
Why is everyone so busy? (2014) - asoli
https://www.economist.com/news/christmas-specials/21636612-time-poverty-problem-partly-perception-and-partly-distribution-why
======
factsaresacred
I recommend people watch Japan A story of love and hate
([http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc](http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x56bwzc))
which, aside from being a great look at Japan, epitomizes the absurdity of
exchanging our time for a salary that increasingly fails to cover the cost to
live and leaves us without free time. 30,000 Japanese kill themselves each
year due to work related stress.

Great quote from the doc:

Naoki:"You (the West) game me this f*cking Capitalist system 100 years ago..."

Cameramen: "And now you're rich"

Naoki: "Is this rich...is this a good system?"

I hope - and expect - that one day offices are viewed in the same way we view
the factories of the early industrial age: prisons of drudgery and misery.

I'm not naive, civilization and its innumerable benefits (like actually being
able to live past 65) has a cost. But the notion that sitting in traffic each
morning to reach a room where one stares into a screen for 9 hours - every
day, for 40 odd years - is desirable is the greatest con capitalism has ever
pulled.

~~~
terrytrend
On the money. Fuck the 9-5 corporate work life.

I've been doing this everyday for 12 years..and I'm about to blow my brains
out.

I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it
everyday for the rest of your life.

~~~
kirso
A bit too radical, lots of people enjoy having a job and stability that it
brings.

Entrepreneurship is romanticised by entreporn on Medium.

Essentially there is no black and white answer, everyone should just do what
gives him/her meaning.

~~~
mercer
I think it's interesting that:

> I encourage everyone to find one thing they love and find a way to do it
> everyday for the rest of your life.

...is translated to entrepreneurship, when that doesn't have to be a given.
I'm still struggling with the alternative possibilities, but I just wanted to
point that out.

That said I do agree with your conclusion. It's the path to get there that can
keep me up at night, and perhaps not framing it purely in terms of being
employed or self-employed might help (not saying that that's what you were
saying, btw).

------
hliyan
I'm of the opinion that the root of the problem is inflation (but I'm open to
correction).

My thinking is that we're constantly being pushed to work harder because no
business today can reach a successful steady-state -- it must keep growing.
The reason businesses must keep growing is that investors demand it. Investors
demand it because they believe that wealth sitting around not making more
wealth is a waste. Inflation, I believe, is a big component of this view. What
would happen if we keep inflation near-zero? Is slow growth really a bad
thing?

~~~
XR0CSWV3h3kZWg
I agree that there are likely negative social consequences from inflation, but
the idea that inflation is the reason a business can't reach a steady-state
because of inflation seems to ignore Red Queen[1] like affects.

Something I've noticed a lot in tech is that companies will spend a huge
amount of money to push new features that aren't core to the business and to
launch new products that frequently fail. I've always viewed these as
attempting to prevent competition from emerging rather than trying to
compensate for inflation.

~~~
codetrotter
You forgot to include the link you were going to reference.

~~~
bproven
This is the reference AFAIK:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Queen%27s_race)

------
SomewhatLikely
As long as there are marginal gains to be made from working an extra hour I
don't see this changing. Imagine if one country decided to change from a 40
hour work week to a 20 hour work week. If this decreases their GDP from
producing less output, then they become economically weaker, their standard of
living in terms of purchasing power is diminished, and the tax base is
decreased. I think the biggest reason we don't see more leisure time is the
same reason wild animals don't see much leisure time: competition. At the
international level, countries which produce more are more powerful, and at
the domestic level other things being equal an individual who produces more
will command a higher income, which translates to gaining a bigger slice of
the economic pie and the additional power that confers. I suspect many of the
people on hacker news could easily live on half the income they make, but we
choose not to, because we prefer the extra affordances of working full time or
more.

~~~
guntars
It's just people being wired to compare their lives with other's. Humans
evolved in small groups with hierarchies where your "rank" compared to others
could mean the difference between life and death. Not so much these days, but
the habit is still there.

Luckily, we also evolved big brains that let us override almost any instinct
and with a bit of effort we can be perfectly happy with any slice of the pie.

P.S. I'm somebody that gave up a large fraction of my salary to be able to
work part time and travel the country. It's been worth it so far.

------
LandR
My last job, I had so much more free time. I finished at 4 each day and
sometimes took 3 hour lunches. Someone would text me in another city and ask
if I could come through and meet them. I would often just walk out of work (it
wasn't a problem) and go meet them. If it meant that I didn't get back to the
office that day, so be it.

There was lots of time spent with friends and family, it was great.

My current job, I eat lunch at my desk and spend so much less time with
friends and family. A couple of months ago I was working from 8AM to 3:30AM,
then was back to the office for 8AM the following day.

I make more money now, but I was so much happier before.

I often think about just quitting work and taking a year or two off, just do
me things and figure stuff out. What I want from life, what my prioritie are
etc.

But then I worry if you take that long off, how hard would it be to get back
to work afterwards? Are employers even going to entertain my CV

~~~
justaguyhere
_I would often just walk out of work_

In one of my previous jobs, while leaving at 5:30 pm (started at 9 am), the
CTO asks "half day today?", only half jokingly :(

~~~
jfoutz
I got in late, so i'm leaving early to make up for it.

------
taneq
Because we've been sold the idea that there is someplace else to be, and that
we should work as hard as we can to get there.

