[headmelted]

The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having gone very wrong IMHO.

The notion of tracking if time spent on anything helps “prevent burnout” speaks volumes to how we view ourselves as consumables.

The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little while at the end of your life when your health is failing, which has always been really sad to me.

[Aurornis]

> The fact this study even exists is a sign of something having gone very wrong IMHO.

I agree, but for different reasons: The paper is an example of someone sending out surveys to collect self-reports and then writing a paper title as if they had performed a study. They did not. They just surveyed some college students and drew conclusions by running statistical analyses on the data until they got something that seemed significant.

It appears to have worked, though, as I’ve seen it shared across the internet by assuming it’s a robust proof of something.

This paper is very bad. The numbers in the abstract don’t even add up, which any reviewer should have caught. To be honest this feels like an undergraduate level assignment where students are asking to give a survey and do some statistical analyses. The students usually pick a topic close to their own life (like Super Mario Games) and then come up with some result by playing with their survey numbers until they find something.

[ThePollingStone]

This study reminds me of the types of projects I did when I took statistical psychology classes in undergrad. I was hoping to see data taken directly after participants had actually played the games in a controlled environment. Also, why focus on just Nintendo games?

Judging by the authors' affiliations and Nintendo-approved rhetoric, this does appear to be a shill.

[LeoWattenberg]

> They just surveyed some college students and drew conclusions by running statistical analyses on the data until they got something that seemed significant.

Is this just cynicism or based on anything? From reading the methods section it doesn't appear this is what happened

[fwipsy]

I agree, but hard work is nothing new. Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. I'm uncertain how to think about burnout in this context. Did they have burnout and were forced to work through it? Were they better at pacing themselves? Maybe the type of work (mental rather than physical labor) or circumstances (working for a corporation) today are more conducive to burnout?

[EGG_CREAM]

I don’t have any citations, but I don’t think that “work” was at all similar to what we do now. Early hominid work would have involved many different tasks throughout the day, such as tracking, hunting, cleaning, gathering, building, repairing, traveling, etc, right? Compare that to “do this one task 8-16 hours in a row,” and it does seem like a mode of work we would be particularly ill suited for. Orrrr maybe I’m wrong, I’m using general knowledge and inductive reasoning, so I would not be suprised to learn I’m off base here.

[jetrink]

> Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it.

Recent anthropological and archaeological research is challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of hard work were separated by long periods of light work and rest.

[tracker1]

I'm not sure how environmental factors play into this either. As a Gen-Xer, it often feels like the current late teens and early 20-somethings all have a crippling level of "anxiety" over what should be relatively simple human interaction, and this started well before COVID solidified this influence. Does this in general have an outsized effect on burnout?

I've felt true burnout twice in my life, the first time was after several years without any vacation time taken and about 3 months of 60-80 hour weeks. I literally hit a wall and couldn't even open a project in front of the computer, I was in a haze and not safe to even do anything. My brain was like, "nope!" More recently, a couple years ago it's been a larger state of dissolution about my career without a clear alternative so much as something that I would consider a disablement.

[AndrewKemendo]

> Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do?

Unambiguously yes. This is well documented and impossible to ignore.

Marshal Sahlins described it best in Stone Age Economics but reading Graeber will get you there or Levi Strauss if you’re into the whole structural anthropology thing

[anal_reactor]

It's not about leisure time. It's about the meaning of work. In the past, effects of your work were very direct - carry shitload of stone from one place to another together with your cousin, build a house for you and your family. Nowadays it's all very abstract - have a useless Teams meeting with people you don't care about so that you can do press buttons that maybe change some metrics you don't even understand. What was the last time you felt "I'm happy I built this"?

[lbrito]

>Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do?

Yes. In the middle ages (and presumably in any agrarian society) people would work intensely for a few weeks and have the most of the year free.

[eru]

> The whole culture we have emphasises trading working the best years of your life just so you can (maybe) rest for a little while at the end of your life when your health is failing, which has always been really sad to me.

Have you considered getting a job you like better?

You can also take sabbaticals. Or retire early.

[lbrito]

Unrealistic for most working people with families.

[darepublic]

This is the problem of evil right. Those human tribes who just chilled out after meeting the bare requirements of survival died off because some greedy assholes outcompeted them.

[andrewflnr]

I'm only a casual follower of ancient human evolution and anthropology, but this doesn't mesh with my impression. Lots of human groups have been able to relax in relatively hospitable environments, over long spans of time.

[Aurornis]

> Those human tribes who just chilled out after meeting the bare requirements of survival died off because some greedy assholes outcompeted them.

The idea of tribes just “chilling out” to survive is a modern anachronism projected on a romanticized past. We’re so disconnected from the realities of clothing, feeding and sheltering ourselves without modern amenities that it’s hard to imagine what pre-industrial like was like. Thinking that “chilling out” was a viable path to survival is a symptom of that disconnectedness.

[soared]

A recent HN thread I cannot seem to find discussed the idea that currently in the US work is the default state, and leisure exists to refuel for work. At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure. This context affects everything in life - IE a microwave frozen meal is excellent in the work viewpoint (time value ratio), but if you enjoy cooking it’s horrible in the leisure viewpoint.

[Saline9515]

At which time exactly was leisure "the default state"? The only way to have this is by having a slave-like class while the idle elite could enjoy "leisure", or live in very low density, caloric rich environment, which doesn't last long or ends up with wars (and being enslaved by the neighboring tribe, if you are from subsaharian Africa).

[citizenpaul]

I think there is a growing online mix up of "leisure" time in the past. 99% of people were farmers, farming season is 3-4mo a year. That doesn't mean they had 9mo to do whatever they wanted. The time off was technically not their job but they were doing work on other survival tasks. If you consider re-roofing your shelter leisure time then yeah past people had more leisure time.

We have much more non-survival leisure time now.

[Insanity]

My girlfriend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have full time jobs and can only cook “real meal” in the weekend now that WFH ended.

It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least somewhat health conscious…

[Aurornis]

> At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure

It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of hard work was necessary to even survive through the winter each year.

What times in history had leisure as the default state? When was life so much easier than it is right now? Where were all the food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment materials coming from during this time and why was it so much more efficient than today?

[jebarker]

> At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure.

What times/places are you thinking of when you write this?

[RobRivera]

The WHOLE US!?

[jMyles]

...I don't view myself as a consumable. I enjoy accomplishing. I do not enjoy burnout. I'm interested in ways to prevent it. It's really that simple.

I don't particularly find this survey compelling, but I also don't want to be judged as some vampiric capitalist just because I'd like to have more work bandwidth.

[andai]

Especially since we're about to give birth to an entire species which is better suited to the task!