You Don’t Need More Free Time | Hacker News Reader

You Don’t Need More Free Time

nytimes.com

170 pointsotoolep66 comments

Having been self-employed for eight years now, with all the 24/7 life/work home/office work/play crossover it brings, it's been so long since I could relate to this perspective, or experience the joy of happy hour or TGIF. I often work weekends, while am prone to accomplish very little on a random Wednesday.

It's not that I'm always working or that I'm preternaturally time-efficient, organised or productive, it's just that there are no clear boundaries between work and non-work hours (for good or ill), nor between most friends and colleagues.

Maybe this doesn't apply to most people, but with the proportion of the economy accounted for by solitary freelancers expected to rise, I would think I'm not the only one who doesn't even remember what weekends or holidays are anymore. If so, it seems to me that a more enlightened and forward-thinking perspective would take into account the fluidity of work-life space for many Millennials (and beyond), rather than trying to shoehorn us back into mid 20th century big-corporate life rhythms.

EDIT: My personal investment in that viewpoint has been largely about finding better workplaces and better ways to work, e.g. http://likewise.am/2015/12/18/why-i-love-industrious-and-abo...

I've been working from home for about 8 years now as well, as a director of an agency, as a freelance consultant, and as a startup co-founder. Until I put into place some structure around my work hours, I was less productive and enjoyed my life less. Your final sentence seems to ask for more "enlightened" views on an unstructured work environment, but you seem to be displeased with yours; am I reading that correctly?

I'm not necessarily displeased with the very fact per se, though in my particular case it was an extremely - and shortsightedly - solipsistic choice for a (then) 22 year-old extrovert to make.

I agree that structure and routine are essential. However, many people, including myself, ended up in self-employment in part because they can't do 9-to-5 well or consistently for years on end.

I feel you. I'm a non-24 so regular office hours are often problematic for me. When I was self-employed, I'd just work whenever I would feel like, be it regular hours or weekends, day or night. I'd accomplish a lot more because I would simply be in the right mood for work at that time.

I tried a 9-5 "flexible" job (remote foss work) for a year or so and was often extremely unproductive, sometimes for several weeks. It just clashes with the way I operate.

For most of the past year I've been trying to follow my github streak to maintain the idea of doing a little work every day, no matter how small (https://github.com/jleclanche/). It's been an incredibly productive year and I've never felt unproductive like I did before. I haven't felt the need for holidays because my "work days" are not tiresome. I still take holidays sometimes, as long as I can get one small piece of work done during the day, even if it only takes 15 minutes.

I kinda miss freelancing, although closed-source work makes me itch nowadays.

You might checkout Redhat and Mozilla. I've heard nothing but good things from people working remotely at both orgs, and they have FOSS projects for people to work on.

> I would think I'm not the only one who doesn't even remember what weekends or holidays are anymore.

I've been also self-employed for 7 years, started as startup co-founder, rented office in the best tech hub in my city, etc. Then we started to cut costs, ditched the office and started remoting and freelancing for several clients. It's been 4 years working from home now and sometimes I hate it, but other times I like it.

I think the authors of that article are spot on. Having the schedule you dreamed about, means nothing if you don't have anyone to share the good moments...

This year probably I'll start travelling. One colleague who is a top-notch SEO, is doing the nomad thing and he seems really happy travelling and living 6-8 months in different places of the world, sharing co-working spaces, meeting new people, etc...

The problem with always-travelling is health insurances. I have found that most international insurances (for example Allianz) insure you "worldwide, with a country of residence" meaning that travels are limited to 3 months. Which seems incredibly inadapted to people from generation Y.

World Nomads has worked for me. You just buy a new policy when you need to extend the trip.

If you buy one for 6 months it comes out to $80 / month. You must be farther than 100 miles from your home residence at the time of your medical incident.

I believe the catch is, if something happens and you need coverage beyond the end of your current policy, then renewing it doesn't earn you continued coverage for that incident. That would be what they call a pre-existing condition.