~~~
davidjnelson
> we’ve been sold

And believed the sales pitch, which was never true.

------
collyw
There is a lot more bureaucracy built into the systems we have to deal with
these days as well (David Gaerber's "Utopia of Rules" is a good read on this).

I have a lot of stuff to do, and was kind of getting on top of it recently. I
needed to renew my driving license here in Spain. I needed two appointments
(trying to fit them around work). I have been given a temporary license for
the time being and am waiting on the new one to be posted. I noticed that the
temporary paper has my name spelled wrong, so there is a good chance I will
need at least one more appointment just to get that typo fixed when the
plastic version comes through.

I guess another factor is the changing nature of jobs. Certainly in IT you
need to devote at least some time to keeping up with new tech or you will
become obsolete. I find this especially frustrating when a lot of the "new" is
just a rehash of stuff from 30 years ago. Its also why I hate fronted work, as
the ecosystem is a constantly changing mess.

------
sixhobbits
I found this article really interesting and extremely well written. The
excerpt below is a literary masterpiece.(other comments complain about paywall
but on mobile I got "3 articles free" message. Not sure if they're A/B testing
or if they're giving me free stuff because I'm in South Africa and they assume
that online payments are hard here)

"Leisure time is now the stuff of myth. Some are cursed with too much. Others
find it too costly to enjoy. Many spend their spare moments staring at a
screen of some kind, even though doing other things (visiting friends,
volunteering at a church) tends to make people happier. Not a few presume they
will cash in on all their stored leisure time when they finally retire,
whenever that may be. In the meantime, being busy has its rewards. Otherwise
why would people go to such trouble?

Alas time, ultimately, is a strange and slippery resource, easily traded,
visible only when it passes and often most highly valued when it is gone. No
one has ever complained of having too much of it. Instead, most people worry
over how it flies, and wonder where it goes. Cruelly, it runs away faster as
people get older, as each accumulating year grows less significant,
proportionally, but also less vivid. Experiences become less novel and more
habitual. The years soon bleed together and end up rushing past, with the most
vibrant memories tucked somewhere near the beginning. And of course the more
one tries to hold on to something, the swifter it seems to go"

~~~
mrhappyunhappy
I wonder if this author has children. I couldn’t read because of paywall. My
life came to a slow and boredom was setting in slowly until I had a child.
Living through his life makes me feel excited again, not for myself but
knowing everything he’ll go experience. If anyone reading this has a choice in
having kids but hadn’t yet, I’d highly recommend it. Yes it’s hard and strange
at first but worth every moment. Just now I smiled at my 6 Mo old kiddo and he
laughed at me. It's moment like this that make me realize what's important in
life and one of the reasons I enjoy working for myself from home - even at the
cost of much less pay.

