Kinda sorta.
It is more that the things we are busy doing are not fulfilling. Half of everything we do is because we are forced to do it to survive.
Contrary to popular belief, people actually like to do things and to keep busy/be productive… when we have control over what those things are
I agree. That’s why I said ‘fuck the system’ 13 years ago and haven’t spent a single second being a slave since then. Every day I wake up and don’t have to pay a house scalper is another victory against crapitalism.
If you don’t mind sharing - how are you getting by? Social Security? Food Stamps? Section 8? Inheritance?
I like being busy, but I like having agency over how I am busy. I don’t want to be “busy” because I have a bunch of arbitrary and meaningless paperwork to turn in that my boss won’t even read, but I like being “busy” in that I’m happy to spend my time doing things that have an immediate impact.
Give me a 12 hour day cleaning up a homeless shelter over paperwork.
So yeah… I noticed you haven’t filed your TPS reports this week.
When we got to UML diagrams I dropped out of programming and CS. I’d rather eat fucking glass.
My bullshit poison paper work was lesson plans. Like, what other profession expects you to tell them what you are going to do a week in advance? I planned my lessons, but I didn’t do it in a way that matched their paperwork. Like, bruh, can you trust that the stack of books on my desk with notes on them indicates something?
Like, I don’t know what vocabulary or math skills I’ll be teaching this week - because sometimes I’d find out they didn’t know how to use a calculator or the same dickweeds that wanted me to have my entire future planned out decided to have a random fire drill.
I like teaching without a plan and I’m damn good at it. Making me spend my Sunday evening (you know, time I’m NOT AT WORK) filling out some dumbass form made for english and social studies teachers which doesn’t realize that science spends months on the same standards…. When I know my shit. Put 20-25 teenagers in a room with me for an hour and they will know the quadratic formula or how to balance a chemical equation. Just fucking let me do that instead of staff meetings and discipline (ie, spending 1-2 hours after school calling every parent of a kid that stole my shit/refused to put their cell phone up/called me a fucking [will be removed if written out]) - just let me TEACH.
My wife is a middle school teacher and I 100% feel your pain through her.
Lesson plans are like of bullshit paperwork, invented because a minority don’t do shit without being tightly monitored and a rigid structure to follow.
Good teachers can just wing a class based on whatever needs covering from the curriculum on that day, bad teachers don’t care whats on the curriculum that day, terrible teachers don’t care and couldn’t even teach it without following a detailed plan.
Its because of those two groups that lesson plans exist.
In an ideal world you would just performance manage those two groups and sack them, but because teaching is underpaid there are a shortage of teachers (plus most people suck at putting people properly through performance management), so its beneficial to micro manage instead rather than having mass vacancies.
its beneficial to micro manage instead rather than having mass vacancies.
Kinda a positive feedback loop there. Teaching is a hard job which is going to require lots of work beyond your contract time and pays shit compared to other jobs which require the same level of education and training. Adding the additional work and micromanagement drives people away. Especially when that micromanagement is pointless and ineffective.
They’d pay these consultants hundreds of thousands of dollars to tell us to do things, when those consultants had no understanding of the fact that you cannot teach a physics class like an English class. (Maybe use that money to hire more staff? There’s a huge difference in the work when the class average is 25 and not 32.)
And yeah - the district I worked in was primarily staffed by emergency certified teachers. I taught my colleagues subatomic structure and wrote their assessments, because they often had degrees in things like physical education. I get, if you’re hiring people off the street because you’re desperate you probably do need to watch them more, but at the same time if the vice principal is taking me aside my first day of teaching and saying “you actually have a degree in this, so you are going to have to step up and take one for the team” - idk, if I’m going to have to work Sunday nights, let it at least be in a way that acknowledges that I’m a professional and have my own system.
You not going to break the loop till you pay dramatically more to teachers, poor pay usually attracts under motivated people in smaller numbers, so you cant be picky. These people eventually get promoted, an you end up with poor quality managers running the school who take advantage of good teachers.
