
To my limited knowledge, "Don't try" is to say do something that you don't need effort to start doing, something that doesn't feel like a chore to you, something that you are passionate about.
He also mentioned going hungry a lot for his passion.
I don't think that someone who perseveres through all that is a slacker, but again, my understanding is limited.
damnitpeter|2 years ago
WFHRenaissance|2 years ago
pelagicAustral|2 years ago
shrimp_emoji|2 years ago
foobarian|2 years ago
oifjsidjf|2 years ago
TechBro8615|2 years ago
Granted if you have a family to provide for, and a life outside work, then you might be "working to live," and entrepreneurship is a needless risk that won't bring additional satisfaction. But if you're at the point that you're stressing over your productivity during the three hours of time you have to yourself each day, then that probably means you don't have much of a life outside work anyway. So it would be better to eliminate the work that is draining your energy, and replace it with pursuit of your own goals. Then you'll have those three hours to yourself, and you'll have spent the whole day being productive. It will be a net gain overall.
The first step is realizing that the risk of quitting your job is much lower than you think. Once you come to terms with that, it will be much easier to quit and begin building something important to you. There are so many opportunities for builders to produce value, raise money, get customers, and generally make themselves more useful, and therefore more fulfilled, than they ever could be while working for someone else. Take advantage of those opportunities while you can. If you fail, try again, or worst case scenario you can revert to your wage slavery.
jurassicfoxy|2 years ago
tuanm|2 years ago
Mental health should be more concerned and the "work-life balance" term needs to be brought to the discussion. Also, do not let the "overthinking" in.
By the way, I'm doing my 9-to-5 job for several years as a software engineer and still learning new stuff everyday. It's not the best but I'm enjoying my life. Just relax. =))
von_lohengramm|2 years ago
If you're some temporarily embarrassed billionaire, then the startup grindset is quite productive towards your goal.
If filling your life with momentary happiness is your goal, then playing videogames is quite productive towards your goal.
If you're a good little worker bee or someone at the Bureau of Labor Statistics is holding your family hostage, then clocking in 18 hours a day/7 days a week at $BIGTECH is quite productive towards your goal.
If you're religious, then going to church, improving your behavior/mindset, etc. are quite productive towards your goal.
It just all comes down to: What do you want out of life? What do you see as the purpose of life? The purpose of your life? Looking at this problem any other way is just deferring your personal philosophy, beliefs, and values to someone else—someone who probably doesn't care one bit about you and what you want.
georgeecollins|2 years ago
If every day you do one thing that makes thing easier going forward, gives you another option, makes a job easier in the long term, adds a skill, gets you a reference or a connection, pay a dividend or royalty, etc.. in the long run you will be fine.
InstantMessage|2 years ago
https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/01/06/fire-and-motion/
"...you have to move forward every day. Sooner or later you will win."
ragnot|2 years ago
atentaten|2 years ago
alexpotato|2 years ago
"On average, I spend about an hour a day on curl. It adds up over time."
lljk_kennedy|2 years ago
Downtime is productive. It recharges you, allows you to background-process your thoughts, fulfills your mind if you're doing something you love, makes you healthier if you're doing something active. Being productive in service to yourself is totally fine.
jmkni|2 years ago
Eventually I realised that doing what is basically your job in your free time is fucking exhausting.
Nowadays I try to spend that time learning things which won’t enhance my career. Gardening, cooking, woodwork, much less stressful and more fulfilling imo
asdff|2 years ago
Meanwhile, with these other things you do get fulfillment because you see directly the fruits of your labor investment. You garden and get food and a beautiful environment. You cook and get a wonderful meal. You woodwork and get something beautiful or functional or both. You work out or do sports and you see your body develop and improve. In all cases, you are getting better at something or producing things and taking full advantage of it. You get this sense of progression like you are skilling in an RPG except the benefits are tangible.
commandlinefan|2 years ago
chronofar|2 years ago
One could argue that this is the problem. Not that you spend your time doing activities others wouldn't consider leisurely, but that you feel compelled to because otherwise you become "really anxious." Some anxiety can be a propulsion, but too much can be a pathology. I'm certainly not fit to evaluate your own, but by your own words I'd suggest it's possibly worth further reflection.
