Suppressing boredom at work hurts future productivity | Hacker News Reader

Suppressing boredom at work hurts future productivity

phys.org

84 pointsryanblakeley58 comments

If you work remotely, a good cure for boredom is working 2+ jobs with minimal responsibilities or expectations. Spinning plates, keeping a mediocre output for keeping the job, is a great wealth and boredom fix.

I wish employers would better encourage and reward those who put enormous effort into their job. Far too often you just get dragged along with a promise of a promotion down the road. Then its a 5% increase. Meanwhile the sub-par performers collecting the average salary are getting better compensated for their time.

This is one reason why entrepreneurship can be appealing. Not only is there potential reward for hard work, but you are the captain of the ship too. Its not for everyone, but I think its for far more people than who currently try. The world would benefit from more entrepreneurs providing real value through their efforts.

Agreed re: entrepreneurship.

There is a problem with modern employment if you do not have an upside tether like pnl, profit share, equity, commissions, etc.

That is because all jobs have implicit downside tethers. If things go wrong for the company you can be fired, and if you get a cash bonus then they can also reduce your compensation by slashing bonuses after you do the work.

I've had jobs like this where you get worked dumped on you left & right. Literally doing multiple jobs as others leave, with managers unable to articulate priorities or what can be dropped because everything is important. Meanwhile knowing max raise is gonna be 5% with a random chance your total comp is flat or even down if the company has a bad year. The promotion path is slow and you are 2-3 years out from the next level.

It leaves the employee with a feeling of powerlessness and lack of control. Highly demotivating.

> I wish employers would better encourage and reward those who put enormous effort into their job.

I wonder if the reason they don't, is because the folks higher up are also dragging their heels & putting in 40% for the paycheck.

Strange how little I hear this asked after

I think there's a caveat with the current market.

Many Big Tech companies are in a phase of pre/post-layoff hunger games. Meanwhile, more and more AI startups are appearing, with lucrative-looking equity packages.

In both cases, a pragmatist could reasonably conclude that "working hard to keep the high-paying day job" is a better strategy than "going into the jungle and start a startup."

In a lot of jobs doing too much will put you on a quick path to getting fired or sidelined for being annoying.

>2+ jobs with minimal responsibilities or expectations

I was never lucky to find such jobs in my life. Every job I had enough on my plate to not have enough time and energy for a second job.

Plus, in my EU country working 2 full time jobs at the same time is impossible since employers can ask to see your social security contributions history before you start work to make sure it matches what you said in your resume, and there it shows your current and past employment history so they'll find out. Even if you don't get caught at that stage, if you get caught later, they can sue you for it if they find out.

Feels like only Americans have this luxury of plentiful easy jobs for big money and employers who don't ask questions.

I'm not capable of this, but I think the idea for many is to get a job that does have responsibilities and expectations, and treat it like a job with minimal responsibilities and expectations.

Pretty much. I see these people all the time, they know how to slack off to the maximum extent possible while still appearing somewhat productive to their superiors. They just exist and don't raise a fuss which keeps them employed for years or decades with near zero effort, all the while I'm worrying immensely about everything and so tired at the end of each workday that 12 hours of sleep is barely enough!

Like everything in US law its complicated because we are resistant to single unified systems. Working for two Fortune 500 companies is likely to end badly like you said in the EU. But there are many smaller companies here that are not as bureaucratized. So like startup + bigcorp would be safer, different industries even better. The tradeoff is we get fired all the time and have almost no worker protections except for in a few states like CA.

Oh American companies check too. There are things like The Work Number https://theworknumber.com/ that collects and stores employment information. The typical company does perform a background check on applicants.

Depends on your setup, if you are working as a self employed then nobody can check that. But only works in certain countries.

> if you get caught later, they can sue you for it if they find out

Is it illegal to have 2 jobs in your country?

Netherlands:

- may not work more than 60 hours in a single week, and not more than 48 hrs/week on average

- may not work more than 12 hours in a single shift

- must rest for at least 11 consecutive hours every day, and at least 36 consecutive hours every week

- stricter rules than this for pregnant women and minors

https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en...

Iceland has similar regulations but they are only limits on the employer. Nothing illegal about working multiple jobs at the same time.

I would think it was the same in NL.

From what I’ve understood in NL, the limit is on all employers simultaneously. So if you work two jobs, even if each job is within the limits, if both jobs together exceed the limits, both employers are liable.

> Under the Arbeidstijdenwet (Law on Working Hours), you must inform all your employers about your working hours. Your employer is liable for contraventions of the Arbeidstijdenwet. If you contravene, your employer may be fined. Even if he is not aware of your second job. [1]

Curiously though, it appears there are a number of cases in which the law doesn’t apply: for employees who earn 3x minimum wage or more, professional sporters, researchers, theatrical professionals, medical professionals, military personnel, summer camp guides, and volunteers. [2]

Disclaimer: not a lawyer.

[1] translated from https://www.arag.nl/werk-en-inkomen/arbeidscontract/twee-ban...

[2] https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/werktijden/vraag-en...

This seems more like a limit on employers than workers.

Germany: It is part of my contract that my employer knows about my other jobs and they don't interfere with my actual job. E.g. having a side business that you maintain outside your working ours is fine.

You also can't have two full-time jobs without you violating labor laws or defrauding your employer. Since if you aren't defrauding one employer you would have to work 16 hours a day, which you can not do for 5 days a week in a row. And there is no way to actually hide that your are doing this. Employers are forced to pay certain taxes for employing you which can't be payed by two different companies for the same thing.

I think you could pull it off by working as a freelancer / contractor besides your main job.

usually every contract for a job will have some clause like working hours etc. You would be breaking that clause.

