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Comment by throw_away1525 | Hacker News Reader

Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it. Maybe music, woodworking, painting, writing, etc... Easier said than done, after having that insight years ago it has been on my to-do list permanently and yet here I am on the screen... After producing for 8 hours at work it is pretty hard to muster up the energy to produce things for myself in the evenings.

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> Ideally you would produce something instead of consuming it.

Why? I'm already "producing" a big part of my day. This "always be producing" mentality is more harmful than making time to relax, enjoy yourself in non-productive ways.

You're right, there's a place for both active leisure and passive leisure. The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.

> The problem I have is that our jobs rob us of the energy we need for active leisure, so we just end up doing passive leisure 100% of the time which I think is way out of balance.

I don't know what the ratio is between active and passive leisure. Nor do I know for sure that people generally have more leisure time now than ever before, but I do suspect that is the case.

But I do know that there are many companies that one might consider to be in the "active leisure industry" and that are profitable.

It's false that people now have more leisure time, in fact we have less than ever before.

For most of human history we were hunter gatherers. We know from the field of anthropology that people in hunter gatherer tribes "work" about 30 hours a week - but their work consists of things we consider leisure like hunting, fishing, hiking, and building things with friends (ever spend a weekend helping a buddy build a deck?).

Hell, even medieval surfs had more free time than us. Planting and harvesting seasons certainly had some full workdays but other than that... lots of time off. You know all those feasts in the Catholic church? Yeah, they got all those off. Kind of like how government workers get all the extra holidays off like MLK and Columbus day. A medieval surf's PTO puts an average American's PTO (0 days by law!) to shame.

If you compare our current amount of free time to the free time of a Dickensian orphan working in a factory at the turn of the 20th century then yes, it seems like we have it pretty good. But compared to 95% percent of human history, we work way more time at our stupid jobs than any other humans in history.

> It's false that people now have more leisure time, in fact we have less than ever before.

This chart and supporting material argue that over the last 150 years annual working hours per worker drastically declining. That lets me believe that leisure time is increasing. https://ourworldindata.org/working-more-than-ever

Where do you think they're wrong?

I am not comparing our current leisure time to the time we had at the beginning of the industrial revolution and onward. We probably do have more free time than we did 150 years ago. I'm comparing our leisure time to the leisure time we had before agriculture was invented - that's why studying hunter gatherer tribes is so interesting. These also happens to be the conditions we evolved for.

That's another aspect of the screen time shaming mentioned above, a lot of those production hobbies use screens! If you want to record and share music with your friends, you'll be looking at a screen for quite some time. Are these people harming themselves by producing and recording music? Of course not nobody would suggest so, but that's the outcome when people eagerly suggest near zero screen time.

Also there's the other factor where we have this insane obsession with producing at all times. Producing for work. Producing for multiple side hustles. Producing with our hobbies. It's as if they're trying to speedrun a complete burnout, not just with work but with relationships and life itself. Some people really do need a reminder that it's ok to relax, to consume, to observe, to waste time with people you love.

Basically what I'm saying is more people should find the balance that works for them and question whether their current general routine makes them happy. I reckon for a lot of people, the difference doesn't really come down to screen time or production vs consumption, but an active choice to be doing whatever it is they are planning to do.

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