
Are we too busy to enjoy life? - anthilemoon
https://nesslabs.com/too-busy-to-enjoy-life
======
willthefirst
For some age-tested wisdom on this topic, read Seneca's _On The Shortness Of
Life_ :

[https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/ebooks/seneca/on-the-
shortn...](https://www.globalgreyebooks.com/ebooks/seneca/on-the-shortness-of-
life/on-the-shortness-of-life.pdf)

"But one man is possessed by an avarice that is insatiable, another by a
toilsome devotion to tasks that are useless; one man is besotted with wine,
another is paralyzed by sloth; one man is exhausted by an ambition that always
hangs upon the decision of others, another, driven on by the greed of the
trader, is led over all lands and all seas by the hope of gain; some are
tormented by a passion for war and are always either bent upon inflicting
danger upon others or concerned about their own; some there are who are worn
out by voluntary servitude in a thankless attendance upon the great; many are
kept busy either in the pursuit of other men's fortune or in complaining of
their own; many, following no fixed aim, shifting and inconstant and
dissatisfied, are plunged by their fickleness into plans that are ever new;
some have no fixed principle by which to direct their course, but Fate takes
them unawares while they loll and yawn—so surely does it happen that I cannot
doubt the truth of that utterance which the greatest of poets delivered with
all the seeming of an oracle: 'The part of life we really live is small.'"

~~~
1121redblackgo
Born 4 BC Died AD 65

Absolutely incredible that his words can speak to someone 2000 years later and
make them feel something in the core of their essence. Thanks for sharing this
really helped me with some things this morning.

~~~
close04
Human nature hasn't changed probably in thousands of years. Our tools and
possibilities did but if you'd swap a few people around in time (of course,
ignoring the shock of the change) they'd fill their shoes the same way.

~~~
PoachedSausage
I often wonder if it is true that human nature is unchanging. The proposal
comes up often in political debates, but there is not really the place to have
an informed discussion about human nature.

It seems to me that human nature has changed quite a lot in the last few
hundred years. Examples would be the change in how we view other humans,
slavery is regarded as barbaric now, we have the declaration of human rights
and equality for women and people of different sexuality etc.

~~~
jshevek
If we accept the definition "fundamental dispositions and traits of humans"
then I wouldn't consider those examples to qualify, as they are not
sufficiently fundamental in my view. They are closer to social norms. If we
experienced a wholesale global economic collapse, I could easily see our
great-grandchildren retuning to those and other barbaric norms.

~~~
Groxx
Just to join in: since it's "human _nature_ ", I think it's reasonable to
consider only things which are relatively universal / innate, not learned
things like social norms.

2,000 years is very little time on a genetic timescale, I wouldn't expect to
see many changes. Some, sure, but not much.

------
torgian
Without reading the article, I can say yes, yes we are.

There are very few exceptions to this depending on your career and mindset. I
can say that I enjoyed life a lot during my 8 years in the military, and it
had nothing to do with the job ( the job sucked ). It had everything to do
with the people. Friendships forged, the understanding involved, the familial
bond that came with it. That made me feel happy.

After that, normal jobs were just busy work. Which iswhy I'm happy to say that
my current job ( 100% remote ) is much more satisfactory, and not as "busy". I
enjoy life as it is. I lucked out so far.

But I will say that while everyone might have different standards of "enjoying
life", the key factor is actually _belonging_ to a family. Doesn't mater if
that family is blood related, it just needs to be people you fully trust and
can do anything with and be completely comfortable with.

This is not something that is easily attained, but it can be easier to find if
you're not working some shit job 10 hours a day every day five days a week
with no chance of vacation and no job security.

That shit needs to change,a nd the majority of us are slaves to it.

~~~
derg
>But I will say that while everyone might have different standards of
"enjoying life", the key factor is actually _belonging_ to a family. Doesn't
mater if that family is blood related, it just needs to be people you fully
trust and can do anything with and be completely comfortable with.

1000% agreed. Everything about current life has done a good job siloing and
isolating people to be nothing but worker drones. There is no sense of
community, no sense of belonging to something, or even being allowed to be
human.

How many people work jobs so compartmentalized, so abstract, that they can't
even see the bigger picture of what they are working on? Better yet, how about
all those people who work in the "gig economy", working odd hours, working for
scraps, unable to make rent? In each case, the worker is almost completely
divorced from anything and it all ultimately starts to be (and feel)
completely pointless.

~~~
subhobroto
> 1000% agreed. Everything about current life has done a good job siloing and
> isolating people to be nothing but worker drones. There is no sense of
> community, no sense of belonging to something, or even being allowed to be
> human.

It's not something that happened by accident.

People like it and gravitate towards it.

Doing one, and preferably only one thing is really comforting.

When my friends who live in the city complain that their sink is backing up
and how hard it is to get a plumber even after offering $350/visit, I listen
to the symptoms, figure out the tools needed, pay a visit and fix the problem.

When I tell them how easy it is to diagnose a plumbing problem, and how next
time they don't need to pay me in beers or even the plumber - they are just.
not. interested.

Writing the same React application a 100 times is far more enjoyable (and
profitable).

People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push
comes to a shove, doing the same old thing, repeatedly, is extremely
comforting.

Doing different things is risky and non-comforting.

That takes deliberate practice and planning.