Its so self defeating as high quality teaching as you do results in better engaged students with better results that lead to life long improvement to the entire economy. Instead we have ladder pulling from the rich who want to kneecap state funded schools while enriching their own private schools to create a barrier for the majority to compete.
Long live the 4-day work week.
Which has been proven to improve both productivity and profits. Same as home office. But petty people still prefer to take away freedom from people they consider beneath them, I guess.
I have a routine day job and a part time night job which I do from home on contract basis. I had vacation from my day job last week, because I have a sweet union job and get loads of vacation so some of it is just hanging out at home, but it’s AMAZING how job 2 expands to fill all that time, as well as every errand thing I have no time for, like haircuts. And my dork assed loser ex I still have to live with is like “well you can get these things done while you’re off”. I’m never off. Never ever.
Ugh that sucks. Is it not an option to drop that additional responsibility? Just say you can’t because of “prior obligations” (taking care of yourself)?
I find empathetic people are often the worst at letting things break so they can have one.
Not that I fully know your situation, so pardon my perscriptivising.
No, unfortunately I need the money, and my ex is a bad situation that I have to grey rock through.
Is it really that crazy to think you might have more time to do things when on vacation from your day job?
I do “productive vacations” mostly too, but sometimes you need a real break. I’m not even talking about going anywhere, but giving yourself time to just laze about and read and make meals and just do basic tidying, or whatever.
I don’t even have a paying job right now, but I can’t wait until I do, so I can take a week off to actually relax.
You might not need that, but I do.
It is actually. The amount I work is insane.
You honestly sound bitter
Why shouldn’t I be? I’ve worked at least 60 hours a week for 20 years, while he sits on his ass and watches hours of TV.
I mean, it’ll be unpopular if you post that on bootlicker social. I mean LinkedIn.
or a CEO themselves
It’s not that we’re too busy. It’s that we’re too busy without purpose. What’s the point of being busy when it doesn’t proportionately translate to having our needs met?
We have more abundance than ever before in all of human history, and yet we work harder than hunter-gatherers just to feed ourselves, and we have less leisure time than they did. We work more hours per day and have fewer days off per year than medieval serfs. And for what? What’s the purpose? So some asshole who was born on third base can buy another mansion?
Exactly! I work in a group home, so my work is very easy, but I want to go into IT, so I can actually go into a field I love
Preach.
yea, “unpopular” because we’re all indoctrinated from preschool onward that it’s “natural” to be yanked out of sleep by an alarm, bust our asses to show up at work, move on to things at the sound of a bell for all the daylight hours, then get minimal, if any, sleep in order to do it all over again tomorrow. god forbid you get an opportunity for a nap in the middle of the day
thank the industrial revolution: slavery dressed up in “freedom and opportunity” – same as the other familiar phrase “arbeit macht frei”
you exist to generate value for your owners. that’s it.
I worked 55+ hours a week for years. During the pandemic I became a stay at home mom. I suddenly, never sped while driving and any road rage tendencies vanished, nearly overnight.
While I feel quite isolated and lonely sometimes, as everyone I know works and are busy all the time, I can’t stress enough how much of a change my driving habits went through when I was no longer in “workmode”.
I used to break an average of 3 traffic laws every morning getting to my 6am shift. Then, the rush to just.get.home.
To a point now, I don’t like driving during rush hours, or shopping after the work crews get off. 10am on a weekday at the grocery store? Everyone is pleasant and polite.“excuse me” I say, and we have a polite interchange. I’ll give a compliment to a womans dress, and I’ve passed some good on to a fellow human, sometimes I even receive compliments from the little old ladies, I’ve learned from them after all.
If I go to the shop after 4pm or on a weekend? I can feel folks souls have been ripped out and stomped on, knowing what they feel… I say excuse me as i have to scoot pass their cart, and I don’t even get a response just a glare. Then I return home sad.
Work/life balance is crucial. Ideally, everyone should be guaranteed a healthy work/life balance, while still being able to live comfortably. With one job.
