Back when we were kids, most people I knew did the bare minimum in life. They went to school or work. They came home. Relaxed. Ate. Went to sleep.
We slept a lot!
Some may have done a little bit of gardening. Or whatever. But, essentially leisure was leisure.
Nobody I knew then was even remotely maniacal about how they spent their downtime. I don't know how much life has changed in India. But, here in the US, leisure is no longer leisure. There is intense commitment, a maniacal intensity, to whatever people decide that they want to pursue.
My early exposure to this was back in California. Brewing beer at home was becoming a craze. I practically had to run away from a couple of acquaintances if I ever ran into them at any get together, because they could go on and on about the latest in their brewing.
Then there were the bake-bread-at-home people, especially after that machine appeared in the market in the early 1990s. Remember that?
Quilters, oh, don't get me started on them!
The age of Facebook and Instagram has made this worse.
People bike 40 miles and can't wait to post it. Leisure activities are meticulously documented and broadcast to the world.
I won't be surprised if soon people start boasting about the awesome sex they have, and broadcasting it as if they are porn stars in their bedrooms. Oh, wait, they already do!
Why do people get so maniacal, and competitive, about their leisure time "work"? When did this "play hard" concept take over lives? And why the condescending attitude towards those of us who don't play hard? I wish I could just freely admit that I don't do much. Why not just chill, and enjoy?
One might think that these people go to work in order to relax from such all the strenuous leisure activities. But, nope. Working hard and long hours is apparently the modern thing. I can understand the long, hard, and unpredictable hours in the healthcare world. But, most others? Even in the bullshit jobs?
Yes, yes, yes. I have written about all these. A lot. I hope against hope that the coronavirus is compelling people to ask themselves why they do what they do.
The global pandemic is reminding us about what Voltaire wrote: Work saves us from three great evils--boredom, vice, and need. Many of the suddenly jobless are worried about their needs, while those with jobs or money in the bank wonder how they will spend the hours and days that stretch before them.
The novel coronavirus has hit the pause button. "And it has raised a question we have rarely had the courage to ask ourselves: what is it, exactly, that we keep going off in search of?"
Olga Tokarczuk writes about that maniacal life which has now been upended by COVID-19. She writes, "It has shown us that our frenetic movements imperil the world. And it has raised a question we have rarely had the courage to ask ourselves: what is it, exactly, that we keep going off in search of?"
Writers like Tokarczuk need to help us out by thinking for us and distilling the essence of what life is about it. She adds in that essay:
We believe we are staying home, reading books and watching television, but, in fact, we are readying ourselves for a battle over a new reality that we cannot even imagine, slowly coming to understand that nothing will ever be the same.
Nothing will ever be the same!
Tokarczuk ends her essay with this:
Before our eyes, the smoke is dispersing from the civilizational paradigm that has shaped us over the past two hundred years: that we are the masters of creation, that we can do anything, that the world belongs to us. A new time draws near.
The lines were long at the gate. The US had just assassinated an Iranian general and, we had to go through additional security protocols.
I heard a man excitedly calling out a woman. "Long time," he said. "How are you?"
"Doing well," she said and added something in Hindi.
I wanted to turn towards them and suggest that they speak only in English if they wanted me to listen in, because my Hindi is no good. But, I didn't. I didn't have to either--the rest of their chat was all in English.
They talked about the places and peoples they visited during their respective vacations in two different parts of India. And then came the job talk.
"So, who do you work for now?"
"It has been more than four years with Microsoft," she replied.
"How are things going?"
"I have a great team. Pay is great, and the benefits are good."
I thought to myself that it was a strange response. It was not adding up well.
"Sometimes, I wonder why I am doing all that. What's the point of this work?"
Aha, that explained the strange response.
I wish people sincerely engaged with such questions. What's the point of the work that they might be doing?
"So, how do you answer that question?"
I was delighted that the man was a good conversationalist. He wasn't being the stereotypical male by any means.
"I wish I knew," she said and laughed.
He didn't let her off that easily. "I am sure you have thought about it. How you deal with that question?"
"Art is my savior."
"You mean like painting and sketching?"
"Yes. As an undergrad, I had taken an art class. Now, I am building on that."
People often spin their wheels doing pointless work in order to earn what they consider to be a good salary. But, those high earnings do not fill the emptiness within.
A long, long time ago, I was convinced that the salary and benefits that engineering promised me would never come anywhere close to being the answers to same question this woman was pondering: What's the point of this work?
I took a different path that has led me to where I never have to worry about the point of it all. I lucked out.
A couple of days ago, I blogged that we are addicted to stuff. I added that getting rid of this addiction is impossible.
