I believe in similar things. Here, where I currently live, we spend so much time working and being productive that we forget to ask questions. "Why am I doing this?" "What is the meaning of it?" "What is really important?" Then we end up lost, depressed and what not. Not all of us do, but some? Certainly. We do it because others do it. Because we believe that pursuing a different venue is not realistic. Others have that? Hell, I should have it too.
"I should totally run a startup."
Anyways, it happened to me. Went to SEA for four months. Dreamed. Life is amazing. I can do whatever I want. I don't need money to live. yadi. yada. Then you come back, and no one understands you. You are a hippy. I'm not.
In periods of doubt, I write things down. Then I remember what I believe. Then I remember I'm going back soon. That it is what I should be doing.
Being productive is ok. It's fun. But, in the end, it's not important. People are. At least, that's the conclusion I came to.
I'm a recent immigrant to USA, and while I don't presume to know everything about American culture, your comment and this article really resonate with my observations in the time I've spent here.
There is a consistent message pervasive in the culture - you are worth what you produce. You are defined by what you produce. Productivity is the currency that buys you respect in society. I've met many many people who rise above this view, but as a society, this is prevalent. Everything has to be about "winning" in some way - even if you are working out, or playing a game, you gotta "play hard", compete, kick the other guys ass, not feel sorry for yourself, not mope, just WIN. Forget about what you're winning, what or why you produce, as long as you produce more than the other guy. Other cultures may use wisdom, or age, or kindness as currencies for respect/status in society.
And then people wonder why society is becoming increasingly isolated. See, when you tie your worth to what you produce, you must give up everything to produce. EVEN IF "producing" means painting a beautiful portrait in your garage, the compulsion to produce is the problem. It makes people focus too hard on themselves and how they can improve/level-up. Too focused inward to see the people around you and their lives, and the joy that can bring. That isolation leads to addiction, depression, isolation and all manner of mental illness. Because humans have evolved to be social creatures. It is hardwired in our nature. We cannot and should not try to fight that. We should not view that as a sign of weakness or an obstacle to productivity, or money, or fame, or any other idol.
Sometime I wonder about the "meaning of life", but the real question is "what is the purpose of civilization?".
Cynics could argue that civilization is like a cancer, thus we should make sure civilization grows as fast and as big as possible to survive a cataclysm or to make sure one's country wins a future war.
That's the only argument to have higher standards and incentives to be productive, just so that society can be fatter and faster. There is no incentive to be happier at all when you want to be the strongest. Modern, developed capitalistic societies is just about scoring money. You just can't be happy in a society like this, because everything, to economical policies to the customs, are now made towards bigger faster stronger.
Sometimes it seems that the poverty and the crisis of the 30s scared one generation, and set a whole mentality of never being poor and unproductive ever again. Economics and scoring are now the highest priority. We're not individuals, we're just scores.
This post is full of mistakes and unclear thinking. I can't figure out what the author is arguing against or for. Is she against quantifying wealth? I'm not sure. Is she against working hard? Maybe. Does she think it impossible to quantify happiness and well-being? I get the impression she does.
First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. India and Canada may produce the same amount of wealth, but India has 35 times more people. Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. That's why it's used.
Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
Many people, especially in technology, say their productivity is changing the world, and this is irrefutable. But no one seems to know what they’re changing it into, because no one can measure the world. When no one can measure the world, how much can it really exist?
This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. Maybe they're missing or underweighting a factor. Maybe they just have different preferences than the author. But to suggest that the entire enterprise is bunk is to disregard centuries of progress across a dozen fields of study.
If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't
spending it right.[1]
If you're attempting to find a productive rhetorical truth in a piece about shedding productivity as a focus, you're missing the point.
In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points.
The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you lose an extremely precious thing by focusing on measurement and optimization and increasing quantity and productivity. She has an extremely clear and valid point, which lucidly carries so much truth in it, and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true.
In fact, the clarity and style and beauty of this piece remarkably matches almost exactly how it feels. It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Even so, no one knows what, exactly, to do with it; so we call it unproductive and go on trying to live our highly productive lives. It's so much bigger than we are, this thing, and resistance seems futile.
And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time, but you have a fleeting chance, at least, of converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time, and come just a bit closer, thereby, to the reality of things.
Chiefly, the author is arguing against productivity as an ends to itself, but also against the reduction of human endeavors down to more easily digestible quantities. In essence, against measuring out our lives with coffee spoons.
The author also argues that time she had previously considered wasted ended up being more fruitful than the prevailing culture would have us believe possible. This is, I think, the important message. The mind is often working when we are not consciously aware of it, and to discount leisure time not spent checking tasks off a todo list as having been wasted is not only tediously anal but also simply false.