~~~
s3cur3
I feel like the idea of “living through” one’s kids has a lot of negative
connotations——pushing them to spend hours a day on something they hate, etc.
But there is absolutely something to be said for being able to see the world
through your kid’s eyes. They get so excited about things that are totally
mundane to adults. (My one year old yesterday had to stop and examine each
little hole in the sidewalk as we walked.) That wonder at the world is
certainly infectious.

~~~
davidjnelson
There’s beauty in seeing the world through a child’s eyes, even as an adult.
Where life is wonder. Nature is really great at infecting one with wonder as
well.

------
davidjnelson
> Writing in the first century, Seneca was startled by how little people
> seemed to value their lives as they were living them—how busy, terribly
> busy, everyone seemed to be, mortal in their fears, immortal in their
> desires and wasteful of their time. He noticed how even wealthy people
> hustled their lives along, ruing their fortune, anticipating a time in the
> future when they would rest.

Living fully in this moment _now_ feels way underrated.

------
fwn
I'm not sure their psychological/cultural reasons translate very well to
continental europe. The people that surround me in Germany have all the time
they want.

Besides that:

> No one has ever complained of having too much of it.

Isn't that just being bored? I'm sure I've heard people complaining about
that.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I think people who complain about being bored are simply scared of being alone
with their thoughts. I don't mind doing "nothing" on a train or bus ride, it
gives me time to slow down a little and just think to myself.

I think this "gotta be busybusybusy" thing originated in the US, but it is
definitely spreading.

I see way too many people who are way too wrapped up in their careers or are
constantly stressing about all the things they "have to do", and they forget
to actually enjoy anything, because they're already mentally at the next
thing.

I love lazy Saturdays on the couch, and I wouldn't trade them for anything.

------
arca_vorago
Honestly it's about ownership of homes and debt levels. If you aren't in
massive debt and you own your home, small efforts can easily pay off other
costs and you can live a comfortable life. If you lose your job but you own
your house and have a small amount of savings (most don't), at least you won't
get evicted...

And because wages are so artificially depressed by the suprarich, it takes two
jobs to support a life far too often. Noam Chomsky talks about how at the
beginning of the industrial revolution the people were skeptical of the 6-9
job that payed a pittance as essentially not much better than chattel slavery,
the only difference being you got to go home at night.

This is about class warfare, this is about the oligarchs fucking us all
constantly and consistently while we do nothing because the people we expect
to do something (the government) are corrupted, blackmailed, coerced, and
lobbied into the ground until they break to the oligarchs will (which is why
there is truly only one party at the moment, the oligarchs party).

Add on top of that the unconstitutional private banking conglomerate known as
the fed and the 16th amendment, and you have a recipe for runaway inflation,
devaluation of purchasing power, and increases in poverty, homelessness, and
_work hours needed to support the cost of living per area_.

Jackson was a piece of shit when it came to the natives, but that far too
often overshadows the importance of his effort to fight the banks. (Also, him
beating the brits with marines, sailors, militiamen and pirates is a movie I
want to make someday.)

Shades of Smedley Butler if you ask me. Anyone remember that? Oh yeah, they
don't teach you in public school that a bunch of facist corporate oligarch
banker types tried to attempt a coup on the American government via a Marine
Corps general who double-crossed them and reported it all to congress all in
~1933? Oh yeah, they blacked out the names until John Spivak published them.

([https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_C...](https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/McCormack%E2%80%93Dickstein_Committee#Deleted_Text))

([http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-
NewMasses.pd...](http://coat.ncf.ca/our_magazine/links/53/spivak-
NewMasses.pdf))

------
newnewpdro
Everywhere Americans look they're pressured to consume more, achieve more,
live beyond their means, go into debt (student loans, car loans, home
mortgages), and have a family on top of it all while saving for some fabled
retirement and college tuition for the kids.

If you unplug and simplify your life, don't bother with pursuing a family,
you'll see how disincentivized to be busy you are and how absurdly everyone
else appears to be living. But if you pursue all the things your competitors
are pursuing, you'll find yourself having to acquire similar levels of
resources. There's not enough to go around for _everyone_ to have that amount
of excess, hence it must be fought over.

Basically what you have is a non-violent (most of the time) resource
competition determining who gets how much of what in what order, where the
participants aren't even pursuing a specific quantity - they're just after as
much as possible while they're still able, MORE.

edit:

After writing the above, I remembered this short video from the 90s, semi-
related. [1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCeeTfsm8bk)

------
Sylos
> And lunches now tend to be efficient affairs, devoured at one’s desk, with
> an eye on the e-mail inbox.

Alternatively, you do go into lunch break, because you have to network with
colleagues or business partners.

------
omalleyt
Societies compete with each other like organisms. Successful societies
propagate. Primary dimensions of competition are demographics, economics, and
military. Thus the history of social organization is necessarily a history of
extracting ever-more value from the labor of society's members.

Keynes and others seem to have labored under the delusion that the history of
social organization is a history of ever-increasing happiness for society's
members.

------
projektir
My current guess is that a large part of this is the increase in various
amounts of "chores" to manage, and this potentially increases with more
wealth. Bills to pay, insurances to get, appointments to make, this or that
government obligation to fulfill, monitoring credit report and data breaches,
investing money here or there, getting real estate...

\+ other things, like continuous learning, information collection, designing
exercise schedules, designing diet systems...

With the persistent threat that if you mess these up there will be trouble.

Related to this, I wonder if the proliferation of these things is why
_conscientiousness_ is currently strongly associated with success. I've seen
highly intelligent people have significant failures in their lives because
they simply couldn't efficiently manage the bureaucracy that it seems it is
assumed you can just manage automatically, which very much does not seem to be
the case.

In reality, I think the current small (and large) task management load is
simply too large for most people to properly handle, and wealth doesn't
particularly help with all this because it doesn't directly increase the
mental load surface... unless you outsource the work somewhere else...

------
blowski
Listen also
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07v07pb)

------
8bitsrule
If 'busy' means that your time is filled with things to do, that -can- be a
good thing. My impression is that before technology, media, communications,
health, and rising standards of living life was -a lot- more boring.

Every day on the 'net I see that hundreds of people who've not only found
specialized, fascinating topics, but finally have someone to talk to about
them. Sure beats taking anti-depressants.

To the extent that busy means 'paying for all this stuff I have to have': how
much of it do I really need? Are we victims of 'have to have' obesity? I'll
just gently suggest that, for many in the West, the answer is yes.

------
KozmoNau7
This "must be busy" mindset and 50+ hour work weeks is so utterly alien and
_wrong_ to me, and I'm glad I feel this way.

I would never let a job get in the way of family and social experiences, in
the way of _my life_. Relaxation and leisure time is absolutely non-negotiable
for me, I would never give up on a concert or culinary experience or anything
else for something as mundane as work.

I think this mindset has also gifted me with more patience and more ability to
not be bored, compared to most of my peers. Luckily, all of my friends share
my mindset, anyone too work-obsessed simply doesn't fit in for long.

I am a slacker, and I enjoy it very much.