~~~
derg
>People really like to say they want to do more things in life, but when push
comes to a shove, doing the same old thing is extremely comforting.

Your react app example is an interesting one because it touches on the profit
motive. Yes, it's easier to be disinterested in say, your plumbing example,
but how much of that is due to genuine disinterest and how much is due to the
constant implicit pressure to produce produce produce?

General Personal growth (including being able to diagnose issues with say your
plumbing) takes a back seat to personal growth that can net you the most
amount of money and the constant grind of needing to prove your monetary value
to society.

Simply put, yes there is a bit of the human condition to being interested in
what's safe, and what you know, but there's also the implicit need to be
hyper-specialized in an unhealthy way in order to maximize your output, to the
detriment of everything else and for me personally, the latter is definitely
where I fall to the absolute detriment of my own mental health. And that is
where I think we are failing as a society.

~~~
subhobroto
> And that is where I think we are failing as a society.

For sure!

I would love your inputs on my thoughts on this topic but I'm in a conundrum:

1\. If I put a link to my thought, people flag my post as self promotion

2\. If I copy paste my thoughts more than once on the same thread, people flag
my post as adding noise, eg:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22961683)

So I guess the only thing I can do now is kindly request you to look at my
recent post history on this thread.

------
acd
If people worked less and spent more time with their friends and loved ones
they would be happier. As a consequence anti depressants would go down,
happiness and well being go up.

For that we need to change the banking system which puts people in debt. Ie
working to pay of debt is voluntary wage debt enslavement. The previous
sentence is controversial. Most still want status quo vs radical change.

~~~
CalRobert
Debt is dangerous. Debt, combined with artificial constraints on necessities
(like housing) doubly so. We pretty much tell people "it's illegal to build a
cheap home" and "btw we can offer you a 30 year mortgage on these nice fancy
homes".

It feels a bit like the supply of housing and the supply of debt are both
manipulated to make sure people work as hard as possible but without
revolting. Living free and clear of debt is extremely hard; the places you can
build a home without restriction are generally not near decent jobs, and the
places near decent jobs make it more or less illegal to build homes (and those
you are allowed to build have to meet labrynthine requirements about outdoor
space, parking, density, etc. - certainly the sorts of homes normal people
could afford to build with the cash they have aren't allowed in the major
metros).

Of course, those who already own homes have a strong incentive to preserve the
housing cartel, as it increases the value of their asset (which they can then
sell when they retire and move somewhere cheap with no jobs)

So far as I can tell the best path out is remote work and a low cost of living
area, but that's open to rather few people and I have a suspicion wages will
drop as more people gravitate towards this option and there's more
competition.

Not to mention that we explicitly encourage young people to throw away 4 years
of their life _and_ take on massive debt before starting. I'm not sure a
degree, a pile of debt, and 4 years of opportunity cost are worth more than
your wits and a clean slate.

~~~
ip26
It's mostly illegal to build a cheap home because they can be deathtraps. I
believe house fires used to be one of the top killers in the country; today,
firefighters only spend 1% of their time fighting fires.

In any case, property prices in high CoL locations is mainly the cost of the
land. I've visited homes in the midwest nicer than almost anything I ever saw
in the Bay Area that cost 200-300k.

~~~
WWLink
This is exactly it. I rent a house that costs $900,000 and it’s a 60 year old
death trap. Just like most of the other houses in the neighborhood. It was
built when LA County was more of a “build baby build!” Place lol.

When you buy a house here it’s more like you’re buying a $900,000 piece of
land and getting a free house in the deal. Those houses are practically
worthless and a lot of new buyers tear them down and build a new one.

I’d guess that doing that costs a few hundred thousand. But most of the time I
see that, the new houses are way better quality. If you wanted to bare minimum
meet code, it’d probably still be cheaper to build a new house than to refit
the old one.

------
throwawayyipyip
I know I am. I'm dreading living paycheck to paycheck being pushed into a
specialism in which people only think I'm capable of doing that. Eventually,
I'll be able to safe a bit, but it doesn't mean that I can take a break from
work. It's nice to have 25 vacation days (yay Europe), but I'd prefer, hmm...
3 months? Not gonna happen? I get that, from an economic point of view, but
from an "enjoy life" point of view, that would be where I'd want to be, or
perhaps even 6 months. I'd work the other 6, that's how much I want to work.

