this post was submitted on 28 Apr 2025
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[–] [email protected] 10 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

Kinda sorta.

It is more that the things we are busy doing are not fulfilling. Half of everything we do is because we are forced to do it to survive.

Contrary to popular belief, people actually like to do things and to keep busy/be productive... when we have control over what those things are

[–] [email protected] 0 points 5 hours ago (2 children)

Not being busy will make you braindead and depressed too = shorter lifespan

[–] [email protected] 2 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

It's a balance. Not being busy is good sometimes; it's called "resting" and it's important for mental health.

But yes, to what I believe you're trying to get across, being forced to be stagnant for extended periods of time (such as solitary confinement) can have deleterious effects on one's mental and even physical health.

The point is also more about having agency over whether or not you have to be doing something and how you get to do it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yes I was merely adding to your earlier comment

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Your statement does a poor job in its addition and neglects certain important nuances by being overly generalized in its phrasing.

"Not being busy" doesn't make you braindead and depressed. It is an important distinction between simply "not being busy" and "being forced into stagnation to the point it becomes hazardous to your health"

[–] [email protected] 2 points 53 minutes ago (1 children)

Not a native speaker and living in different culture, commenting online is always a risky game. I wish people would understand the correct undertone.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 minute ago

Undertones are entirely social concepts and depend on the culture of a region, and usually involve nonverbal communication in things like tons and body language to discern differences. Adding the language barrier just complicates things even more.

Most people unfortunately don't consciously consider this stuff and just assume everyone is like them.

So, as you said, commenting online is a risky game.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

30 years in the forest, surrounded by family and friends, a life spent close to nature, around a fire, below skies that have not yet be tainted with light pollution. A naturally human schedule, based on natural cycles. Or a long life spent under a hazy sun and enough toys to distract you from how alone you are, surrounded by strangers and neighbors who have no reason to learn your name. I wonder which is longer, and which is more full.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 hours ago

I don't think you understand what busy means, you are clearly busy spending time with your family and doing things to make them happy, helping friends, making fire.

That's a productive life where you add value.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 4 hours ago

A life of chemicals, to extend your productivity and to extract what it can from you. A life looking for distractions, when the meaning was there. In the woods. In the plains. In the mountains, the valleys, in a natural garden of eden. We traded it all and all we got was a clock to make us all slaves.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

I agree. That's why I said 'fuck the system' 13 years ago and haven't spent a single second being a slave since then. Every day I wake up and don't have to pay a house scalper is another victory against crapitalism.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 5 hours ago
[–] [email protected] 19 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

I like being busy, but I like having agency over how I am busy. I don’t want to be “busy” because I have a bunch of arbitrary and meaningless paperwork to turn in that my boss won’t even read, but I like being “busy” in that I’m happy to spend my time doing things that have an immediate impact.

Give me a 12 hour day cleaning up a homeless shelter over paperwork.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

So yeah... I noticed you haven't filed your TPS reports this week.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 hours ago* (last edited 4 hours ago)

When we got to UML diagrams I dropped out of programming and CS. I’d rather eat fucking glass.

My bullshit poison paper work was lesson plans. Like, what other profession expects you to tell them what you are going to do a week in advance? I planned my lessons, but I didn’t do it in a way that matched their paperwork. Like, bruh, can you trust that the stack of books on my desk with notes on them indicates something?

Like, I don’t know what vocabulary or math skills I’ll be teaching this week - because sometimes I’d find out they didn’t know how to use a calculator or the same dickweeds that wanted me to have my entire future planned out decided to have a random fire drill.

I like teaching without a plan and I’m damn good at it. Making me spend my Sunday evening (you know, time I’m NOT AT WORK) filling out some dumbass form made for english and social studies teachers which doesn’t realize that science spends months on the same standards…. When I know my shit. Put 20-25 teenagers in a room with me for an hour and they will know the quadratic formula or how to balance a chemical equation. Just fucking let me do that instead of staff meetings and discipline (ie, spending 1-2 hours after school calling every parent of a kid that stole my shit/refused to put their cell phone up/called me a fucking [will be removed if written out]) - just let me TEACH.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

I have a routine day job and a part time night job which I do from home on contract basis. I had vacation from my day job last week, because I have a sweet union job and get loads of vacation so some of it is just hanging out at home, but it's AMAZING how job 2 expands to fill all that time, as well as every errand thing I have no time for, like haircuts. And my dork assed loser ex I still have to live with is like "well you can get these things done while you're off". I'm never off. Never ever.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

Is it really that crazy to think you might have more time to do things when on vacation from your day job?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

It is actually. The amount I work is insane.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 hours ago

You honestly sound bitter

[–] [email protected] 20 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Long live the 4-day work week.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 hours ago

Which has been proven to improve both productivity and profits. Same as home office. But petty people still prefer to take away freedom from people they consider beneath them, I guess.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 22 hours ago (2 children)

I mean, it'll be unpopular if you post that on bootlicker social. I mean LinkedIn.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

LinkedIn somehow has the world's worst takes. Actually filled with leaded boomers.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

Those fuckers want an eight day week.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

I'm all for it if we get half of them off.

[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 day ago (3 children)

It's not that we're too busy. It's that we're too busy without purpose. What's the point of being busy when it doesn't proportionately translate to having our needs met?