So you'll notice when you sign up that the longer you extend your policy, the more it costs per month. E.g. 3 months might be $200 and 6 months $600

It depends on where you are. In a lot of parts of the world, you're better off paying out of pocket. I would say not just in the developing world -- even out-of-pocket fees for foreigners not covered by social medicine in the EU didn't strike me as being egregious or unaffordable. Then again, perhaps I was comparing them to the insanity in the US.

Same in Academia

I suspect that have more to do with your unwillingness to set boundaries and limits on both relationships and time. It's as simple as establishing that if you want to be friends with people you also work with that when you are not in a work environment or mode that you not talk about work. Work-life is only fluid if you allow it to become so. Those are all very much choices and lack of choices you are making. There is nothing different about Millennials other than that they have grown up in an environment and society that has not be able to set boundaries in many different ways in a long time.

> with the proportion of the economy accounted for by solitary freelancers expected to rise

Am I the only one absolutely horrified by this?

The gig economy has never, ever interested me. I have no interest in being a freelancer. I want a nice 9-5 office job at an office park in the suburbs with strict boundaries between work time and personal time, a dependable salary, and benefits provided by my employer.

I don't even care about working on interesting things as part of my career; I'd rather work on interesting projects as a side project on my own time for pure fun. I work only because I need some way to pay my bills, because I really don't want to end up homeless. I don't have any desire to mix paying my bills with my personal life or with anything I do for fun.

But I've never really understood Millennials, despite technically being one (born in 1984; Millennials are defined as born 1982-2004). I've always identified more with previous generations. "Millennial culture" has always escaped and mystified me.

Between this comment and things like the article a few weeks ago on how suburban office parks are going away (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10773865), I've lost hope for the future.

No, you're not the only one absolutely horrified by this. But it does mean that tech entrepreneurship is probably not for you, and that's completely okay. I would say it isn't for most people.

I'm still horrified by suburbs regardless, though. :-)

Why? If a suburban neighborhood is full of good people, there are a LOT of social things people do that match or are superior than what hipsters do in gentrified urban areas. Cheaper too. Want to pay 5 dollars a coffee or sit with one of your friends on their back sun room and have the same conversations with 30 cent espresso.

Want to have drinks and watch a game? How about beers and grill out with your neighbors while your kids play in the grass? Want to visit the coolest hacker space ever and scratch that DIY itch? How about help your suburban neighbor rebuild his 1971 camaro in his heated 3 car garage, or get your neighbors help you build that man-cave / craft room in the basement.

You know once the real estate parasites have convinced enough people to live in lofts with cracked 'artisan' concrete, exposed brick and stainless steel counter tops that they will then make their way back to the suburbs and try to make new dollars there a generation later. Millenials have been sold on an image just like the working man and woman were sold on the suburbs in the '50's to '80s.

After a lot of pressure from parents ("So what time do you get off work tonight?") I came up with a semi-decent metaphor: Us entrepreneur people are on a hunter-gatherer schedule. I can't predict in the morning whether or not I'll be hunted by a sabretooth in the evening. Or whether or not I'll spot some tasty roots and have a lazy meal with friends for three hours during the early afternoon.

Hunter-gatherer. Excellent analogy. I'll reuse it. With non-millenials.

Being unemployed seems like a very different situation from having one more day off per week. If I had one more day off, my life would be the same in terms of social connection, except that I'd have more time to relax, recharge, and engage in solitary hobbies. The people I've worked with who have had Wednesdays off certainly weren't bored on their days off; they were giddy and triumphant on Tuesday afternoon and would spend the free day kayaking, fixing around the house, reading, etc.

This resonates. Especially since having a kid, the tension between solitary and family activities at the weekend has been a real struggle.

If I ever get married I'll put an alone day clause in the contract. I love you but I need to get away from everyone. It can be hard to say without seeming like you're saying "you're annoying me" but there's just something different about being alone. At least if I have a meditation bench, there's that.

The problem is that if you have kids, it's going to be almost impossible for both of you to get an alone day and still have time to do things together.

Yep, that's probably a big reason people just aren't having many or any kids these days.

