Hacker News Reader

Comment by jabbernotty | Hacker News Reader

To me, making a 40 hour work week is not the same as "devoting my life to work". Obviously there is a relationship there, but even if you have two hours of travel time each workday, and you work 8 hours a day (add a half hour break), there is time to do other things than work on a workday.

View on HN

Well I'd argue that it's definitely devoting your life to work. It's an activity that you spent a massive amount of daytime doing for most of your life. It may not be the only thing you devote your life to but it is definitely one of them and probably the largest one.

I've never been able to get up after a day of work and do something. I'm just done after working for 8 hours. I'd just sit and do nothing wait to recover "energy" and as soon as I recover back to normal work starts again.

That sense of exhaustion eventually goes away after a few months working full-time. That said, even now I feel the amount of interesting stuff I can do on a week day after work is pretty limited -- not just because of time, but because of brainpower. And you can't really use every weekend either, or you'll burn out fast. So a) make peace with getting a lot less done, or b) find a way not to work full time.

The break is part of your working hours. And if you live an hour from work, research shows you will be much happier if you move to within 20 minutes (even if this means you get "less" for your money.)

6 hours without reddit, hacker news, meetings, and other distractions, beats 9 hours with those things (as long as you're working on the right thing and not throwing away ALL your time :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com