I disagree with you. I thought it was very clear and well written.
> Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake.
It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars.
> Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it.
Which is what he is talking against. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.
> This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it.
In Notes from Underground the hero attains his own measure of happiness through spite, i.e. self harm, i.e. misery. Any measure of human happiness is contradictory, or it wouldn't be human. Try to imagine the most perfect utopia you can, where any measure you come up with is maximized, or optimized (to use the SV parlance). Then think if people would really be happy in such a place. Even if your measure includes just the "right amount" of misery, it would still be wrong, because, by virtue of its reality, it will no longer be optimal.
If I were pressed to come up with one ultimate measure for human happiness, it is this: people are happy when they have what they don't have. Now optimize this. Of course, under this measure, people's happiness is constant at zero, but there are other (smaller) terms in this formula that basically amount to compromise :)
I am sure you can appreciate the constant inner conflict of the human condition. Apparently you can't measure soul.
Note that the author partly justifies it by the writing she produced later, which wouldn't have happened without her "unproductive" time.
Applied to programming, it seems to me the author is against measuring lines of code per day, and in favor of going for long walks and letting solutions pop into your head that don't require so much code. Or longer walks that cause you to realize the whole program is bunk and you ought to be building something different. It's pretty difficult to measure the productivity of this sort of thing (except perhaps after a lot of hindsight), but it can have a huge effect on your long-term results.
Richard Feynmann wrote about this. He got burned out trying to be scientifically productive, started screwing around, got curious about the physics of something trivial, and ended up figuring out something important.
> First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP.
A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is.
> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries).
> Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things.
I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).
I feel like many Americans (assuming you're American) have a knee jerk response when they're told that money cannot buy them happiness. They get defensive as our society constantly reinforces us with the idea that money does in fact purchase happiness. This is a great message to keep us productive and increase GDP, but is it really true? You've presented that journal article as evidence, but looking past the catchy title, it still does not show that money = happiness. It says that money, when used to purchase experiences or help other people, brings about happiness. If anything, this seems to imply that experiences and helping others brings about happiness, and money is a means in which we can help others or experience things. However, excess wealth is hardly a pre-requisite for experiences nor helping others. Certainly, there exists a baseline; if you're struggling to get food, you probably can't focus on helping others, but there's nothing stopping you from deciding to quit your job, emigrate to a foreign developing country, and start working at a non-profit (sans debt obligations, of course, which tends to be the result of a horrible education system and/or rampant consumerism). I remember meeting an Australian engineer in Montreal who worked for a year and then took two or three off to go travel around the world. He especially liked to snowboard. Yes, productivity and wealth were necessary for him, but it was a means to an end; so that he could purchase experiences that made him happy. I feel like many people in our world would look at him and say "but what about your career progression? Dear god man, don't you have any ambition? You'll never become CTO like that!" I feel like our society has gotten sucked into a rat race, where it treats productivity and the accumulation of wealth as the end itself rather than the means to happiness. Nothing better signifies this than our obsession with GDP.
I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.
> Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
I am pretty sure that the agricultural, traditional type lifestyle of Okinawa(which is the region which has the famed life expectancy) is nowhere near the same as the lifestyle in Japan's urban cities where that workaholic ethic is.
"Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!"
I had seen as many workaholics in the USA as in Japan. For different reasons, and in different ways.
In the US you are supposed to do it because of ambition, in Japan you do it because of social pressure or constriction of the environment.
Oh, never mind, in the US they have this beautiful two words that describe everybody: Loser or Successful, that does wonders to social pressure people to work more, but thinking "they actually want it", like in Japan, anyway.
But food is much better in Japan. They also eat a lot of fish that before Fukusima, was the less toxic or industrialized food you could eat. No artificial feed(until recently), no genetically modified, no antibiotics, no hormones like US loves so much.
Re: "If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right", that's the cheeky title of the article you link to, but not really the content of it. The article discusses how to get the best bang for your buck when spending your money. It may still be the case, however, that the best happiness bang for your buck is to do something with your free time other than seeking above all else to maximize your income in the first place, and the article is not intended to exclude this possibility.
> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
There is a huge unbalance between men and women (which traditionnaly don't get the same chances to work in high pressure environments, and are less subjected to karoshi) and as someone else point Okinawa people won't have the same life expectancy as Tokyo area people.
This is a factor in the juxtaposition of workaholism and high quality of life in the same country.