Recently, I asked at a new job that I was about to start if I can work 4 days
per week instead of 5. Now they're doubting to even hire me. Screw this.
Contracts don't make sense, they claim you trade time for money, but that's a
lie, otherwise I could work 20% less than what's normal.

When I did enjoy life, I was at university.

I didn't have those concerns and I studied whatever I felt like. I enjoyed
life then. Also when I'm on vacation and know that I can take a break from
worrying, then I also can enjoy life, or maybe it's simply that hiking with
good friends is amazing.

It's easy to enjoy life given unconstrained resources. Unfortunately, I see
that we're mostly resource starved. Rent? That's about a 2 week paycheck
(otherwise 3).

With that said, it beats dying because you don't have access to medicine. It
beats a lot of things that medieval people used to do. It's better.

But it still sucks.

~~~
centimeter
A manager once told me something that stuck with me. "20% of your paycheck is
for doing work, 80% of your paycheck is for being available with context."

It often feels like the way companies/teams/tasks are structured causes
employees to waste time or be a lot less productive than they could be. But it
turns out that, for companies to scale beyond a certain size, the winning
recipe is (depressingly):

* Fungible employees are more important than productive employees. It's incredibly risky to rely on the specialized abilities or knowledge of any single employee. Keep your bus factor high. * It's OK if your employees are kept "idling" most of the time, as long as they're available when you actually need them. In most white collar industries, demand for labor is extremely bursty.

This is one reason companies are so reluctant to adopt irregular work
schedules. It works fine for (small) companies that are OK with relying on
competence/specialization and accepting small bus factors, but it breaks the
strategies larger companies use to scale.

~~~
bena
Why is that depressing?

That's the core message of Slack. Do not operate at peak efficiency, it will
hurt you when you can least afford to be hurt.

Don't mistake effort for value. An employee who is grinding 24/7 isn't
necessarily more productive than one who is doing only 8 hours a day, 5 days a
week.

~~~
centimeter
> Don't mistake effort for value.

This isn't the dimension of productivity I'm talking about. I would be 10x
more productive if I didn't have to do code review, didn't have to coordinate
with other people when they wanted to use my systems (or vice versa), etc.
However, I acknowledge that, in practice, this would actually be bad for my
employer. It's better (for them) if I operate at 10% productivity and it won't
be catastrophic if/when I leave.

------
koolhead17
Yes

* Most of us have no clue what enjoyment means.

* We are living in a world where others define our purpose and meaning of enjoyment.

~~~
grecy
After spending 2 years driving through Latin America, and three years driving
around Africa to the most remote places I could reach[1], I wholeheartedly
agree.

I honestly feel that the majority of people in Western countries don't know
day to day happiness.

[1] [https://youtube.com/theroadchoseme](https://youtube.com/theroadchoseme)

~~~
cryoshon
i've come around to a similar point of view after spending a lot of time in
latin america.

i don't necessarily believe that people down there are happier on average,
because i know that many are not. but, i have noticed that latin americans
seem to have the latitude to take more joy and passion in their daily lives.
and i think that if the two can be separated, people are more content on
average there than they are here.

not everything is a business transaction, and it isn't necessarily desirable
for someone to be spending their time clawing their way through the world.
there's less of a culture of marketing/advertising creating new problems for
people and offering products to solve them, too.

~~~
tozeur
After traveling to 30+ countries and living overseas, there’s definitely an
attitude difference. My mom growing up had no running water in a village, yet
loved the huge family she was a part of. Now she’s in the states and deals
with loneliness on a daily basis

------
ge96
Take hits for this comment

One of the few times I found to be "in the moment" was on a substance(m) which
I'm not saying that's the only way. My point in this comment is, this is the
time when I'm not in my "auto-pilot tasks in mind" mode everyday where I
forget I'm sitting on a chair/inside a box most of my day.

Other similar feelings being in nature, looking at things closely like the
color of leaves. Watching a stream of water flow or something.

I think that sentiment of "something you enjoyed sticks to you/makes time seem
longer/remember it more" vs. repetitive tasks that are joined together later
forget.

My personal goal is freedom because I'm always afraid of "what if I lose my
job" and "I have to get up at this hour". I can't just be like "today I'm just
gonna go do this randomly because it peaked my interest". I think I will be a
homesteader with a garage producing videos of whatever stuff I build.

But for now... gotta pay my debts/work. FiRe will get there as I don't need
much.

And I don't know at the end of the day the clock ticks, time is running
down... what matters to you?

~~~
GuiA
A long term meditation practice _may_ help you reach similar states of mind.
Much less instantaneous than chemically induced, but perhaps more rewarding
and sustainable.

~~~
ge96
I have tried(not hard enough) I guess I don't know when it's working. Perhaps
too what I said about "being in the moment" just means the details you
normally glance over you notice eg. leaves on a plant or something.

Yeah I don't do the stuff anymore because it does not go with my
brain(paranoia/feeds into delusion). I also can't logically function(write
code). But yeah I'm going to try and do that more often, like stop and look
around me, count items or something.