~~~
marak830
I am the same as you, alas I cannot afford not to work the hours I do (for
which I have copped quite a bit of flack on HN about).

I do wonder why people who can afford to spend time with their family and not
work 60-70 hours per week, actually do.

I can only imagine it would be that they really enjoy their work that much, or
their in a culture such as here in Japan where you stay until the boss leaves
- or else. (Not my situation, I'm a chef, stupid hours in my industry).

~~~
psyc
I'm terrified of letting people into my life, and the biggest reason is I'm
afraid they'll cut into my work time. Now, sure, there's probably a bunch of
Freudian damage that's gone into this. But however I got this way, I am this
way, and I don't mind.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
May I ask what you do for work? And how fulfilled you are by it?

~~~
psyc
Game programmer. 8/10 fulfillment and climbing.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
How is your relationship with your coworkers?

~~~
psyc
I mostly work alone, as of the past few years. Occasionally take consulting
work or contracts. When I do have coworkers, my relationship with them is
typically good to very good.

------
ekr
(this is only a very quick and dirty exposition.)

Humans, like every other organism on this Earth, have been shaped by
evolution, which has instilled a set of adaptations into them.

Like most other species, there is a competition for mates, reproduction
opportunities and resources within the sexes. So, along the ages, humans have
acquired a set of adaptations that "maximize" wealth, status, (whether they
still work in the current environment as opposed to the ones in which these
adaptations evolved is another question). So, in essence, humans who tended to
work more, tended to obtain more resources/wealth thereby becoming more
attractive reproductive prospects. You also get more opportunities to help
fellow tribe members, improving your status within your community etc. In
other words, a highly competitive arms race has emerged.

However, only in recent times, intellectual work has become more common, where
the size of the input is not proportional to the quality of the output.

There is another dimension to this. Many humans today work in corporate
environments where there is an intense competition for advancing in a rigid
hierarchical structure. These advances are strongly correlated with income
growth, and power and control over many work-related issues, which is strongly
related to status. In these environments, it is often difficult to actually
measure the output quality and quantity of each human, partly because there is
little incentive to do that, partly because people doing the measurement are
not the most technically knowledgeable in the field, but mostly because they
are humans themselves and thus have their own interests (namely improving
their reproductive prospects themselves, so they need to forge allegiances
that stabilize their positions etc). Promoting the most capable worker is
sometimes outside their interests. So in this environment, many other cues are
used to evaluate the worth of employees, many completely unrelated to their
capabilities and work. So, marketing oneself becomes an important aspect in
this economy.

One clear way to signal to others that you are very dedicated to the company
and an important employee is to spend more time at the office than the others.
Busyness is a signal of importance/status and value to the company. Of course,
people actually interested in performing high quality intellectual work will
know that time spent on a task is only one (minor) factor ...

~~~
patrickxie
what other ways can we use to measure worker's output quality and quantity
other than the easily quantifiable factor of "time"?

------
Rainymood
I'm an academic. If I get in 3-4 hours of deep work I'm done for the day and
can relax.

------
IThoughtYouGNU
[http://archive.is/AfhEN](http://archive.is/AfhEN)

~~~
el_cid
creepy

------
hellofunk
I'm always amazed how I end up seeing long threads from HN users who read an
article, but when I click on it, there is a pay wall. Are all those readers
subscribers to these news sites?

~~~
wyattpeak
Most of the sites show their content to archiving services. If you go to
archive.is and enter the URL, you'll see the content.

~~~
pcf
Thanks, I wasn't aware of this.