Even though some valuable ideas are expressed in this piece, there's a lot of conflation of highly distinct social phenomena that goes on. The author looks at the notion of "productivity", judges that people blindly rush from birth straight to the grave in the pursuit of being "productive", somehow lops that in with GDPs (not per capita, not at PPP?) and the weird way in which we have industrialized pleasure, and concludes... what, exactly?
Regardless, the author expresses a valuable point that suffers from her conflating topics.
I think that point is that there's a certain industrial culture -- a focus on productivity and structure -- that dominates our lives, whether in work or in leisure (see e.g. tourism). I don't think this is necessarily bad, but it's important to be aware of it.
Some people do indeed wear blinders as they race through life, being as productive as they can -- not for themselves, but maybe for society. Or for their boss. Or for someone else, whose interests are not necessarily aligned with their own. Maybe that's a good reminder to carefully define productivity for yourself, however you see fit. The idea here is to have a notion of productivity to strive for that is well-aligned with doing things that make you feel good for the time invested. And then we're right back down to those age-old platitudes, so obvious and ubiquitous that we forget their truth: "spend your time wisely."
I liked this essay, but it's also important to point out that GDP is very strongly correlated with health outcomes like life expectancy. It might be that we are starving our souls, but let's not forget about the fairly serious consequences of starving our bodies.
I don't mean to say that I disagree with the conclusion, just that I think the historical context is missing something. We didn't become productive out of greed, we became productive out of hunger. That attitude has run its course, absolutely, and we need to ask: we're not hungry anymore, so what now?
But let's not denigrate how we got here on the assumption that it was never a good idea. We might have climbed past the lowest rungs of the ladder, but that doesn't mean we didn't need them. Indeed, there are many who still do.
Then how you explain the fact that USA has one of the lowest life expectancy among the developed world?
I think that what the author tries to explain is that, in some places, societies have gone too far in the seek of productiveness and, ironically, people there is less happy and healthy.
I guess finding the good balance is more important than trying to be the number one.
"Above all we become interesting [sic] in measuring ourselves. Word count/day, lines of code/day, hamburgers served/hour, steps taken/day, test questions/100, money earned/field’s average salary. We got quarterly reviews, job evaluations, and tested certifications."
I've a dilemma:
I've come to believe that this really is a bad thing, not just because we're suboptimizing output at the expense of quality of life, but also because you get what you measure: you can totally get more LOC/day without actually getting anything useful.
BUT, what's the alternative? People need to be rewarded for output; different individuals' outputs are different; still, should we reward them the same? Or should we make it dependent on output (therefore, reward merit, not need)? If so, should the measure be subjective or objective? Can you make it objective without turning it into what the author is talking about? Can you make it subjective while keeping it fair? No matter how much I try, when I try to be fair in rewards/compensation, I find metrics raising their ugly head.
Just remove the individual metric. We know they don't work.
Incentivize the entire company for the success of the company. Pay people fairly in an uncomplicated way. Align all the incentives and don't reward anything that is not directly connected to the clear and well-communicated success of the company.
The article states that Karoshi is death by productivity. This is generally not correct. Karoshi is death from over-work.
The distinction concerns quantity of output. Many Japanese will work long hours with little impact on output. Such people are therefore hard-working yet unproductive.
Japanese business culture tends to respect effort more than result.
What really devastated my generation was the spiritual malaise inherent in Taylorism's perfectly mechanized human labor. But Taylor had never seen a robot or a computer perfect his methods of being human. By the 1980s, we had. In the age of robots we reinvented the idea of being robots ourselves. We wanted to program our minds and bodies and have them obey clocks and routines. In this age of the human robot, of the materialist mind, being efficient took the pre-eminent spot, beyond goodness or power or wisdom or even cruel greed.
Ouch.
We are productive without price. Not because people aren't dying, they surely are, uncounted lives and families are smothered with despair. There is no price because there's no measure to quantify what we are losing.
This makes me wonder how history will look on our mental health issues, as we look back on alcoholism in early 20th century America.
For those sympathetic to the views of the article, I can't recommend enough Matthew Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft for a fuller and prescriptive discussion of the history and philosophy of these issues of work and meaning and mental health.
Increased Pareto is a better thing to aim for than increased productivity.
Doing the one very important thing, the one thing with huge returns or leverage will outweigh all the other probably also important things that really hard working and productive people can do in a day
It however takes wisdom to know what is important and courage to trust your wisdom.
Why am I productive? No other reason than I dislike boredom. I had the unusual situation growing up of having completely free summers (including college). To do absolutely and whatever I wanted. Well, long story short, I basically wasted them and didn't get anything accomplished. And I definitely wasn't happy with that much useless free time.
So now I do things because I find them interesting. I "measure myself" and try to improve at things because it's a fun game for me. The results don't really matter in the end, but it keeps me entertained.