------
agitator
This is why I left the Bay Area.

To each their own. For me, the culture reinforced a sort of blind dedication
to a company or a cause. Everyone you would meet or talk to would want to talk
tech or entrepreneurship. You could tell they were comparing themselves with
you or trying to figure out a way to collaborate. Everything was about work.
If you weren't hustling, someone else would out hustle you.

I missed a balance in life. Visiting with friends, family, hiking, talking,
enjoying the weather. In the bay, even when I did take a break and venture out
to enjoy life, it felt like the world was barren. In comparison to other
places I've lived, the food, the culture, art, and life were just bland
outside of work. It's just a reflection of the priorities of the people living
and working there.

The other thing is, what better way to get return on your business investment.
It's obvious that if you cultivate a culture of competitiveness, combined with
dangling the carrot of prestige from working at a place that would unlikely
become a unicorn, combined with scarcity of resources (expensive housing, high
cost of living), you get people burning more of their precious time for the
benefit of founders and investors. It's an excellent situation if you are a
founder or investor. Aside from experience and skills gained, it's a tough
situation if you are an individual contributor.

~~~
N1H1L
The food in the Bay Area was bland? And there were no hiking/camping
opportunities?

The Bay Area definitely has some problems - but a lot of your complaints are
untethered from reality.

~~~
agitator
The food scene is definitely overhyped. Maybe if you are coming from the
midwest it's impressive, but for me it was repeatedly a huge let down.

There is plenty of hiking and skiing nearby but the point I was trying to make
is that it was tough to break away both from work and from people who loved to
talk about work.

~~~
wbronitsky
Living in the Bay Area, I find the food scene amazing. I do, however, find the
food scene in San Francisco bland and repetitive.

The same pattern holds for cultural activities and the outdoors; SF has the
same things over and over again, while the Bay Area as a whole has an
abundance of options to fill your life with. I have also found that many
people who move to San Francisco spend 99%+ of their time in SF.

I do agree with your sentiments about what a large amount of people in the Bay
Area want to spend their time thinking and talking about. I stopped going to
parties years ago after I couldn’t find a conversation that wasn’t about how
this dude worked at Apple.

------
JoeAltmaier
I'm reminded of a line in a movie recently. The spouse had died, and a friend
commented "Never put off doing things, because we don't know how long we
have." They replied "You don't get it. What I miss is, doing nothing. I just
want to do nothing with them, again."

------
ryeights
“Industrial Society and Its Future”, Ted Kacynzski (the Unabomber)

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unab...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
srv/national/longterm/unabomber/manifesto.text.htm)

While the man and his actions were reprehensible, his manifesto was lucid and
insightful and, in my opinion, correctly diagnoses many of modern society's
ails.

>In modern industrial society only minimal effort is necessary to satisfy
one’s physical needs. It is enough to go through a training program to acquire
some petty technical skill, then come to work on time and exert the very
modest effort needed to hold a job. [...] Thus it is not surprising that
modern society is full of surrogate activities. These include scientific work,
athletic achievement, humanitarian work, artistic and literary creation,
climbing the corporate ladder, acquisition of money and material goods far
beyond the point at which they cease to give any additional physical
satisfaction [...]

>For many if not most people, surrogate activities are less satisfying than
the pursuit of real goals (that is, goals that people would want to attain
even if their need for the power process were already fulfilled). One
indication of this is the fact that, in many or most cases, people who are
deeply involved in surrogate activities are never satisfied, never at rest.
Thus the money-maker constantly strives for more and more wealth. The
scientist no sooner solves one problem than he moves on to the next. The long-
distance runner drives himself to run always farther and faster. Many people
who pursue surrogate activities will say that they get far more fulfillment
from these activities than they do from the “mundane” business of satisfying
their biological needs, but that is because in our society the effort needed
to satisfy the biological needs has been reduced to triviality. More
importantly, in our society people do not satisfy their biological needs
_autonomously_ but by functioning as parts of an immense social machine. In
contrast, people generally have a great deal of autonomy in pursuing their
surrogate activities.

~~~
EmptyAbyss
To me these sound more like complaining that modern activities do not satisfy
ancient human instincts well (mixed with legitimate criticism of paperclip-
optimizing). Humanity is making something new with its whole way of life,
figuring it out as it goes, so _of course_ the old things don't fit, and we
can't yet change them.

Ted did go off to live in the woods, the ancient natural environment, so I
shouldn't be surprised.

------
Pfhreak
The people's policy project has a pretty decent writeup of some fairly
straightforward changes we could make to increase leisure time here in the
states: [https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/the-leisure-
ag...](https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/projects/the-leisure-agenda/)

The changes we need aren't that big, we just need to advocate for them.