Back in the "old days", people lived with multiple generations under one roof and with their extended families. So raising kids was easier because you had a lot of help: grandparents, uncles/aunts, etc. Then the "nuclear family" came along in the 50s and things started falling apart. It was OK for a while because women were relegated to near-slavery, but then things changed and we had two working parents, and then there wasn't enough time to parent properly.

I fully agree and the more kids you have, the less time you have for yourself.

The first option that came was to reduce sleep to gain free time, definitely not a good idea on the long run.

Just getting married makes it hard. I think it depends on what your partner is like though - mine doesnt seem to need it so I get very little now

I can attest to this. I have a four-day workweek, and Friday is hobby day. The weekend is usually spent hanging out with friends, since they also don't work weekends, but Friday is perfect for catching up on hobbies. I strongly recommend it.

>it’s not just that we have a shortage of free time; it’s also that our free time, in order to be satisfying, often must align with that of our friends and loved ones. We face a problem, in other words, of coordination.

Isn't it obvious that if we all get more free time, it will align with others much more easily? So, it's not that "you don't need more free time", it's "you all need more free time".

Yes, exactly. Work is detrimental to mental health, and not-work leads to shared mental health improving activities like socializing with family.

Assuming that the activities that you find satisfying involve interacting with other people.

I'm pretty psyched when I have more solitary free time that I can devote to reading, or working on my own coding projects, or going hiking with my dog. Or just being free to deal with appointments and errands outside of the tiny windows of time that intersect between the business hours of other entities and my pre/post work hours and lunch breaks.

That was my qualm with this piece, too, although I realize we're in the minority re: putting a premium on time spent with the self. There wouldn't be much difference for me if my additional "free time" coincided with others being off work as well. Actually, it may slightly reduce my satisfaction with it, because then everyone would be flooding all the typical "off time" spots (gym, market, laundry, etc.), which I try to avoid at (almost) all costs.

>Assuming that the activities that you find satisfying involve interacting with other people.

I'd venture to say that for the majority of people, that is the case (the activities that they find satisfying involve interacting with other people). I mean, even introverts go on the internet and enjoy stuff involving interacting other people all the time, the just don't do them in close contact.

But even things that don't involve other people directly (present or remote), they do involve other people in making them. E.g. reading a blog or a webcomic or listing to music, still involves these other people (its creators) making those things.

Hence, when everybody gets more free time, then you get more free time to e.g. read, and others get more free time to write stuff that you'll eventually read.

Whenever a cashier asks me 'How are you', I reply 'Oh you know, it's my DayOfWeek'.

Most people that never spent time in retail are confused by this. 'It's Wednesday for everyone, what do you mean by it is your Wednesday?'

If you spend time working a 35 hr/week job (just little enough to not qualify for benefits) you know that your weeks and weekends can be totally different from the rest of the world's, your family's, and your co-worker's weekly plan. Oh, and that changes from week to week too.

Coordination of weeks and the days of therein has to start from a labor perspective. If you want to buy groceries or shoes from a store, it has to have a cashier, and that cashier's family and friends have to understand that the cashier's life is scheduled differently while in that job.

It's a clickbait title. It's not meant to be accurate, it's intended to generate clicks.

tl;dr - Free time is better when other people have the same time off as well.

This feels like a bit of a no-brainer to me, but that doesn't mean more time off wouldn't be useful. Saturday and Sunday are usually spent catching up on work, doing some laundry and dishes, and all the other errands we didn't have time for during the week (groceries, repairs, etc.). We have more leisure time as well, but a few hours here and there during the week are quite useful, even if nobody I know shares those hours, as they would let me shift the "boring" stuff to a time when nobody else is free.

Life is better if I can meet a few friends for brunch Sunday morning because I had time to get groceries on Tuesday and do laundry on Thursday.

Exactly! And just because free time is better when there are others around doesn't mean that extra days off aren't helpful. I'm a contractor and I regularly have a week or two off between jobs. Sure the weekend is still better than a Tuesday without work but I can take time on that Tuesday to go to a movie or a museum on my own and it feels great.