America is also the country that gave us 'stick it to the man', 'tune in, turn on, drop out', 'make love, not war'. America is a big country, big enough to find a space somewhere to l9ive your life almost any way you like and pobably find others who want to do the same too. In fact I'm hard pressed for think of any other nation on the entire planet that is more diverse. Anyone care to name one?
I speak as an outsider (a Brit) that's visited the US several times and has many friends and acquaintances there.
Trying to summarize the post: Free time can increase your wisdom and is necessary sometimes for higher order thinking. Too much productivity, that is not having time for your mind wandering, produces a bad effect in society. To compose that post has taken the author four months.
I think that every great writer has been many times in his life waiting for inspiration. But inspiration only occurs when you are inviting inspiration to come by working a lot, your mind has to be struggling with the problem, at least in a subconscious level, and then, suddenly, inspiration comes to your rescue.
If you liked the theme of this essay you will like this book:
"How to Be Idle" by Tom Hodgkinson.
The book starts similarly and expands the idea of idleness to trying to bring it into your life.
I may somewhat agree with the author's case against productivity, but I think it's important not to confuse it with a case against production. At the end of the day (or life) I think you do want to look back and think of what you've produced (rather than consumed), and how you did it. Was it fun? Satisfying?
I think it's fair to want to rebel against production/time. It's not bad to think instead of something along the lines of satisfaction/production.
This is the major problem when you do things for reasons other then you love to do it. Stop trying to do whats "hip" and find your passion. A lot of the thoughts given in the article have the slight taste of the author wanting to do them because they are intellectual/trendy/response from society. Do what you love, simple as.
> Stop trying to do whats "hip" and find your passion.
Don't. Don't go overboard with the passion thing. If your passion is origami, you are in for a very rough ride trying to live off selling folded paper on the street.
Find a balance. What's difficult is that life is not black and white, it's in shades of grey. Find something that the market needs and that you like doing. Not something that you absolutely love doing and that nobody ever wants, nor something that the market absolutely wants and that you loathe doing.
You wrote about the time when you weren't beating yourself for not being productive enough and you described that past experience in a way that seemed to me like you were happy. What made you want to become productive? What did you imagine 'productive' looks and feels like? Could you track down your most internal motives?
Okay we should spend more time wasting more time. But how to pay your bills in that time? As long as this question is not answered all this discussion is meaningless in my eyes.
This is an excellent post because it focuses on a central topic: mankind's behavioral predispositions.
The world today runs on profit and productivity. Morals, ethics and philosophies are irrelevant hindrances, as SV and Wall St. have demonstrated repeatedly. This is all well and good, as the last century apparently demonstrated that all ideologies and philosophies are the devil incarnate (Nazism, Leninism, Maoism, etc.)
But I do wonder one thing...did we quit on ideology prematurely? An ideology which I've always held as my own mission in life is the relentless pursuit of knowledge through science.
Throughout history, there have been times where mankind has focused intently on this goal, and the results were incredible. Sadly, most of these periods were spurred on by major wars.
What I really want to know is this:
Is it possible to built a society whose goal is the advancement of mankind's knowledge?
The profit motive and the free market are undoubtedly the best motivators for mankind, due to our evolutionary predispositions for survival and inherent need to establish status hierarchies. But could we not harness these energies, and direct them to positive-sum endavors such as science and engineering research, rather than a pure profit-driven battle to the death?
Keep in mind, the historical mean society throughout history has been oligarchy. It appears the last century was a brief respite due to massive wars and resultant existential threats. We now seem to be heading right back into the oligarchical paradigm of rich get richer, and poor stay serfs [1].
I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge. The market exists and is regulated to produce needs and wants efficiently, yet without negative-sum behavior (regulatory capture, corruption, anti-competitive conduct, wage fixing, etc.) Education and research are a prime government mandate in addition to infrastructure, defense, healthcare and a social safety net. Citizens are incentivized to hone their skills and education continuously without massive financial downsides (student debt). State sponsored research institutes exist throughout the country similar to Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, JPL, etc. and serve to stimulate the economy through constant research projects, both large and small. The projects provide jobs for low and high skilled individuals (e.g. ITER, LHC). Those who enjoy pure research have a plethora of opportunities to move the state of the art forward. Those who don't, have excellent and rewarding employment.
The challenge in creating this society is a very tough one: humans are not motivated by knowledge. We are motivated by status, sex, and power, though few ever understand it or admit to it. But I hope that one day, knowledge of our inherent weaknesses will become common enough such that we can fight our destructive natures in an effort to transcend our limitations.