------
perfunctory
Not only we don't enjoy life we also destroy it (as in climate change)

[Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change]
[https://ecology.iww.org/PDF/misc/climate-change-
workshare-20...](https://ecology.iww.org/PDF/misc/climate-change-
workshare-2013-02.pdf)

~~~
luckylion
> [Reduced Work Hours as a Means of Slowing Climate Change]

Great, how do we do that without reducing output? If the share of society that
supports all of it cuts their hours in half, their personal situation will
certainly improve. But a lot of people will go hungry.

~~~
eropple
_> But a lot of people will go hungry._

Will they? Honest question. How much of the labor share is human versus
automation in 2020?

~~~
Nasrudith
The hunger itself is less of an issue because the food itself is pretty damn
cheap. With resturants the labor is the biggest cost component. Especially if
it is just "rice and dried beans boiled in water plus multivitamins". Hell the
supply chain issues show distribution is an expensive part in comparison -
although unfortunately the cheapness comes from high scale too.

The real issues with scalability are things like medical care and other higher
skilled labor - not just because of task switching inefficiencies but because
any proportional hour reduction means increased demand - assuming that the
hours worked are useful.

Less skilled labor is more or less commoditized and would be easier to spread
the burden around and would likely show a boost instead of a decline in
productivity (although involving say 10 people working 4 hour shifts instead
of 5 working 8 hour shifts).

Regardless of stance on what we should do a massive societal lifestyle shift
would neither be easy nor well received.

------
reagular
Of course we are too busy. Even the last century we didn't work like today.

No electrical light? Not working the night.

No subway? No work if there is snow.

No internet? No remote work.

etc

~~~
cafard
In the late 19th Century, workers in the US steel industry commonly worked
twelve-hour days, seven days a week, which turned into twenty-four-hour days
when the night shift went to day shift and vice-versa.

Snow - subway = no work? Hardly. In the suburbs, people drove, in the cities
people walked.

~~~
nervousvarun
Sure but that example from the steel industry surely was an outlier? What % of
the workforce was still agrarian in the late 19th century?

As for the suburbs and people walking etc...mostly agree.

But surely you'd agree that the onset of the internet has extended most
people's working hours in a significant way.

What's the < year 2000 equivalent of receiving/responding to a work email at
10pm?

~~~
subhobroto
> What's the < year 2000 equivalent of receiving/responding to a work email at
> 10pm?

Your horse running away or the wolf jumping into your sheep pen among others.

Humans have never had a dearth of interruptions.

What's sad is, today, most of those interruptions are completely ignorable (no
one has a sheep pen thats not well protected and monitored) - yet, we treat
that work email at 10pm with the same urgency as one.

Atleast back then, it was _your_ sheep pen.

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
_Your_ sheep pen on _their_ land across most of the world. And sometimes not
even that.

~~~
subhobroto
I'll be facetious and say it's now: _Their_ sheep pen on _their_ land across
most of the world.

On a more serious note, _their_ land really applies to the rich could tax you.
They didn't care about taking care of the land - the only reason why they
owned it is to tax it.

Nothing's changed for the better on that front.

------
seph-reed
Step 1: Find your local artist/builder/maker/burners or just anyone with a
passion, motivation, and a project that has room for help.

Step 2: Volunteer your time towards creating reality from a shared dream.

I know nobody has time. I know the people are weird. I know it's awkward and
you're self conscious. But you'll have to trust an internet stranger here:
it's worth it.

Make something with others. Don't sit around talking about your opinions,
that's not society. Working together towards a common goal is society.

------
jason_price
There's one more reason we can behave like this: we just postpone enjoying
life for the future.

~~~
defterGoose
This despite literally any old person you'd care to ask beseeching us not to
do this.