Check out Four Thousand Weeks for some recent musings on why that anxiety may be best ignored rather than heeded: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54785515-four-thousand-w...
golol|2 years ago
shrimp_emoji|2 years ago
There's the "simple carbohydrate" fun of, say, an action game, which is immediate, easy, but low-nutrition and, enjoyed overlong, makes me feel empty inside.
Then there's the "complex carbohydrate" fun of learning something new or working on a project, which is more fulfilling and interesting but also work -- mentally taxing -- and, enjoyed overlong, burns me out.
My brain seems to demand a balanced diet of both.
BossingAround|2 years ago
What happens when you get to such a state where you simply cannot NOT waste time? E.g. your job becomes so soul-sucking that you have no mental energy left? Might you be then the author of the post? Hmm.
lelima|2 years ago
I feel I'm more productive after having these small breaks and I feel way happier, anyone should try it
criddell|2 years ago
throw93|2 years ago
Also who decides the metrics of "Productivity"? If we listen to our bosses and CEOs we would ruin our mind, body and personal relationships while they generate intergenerational wealth.
aidenn0|2 years ago
dsadsadsawdqdwq|2 years ago
Not saying you should be doing anymore, just saying it's okay to not be productive after traveling that much on top of a full work day. If it makes you feel better I work from home and recently had to travel for a customer. 2 hours each way, and I only worked 7 hours at the customer and it was the most exhausted I had been in months.
unity1001|2 years ago
If the commute is no more than 15 minutes, you are losing 30 minutes there and back every day, which is 10 hours every month, almost a waking day every month. Its still lost time. This is without counting the time lost in preparing for getting out of the house, settling in at work, and then doing the exact opposite when commuting back. Make each 10 minutes if you are someone who gets up and going very fast. You are now up to 1 hour lost every day, 20 hours every month. Almost and entire day or two waking days...
mcv|2 years ago
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.
isoprophlex|2 years ago
That's not a job my dudeperson, that's a gulag
deprecative|2 years ago
pastacacioepepe|2 years ago
Bad analogy. More like a Walmart.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JsgrXyBZO0
yboris|2 years ago
Fight for 4DWW !!!
listenallyall|2 years ago
kvark|2 years ago
mid-kid|2 years ago
I really hope to eventually do something that allows me to earn money, and have enough time to both tinker and relax, without running the risk of being exhausted come next morning.
pdimitar|2 years ago
How about some new propaganda?
"Work maximum 5h a day and the other 3h you will donate to your employer if they are kind and give you good atmosphere and money"?
How about that one, eh?
roguas|2 years ago
nicbou|2 years ago
Live a simple life, make enough money, then focus on other things. You've met your weekly quota, your bills are paid. Now go play.
When you're on your death bed, you won't be thinking "I wish I spent more time at work, closing tickets".
throwaway22032|2 years ago
If you spend 50% of that at work, you have spent 50% of it at work. Probably the most productive 50%.
The entire point of working for someone else is to attain enough money that you don't need to any more and you can treat it as more of an optional thing. If you're not doing that then unless you really enjoy your job burnout is inevitable.
Rimintil|2 years ago
If that were the singular goal/point, then most people should simply give up working entirely because they'll never reach it. They're working their own version of the sunk cost fallacy.
esafak|2 years ago
leonroy|2 years ago
For example I was in a tech company where XMPP was the core of every one of our products. There were almost no REST based APIs in the company and we had our own protocols and APIs which made much of what I did very specific and non transferable. Day in and out I worked with XML, asynchronous messaging and increasingly niche tooling as XMPP became less and less relevant and HTTP based APIs like REST-JSON and WebSockets displaced it.
It wasn’t hard to move jobs but it wasn’t easy either. I had to spend a month or so in my own time learning REST, JSON, WebSockets and Spring MVC in order to pass interviews.
I think constant productivity culture leads to burnout but there’s got to be a middle ground between doing nothing after hours and hustling non-stop.
version_five|2 years ago
Noe2097|2 years ago
The perspective of spending 1 or 2 hours playing videogames or watching entertainment (movies, series) became terribly boring to me. I can only think of that as a loss of time: I wouldn't be a better person at the end of it.