>>But I do wonder one thing...did we quit on ideology prematurely?
In reality we quit on the idea that society can be engineered, but we nevertheless retain the notation that individual actors can be engineered. For example, we reject the notation that the communist party can build a stable society but we retain social value that you shouldn't judge people solely on wealth.
>>I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge.
Its hard to say what is and isn't knowledge, I shudder to think of a society based on research publications.
This goes back to my first point. Its very hard to engineer a society. We can only hope to make reasonable actors.
[+] [-] charlespwd|11 years ago|reply
I believe in similar things. Here, where I currently live, we spend so much time working and being productive that we forget to ask questions. "Why am I doing this?" "What is the meaning of it?" "What is really important?" Then we end up lost, depressed and what not. Not all of us do, but some? Certainly. We do it because others do it. Because we believe that pursuing a different venue is not realistic. Others have that? Hell, I should have it too.
"I should totally run a startup."
Anyways, it happened to me. Went to SEA for four months. Dreamed. Life is amazing. I can do whatever I want. I don't need money to live. yadi. yada. Then you come back, and no one understands you. You are a hippy. I'm not.
In periods of doubt, I write things down. Then I remember what I believe. Then I remember I'm going back soon. That it is what I should be doing.
Being productive is ok. It's fun. But, in the end, it's not important. People are. At least, that's the conclusion I came to.
I guess I'm just rambling. Carry on.
Note: when I write "We", I mostly mean "I".
[+] [-] bonobo3000|11 years ago|reply
There is a consistent message pervasive in the culture - you are worth what you produce. You are defined by what you produce. Productivity is the currency that buys you respect in society. I've met many many people who rise above this view, but as a society, this is prevalent. Everything has to be about "winning" in some way - even if you are working out, or playing a game, you gotta "play hard", compete, kick the other guys ass, not feel sorry for yourself, not mope, just WIN. Forget about what you're winning, what or why you produce, as long as you produce more than the other guy. Other cultures may use wisdom, or age, or kindness as currencies for respect/status in society.
And then people wonder why society is becoming increasingly isolated. See, when you tie your worth to what you produce, you must give up everything to produce. EVEN IF "producing" means painting a beautiful portrait in your garage, the compulsion to produce is the problem. It makes people focus too hard on themselves and how they can improve/level-up. Too focused inward to see the people around you and their lives, and the joy that can bring. That isolation leads to addiction, depression, isolation and all manner of mental illness. Because humans have evolved to be social creatures. It is hardwired in our nature. We cannot and should not try to fight that. We should not view that as a sign of weakness or an obstacle to productivity, or money, or fame, or any other idol.
[+] [-] jokoon|11 years ago|reply
Cynics could argue that civilization is like a cancer, thus we should make sure civilization grows as fast and as big as possible to survive a cataclysm or to make sure one's country wins a future war.
That's the only argument to have higher standards and incentives to be productive, just so that society can be fatter and faster. There is no incentive to be happier at all when you want to be the strongest. Modern, developed capitalistic societies is just about scoring money. You just can't be happy in a society like this, because everything, to economical policies to the customs, are now made towards bigger faster stronger.
Sometimes it seems that the poverty and the crisis of the 30s scared one generation, and set a whole mentality of never being poor and unproductive ever again. Economics and scoring are now the highest priority. We're not individuals, we're just scores.
[+] [-] ggreer|11 years ago|reply
First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP. Her comparison used absolute instead of per-capita values. India and Canada may produce the same amount of wealth, but India has 35 times more people. Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake. That's why it's used.
Most people make mistakes when it comes to balancing work and leisure, but to claim such mistakes are killing us is preposterous. People in developed countries live the longest, healthiest lives in the history of humanity. The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
Many people, especially in technology, say their productivity is changing the world, and this is irrefutable. But no one seems to know what they’re changing it into, because no one can measure the world. When no one can measure the world, how much can it really exist?
This really irks me. Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things. Maybe they're missing or underweighting a factor. Maybe they just have different preferences than the author. But to suggest that the entire enterprise is bunk is to disregard centuries of progress across a dozen fields of study.
If money doesn't make you happy, then you probably aren't spending it right.[1]
1. http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~dtg/DUNN%20GILBERT%20&%20WILSON%...
Edit: Pronouns fixed. Apologies, I thought Quinn was a male name.
[+] [-] calinet6|11 years ago|reply
In fact, you're arguing that she should 1) be able to quantify happiness, 2) consider life-expectancy as a proxy for life quality, and 3) pursue optimizing life by quantifying and measuring it. I think you're missing many points.