------
quietthrow
It’d be great to get a more international perspective here. Based on the
responses on the thread so far this sounds very US centric where really very
few people are not busy compared to say Europe where has a more balanced
approach. Enjoying that busyness or not that’s a different story given
enjoyment is such a personal thing.

~~~
donothing
I lived and worked in Europe and I still feel that people need a hell of a lot
more nothing in their lives. If you're curious about my perspective, it's
downthread, same username.

------
subhobroto
> Being busy all the time can give us an illusion of productivity which may
> feel reassuring

> You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually
> flowing on,” supposedly said Heraclitus. Time is like a river. If you’re too
> busy to enjoy life—too busy to spend time with friends and family, too busy
> to learn how to paint or play the guitar, too busy to go on that hike, too
> busy to cook something nice for yourself—these moments will be gone, and you
> will never get that time back

> Being busy is a defense mechanism. It’s a way to avoid just—being. Having
> responsibilities, deadlines, a long task list… Overloading our senses can
> make us believe we are moving in the right direction, or a list in a
> direction. But the constant cycle of tasks we tackle without ever thinking
> often leaves us stagnant

Having grown up in a "developing" country (India) with its high mortality and
having suffered the emotional trauma of losing family members, friends and
coworkers, unexpectedly , gives a perspective about life.

Having been battered to near death for starting small businesses that
threatened established ones in the state I grew up in, gives a perspective
about life.

Having been put at gun point, shackled to a post in a kneeling position by the
mafia of another state I moved to, to start businesses, away from my home
state (where they knew who my family was and could kill them), gives a
perspective about life.

And that perspective is - there is abisolutely NOTHING like family and
friends. No, not the fake ones. The real ones who open up their own homes, in
the face of danger when you're battered, bleeding, destitute and broken.

Which is why, when I moved to the U.S., the obsession with "start up" success
at the expense of anything else was/is extremely fascinating!

People want to be successful. No one likes to lose. Even a freeloader is
expressing that behavior because they believe that is the best way to win.

The work life "balance" in the U.S. is incredibly messed up - like real bad.

The assumption most people make is "Let's work real hard while we are young so
we have all the money we need when we are older. We will have fun then".

So right out of college, with six figures in debt, people are working 40+
hours/week (typically 60+ hours/week), working weekends without blinking an
eye.

Everyone's doing it, it's the norm, so what's wrong with doing what everyone
is doing.

No one has time to make meaningful relationships.

Most people spend less than 3 years at a job, so what's the point anyways. You
can't get a good salary hike without quitting your existing and joining a new
company.

That model bleeds into one's personal life as well - people are so busy
working hard that they miss the opportunities to build a meaningful
relationship with their spouse and children.

Guilt sets in so the spouse and children get showered with expensive gifts and
vacations but they have nothing much to talk about during those vacations
either so they spend most of their time visiting random places, taking tons of
photos, posting them on social and handling the barrage of comments they get
for those photos, which again steals time from whatever chance was left of
having a private conversation.

The emptiness does not resolve though - and when it gets intolerable the
spouses file for divorce.

Maybe it will work out with someone else.

Once they retire - they have two big problems:

1\. yes, they do have money, but don't know what to do with it

2\. they also don't know what to do with the free hours they now have
available!

To address #1, they hand over their money to fund managers who proceed to
loose all or most of that money because they are sure they can beat the
market.

In the meantime, they have been so frigging busy most of their adult life with
the one thing they did for their employers that they did not develop social
skills (outside the fake "professional" facade) or general skills that they
can use to improve their own lives outside the work context - and everyone's
so fake that it gets down under your skin because deep inside you can feel the
fakeness so you hesitate to make more social ties.

Now, with the money depleted and being bored out of their minds, what's the
next step?

So yes, it does feel to me that here in the U.S., being busy is a defense
mechanism - because it's a good excuse for procrastinating on what really
matters.

~~~
sdfin
What you shared made me evaluate India much worse than the idea of that
country I had before reading it.

I'm glad you are still alive and in a country where you can do business
freely.

~~~
subhobroto
My experience is likely atypical.

None of my coworkers who did a standard job faced these specific issues
although a few business partners did.

I refused to pay bribes or strike "deals" with established businesses and
that's business 101 in India.

I also dont respond well to threats or attempts at restricting my freedom
without good cause.

Most Indians don't take the path I chose to take in life and didnt get exposed
to the same things but the random death is still a thing (although the type
that hangs out here on HN arn't aware of how many die in freak
train/car/electricity/machete accidents because they themselves lead a very
posh life isolated from reality.)

I am told things have changed for the better over the last two decades.

I really hesitate to find out and confirm though.

------
mbostleman
Depends on whether an individual's busyness is enjoyable. The title kind of
implies that there are no individuals ("we" are all together) and that "busy"
in and of itself not in the set of things in life that are enjoyable.

------
chrisweekly
Tangent: happy to see nesslabs getting to HN front page. It's a great site
(and nascent community) run by one Anne-Laure Le Cunff, a thoughtful,
intelligent, curious and humble neuroscience student I find it impossible not
to root for.

------
amelius
Unfortunately, the advancement of technology has not brought us more free days
per week.

------
sadfev
My problem is opposite, I am too indulgent and it’s difficult to be very
productive

------
donothing
So I did nothing for two years.

In theory, I was studying, and working on building a few things, but I never
did much of either. I rented a spot in an old warehouse in the countryside for
$100 a month and decided to build myself a sort of tiny home inside there. It
started out rough; I won't forget freezing on the concrete floor those first
few nights, wrapped in one of those foil survival blankets.

The winter left quickly, and with it the last of my ambitions. I'd do a bit of
work, here and there, but doing nothing was my primary occupation. I would lay
in fields and watch horses in the distance, I would sit on the side of a
stream and rest my feet in it. One of my favorite activities was to bike to
the nearest town about a half hour away and buy ice cream, lying in the grass
and tearing into it like a child.

Biking was always great fun. I would bike with no purpose, simply being free.
There is no greater feeling than cruising the countryside with the wind in
your hair and absolutely no idea of where you will go that day.

Occasionally a horse would match me for the length of its pasture. I got the
feeling that the horses dreamed of my bike as a child dreams of wings.

Things always seemed to just work out. When my bike gave out, the friendly
locals were happy enough to give me rides until I fixed it with some rope I
found. When the seasons again changed and my tiny home grew colder I was
offered a free room in a lovely old farmhouse.

But as the snow returned so did my ambitions. I planned to finish months of
work in days, then grew frustrated when I didn't. I grew crazier and crazier
and at the end neglected all reason. Eventually, I accepted the advice of a
local and decided to move to the city, get an apartment, and find work as a
programmer. I did all of these quickly. The apartment lasted; the job did not.
After so long doing nothing, I found myself nearly unable to work, paralyzed.

The next year I continued to do nothing. I had a flash of ambition, but it was
quickly interrupted by falling in love early in the year: a beautiful girl
far, far out of my league. We fled our responsibilities to the south of
France. Perhaps the best single week of my life was there with her doing
nothing: lying in the sun, swimming naked in the sea, smoking a joint on the
windowsill, watching the boats go by.

We spent a wonderful year together, but the winter came as it did before to
drive ambition: this time not mine but hers. We separated.

Now I find myself a normal programmer. Like most people here, I do an awful
lot of something and get paid well for it. But you can bet that once I've
stashed up enough of those paychecks my schedule will have a lot more nothing
on it.

------
pjc50
This article could have been written at almost any time in the past 50 years.
But somehow it lands particularly badly in the middle of a pandemic when some
people are far too busy and some are forcibly idled.