We have more abundance than ever before in all of human history, and yet we work harder than hunter-gatherers just to feed ourselves, and we have less leisure time than they did. We work more hours per day and have fewer days off per year than medieval serfs. And for what? What's the purpose? So some asshole who was born on third base can buy another mansion?

[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thats our monetary policy. People must consume more every year to create more inflation, as technology actively reduces the price of goods.

If goods get cheaper we have deflation, they create more money supply via lower interest rates, and the price of inelastic shelter gets bid up, and asset holders receive a value windfall until prices rise. Which is why we are at a higher price to income ratio than 2007.

People born closer to the gold standard are richer, they got in when currency wasnt tethered to consumption.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Jokes on you, I am unemployed.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Joke's* on you

(The joke is on you.)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 3 points 12 hours ago

Helping their employment prospects one correction at a time.

[–] [email protected] 66 points 1 day ago (5 children)

There is no reason why taxes pooled together from all of our incomes cannot be used to subsidize Healthcare, education and a basic living income for all citizens. But if everone no longer had to worry about survival, no one would put up with corporate abuse from rich cunts and plus if they'd paid their fair share of taxes and couldn't just steal tax money to gamble with, they'd never be as filthy rich as they are to begin with.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

What you describe is more or less the Nordic economic model, except the basic income. Corporate abuse is low, because it is not unthinkable to "not work" in response to such abuse, but also because unions are strong. Nevertheless, a lot of people still work a lot, so it doesn't completely change the work/life balance oddity op is posting about.

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[–] [email protected] 204 points 1 day ago (4 children)

yea, "unpopular" because we're all indoctrinated from preschool onward that it's "natural" to be yanked out of sleep by an alarm, bust our asses to show up at work, move on to things at the sound of a bell for all the daylight hours, then get minimal, if any, sleep in order to do it all over again tomorrow. god forbid you get an opportunity for a nap in the middle of the day

thank the industrial revolution: slavery dressed up in "freedom and opportunity" -- same as the other familiar phrase "arbeit macht frei"

you exist to generate value for your owners. that's it.

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[–] [email protected] 32 points 1 day ago (2 children)

I'm currently unemployed, and I was not expecting to be so busy. I thought I would have a little more leisure time, might be able to catch up on a few things that I never seemed to have time for, like catching up with family, playing some video games in my back log, and doing a small bit of travel. That hasn't materialized. It's like as soon as I stopped "working", more things came up that needed my attention. I'm basically busy from the time I get up in the morning until I wrap up for the night and veg out in front of the TV for an hour before bed. I swear I had more me time when I was working. Not sure how this happened.

[–] MDCCCLV 32 points 1 day ago

This is common, it's because there was a huge backlog of things you just never got around to doing because you didn't have enough time. When you're working you prioritize some relaxing time because you have to go back to work soon. Now you have to do all the tasks you've stored up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 21 hours ago (1 children)

Would you mind sharing what kinds of things are taking up your time?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 hours ago

Well, initially there were a whole slew of things I needed to take care of before my job's benefits were officially cut off. So many calls, appointments, emails, research, paperwork, applications, and so on trying to get things situated before I was officially, fully unemployed.

On top of that, my life as of this past year could be summed up as "one thing after another", so losing my job was part of that, and it didn't end there. Deaths in the family. Major medical issues. Major accident/injury (that literally wouldn't have happened if I wasn't unemployed b/c it was a wrong place, wrong time kind of thing). The list of stuff that's happened since losing my job goes on.

Some things boil down to personal choices I'm making. For instance, now that I have more time than income, things I might've paid a professional to do, I'll just handle it myself when it makes sense to do so. Similarly, when friends and family need help with stuff, I'm making myself available for that. Things like taking care of pets for people when they have to travel for work, helping a friend put together a shed, helping move heavy furniture, etc.

In my own home, I'm taking on a much larger chunk of the day to day chores. My partner is having to shoulder more of the financial burden and having to deal with lifestyle cutbacks because of my situation, so I take a lot of pride in being able to relieve him of as much housework as possible. I'm the one doing the bulk of the dinner prep, a lot of the daily clean-up stuff, and things of that nature.

I'm also doing some things to help insulate us in case of a severe financial down turn. For example, I'm building and planting a larger garden this year than originally planned. I'm prepping all my canning and preservation equipment to make the most of whatever I'm able to grow. I'm clearing out old junk and reorganizing our storage spaces so we have more room to stock up on necessities.

Although I'm not devoting a ton of time to job hunting yet, I am still spending time doing some light networking, looking at job postings, investigating new skills, and things of that nature for when I do inevitably get back into the rat race.

Keep in mind, my days run together now and if you asked me what I did yesterday, I could probably only recall about 10% of it. Plus, this is already turned into a novel of response even though I've kept things high level, but know for sure, it's all this stuff and so much more.

[–] [email protected] 86 points 1 day ago (11 children)

I think about this a lot. We have essentially, purely through accident tbh, created a society that we are evolutionary unprepared to live in. So much of our typical day to day is actually horrible for our bodies and often antithetical to their good function.

In a strange way, it's almost incredible. We have invented a rock that we cannot lift.

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 1 day ago (10 children)

Yeah this is one of the reasons labor needs to organize.

There's one boss telling 500 workers that they all need to work themselves to death? Fuck that. We outnumber him. We could be productive without burnout and things could be fine.

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