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Comment by NamTaf | Hacker News Reader

I believe I'm working on average longer hours, but I'm able to more flexibly use my own time whilst doing so. I'll work as I'm watching a Twitch stream, for example, and I feel far more relaxed doing this than trying to focus 100% on work and only work. I can pick when I work, so when I'm feeling completely mindless and distracted at 2pm I can just zone out and do my own thing, but then make it up later.

For me, the hours might be longer (even not counting the breaks in the day), but the time when working is more relaxed. I prefer this balance.

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> I can pick when I work, so when I'm feeling completely mindless and distracted at 2pm I can just zone out and do my own thing, but then make it up later.

This is by far my favorite perk of working from home. I’ve been able to max my efficiency. When I hit this wall, I usually go do something that requires me to move around, such as going to the grocery store or doing laundry, which are things I would’ve had to do anyways. The difference is that I’m doing those tasks when I’d otherwise be sitting at my desk being unproductive. It’s kind of like intuitive eating; working when your brain is up for it. Of course, you can’t utilize this luxury every day and every hour, as often times you do need to bunker down to accommodate the typical 9-5 schedule. But, it’s still much more apparent than when being in an office.

This is a slippery slope towards overworking, where work blends into life. This isn't how things should be. Unless you're a PhD student like me :)

It's how "work" always was for thousands of years, before the office culture meme changed it during the 20th century

Oh so the internet and the endless distractions it brings with it existed in the 19th century as well? /s

You couldn't be more wrong. There is mountains of evidence that attention spans have shorted, and parent comment was a perfect example of that. Can't be arsed to deal with whatever you should be doing? Ctrl + pgdown to the twitch tab.

I don't know about you, but no matter how much I try I can't just spontaneously summon up focus if my mind's not commmited to it. I was that way in school, in uni and now in work.

Working in an office pretending that I can focus on the task at hand whenever required by the roster of office life is one of the biggest charades I've ever performed. It's not possible for me and I piss around on the internet on their time when I am unable to focus. I don't feel that's an abnormal situation for people, either, as it seems many of my colleagues also do it.

Is that so? There was a period during industrial revolution, where people were hopelessly overworked but before that most people must have a had fairly well defined work-life boundaries.

They also had to mend their shoes and wash clothes in the river, so leisure time was not exactly comparable.

Conceded, it can be a slippery slope for some. For me it's not, thankfully. I've no doubt the rigid clock-on/clock-off process helps to keep some people from overworking, but that isn't me. Even in the office I would show up when I finally got to showing up, and would leave when I felt I'd, personally, done enough for the day. I have absolutely no qualms with putting down my laptop when I feel I'm done.

The major difference is that instead of my mindless scrolling through HN or something at 2pm being on work time that is just lost to unproductivity, it's now not because I can get up and do something (grocery run, make lunch, etc.), and conversely that burst of focus and energy in the evening now goes towards productive work rather than focusing more on a videogame or something.

> This isn't how things should be

What is this based on?

That was clearly a subjective ethical statement. The speaker would have used "ought" if they wanted to appear objective.

It's not common in English for that distinction to accomplish the work that you're asserting it does. "Should" and "ought" are synonymous. "Ought" has a more formal tone, but outside technical settings in which the distinction might really matter, no one should be drawing any conclusions from the choice.

> no one should be drawing any conclusions from the choice

But they ought to. ;-)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/should

1. (auxiliary) Be obliged to; have an obligation to; indicates that the subject of the sentence has some obligation to execute the sentence predicate or that the speaker has some strong advice but has no authority to enforce it.

2. (auxiliary) ought to; speaker's opinion, or advice that an action is correct, beneficial, or desirable.

Yes, yes, the language has synonyms. However, the beauty of synonyms is being able to create slight distinctions between them. A native speaker often learns connotations that don't appear in short definitions of some words. Punto e basta.

Perhaps you aren't aware of Hume's "Is-Ought Problem" [0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is%E2%80%93ought_problem

That seems to be distinguishing, as the name suggests, between 'is' and 'ought', not between 'should' and 'ought'. Indeed, both the article itself, and its quotes from Hume, seem to use 'should' as nearly synonymous with 'ought'.

(Even if I've got it wrong, ryanklee claimed that "[i]t's not common" to make that distinction, and pointing to the technical work of philosophers doesn't undermine the claim about common useage.)

Back in high school, Lincoln-Douglas competitive debate taught that "should" was for practical justifications and "ought" was for ethical justifications. Again, to your point, most people don't bother to be so careful with their choices of words.

I ought to think twice before starting a comment thread on HN now

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