Comment by notacop31337 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by notacop31337 | Hacker News Reader

I recently read "Lost Connections", recommended to me after a long few years with depression.

I suspect if you're commenting in this thread, you'd probably enjoy it.

Anyway, the one thing that seems to always be a consistent theme in discussions of burnout, is work. I've not yet seem a conversation on burnout where an employment scenario is not brought up.

One of the chapters in Lost Connections talks about meaningful work, and how a reduction or elimination of personally fulfilling work, can lead to a depression, as can a few other things.

I can't help but feel at this stage after dealing with a long running depression, that our relationships with work are probably broken, and we've all been sold a lie.

My issue with the term "burnout" is that it feels like it's loading the topic to be a personal issue (which it technically is), when in reality, it's a reaction to a bad external stimuli.

I'd write more, but I feel like I'm waffling, I'm happy to discuss more if people want to chat about it.

We have all been sold a lie. The major regrets people give when they are near death, are all linked to work. They wish they had been a better more active parent, they wish they had spent more time with family and friends. Where do these people spend most of their time? Work. Where do they regret spending most of their time? Work.

It's funny, you suggest the idea that "work" is a farce and people act as if you're recommending they stay still until they die. We cannot even fathom a life without "work" as it currently exists. To remind readers, when faced with imminent death, the biggest regret is work. Yet we prevent access to integral institutions based on whether someone is employed, we judge others based on where they are employed, the entire education system is based on funnelling people to work more, and we view homeless people as subhumans who just need to find a job.

Until we reevaluate the entire modern idea of "work", the discussion of "burnout" will continue being fruitless. There will only be yet another temporary solution to sell you on, another form of therapy to attempt and then feel guilt over, another career change you don't want to drag your family through.

>Until we reevaluate the entire modern idea of "work", the discussion of "burnout" will continue being fruitless. There will only be yet another temporary solution to sell you on, another form of therapy to attempt and then feel guilt over, another career change you don't want to drag your family through.

But think of the productivity hacks that are possible! We're just not telling ourselves the right thing. Cognitive worksheets. The Secret. Microdosing. We'll get it eventually! Musk and Jobs got it. We just have to hack it.

What if I can't afford 2 new organs or hair plugs tho

Do you think subsistence farmers had better work life balance?

I don’t have time to give a super in depth answer as I’m mobile - remind me tomorrow and I can - but the novel Four Thousand Weeks by Oliver Burkenan I believe addresses this. They, in a sense, did actually as they relied more on natural clocks that started and stopped the day. I don’t remember the fine details, so I will try to edit with an elaboration tomorrow.

Having worked both "grueling" manual labor jobs and "stressful" white collar work: I would rather be an ape living in some rain-forest.

I don't want to have complex thought. I don't want to have to perform feats of self-flagellation everyday in order to survive. I don't want to be forced to spend the entirety of my very short life in relative isolation, making some other ape filthy rich so he can escape the absurdity and emptiness of existence.

Let me hunt for other small animals with my tribe -- and then spend the rest of my time loafing about. I don't feel like contorting my body and mind as a glorified circus animal in order to get that metaphorical bread.

I know what you are trying to say but just a reminder that rain forests are being destroyed at an alarming rate. Logic doesn't add up. First you rely on experience to say work sucks but then turn around and pick ape life even though you only have the vaguest idea what's like to be one.

There really are people out there who will simply die without attempting to imagine a more fulfilling life for themselves and those close to them.

What are you implying?

No, but I can't help but think of what my grandmother said to me around age 95 - "Your generation may have more money, but we had less stress." That's saying something considering the dirt-floor shack type existence that she faced as a child and young woman. She said to me on more than one occasion that she saw modern life as worse than what she experienced where they were poor, but worked together as a family and enjoyed the natural rhythm of the seasons.

Highly highly recommend the book Four Thousand Weeks for this question.

Someone already suggested this book before I replied so I'll add some more information.

The comparison of "intuitive tasks" is one that sticks with me. So much of what we do currently isn't intuitive like it potentially would have been for farmers. We don't know who benefits. We go somewhere for an abstract amount of time, we "work", we go back home so we can afford to spend time with our family, but not too much time we have work to do to complete before the next sprint.