The whole idea—the wisdom, if you will—is that you lose an extremely precious thing by focusing on measurement and optimization and increasing quantity and productivity. She has an extremely clear and valid point, which lucidly carries so much truth in it, and is not particularly hindered by slight rhetorical mistakes or lack of clarity. It's that true.
In fact, the clarity and style and beauty of this piece remarkably matches almost exactly how it feels. It's so confusing and seemingly contradictory and paradoxical, yet we know it's true. Even so, no one knows what, exactly, to do with it; so we call it unproductive and go on trying to live our highly productive lives. It's so much bigger than we are, this thing, and resistance seems futile.
And this is when you begin looking into Zen, and things become clearer and muddier at the same time, but you have a fleeting chance, at least, of converging on the ability to hold a thing in your head that's both true and false at the same time, and come just a bit closer, thereby, to the reality of things.
[+] [-] courtf|11 years ago|reply
The author also argues that time she had previously considered wasted ended up being more fruitful than the prevailing culture would have us believe possible. This is, I think, the important message. The mind is often working when we are not consciously aware of it, and to discount leisure time not spent checking tasks off a todo list as having been wasted is not only tediously anal but also simply false.
I was reminded of Peter Higgs' statements from around when he was awarded the nobel peace prize: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2013/dec/06/peter-higgs-b...
[+] [-] wodenokoto|11 years ago|reply
> Of course per-capita GDP doesn't fully capture quality of life, but it's easy to measure and hard to fake.
It's extremely easy to fake. I sell you a backrub for 10.000 dollars and after that I buy one from you for 10.000 dollars and we've now in 10 minutes boosted our GDP with 20.000 dollars.
> Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it.
Which is what he is talking against. We are too focused on optimizing, when a lot of what it means to be a human are things that shouldn't be optimized. And secondly, long periods without productivity may actually be the foundation of later quality. And you can't optimize these unproductive periods.
[+] [-] pron|11 years ago|reply
In Notes from Underground the hero attains his own measure of happiness through spite, i.e. self harm, i.e. misery. Any measure of human happiness is contradictory, or it wouldn't be human. Try to imagine the most perfect utopia you can, where any measure you come up with is maximized, or optimized (to use the SV parlance). Then think if people would really be happy in such a place. Even if your measure includes just the "right amount" of misery, it would still be wrong, because, by virtue of its reality, it will no longer be optimal.
If I were pressed to come up with one ultimate measure for human happiness, it is this: people are happy when they have what they don't have. Now optimize this. Of course, under this measure, people's happiness is constant at zero, but there are other (smaller) terms in this formula that basically amount to compromise :)
I am sure you can appreciate the constant inner conflict of the human condition. Apparently you can't measure soul.
[+] [-] DennisP|11 years ago|reply
Applied to programming, it seems to me the author is against measuring lines of code per day, and in favor of going for long walks and letting solutions pop into your head that don't require so much code. Or longer walks that cause you to realize the whole program is bunk and you ought to be building something different. It's pretty difficult to measure the productivity of this sort of thing (except perhaps after a lot of hindsight), but it can have a huge effect on your long-term results.
Richard Feynmann wrote about this. He got burned out trying to be scientifically productive, started screwing around, got curious about the physics of something trivial, and ended up figuring out something important.
[+] [-] zhte415|11 years ago|reply
> First, the author made a huge mistake when talking about GDP.
A common theme of the article is measurement, value, and the measurement of value. Does Canada create the same 'value' as India? The notion seems preposterous, as how can a country 1/35th the size of another produce the same value - the author directly questions what 'value' is, as a measurement of something called 'productivity'. The entire article is a critique of what productivity is.
> The nation with the longest life expectancy is the workaholic Japanese culture so disparaged by the author!
It is not disparaged, quite the opposite. The author highlights that Japan measures (again, a theme of measurement) the number of deaths by overwork, and pretty explicitly and bluntly states that some other countries do not (and sarcastically concludes it must therefore not exist in those countries).
> Measuring and quantifying something is a prerequisite to optimizing it. Maybe a lot of people are measuring the wrong things.
I agree. I believe the author is questioning what needs to be optimised and what is optimal. Before that, measurement has no scope, and what is currently optimised for 'productivity' may not be productive (excuse my pun).
[+] [-] dashboardfront|11 years ago|reply
I do, however, agree with you that the article is poorly organized, rambles in random directions, and fails to present any actual argument.
[+] [-] arvinsim|11 years ago|reply
I am pretty sure that the agricultural, traditional type lifestyle of Okinawa(which is the region which has the famed life expectancy) is nowhere near the same as the lifestyle in Japan's urban cities where that workaholic ethic is.