And another thing the study fails to account for is that unemployed people are less likely to enjoy their days off than employed people. Being unemployed and seeking a job is stressful, many unemployed people are concerned about how long it will take to find a new job or what kind of stress is being put on their finances. If you have stable work and get Wednesday off you can go to the spa and spend some time in the sauna to relax. If you are unemployed you are probably being frugal and know it's not wise to spend money that you may need later to pay your rent.

This article is narrow sighted rubbish trying to twist the author's research to have greater impact.

The study does not account for the fact that some people simply choose to spend their free time by themselves and do not indulge in 'social' activities. Including the average size of the participant's social circle and how they chose to spent their free time could have been useful.

I am sure a lot of people who travel around by themselves or spend the weekend(s) hiking/biking their favorite trail, etc. do not really rely on their free time coinciding with others'.

Thoughts?

I agree with this since I think I'm the person you're describing :).

Definitely so. For the half(?) of people who are like this, more time off from work would be valuable. It would mean more time for being alone and doing your own things. It's hard to take hours and hours of alone time if you're married with kids and you stick to the traditional work week schedule. You would basically need that "other weekend" for yourself, after having been with your family (and maybe friends) for the "first weekend".

Well it also assume the social circle is fixed. There are plenty of people doing activities all the days of the week.

I worked part-time for a few months. I took a hobby and found that I could attend cheap course on the Wednesday afternoon (I think) and I was not alone, far from it. Those people became part of my social circle too - people I could meet within the week. I kept my regular circle for the we, which is what the other people attending the course did too. If it was not for the money, I can't think of any downside of that arrangement.

Which bring me back to the article, it focuses on unemployed to try to derive a rule for all. A lot of unemployed are not unemployed by choice, and they expect to get back into employment. So they will not invest into a parallel social circle like a Stay at Home Parent could. In addition to that their free time could also be a reminder of their failure to find a job, or of their financial problem.

And anyway, most people are only available during the we. So feeling a spike during the we is almost expected even if you are super-active during the week as you will have more time if anything with your partner/kids. Does that mean your week would be better with a job instead of hobbies, somehow I don't think that's the case.

"The intuitive finding was that people’s feelings of well-being closely tracked the workweek. As measured by things such as anxiety, stress, laughter and enjoyment, our well-being is lowest Monday through Thursday. The workweek is a slog. Well-being edges up on Friday, and really peaks on Saturday and Sunday. We are, in a real sense, living for the weekend."

Great, another person admitting that American work culture is slowly killing people, even the people who aren't actively working. This is an impetus for change.

"This conclusion points to a key feature of the work-life problem: You cannot get more “weekend” simply by taking an extra day off work yourself. If we were to take more time off as individuals, we would be likely to spend that time, as the jobless do, waiting for other people to finish work. We are stuck “at work,” in a sense, by the work schedules of our family and friends."

Yes, I found this to be true during my times of unemployment, but only if I assumed that my daytime hours had to be waiting... there are many ways to be useful during the day without a job, however that time period will not be relaxing. Sounds like "more free time" and less "time spent filling a seat" would lead to more general wellbeing in both employed and unemployed people because people would have more shared time together and less time in the stressful and mentally detrimental work environment.

My solution: make all weekends three day weekends and don't alter the amount that people are paid. Remove the outdated and harmful protestant work ethic and replace it with the German work ethic: do the work that is requested of you at maximum efficiency, then leave immediately afterward, and do not answer the phone or emails. Gutting the idiotic and nigh-suicidal affinity that people have for wasting time at work without actually doing anything would also help.

So yeah, we do need more free time, because time spent at work is typically wasted time as well as mentally unhealthy time. If everyone gets more free time on the same day, I assume better mental health would result. To be clear, we've reached the point in our technological development that this goal is eminently possible if there were political will or popular revolt.

BS. I love the weekends because I can sit in my room alone coding, reading a book or watching some TV series. Lack of social interaction is the highlight.