It would be healthy for everyone to live comfortably, and then, work how and if they want to
i noticed a similar benefit to my mental state regarding the rat race. i’d been living in city/urban areas pretty much my whole life ~40 years. when i moved to a rural area and could travel 25 miles in 20 minutes instead of 10 miles in 45 minutes, the difference was indescribable. like 3 traffic lights instead of 12, people know what driving etiquette is, no road rage, etc.
now, even when i occasionally approach the nearest “city,” which is tiny by city standards, i feel the stress and irritability level rising right when i start to see more tail lights than road. it’s insane. and people do this all day every day. fuck. all. that.
There is no reason why taxes pooled together from all of our incomes cannot be used to subsidize Healthcare, education and a basic living income for all citizens. But if everone no longer had to worry about survival, no one would put up with corporate abuse from rich cunts and plus if they’d paid their fair share of taxes and couldn’t just steal tax money to gamble with, they’d never be as filthy rich as they are to begin with.
What you describe is more or less the Nordic economic model, except the basic income. Corporate abuse is low, because it is not unthinkable to “not work” in response to such abuse, but also because unions are strong. Nevertheless, a lot of people still work a lot, so it doesn’t completely change the work/life balance oddity op is posting about.
Imagine not working and still being able to survive.
taxes pooled together from all of our incomes cannot be used to subsidize Healthcare, education and a basic living income for all citizens
Well that’s how it’s done in most rich and even some poor countries. So I assume you are talking about the US which is indeed in a terrible situation with human rights for it’s wealth. And sadly voting red/blue won’t ever change it.
I’m increasingly coming to the point that legislators are people, like you and me.
Maybe if we focused less on convincing Congress, and more on occupying Congress, we would have solved these problems… whether as Progressive Democrats or Independents.
Not the basic living income part, at least not anymore.
There is Social Security but it’s generally pretty miserable and nowadays not even enough to pay for rent (thanks to insane housing inflation all over the place) plus most supposedly developed countries haven’t been building much social housing in the last couple of decades (which is partly why the house price inflation is insane - less state built housing means less Supply but the Demand for new living places is still roughly the same).
Neoliberalism has been exported from the US to even the most Developed nations out there and that’s definitelly screwed up the Social Safety net (also Healthcare, even in countries without a national health service, as well as in some cases the quality of Education).
Also even when things were at their best, there was always this coverage gap for the lower end of the working class: the poor were the ones helped by the social safety net and above a certain income point which was in the area of blue collar work, people could live a pretty decent life from working, but there was a segment of the working class with people having to work shit jobs, juggling multiple jobs and so one just to make ends meet and were the help from social security wasn’t enough.
Even in the best countries this gap has been made much worse by decades of Neoliberalism, both by shrinking even further down the social safety net coverage (to just the trully miserable) and because on the upside income growth didn’t keep up with price growth so even parts of the middle class now have to work shit jobs and count their pennies to the end of the month.
I think about this a lot. We have essentially, purely through accident tbh, created a society that we are evolutionary unprepared to live in. So much of our typical day to day is actually horrible for our bodies and often antithetical to their good function.
In a strange way, it’s almost incredible. We have invented a rock that we cannot lift.
Eh, agreed except it’s no accident. A small group of people have managed to convince everyone else to do all the lifting in exchange for crumbs and little green pieces of paper. We have allowed ourselves to become our own worst enemy rather than unite and explore the stars
Competition is good for a lot of things, but it also becomes a day-to-day race to the bottom that rewards whoever is willing to sacrifice more of their life for the sake of their job than others.
The logical consequence is exactly this: we back ourselves into an increasingly uncomfortable corner that leaves less room for living than we could easily enjoy with our current technology.
B-b-b-b greed is human nature!
Yeah, go check out how any society outside of Europe worked before colonization. Winner writes the history!
The colonists were able to easily defeat most of the natives by out-arming them. But does anybody ever stop to think about why none of these societies ever invented guns? 🤔
That’s because you don’t lift the rock, you grind it. Try waking up earlier!
(jk)
I have a friend who is probably going to become a nun, and the place where she seems likely to join is a convent which has very little contact with the outside world (it’s even on an island). It struck me that the monastic life seems like a pretty good escape from conditions that are objectively antithetical to humanity, especially if you’re someone whose faith is already a huge part of how they cope with the world.
