"Time drunks deeply intuit this, and their procrastination-induced state of timelessness should not be considered a terrible character flaw but rather an act of spiritual rebellion against modernity."
Thank you, I needed that. Time to continue procrastitating.
The article defines the opposite of being a workaholic ("work matyr") as
> “Time Indifference – We put off what must be done and do not use our time to support our own vision and further our own goals.”
Personally i can't really identify with that view. I find work hardest to focus on when it is opposed to my own vision/goals (other then the goal to pay my rent). I suppose its still the same thing as a second order effect, spending time procrastinating is usually more time then just straight up doing it, which is less time on your own goals.
It’s strange that we even work more or even at the same amount of time as 100 years ago.
We have systems that increase worker productivity and even software by itself for the most part should be decreasing the amount of work to be done since it’s supposedly a large force multiplier for productivity.
Economists predicted we would be working less (but they are bad at predicting most things) so while there might be a few more jobs why should work hours have stayed constant? I’m not even saying we have bs jobs either.
//It’s strange that we even work more or even at the same amount of time as 100 years ago.
We don’t. A hundred years the average man was putting in 7 to 7 shifts on the factory or the farm. Physically exhausting, dangerous and painful labor that required your physical presence and likely left you too exhausted for anything else.
Today you and I are click clacking our keyboards in a safe and air conditioned environment, likely can fuck off for hours with out anyone noticing etc.
The idea that we work “the same” as even two generations ago is preposterous.
But you are not trying to produce a fixed amount of goods. You are trying to compete with your peers for a limited supply of goods. Some of these things are artificially constrained (housing), and some of these things are hard or impossible to scale and thereby subject to Baumol's cost disease (surgeons, teachers/tutors, etc.)
So long as 2 people are chasing 1 house, or worse, one oncology appointment for their child, you will have people working themselves to the bone to outcompete their peers. We could, of course, allow building more homes and improve the supply of healthcare, but that might mean people wouldn't work as hard, which would mean less surplus wealth for capital owners and state actors to enjoy.
Because humans don’t care about absolute wealth they care about relative wealth. As long as someone else is working more there’s going to be pressure to keep up with them.
I believe the purpose of life is to create possibility. If that’s true, there will never be an incentive to work less so long as there is more possibility to be created (assuming that people are living purposefully, and it seems to me that those that don’t are evolutionarily selected against)
I think the data are that we are working a bit less than we used to, it's rather that the norms and mental categories have shifted. For example 40hr work week is now a sort of norm, vs "sunrise to sunset."
The average workday is also much safer and less physically painful than it used to be.
There are two things I have in mind, and if I have time later I'll see if I can find them and update the post -- one chart of total working hours per worker, and one article, about how much added safety has or hasn't slowed down productivity growth (which inevitably has a lot of data in it about workplace injury and death over time).
Children also work much less than they used to.
I think that Keynes wasn't completely wrong in his prediction (...and maybe if AI really kicks off he will be more vindicated, just missed on the timing)
The things that make the maintenance of modern infrastructure easier themselves need maintenance.
There’s also a hedonic treadmill effect, where we start to expect the amenities that modern infrastructure affords and use them as a base for greater aspirations (ground travel is solved for the average person, now let’s solve air -> space -> etc)
If someone else worked harder, they'd out-compete you, maybe conquer you. So we set a threshold and say, you can work 40-80-ish hours without going totally insane and dying. But there's no point working less than that, because someone else is ready to push the envelope. Even if the whole US agreed to just take it easy, I fear the other two superpowers (China and..... well Russia seems weak, maybe India?) would outdo us in GDP and it wouldn't be a great position politically to be in, since the US is my favorite superpower by a country mile.
Work may have not decreased, but due to productivity an hour of work buys WAY more than it did 100 years ago. Our shelter is larger, climate-controlled, with plumbing and electricity. Our food has way more variety, quality, and year-round availability, carries fewer diseases, and can be stored in a giant cold box inside our homes for longer preservation. Our transportation is climate-controlled, faster, safer, and more convenient.
Everything we use our wages on has seen massive gains in quality. It’s just that instead of working less and being just as poor as we were in 1924, we work the same and buy the uber top level wealthy (in 1924 terms) version of everything.
> It’s strange that we even work more or even at the same amount of time as 100 years ago.
why is this strange?
if a candybar maker spends $0.75 to make a candybar and sell it for $1.00 and then they suddenly find they can make 2 for the same price, they're going to continue selling them individually for $1.00.
When you increase productivity like that you now have an effective increase in available resources, why would you assume there's only 1 place those effective resources can go?