While the article's conceit that free time has more potential to make you happy when it's free time you can spend with your friends is not untrue, I think it's pretty obvious that people who are working fewer hours have more chances for their free time to intersect with their friends. If you and all your friends work 20 hours a week, but some of them have firm schedules where they're in the workplace 4h every weekday, while others are in the workplace for 8h two days and sporadic appearances the rest of the week, and whatever other configuration of that you can think of, you are all still going to have a generally higher chance of finding time to spend with each other than if you're all spending 60h working three part time jobs to make ends meet!

Seems like an assumption to say that "time together" is the key difference. For example, at various times in my life when I've been jobless, I did experience similar peeks in my mood over the weekend. But I'm a solitary person and I was not necessarily spending that much more time with others. I would say that the difference was psychological. On the weekend, I felt okay relaxing because I knew everyone else was and the pressure was off of me to be looking for work. During the week, I couldn't escape thoughts about my joblessness. The article touches on this slightly when it characterizes the difference as being more in sync or out of sync with society.

I'm retired and I still want more free time.

Please expand on this. Sincerely curious why/how.

Is it so hard to imagine? Like most here, I enjoy a wide variety of pursuits. I'm not sure the specific pursuits would matter; everyone can fill in their own blanks. A single pursuit could easily take dozens of hours per week or more to enjoy in their fullness. Add in physical fitness, sleep, cooking, and hygiene, and that's more time than I'm blessed with.

"The solution might be found in a form of constraint: more standardization of the time for work and the time for life." And stuff gets even more crowded because everyone is free at the same time, yay.

Like a lot of sociological research, I don't think this was written with knowledge workers with hobbies and/or side projects in mind. Still, I found that statement deeply frustrating.

>It seems obvious why working people cherish the weekend: It’s a respite from work. But why is the weekend also so important to the unemployed? The key to answering this question is to recognize that not all time is equal. Time is, in many ways, what sociologists call a “network good.”

Maybe, besides the "network good" thing, it's also the fact that the workdays painfully remind the unemployed that they are unemployed?

Sounds like a solvable problem, in theory anyway. Some sort of super-smart fuzzy logic scheduling app where you can plan all the things you want to do, and everyone who you might need to collaborate/meet with at work, all your friends you might want to meet up with at the pub or go on a hike with, your family, and everyone else relevant is on the same app.

(ok in the perfect world it wouldn't be a proprietary app, but a standardized protocol so whatever app you happen to use negotiates with everyone else's apps)

Your work hours would change from day to day and week to week, and all things might shift around (with the exception of things that can't, obviously) but that's ok.

The longer ahead you plan things, the better, since you'd give it more flexibility, and the more flexible you are, the more you earn points you get to spend when you really need them.

It would know things like traffic patterns and when things are crowded, so instead of just arranging leisure time on the same two days of the week, it would mix them up.

And of course it should also take into account the weather. I'd like as much of my actual free time to coincide with sunshine.

TL;DR: We all need more free time.

If this writer doesn't want their free time, can I have it?

Yes I know... probably not the point of the article, but I couldn't get past the clicky-baity headline.

I am a remote worker. Our team averages 15-30hrs/wk each. Some of us never get above 15. I personally average 25-30 when I'm at home, and 15-25 when I travel. I travel for about 6 months out of the year.

If I am not in someone else's company and am able to open my laptop, I'm working. What I mean by that is when most people would be lounging on their couch with their laptop cruising reddit, or watching TV aimlessly, or reading, I end up thinking about work and then just clock in. I get my general goof-off online time via my phone when I'm getting from A to B or am otherwise not in a position to open my laptop.

This means I very often end up working 7 days a week. I think a few times this year I hit 38hrs in a week. I generally keep track of work via my phone when I'm unavailable or working less and if something pops up I clock in and take care of it.

This is just my nature and I'm happy I've found a job that gives me this type of flexibility. Filling work time into the bits of downtime that would otherwise be wasted allows me to match my free time to those that I love, like my father or partner (who is a schoolteacher and has frequent vacations).

Maybe this isn't for everyone, but if I had to back to a traditional work environment I'd probably lose my mind. The ability to travel, visit my father for a few weeks, take a 10 day vacation with my partner multiple times per year (plus summer/winter break), wake up whenever I want, work out for 3hrs 3x per week, followed by an hours at the pool - that's amazing. I wouldn't trade this for anything.