Hell, I’d be tempted by it, if I had a compatible religious belief. Alas, I think that if I had a “vocation”[1], it would probably require me to stick around and work alongside others who are trying to build a more humane world. I can’t do much, but my sense of duty is greater than my desire to escape.
[1]: As I understand it, “vocation” has a particular meaning for Catholics. Here’s a definition I got from Google: “vocation in a religious context is how God calls you to serve Him in the world.”. “Vocation” came up a lot when my friend was discussing her plans. Despite me being hilariously far from being a Catholic, the concept resonated with me — perhaps because I’d loosely describe myself as an agnostic theist. I don’t believe in a God, per se, but the sense of duty I feel to things like Truth, Justice, Beauty etc. (all of which I feel the need to capitalise) — things which a more religious person might just call “God”.
1 ↩︎
It’s only unpopular for the 1% extracting wealth from the 99%
Sort of, but there really are huge swaths of Americans that grew up learning about “work ethic,” putting in those extra hours, etc… I still struggle to turn it off sometimes myself. And then have to learn over and over and over again that “put in extra unpaid work and it’ll pay off” is horseshit every single fucking time and I’m a fucking idiot.
I’m currently unemployed, and I was not expecting to be so busy. I thought I would have a little more leisure time, might be able to catch up on a few things that I never seemed to have time for, like catching up with family, playing some video games in my back log, and doing a small bit of travel. That hasn’t materialized. It’s like as soon as I stopped “working”, more things came up that needed my attention. I’m basically busy from the time I get up in the morning until I wrap up for the night and veg out in front of the TV for an hour before bed. I swear I had more me time when I was working. Not sure how this happened.
100% I’ve been off work for months and like you I originally thought I’d have more time for R&R, but I’ve only played like 3 levels (Doom 2 Master Levels) in all that time.
Whereas on my last actual work vacation, I played through the entirety of God of War. I couldn’t imagine doing that now.
This is common, it’s because there was a huge backlog of things you just never got around to doing because you didn’t have enough time. When you’re working you prioritize some relaxing time because you have to go back to work soon. Now you have to do all the tasks you’ve stored up.
Would you mind sharing what kinds of things are taking up your time?
Well, initially there were a whole slew of things I needed to take care of before my job’s benefits were officially cut off. So many calls, appointments, emails, research, paperwork, applications, and so on trying to get things situated before I was officially, fully unemployed.
On top of that, my life as of this past year could be summed up as “one thing after another”, so losing my job was part of that, and it didn’t end there. Deaths in the family. Major medical issues. Major accident/injury (that literally wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t unemployed b/c it was a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing). The list of stuff that’s happened since losing my job goes on.
Some things boil down to personal choices I’m making. For instance, now that I have more time than income, things I might’ve paid a professional to do, I’ll just handle it myself when it makes sense to do so. Similarly, when friends and family need help with stuff, I’m making myself available for that. Things like taking care of pets for people when they have to travel for work, helping a friend put together a shed, helping move heavy furniture, etc.
In my own home, I’m taking on a much larger chunk of the day to day chores. My partner is having to shoulder more of the financial burden and having to deal with lifestyle cutbacks because of my situation, so I take a lot of pride in being able to relieve him of as much housework as possible. I’m the one doing the bulk of the dinner prep, a lot of the daily clean-up stuff, and things of that nature.
I’m also doing some things to help insulate us in case of a severe financial down turn. For example, I’m building and planting a larger garden this year than originally planned. I’m prepping all my canning and preservation equipment to make the most of whatever I’m able to grow. I’m clearing out old junk and reorganizing our storage spaces so we have more room to stock up on necessities.
Although I’m not devoting a ton of time to job hunting yet, I am still spending time doing some light networking, looking at job postings, investigating new skills, and things of that nature for when I do inevitably get back into the rat race.
Keep in mind, my days run together now and if you asked me what I did yesterday, I could probably only recall about 10% of it. Plus, this is already turned into a novel of response even though I’ve kept things high level, but know for sure, it’s all this stuff and so much more.