[+] [-] Htsthbjig|11 years ago|reply
I had seen as many workaholics in the USA as in Japan. For different reasons, and in different ways.
In the US you are supposed to do it because of ambition, in Japan you do it because of social pressure or constriction of the environment.
Oh, never mind, in the US they have this beautiful two words that describe everybody: Loser or Successful, that does wonders to social pressure people to work more, but thinking "they actually want it", like in Japan, anyway.
But food is much better in Japan. They also eat a lot of fish that before Fukusima, was the less toxic or industrialized food you could eat. No artificial feed(until recently), no genetically modified, no antibiotics, no hormones like US loves so much.
[+] [-] Chinjut|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hrktb|11 years ago|reply
There is a huge unbalance between men and women (which traditionnaly don't get the same chances to work in high pressure environments, and are less subjected to karoshi) and as someone else point Okinawa people won't have the same life expectancy as Tokyo area people.
This is a factor in the juxtaposition of workaholism and high quality of life in the same country.
[+] [-] JoeAltmaier|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] antichaos|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] byEngineer|11 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] johnloeber|11 years ago|reply
Regardless, the author expresses a valuable point that suffers from her conflating topics.
I think that point is that there's a certain industrial culture -- a focus on productivity and structure -- that dominates our lives, whether in work or in leisure (see e.g. tourism). I don't think this is necessarily bad, but it's important to be aware of it.
Some people do indeed wear blinders as they race through life, being as productive as they can -- not for themselves, but maybe for society. Or for their boss. Or for someone else, whose interests are not necessarily aligned with their own. Maybe that's a good reminder to carefully define productivity for yourself, however you see fit. The idea here is to have a notion of productivity to strive for that is well-aligned with doing things that make you feel good for the time invested. And then we're right back down to those age-old platitudes, so obvious and ubiquitous that we forget their truth: "spend your time wisely."
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
A lot of things (like this) remind me that we are often barely different to bees and ants. Even down to our queens.
[+] [-] perfunctory|11 years ago|reply
Use your own imagination.
[+] [-] sgentle|11 years ago|reply
I don't mean to say that I disagree with the conclusion, just that I think the historical context is missing something. We didn't become productive out of greed, we became productive out of hunger. That attitude has run its course, absolutely, and we need to ask: we're not hungry anymore, so what now?
But let's not denigrate how we got here on the assumption that it was never a good idea. We might have climbed past the lowest rungs of the ladder, but that doesn't mean we didn't need them. Indeed, there are many who still do.
[+] [-] 6t6t6|11 years ago|reply
I think that what the author tries to explain is that, in some places, societies have gone too far in the seek of productiveness and, ironically, people there is less happy and healthy.
I guess finding the good balance is more important than trying to be the number one.
[+] [-] hliyan|11 years ago|reply
I've a dilemma:
I've come to believe that this really is a bad thing, not just because we're suboptimizing output at the expense of quality of life, but also because you get what you measure: you can totally get more LOC/day without actually getting anything useful.
BUT, what's the alternative? People need to be rewarded for output; different individuals' outputs are different; still, should we reward them the same? Or should we make it dependent on output (therefore, reward merit, not need)? If so, should the measure be subjective or objective? Can you make it objective without turning it into what the author is talking about? Can you make it subjective while keeping it fair? No matter how much I try, when I try to be fair in rewards/compensation, I find metrics raising their ugly head.
[+] [-] calinet6|11 years ago|reply
Incentivize the entire company for the success of the company. Pay people fairly in an uncomplicated way. Align all the incentives and don't reward anything that is not directly connected to the clear and well-communicated success of the company.
[+] [-] lovemenot|11 years ago|reply
The distinction concerns quantity of output. Many Japanese will work long hours with little impact on output. Such people are therefore hard-working yet unproductive.
Japanese business culture tends to respect effort more than result.
[+] [-] shoover|11 years ago|reply
Ouch.
We are productive without price. Not because people aren't dying, they surely are, uncounted lives and families are smothered with despair. There is no price because there's no measure to quantify what we are losing.
This makes me wonder how history will look on our mental health issues, as we look back on alcoholism in early 20th century America.
For those sympathetic to the views of the article, I can't recommend enough Matthew Crawford's book Shop Class as Soulcraft for a fuller and prescriptive discussion of the history and philosophy of these issues of work and meaning and mental health.
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|11 years ago|reply
Doing the one very important thing, the one thing with huge returns or leverage will outweigh all the other probably also important things that really hard working and productive people can do in a day
It however takes wisdom to know what is important and courage to trust your wisdom.
[+] [-] Xcelerate|11 years ago|reply
So now I do things because I find them interesting. I "measure myself" and try to improve at things because it's a fun game for me. The results don't really matter in the end, but it keeps me entertained.