We have layers of people telling each other what they should be working on who in turn tell people "lower" than them what they should be working on. No intuition here!

Cheers for the comment outlining more about the book, picked it up, I'm planning on having a big christmas break of reading!

David Graeber, citing other researchers in his recent book The Origin of Everything, certainly believes this was true. I think the answer was that while subsistence farming was a lot of work, it also left much of the day and the year to wait / hunt / do other tasks, while the crops grew. They certainly didn't work 40 hour weeks every week, year round.

I spent three years in rural Africa in 35 countries. I spent most of my time where tourists don’t go. I met tons of people that had never seen a white person, border guards that had never seen a foreigner, etc.

Categorically, without question the vast majority of people told me they work hard for a few months a year during planting and harvest, otherwise they party, spend time with family and do whatever the hell they want. They don’t have Netflix or iPhones, but they have a huge amount of leisure time

> They wish they had been a better more active parent, they wish they had spent more time with family and friends. Where do these people spend most of their time? Work. Where do they regret spending most of their time? Work.

I don't think you have much evidence for that, do you? A 40 hour work week does take up time, but still leaves enough time for other activities. Most people don't die during their working life either.

Sure, working more isn't healthy, but work is unavoidable the way society is organized. Until you're willing to give up running water and supermarkets, you're going to have to work. There's not going to be a reevaluation of the modern idea of work. All you can do is limit the excesses.

So, unionize.

> A 40 hour work week does take up time, but still leaves enough time for other activities.

How much is enough time?

> Most people don't die during their working life either.

But they do tend to have kids long before retiring.

Work is unavoidable, yes, at least until we can automate everything. But are 40 hour weeks unavoidable for our currently standard of living? I doubt it.

How much is enough? With the dwindling labor force, 40 hours is going to be the minimum. Automating everything is a pipe dream. It's really hard, the break-through tech isn't there, and there are not enough engineers to build robots for all those tasks.

> [..] A 40 hour work week does take up time, but still leaves enough time for other activities. [...]

And then, there are all these (low-paid) jobs where 40 hours won't keep you alive, all those people that need to commute an hour each way and so on. And the , it's easily a 50-60 hours/week if you take door-to-door time.

Yes, change your life and get something better. But that's sometimes not so easy.

Join a union, and fight collectively for better remuneration and labor conditions.

My dad is 71 and we just did an awesome remote wilderness adventure together.

He just said if he could have his life over again he would work less and do more fun stuff. I take that to heart.

You mention lack of meaningful work to be a cause of burnout.

Now this may be a difference between US and European definitions of ‘burnout’, but this doesn’t hold true for me.

I’m dealing with (the aftermath of) a burnout since 2016 after what at the time felt like the best half year of my life.

I did everything. A 40hr/week internship that was very fulfilling to me, social engagements on almost every week night, activities every weekend, and a romantic relationship I was trying—but failed—to make work.

It all felt great until I just couldn’t even pay attention to mental junk food anymore.

Now of course this is an anecdote. But I have been told burnout is first and foremost a deregulation of the stress (i.e. adrenaline/cortisol) system). This suits much better with my experience, since I love my work, but can’t do it 40hr/w anymore.

This definitely reads similar to how my body reacted, as if it was under some sort of constant invisible stress.

Constantly hot and sweating, stomach muscles tight, and the feeling of an ever-present fear of something / anything happening.

Once I was able to attribute it to work, and address some of it, things started regulating themselves, but it took a long time; and still isn't complete.

Lost Connections by Johann Hari (2018), FWIW:

<https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jan/17/lost-connectio...>

(I've not read it myself.)

Search more on the author of this book. Some really bad things have been written about him.

Cheers for the comment, what do you suggest I do with this information?

I suggest that you should learn how to read.

Things don't become less true simply because you heard them from a douchebag.

Really? you are a genius.

Thanks homie, it's good to be appreciated.

Textbook ad hominem attack. This does not say anything about the point he made or the texts he wrote.

It is not an attack, cute person. And making ad hominem italic doesn't add any meaning her. Go find a treatment for your urinary retention.

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