~~~
LordOfWolves
Regardless of the article’s timing, the question remains. Are we too busy in
modern society? Do we make ourselves busy to feel better about ourselves as a
proxy to productivity? Is being busy (e.g., involving the brain in various
scenarios throughout the day) necessary to maintain a prescient mind? Can we
potentially be less busy yet generally happier?

I’d argue the answers to these questions are all “yes”, but alas, I have no
scientific data to back my claim, purely anecdotes.

If one is not struggling for basic needs, the current global situation truly
shines a light on which “time sucks” in your life are/were/will be actually
worth the effort and time moving forward (once past this health crisis). From
personal experience, I don’t think I’ve ever been more grateful for my
relationships with my family, following the passing of several individuals
whom I’ve known for 20+ years.

~~~
toomuchtodo
COVID put front and center, "What is really essential?"

~~~
blotter_paper
And somehow, liquor stores and recreational weed dispensaries are considered
"essential" while gyms and many productive small businesses are not.

Are we enjoying life too much to be busy?

(Before this is taken as general anti-drug hate, plz check username -- I'm
pointing out what I see as a weird set of seemingly hypocritical priorities in
a time of pandemic, not telling you that you can never have your delicious
soma.)

~~~
Nasrudith
That was never a statement of virtue but of getting outod their hair. They
would rather have continued normal slow decline from alcoholics than a bunch
of DTs in their ER and poison control issues from "subsitutions". And
presumably self medication with dispensaries for anxiety attacks or other
issues and not wanting to deal with spice or street dealing issues spiking at
the worst time.

Essential is a very task focused state in other words - trying to draw generic
wisdom from it without reference to the new task or situation is a mistake.

~~~
blotter_paper
I could see the explanations you presented being valid, but it's fair to note
that these were not originally considered essential services in Colorado. When
it was announced that they would be shutting down recreational dispensaries
and liquor stores, a friend sent me picture of a huge line that had formed
outside of one. Pretty soon, Colorado announced that liquor stores and
dispensaries would be able to stay open after all. I felt like this decision
might have been based on fear of too many people suddenly congregating around
those points at the worst possible moment, and the rollback might have been
done to spread out the lines over time. Another thought I had was that perhaps
after seeing those lines they feared the protests of quarantine would bring
more participants out if people were cut off from their favorite drug
supplies. All speculation, of course, but whatever their reasons, the decision
(at least in Colorado) wasn't made until after it became evident that people
were forming long lines in response to the announced shutdown. Perhaps they
rethought it for other reasons, I only know the timeline.

Edit: just to clarify, when I say "valid" above I mean "the reason these
decisions were made" \-- my use of this term was not meant to suggest that the
reasons given would be a clever basis for policy. Alcohol withdrawal would be
a real problem. While I don't support making either drug discussed illegal, I
generally think weed is less of a detriment to society, yet in the context of
discussing "essential" services during a pandemic access to weed seems less
essential than staving off the life threatening withdrawal symptoms of
alcohol.

------
palimpsests
Definitely. Recent podcast about this powerfully insidious theme in modern
life, recommended:

[https://www.resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/dr-lise-van-
sus...](https://www.resources.soundstrue.com/podcast/dr-lise-van-susteren-
emotional-inflammation-a-condition-of-our-time)

The talk appproaches how to mediate and fundamentally resolve this experience
(it's partly support of a book that was just released, I am in the process of
reading it - I feel this is going to be really helpful context for many
people).