Being able to better smash buttons, faster, at the right timing -- watching a story unfold on screen -- these used to be a great source of joy "before". But today, it seems all so dull; my intellect or my body doesn't get any better by doing that. Instead, reading whatever book on ML or even on an obscure programming language or technique, or spending time at the gym, or listening to a lecture on math or physics, sound so much more appealing to me.
I cannot spend time anymore just sitting, it literally upsets me. Anybody feeling the same?
moffkalast|2 years ago
Could be the influence of excessive corporativism as the article suggests, where every second we don't spend creating the proverbial 'value for the shareholders' we have no reason to exist. Slowly it leaks into private life until one cannot relax anymore and can only do productive things constantly or feel guilty about it. Or maybe it's about desperately trying to become that better more capable person we once foolishly promised ourselves we'll be, while we visibly age and wonder which day will be our last wondering "is this really all there is to life?".
Either one I guess.
arbitrary_name|2 years ago
Instead i surf every day and go hiking and cook meals for my gf. Couldn't be happier. The hustle part will have to wait until i get through this phase.
mathgladiator|2 years ago
On one end, I don't want to work too hard now that I'm old. However, I don't have to work too hard as I worked crazy hard for a long decade with massive growth and discipline saving.
When I reflect on interns, I want to hire people that are willing to suffer for the craft. I feel it is morally wrong to encourage a low key lifestyle in the young as it wastes potential.
At core, the question I'm asking is how to find people that desire greatness in life.
simontheowl|2 years ago
Daunk|2 years ago
pointy_hat|2 years ago
ryandvm|2 years ago
chankstein38|2 years ago
LoudFrog|2 years ago
Pbhaskal|2 years ago
PM_me_your_math|2 years ago
blastonico|2 years ago
It's more about being smart at work and life (find the best tools for you, discover how your own brain works and find lifehacks - including food - to exploit the best from it).
Jeff_Brown|2 years ago
I realize not everyone has the opportunity, but I think a lot of people would be much happier earning less.
seventytwo|2 years ago
alexfromapex|2 years ago
cmilton|2 years ago
Rimintil|2 years ago
It would be lovely to give up the charade of the importance of work.
leesec|2 years ago
xkcd1963|2 years ago
PeterStuer|2 years ago
mcv|2 years ago
sebastianconcpt|2 years ago
You will not have that levels of energy forever.
Dowwie|2 years ago
greenie_beans|2 years ago
philip1209|2 years ago
the_cat_kittles|2 years ago
sledgehammers|2 years ago
lighttower|2 years ago
are we the rats?
vladmk|2 years ago
sheepscreek|2 years ago
It took me 20 years and a pandemic to realize that corporations (especially public corporations) are one tracked. They are non-living entities fuelled by the insatiable greed of some. Remember the old adage, I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and miserable? Thanks to the increasing rich/poor divide - now everybody is miserable.
It’s the non-stop work culture, and for what? To sell more new phones and laptops to people, when the old ones work just fine?
But there is hope - with the increasing popularity of self-repair friendly legislations and the promotion of manufacturing jobs (the one thing I appreciate Trump for), we just might be able to save ourselves. As imperfect as Unions are, this was the reason for their existence - to keep the other side in check.
Sorry for going all over the place today. Just some things that have been on my mind lately. YOU mean something. YOUR life and well-being matters. Don’t do it for your loyalty - it means shit in most cases. To your boss it may matter a bit, but to the “company” - a made up non-living entity? Zilch. It is heartless and will show no emotion when making “hard” decisions.
/rant
PS: This is not the entire story. I did not get into the rabbit hole of influencers and online/social click-bait marketing that is thriving on FOMO.
jerska|2 years ago
Listen to your body. Always.
byteknight|2 years ago
"Time enjoyed wasting is not wasted time".
Helped me a lot.
AndrewKemendo|2 years ago
aftbit|2 years ago
Swannie|2 years ago
prmoustache|2 years ago
xialvjun|2 years ago
icar|2 years ago
RektBoy|2 years ago
juggli|2 years ago
similetimes|2 years ago
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sremani|2 years ago
pastacacioepepe|2 years ago