Yeah this is one of the reasons labor needs to organize.
There’s one boss telling 500 workers that they all need to work themselves to death? Fuck that. We outnumber him. We could be productive without burnout and things could be fine.
Unfortunately there is a pyramid scheme in place filled with fools that think they can become that one and are willing to fight against those “beneath” them.
Under the table were the fatcats are sharing slices of the cake, squirrel the little mice living of the crumbs that fall down, and once in a while one of the mice catches a bigger crumb, proudly raises it above its head and shouts: “See, the System works!”
True. There are also many idiots who think like, “I work hard and when I take a break it’s well deserved. When they take a break, they’re lazy good-for-nothings”.
There’s a name for this I can’t remember right now. Something more specific than “stupid” or “no empathy”.
Fundamental attribution error
Fundamental attribution error
Yes! That’s it! Thank you
Wiki on it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fundamental_attribution_error
Arrogance? Greed? Being a clueless asshole?
“recursive bulling”
For anyone else reading this: you could be the one to make that change, and gain you and your coworkers better pay and time off.
Seriously consider joining the IWW. They’ll train you on how to organize your coworkers and form a grassroots union, no matter what your job is.
Thanks for the recommendation. I am heartened by recent pushes towards unions. In particular, tech workers are beginning to understand that they are workers (as opposed to the narrative that tech workers exist at a level above the kind of people who need unions).
I haven’t heard of the IWW, but the website for the UK branch has the headline “Bigoted bourgeoisie courts never cared about workers, whether cis or trans” (regarding a recent UK supreme court ruling). I haven’t read the article, but that headline has given me a strong first impression of these guys. They seem pretty based
I’ve been excited at that development as well. It’s honestly a bit baffling it took them so long, especially game developers, where extreme crunch time and post release seasonal layoffs are the norm.
The IWW is the only union that leans heavily anarchist, with a rich history going back to 1905. :)
It’s extremely unpopular in the American business world. This world is so fucked up on so many levels. People wonder how things can be so bad over here… This is a big piece of that puzzle, along with our terrible and underfunded education system, and our lack of affordable healthcare.
Just these three things are bad enough, but then there are so, so many more problems. The United States is a gilded dumpster fire we’ve somehow been convincing the world is a beacon of prosperity.
The parts of the Nazi “economic recovery” from the Depression besides refusing to pay the rest of the Versailles debt and deficit spending financed by futures in tooth gold and slave labor was literally just making people work longer hours.
You can’t just state facts and then call it an unpopular opinion for likes
Is this your first day on the internet?
no but I’m getting tired of this “unpopular opinion but I think the sky is blue” shit
I often find this aggravating, but in some cases, I think that stating an opinion as being unpopular is a defence mechanism that may stem from previous responses to said opinion.
On the topic of everyone being busy, for example, a friend once shared a similar opinion at work and their colleagues jumped on that opinion and argued against it in a manner that was effectively dick-measuring about how tired and burnt out they are, but how they’re going to take on more work nonetheless. It was an especially toxic work environment, but it’s not abnormal to find people who seem desperate to sacrifice themselves on the altar of capitalism.
I speculate that some of this bizarre defense of hyper productivity arises from people who are forced to work that way for so long that they start to think of it as a thing they choose to do. My friend was fortunate enough that he was able to quit his job to stay home with his newborn child, but far too many people don’t have that opportunity. I wonder if some of the men who mocked him for quitting the job did so because they wish they had been able to do the same thing, but given that that ship had long since sailed, pretending that they chose to stay at that shitty job helped them to weather the stress.
This is all a long-winded way of saying that I sympathise with people who hedge their beliefs with saying an opinion is “unpopular”. I think that sometimes, it’s a way of saying “this is something I believe, but I’m not actively trying to change your mind about it”. There may also be an element of someone hoping that people will say “idk what you mean, that’s not an unpopular opinion”, in search of validation. That’s annoying, but I’m sympathetic towards someone fishing for validation in this topic, at the very least.
But then how is someone supposed to argue about how how the sky is red sometimes?
Got 'em.