I think I am much, much productive in this type of work environment than any that I have ever had. It makes my work better, more focused, and keeps me happy & loyal. Flexibility is king.

I think part of this is the cultural contemporary occidental focus on that some activities are inherently social. I think part of the decrease in happiness in unemployed people during weekdays is just the fact that they tend to not do anything they enjoy, because they think that they would not enjoy doing it alone.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/05/the-unex...

What works best for me: a loose 9-17 that can be freely adapted according my daily needs (8-16, 10-18, 12-20, etc). Like this it seems that I have always time for everything.

This study is flawed in so many ways, my guess is a lot of things are affecting jobless people's emotional states besides just when their friends are also free.

I'd love to start a trend replacing "work" with "spending time at the workplace".

> The weekend derives much of its importance from the fact that so many people are off work together.

Oh, goodness no. The weekend is enjoyable in large part it because of those who work to keep businesses open.

This logic in the article is so shaky. Because unemployed people also feel sad on M-Thursday is a reason why an employed person doesn't need more free time? It doesn't make sense.

My first jobs were retail. Everyone had weekend off except me. I hated it. Ten years in retail, and I dreamed of the day I would have a "career" and good pay and weekends off to enjoy it all.

Then I got a career. Now everywhere I go is packed with people and lines.

A trip to the grocery used to be on Wednesday around 2pm. I could fill a cart with anything I needed and get in and out in minutes. Now I go after work and wait in the "express" lane with my under 20 items for upwards of half an hour.

I used to go out on a Tuesday night, because that was my weekend. Two for Tuesday everywhere! Happy hour, all the time. Fast service. Hot food. Now, I have to make reservations in advance to wait 20 minutes for a waiter, because the restaurant is short staffed. God help you if you forget the reservations, or the place doesn't take them. You'll easily wait an hour for a table on a Friday night.

I take a weekend trip to a theme park and I have to park a mile away from the tram which is a mile or more away from the gates, where there are lines to get tickets and more lines to ride the rides. Just getting to the parking spot requires slow traffic. Lines of cars all doing the same thing.

I've considered asking if I could work weekends at my career job. It would be quiet on Saturday and Sunday. I could get a lot of work done without tickets and support calls coming in all day long. But then, who would handle the tickets and support calls if I'm not there?

What a pipe dream... To have a middle of the week "weekend" again would be so grand!

I am self-employed and schedule Mondays off for this reason. Everyone works Mondays. Not me. Plenty of time to get everything done in my personal life and running errands easily.

> Now I go after work and wait in the "express" lane with my under 20 items for upwards of half an hour.

wow, sounds like there's some space for competition in your country's supermarkets!

The line for Trader Joe's in Union Square NY always amazes me—it often has lines just to get inside the store. https://www.google.com/search?q=trader+joe%27s+14th+st+line&...

Are there no other decent supermarkets around? I certainly wouldn't stand in a line for the supermarket on a regular basis no matter how good they are.

Its in the middle of Manhattan, so there are grocery stores everywhere - Trader Joe's is just a chain with a particularly strong cult following, and there are fewer of their stores in Manhattan compared to a lot of their competitors.

(I like Trader Joes well enough, but even when I lived very near to that specific store I'd make a conscious effort to avoid it. Proximity to New York University's dorms seems to do it no favors on the already very busy 14th St corridor.)

> I used to go out on a Tuesday night, because that was my weekend. Two for Tuesday everywhere! Happy hour, all the time. Fast service. Hot food. Now, I have to make reservations in advance to wait 20 minutes for a waiter, because the restaurant is short staffed. God help you if you forget the reservations, or the place doesn't take them. You'll easily wait an hour for a table on a Friday night.

Why not still go out on Tuesdays?

My favorite bar has their cheap well night on Wednesdays, so Wednesday is my night for going out for drinks. That it's in the middle of the week is irrelevant.

This so does not apply to people with small kids.

As the father of a 2yo... You are correct sir.

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