[+] [-] simonh|11 years ago|reply
I speak as an outsider (a Brit) that's visited the US several times and has many friends and acquaintances there.
[+] [-] barbudorojo|11 years ago|reply
I think that every great writer has been many times in his life waiting for inspiration. But inspiration only occurs when you are inviting inspiration to come by working a lot, your mind has to be struggling with the problem, at least in a subconscious level, and then, suddenly, inspiration comes to your rescue.
[+] [-] myth_drannon|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hliyan|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] esfandia|11 years ago|reply
I think it's fair to want to rebel against production/time. It's not bad to think instead of something along the lines of satisfaction/production.
[+] [-] MrDosu|11 years ago|reply
Work will never feel like work again.
[+] [-] sergiosgc|11 years ago|reply
Don't. Don't go overboard with the passion thing. If your passion is origami, you are in for a very rough ride trying to live off selling folded paper on the street.
Find a balance. What's difficult is that life is not black and white, it's in shades of grey. Find something that the market needs and that you like doing. Not something that you absolutely love doing and that nobody ever wants, nor something that the market absolutely wants and that you loathe doing.
Virtue is found in the middle.
[+] [-] damon_c|11 years ago|reply
So a highly productive person gets a lot done in a small amount of time.
People who get a lot done and work all the time aren't really high productivity people; they just work a lot.
I see nothing wrong with striving for productivity if this is how it is defined.
[+] [-] ondrejzabojnik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] misiti3780|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smoe|11 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arecibo_Observatory#In_Popular_...
[+] [-] GotAnyMegadeth|11 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x6hsdWGF0no
[+] [-] mchusma|11 years ago|reply
Basically, I believe Author would be better off making the claim that many people (himself included) confuse the definition of productivity.
[+] [-] goldenchrome|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] erikb|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] FD3SA|11 years ago|reply
The world today runs on profit and productivity. Morals, ethics and philosophies are irrelevant hindrances, as SV and Wall St. have demonstrated repeatedly. This is all well and good, as the last century apparently demonstrated that all ideologies and philosophies are the devil incarnate (Nazism, Leninism, Maoism, etc.)
But I do wonder one thing...did we quit on ideology prematurely? An ideology which I've always held as my own mission in life is the relentless pursuit of knowledge through science.
Throughout history, there have been times where mankind has focused intently on this goal, and the results were incredible. Sadly, most of these periods were spurred on by major wars.
What I really want to know is this:
Is it possible to built a society whose goal is the advancement of mankind's knowledge?
The profit motive and the free market are undoubtedly the best motivators for mankind, due to our evolutionary predispositions for survival and inherent need to establish status hierarchies. But could we not harness these energies, and direct them to positive-sum endavors such as science and engineering research, rather than a pure profit-driven battle to the death?
Keep in mind, the historical mean society throughout history has been oligarchy. It appears the last century was a brief respite due to massive wars and resultant existential threats. We now seem to be heading right back into the oligarchical paradigm of rich get richer, and poor stay serfs [1].
I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge. The market exists and is regulated to produce needs and wants efficiently, yet without negative-sum behavior (regulatory capture, corruption, anti-competitive conduct, wage fixing, etc.) Education and research are a prime government mandate in addition to infrastructure, defense, healthcare and a social safety net. Citizens are incentivized to hone their skills and education continuously without massive financial downsides (student debt). State sponsored research institutes exist throughout the country similar to Bell Labs, Xerox PARC, JPL, etc. and serve to stimulate the economy through constant research projects, both large and small. The projects provide jobs for low and high skilled individuals (e.g. ITER, LHC). Those who enjoy pure research have a plethora of opportunities to move the state of the art forward. Those who don't, have excellent and rewarding employment.
The challenge in creating this society is a very tough one: humans are not motivated by knowledge. We are motivated by status, sex, and power, though few ever understand it or admit to it. But I hope that one day, knowledge of our inherent weaknesses will become common enough such that we can fight our destructive natures in an effort to transcend our limitations.
Till that day, I remain a dreamer.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Cen...
[+] [-] frozenport|11 years ago|reply
In reality we quit on the idea that society can be engineered, but we nevertheless retain the notation that individual actors can be engineered. For example, we reject the notation that the communist party can build a stable society but we retain social value that you shouldn't judge people solely on wealth.
>>I can envision a society built around the pursuit of knowledge.
Its hard to say what is and isn't knowledge, I shudder to think of a society based on research publications.
This goes back to my first point. Its very hard to engineer a society. We can only hope to make reasonable actors.