------
machinehermit
Not me. I am like a high energy dog that needs to be walked until the owner is
annoyed. I love my normal life. This lack of stimulation right now is terrible
for my mental health.

~~~
tonyedgecombe
That's OK as long as you don't expect other people to be the same.

------
eruci
If you're too busy, you're doing something wrong.

~~~
ceedan
Sounds like privileged insight

------
JTbane
I'd say yes.

The quarantine has put it in perspective for me, I'm able to exercise more and
enjoy life since I don't have a 1-hour commute each way to work.

~~~
wbc
agreed 100%, exactly the same experience here, haven't jogged in years and wow
it feels great

------
PeterStuer
You are not supposed to enjoy life.

You are only meant to aspire enjoyment at the end of a never ending path of
conspicuous consumption.

------
pascalxus
this part is key: "Research shows that humans tend to do whatever it takes to
keep busy, even if the activity feels meaningless to them. Dr Brené Brown from
the University of Houston describes being “crazy busy” as a numbing strategy
we use to avoid facing the truth of our lives."

------
aklemm
Yes, and it’s proven for me during the Covid-19 lockdown, but I’ve always
suspected as much.

------
darepublic
life is not enjoyable by definition

if robots could do everything for humans we'd probably play the most realistic
VR video games while high with all our time

suffering and scarcity is actually a requirement for enjoyment imo

~~~
TeMPOraL
Your comment makes me want to finally sit down and read Iain Banks. Because
apparently they solved that in the fictional, post-scarcity world of the
Culture.

I don't believe that _suffering_ is a requirement for enjoyment. Some level of
discomfort when you're not having fun, yes - something that pushes you to
descent the gradient. An occasional pain even, maybe. But not _suffering_.

------
ravenstine
If we can't enjoy life(or at least be content), why live it?

Most people, in my experience, have to struggle to enjoy life. They spend most
of their time working a job they don't really like, come home too tired to do
anything meaningful, have weekends where they can't decide between doing
something or relaxing, and binge on food and alcohol and teevee to feel like
they're alive.

While I'm fortunate in that I naturally enjoy software engineering, there's a
lot about the job of being a software engineer that is lacking. I think a lot
of programmers would say the same, but because everyone wants to keep their
job, they repress their disappointment. People become demoralized with their
jobs when company ideals turn out to be lies, leaders lack appreciation for
their talent, standards decline, and more and more work is asked of them for
the same pay as time goes on. Sure, we can be promoted by changing companies,
but that also can come at a huge cost unless you live in Silicon Valley,
perhaps. All these things wear on people, encroach on their personal time, and
makes them feel trapped. I'm not just talking about the profession of
programming. There's lots of alienation happening that's preventing people
from enjoying their lives to its fullest. (alienation is probably one of the
only theories of marxism that I think are correct)

Maybe we'll learn a lesson from being locked down. I'm not optimistic, but it
would be ideal. By now, maybe a lot of people will figure out that they don't
have the kind of job security they thought they did, and that sacrificing so
much of themselves wasn't really worth it for what they were gaining. Perhaps
more people will realize that they don't necessarily need the next promotion,
or they will choose to follow their passion because, well, even if they have a
high falootin' corporate job, they could lose what they've got anyway, so they
might as well do what they enjoy.

------
kumarvvr
Yes.

------
varjag
Betterige's Law

~~~
didsomeonesay
Validated by exception to the rule (cause the answer is Yes).

------
ceedan
Yes

------
beamatronic
Yes. 100%.

------
wait_a_minute
The average American watches 3 to 4 hours of television per day.

[https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-
televisio...](https://www.statista.com/statistics/186833/average-television-
use-per-person-in-the-us-since-2002/)

Americans also tend to work more hours than their European counterparts. So to
me, the idea that we are too busy to enjoy life is categorically FALSE. We
have more leisure time now than we ever did at any point in history.

~~~
cableshaft
I think part of the reason for such high television numbers is we are so
mentally and/or physically exhausted after work (and taking care of children,
and chores around the house, and whatnot), that we don't feel like doing much
but sitting down and relaxing during this time.

Also TV is one of the few things you can do while also doing other things,
like I had it on while I was cooking and doing the dishes and eating dinner
yesterday, after I finished working at 6:30pm, and was finally done with
everything at 9:30pm, just in time to do 20 minutes of saving interesting
articles about the pandemic, and then passing out.

I'm doing the pandemic article collection, in case people are curious, for
multiple reasons. So I can look back and reflect on how it developed later (or
show future children), and maybe use it as inspiration for future game designs
or short stories I might develop in the future, since I'll likely forget most
of the more unusual stories or side effects of the pandemic eventually.