There is more work to go around. Back in the day, the only work that was required was sustaining one's caloric intake via farming (not to even mention the sibling's point that that work was much more strenuous that today's). As civilization advances, more work is uncovered. It is akin to a form of Parkinson's Law (work expands to fill the time allotted), only in this case, the time allotted is the entire future history of humanity.
It’s by choice. Most people in the US could achieve 1920s standard of living by working for a fraction of standard career (say 10-20 years), and retiring early. Instead, people choose to work till old age, to be able to afford modern comforts and pleasures.
If you’re working half the time versus millions of comparably talented people full time: you will soon be out of a job (if employee) or a business (if employer).
> To be time drunk means to be so “drunk” that one forgets time exists. This forgetfulness is presented as a bad thing, given its inefficiency in the market economy. However, forgetting time is the right move when it comes to sacred considerations.
But isn't the flow state also where people forget time exists? And isn't the flow state said to be the most productive state people can be in?
But id argue that the only difference between drunk procrastination and flow state is that one is considered “productive” while the other one is considered a waste of time.
If my randomly disassembling a laptop to clean it instead of tackling that hard problem at work gave me money I’d be in flow state.
I have, through my life, oscillated from one extreme to the other - at school, this manifested as an utter indifference to lessons, preferring to read under the desk, yet a week of frantic learning in which I would absorb the year or term’s lessons. I was mostly time drunk at this point.
Come graduation, I had an urgent need for income, to support both myself and family members who suddenly found themselves in a hard place. I worked a day job, a night job, two side gigs, and burned the candle fiercely for four years.
One of the side gigs grew, became a business. Ten more years of utterly relentless and increasingly miserable grind. Lucre, too, but at a steep cost.
2016. Burned out. Health so bad I earnestly thought I would probably soon die. Quit.
Three years of time drunkenness. Travel. Drugs. More travel. More drugs. Lots of time staring into space and wondering who I was. Nothing was fulfilling, even doing things I knew I once dreamt of one day doing - the memory of desire was there, but the actuality, absent. I had utterly internalised the idea that my labour was my identity, and that I was without want or need. It seemed intractable, and no amount of r&r found me any improved.
Then, we moved off grid. Seemingly the last step in a spiral, instead found me suddenly very much occupied with the basics of modern life. Water. Power. Shelter. Floods. Fires. You name it.
That, and therapy, have finally found me at a virtuous mean. My cycles are no longer decadal, but hourly. I work. I play. I learn. I waste time. I use it well.
I find myself with a child now, to boot - and she is the virtuous mean embodied - work and play, all in one.
Anyway. These lessons are easily spoken, but hard earned.
My colleagues would consider me a 'work martyr', but what they don't understand is that my strategy is to get everything done as fast as possible and then to significantly chill. With deadlines covered and all the details buttoned up way ahead of time, it leads to a much less stressful life.
My partner has this same philosophy, but somehow all that seems to happen is them taking on more work (uncompensated) as soon as they get ahead, and the sought-after chill period and energy for non-work never seems to materialise.
Ecoste|2 years ago
Thank you, I needed that. Time to continue procrastitating.
coldtea|2 years ago
bawolff|2 years ago
> “Time Indifference – We put off what must be done and do not use our time to support our own vision and further our own goals.”
Personally i can't really identify with that view. I find work hardest to focus on when it is opposed to my own vision/goals (other then the goal to pay my rent). I suppose its still the same thing as a second order effect, spending time procrastinating is usually more time then just straight up doing it, which is less time on your own goals.
bluefirebrand|2 years ago
When it comes to employment, I've never found it actually benefits me all that much to work hard and deliver results early.
And it doesn't free me up that extra time to pursue my own goals either.
I don't think I'm alone in this.
zitterbewegung|2 years ago
We have systems that increase worker productivity and even software by itself for the most part should be decreasing the amount of work to be done since it’s supposedly a large force multiplier for productivity.
Economists predicted we would be working less (but they are bad at predicting most things) so while there might be a few more jobs why should work hours have stayed constant? I’m not even saying we have bs jobs either.
xyzelement|2 years ago
We don’t. A hundred years the average man was putting in 7 to 7 shifts on the factory or the farm. Physically exhausting, dangerous and painful labor that required your physical presence and likely left you too exhausted for anything else.
Today you and I are click clacking our keyboards in a safe and air conditioned environment, likely can fuck off for hours with out anyone noticing etc.
The idea that we work “the same” as even two generations ago is preposterous.