Contract? We are at will.

What do you mean? You dont sign anything?

Great way to kill remote work for the rest of us.

I have several things to say about this:

1. Jobs with minimal responsibilities pay minimal salary

2. Influencers that promoted overemployment during Covid are now unemployed and trying to survive by selling informational products

3. If a scammer offers you a deal to scam someone, in reality the most likely victim of the scam is you

> Jobs with minimal responsibilities pay minimal salary

Jobs with minimal printed responsibilities pay minimal salaries. In practice, things are quite different.

And the original overemployed guy doesn’t have anything to sell, lol.

> 1. Jobs with minimal responsibilities pay minimal salary

This is so wrong, I cannot even take seriously the rest of the points.

Yeah, one of the most shocking things I learned as an adult is that work is inversely proportional to salary. It's obvious in hindsight but it's hard to deprogram the lies you were told constantly growing up. Jobs with shit pay are offered by employers who are price sensitive and who are trying to squeeze every little bit of effort out of each dollar.

Take that not even $15/hr line cook and compare it to your software dev hourly and ask yourself are you working 5x harder than they are? Oh fuck no, I'm working less hard most weeks.

"In theory" the equation is something like [time+energy spent] * [value for work not being doable without specialized knowledge/experience] * [demand for the work], with the goal being to maximize the second and third to absurd values, so you can decrease the amount of actual energy you expend.

In theory.

Could you name a job with minimal/low responsibility that pays better?

It's a shit market and you're taking someone's job and doing it half assed. The other job seeker loses, your boss loses, you win. In Cipolla's formula this is "bandit with a side of stupid."

>and you're taking someone's job and doing it half assed.

if we're being frank: one person's half assed may be better than someone less talented but throwing all their effort trying to finish tasks. Talent isn't equal, even if pay for the position has a relatively narrow range (working twice as hard at one job =/= twice the pay/benefits).

I think there is certainly a conversation to have about "overemployment" and how that can cut into the ability for other talent to be fostered, but I'm not going to pretend that 90%+ of companies ever cared about training their employees or even keeping them for more than 2 years. If they could get some person with 20 YOE working at half their output for 150k (because they then have a 2nd job doing the same thing), I doubt the moral quandries would even come into effect. Just potential legal/NDA issues.

It’s also poisoning the well for other remote workers, giving remote work a bad name.

Ruin everything for a quick buck and then run, very hustle culture. Of course I guess our society is incentivizing this kind of behavior.

The company would gladly replace you with one person doing exactly your job for half the pay - why if you do the same thing reversed you have to care if "your boss loses"?

As tempting as it is having been unemployed for fifteen months to get indignant, if someone can hold down two simultaneous jobs those jobs are probably not worth having. I could have worked a second job while at my last. That’s a big part of why I left.

> The other job seeker loses, your boss loses, you win

Yes, that is how our economic system works. What, are you under the illusion we still have some kind of social contract or moral responsibility toward society? If my CEO doesn't, why the hell should I? For the record I don't think it's good, but I didn't invent the game, we're all just trying to play it as best we can.

It’s about the moral contract with yourself, but that’s your business and no one else’s. If you compare your values to those of your CEO, or anyone, then you’ve likely lost sight of that. You become fearful of being who you want to be and fixated on attachment and loss prevention.

I've never worked two jobs like that, but if an opportunity presented itself, I'd probably take it. I'll save my morals for people who actually care about me.

You can be perfectly moral in your personal life while being amoral in your professional life when it comes to matters like these. Trying to be moral in an inherently amoral environment is just opening yourself up for exploitation.

This isn't how I think of morality. Im mostly just being pedantic here but it stuck out to me in a weird way so here's an internet comment with my thought.

You can do whatever you think is right for you and I have no judgement for you either way, I just don't personally use morality to describe this kind of situation.

I think I agree with some of your underlying sentiment about the normal work and human experience being ruthless and cruel, and I understand the foolishness and danger in treating bad people like they are good by deciding to do that is your moral decision it isn't someone outside or morality in some way.

Morality is only really tested when it isn't the easy or most profitable way.

imo it's not useful to act as if the social contract is completely gone or that it will ever be completely gone and I say that as someone who surprises himself every year with how much further I have to lower my expectations on humanity. But... there will always be some kind of social contract because life without trust isn't possible, you'd have to be a machine under total surveillance with iron clad checks on every twitch of your finger otherwise.This is all just the ebb and flow of capitalist desires: One side tries to extract every bit of profit out of you and the other side tries to do the same. In that struggle hopefully both sides end up in an equilibrium that is humane and fair and no single side wins.

The best solution I've read for this is for companies to ensure you put your job on LinkedIn.

the formula is (years of experience / 5) for number of jobs you can do remotely

Suppressing boredom diminishes productivity and the likelihood of finding meaning at home, as well.

Guarding against the things I use to avoid boredom is the most effective way I've found of doing the things I'll feel good about later.

You may have misunderstood. "Suppressing" here means ignoring boredom and powering through it. It sounds like you interpreted it to mean the opposite.

Love to hear examples of things you guard against. And if you have a good guard.

Article seems to be more that you shouldn't "power through" boredom. Sounds like if you can sprinkle fun in, that would be enough to make it not boring? Where fun could be challenging yourself to something. "How much of this can I get in arbitrary timeframe?" kind of challenges.

When I realized that the gervais principle was not a joke _at all_ I became a contractor, and I moved to 100% remote. This way I produce the output they expect while working on my own products. Best of both worlds and everyone is happy.

Of course this only works if you really do have enough non-boring tasks that there's always one available to switch to, and if the boring tasks aren't so boring that you get bored with them before making enough progress.

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