CalRobert|2 years ago
So long as 2 people are chasing 1 house, or worse, one oncology appointment for their child, you will have people working themselves to the bone to outcompete their peers. We could, of course, allow building more homes and improve the supply of healthcare, but that might mean people wouldn't work as hard, which would mean less surplus wealth for capital owners and state actors to enjoy.
ralph84|2 years ago
purplerabbit|2 years ago
compumetrika|2 years ago
The average workday is also much safer and less physically painful than it used to be.
There are two things I have in mind, and if I have time later I'll see if I can find them and update the post -- one chart of total working hours per worker, and one article, about how much added safety has or hasn't slowed down productivity growth (which inevitably has a lot of data in it about workplace injury and death over time).
Children also work much less than they used to.
I think that Keynes wasn't completely wrong in his prediction (...and maybe if AI really kicks off he will be more vindicated, just missed on the timing)
mxkopy|2 years ago
There’s also a hedonic treadmill effect, where we start to expect the amenities that modern infrastructure affords and use them as a base for greater aspirations (ground travel is solved for the average person, now let’s solve air -> space -> etc)
01HNNWZ0MV43FF|2 years ago
If someone else worked harder, they'd out-compete you, maybe conquer you. So we set a threshold and say, you can work 40-80-ish hours without going totally insane and dying. But there's no point working less than that, because someone else is ready to push the envelope. Even if the whole US agreed to just take it easy, I fear the other two superpowers (China and..... well Russia seems weak, maybe India?) would outdo us in GDP and it wouldn't be a great position politically to be in, since the US is my favorite superpower by a country mile.
It's unfortunate math.
lm28469|2 years ago
joshuahedlund|2 years ago
Everything we use our wages on has seen massive gains in quality. It’s just that instead of working less and being just as poor as we were in 1924, we work the same and buy the uber top level wealthy (in 1924 terms) version of everything.
PH95VuimJjqBqy|2 years ago
why is this strange?
if a candybar maker spends $0.75 to make a candybar and sell it for $1.00 and then they suddenly find they can make 2 for the same price, they're going to continue selling them individually for $1.00.
When you increase productivity like that you now have an effective increase in available resources, why would you assume there's only 1 place those effective resources can go?
satvikpendem|2 years ago
badpun|2 years ago
j7ake|2 years ago
lynx23|2 years ago
HPsquared|2 years ago
kortilla|2 years ago
UncleOxidant|2 years ago
But isn't the flow state also where people forget time exists? And isn't the flow state said to be the most productive state people can be in?
culopatin|2 years ago
Terr_|2 years ago
Hold up, there's something off about this terminology.
When alcohol-drinks are drunk on alcohol, they may forget many things, but the existence of (more) alcohol is not typically one of them!
OJFord|2 years ago
Hang on, how many have you had? :'D
I guess it could make sense like 'enjoying using lots of time', so forgetting it exists in the sense of not caring about ifs passage?
bee_rider|2 years ago
madaxe_again|2 years ago
I have, through my life, oscillated from one extreme to the other - at school, this manifested as an utter indifference to lessons, preferring to read under the desk, yet a week of frantic learning in which I would absorb the year or term’s lessons. I was mostly time drunk at this point.
Come graduation, I had an urgent need for income, to support both myself and family members who suddenly found themselves in a hard place. I worked a day job, a night job, two side gigs, and burned the candle fiercely for four years.
One of the side gigs grew, became a business. Ten more years of utterly relentless and increasingly miserable grind. Lucre, too, but at a steep cost.
2016. Burned out. Health so bad I earnestly thought I would probably soon die. Quit.
Three years of time drunkenness. Travel. Drugs. More travel. More drugs. Lots of time staring into space and wondering who I was. Nothing was fulfilling, even doing things I knew I once dreamt of one day doing - the memory of desire was there, but the actuality, absent. I had utterly internalised the idea that my labour was my identity, and that I was without want or need. It seemed intractable, and no amount of r&r found me any improved.
Then, we moved off grid. Seemingly the last step in a spiral, instead found me suddenly very much occupied with the basics of modern life. Water. Power. Shelter. Floods. Fires. You name it.
That, and therapy, have finally found me at a virtuous mean. My cycles are no longer decadal, but hourly. I work. I play. I learn. I waste time. I use it well.
I find myself with a child now, to boot - and she is the virtuous mean embodied - work and play, all in one.
Anyway. These lessons are easily spoken, but hard earned.
RHSman2|2 years ago
drothlis|2 years ago
sibeliuss|2 years ago
ikr678|2 years ago
chasd00|2 years ago
porompompero|2 years ago