I continue to think about this and, frankly, it scares the life out of me. Yes, as I wrote there, there are the awful impacts on the natural environment that sustains our existence. But, there is more to worry about. Something more existential. If we are working long hours primarily because it is not about mere survival but to get more stuff, then "today’s discussions need to move beyond the old point about the marvels of technology, and truly ask: what is it all for?"
The metaphorical tasting of an apple from the forbidden tree is about this aspect of our existence. Through our curiosity, over the hundreds of thousands of years, we have essentially become people running faster and faster on a treadmill. What is it all for?
It doesn't have to be this way though.
If we wanted to produce as much as Keynes’s countrymen did in the 1930s, we wouldn’t need everyone to work even 15 hours per week. If you adjust for increases in labour productivity, it could be done in seven or eight hours, 10 in Japan (see graph below). These increases in productivity come from a century of automation and technological advances: allowing us to produce more stuff with less labour. In this sense, modern developed countries have way overshot Keynes prediction – we need to work only half the hours he predicted to match his lifestyle.
But, such short work weeks did not happen, nor will it ever happen.
Globally, people enjoy a standard of living much higher than in 1930 (and nowhere is this more true than in the Western countries that Keynes wrote about). We would not be content with a good life by our grandparents’ standards.
If the pace of increase in life expectancy in developed countries over the past two centuries continues through the 21st century, most babies born since 2000 in France, Germany, Italy, the UK, the USA, Canada, Japan, and other countries with long life expectancies will celebrate their 100th birthdays.
Have we paused to consider what this will mean? How long will those kids who grow up to be adults be on treadmills so that they can get more stuff?
If you are like me, you, too, until today, have never ever come across the word nepreryvka. What does that mean?
Glad you asked. Because I want us all to pause a little and think about it.
In 1929, Stalin--yes, that Joseph Stalin and not this guy--introduced a staggered schedule that was known as nepreryvka, "or the “continuous workweek,” since production never stopped."
The government divided workers into five groups, and assigned each to a different day off. On any given day, four-fifths of the proletariat would show up to their factories and work while the other fifth rested. Each laborer received a colored slip of paper—yellow, orange, red, purple, or green—that signified his or her group.
Oh, why five when there are seven days in a week? Because his governemnt "downsized the week from seven to five days. Saturday and Sunday were abolished."
Anything introduced by Stalin ought to be the worst for humanity, right? What was awful about this continuous workweek?
People had no time to see friends; instead they associated by color: purple people with purple people, orange with orange, and so on. Managers were supposed to assign husbands and wives to the same color but rarely did.
You are perhaps thinking, "hey, that was back in the godawful USSR." Think again.
How many people do you know in the working age who truly do not work on Saturdays and Sundays? Do they leave at a reasonable hour in the morning and return home about the same decent hour in the evening? Are they checking their work emails during their "off" time? Do you hear people complaining that it is increasingly difficult even to plan dinners with family and friends because of conflicting work schedules?
Remember that we are talking about people in the working age. Think about 25 to 55. Those of us over 55 are lucky that we are mostly done, as long as we are able to hang on to whatever we are now doing.
We seem to have created for ourselves a nepreryvka in a market economy, without a Stalin dictating it,?
Whereas we once shared the same temporal rhythms—five days on, two days off, federal holidays, thank-God-it’s-Fridays—our weeks are now shaped by the unpredictable dictates of our employers. Nearly a fifth of Americans hold jobs with nonstandard or variable hours. They may work seasonally, on rotating shifts, or in the gig economy driving for Uber or delivering for Postmates. Meanwhile, more people on the upper end of the pay scale are working long hours. Combine the people who have unpredictable workweeks with those who have prolonged ones, and you get a good third of the American labor force.
Why does this matter? "A calendar is more than the organization of days and months. It’s the blueprint for a shared life."
A news report referred to a post that went viral. A post by a father on his 8-year old son's death. A post in which he wondered whether all that time at work is worth it.
I cannot even begin to imagine what it feels like to suddenly lose a 8-year old child.
The father writes:
Around 5:40am, the next morning I woke up for a series of back to back
meetings. I did a Peloton ride, took an analyst call from my home
office, one with a colleague on the drive to work, then the rest at the
office. None seem that important now. I left that morning without saying
goodbye or checking on the boys.
While at work, when he was in a meeting, the mother called and said “J.R., Wiley is dead.” The father writes, "If there’s any lesson to take away from this, it’s to remind others (and myself) not to miss out on the things that matter. "
We fail to ask regularly ask ourselves what really matters to us and, therefore, whether we are living our lives consistent with that. It is a tragic irony that at work we engage in discussions on what our mission is, and worry about mission creep. In our personal lives, on the other hand, we don't seem to have a "mission statement" of any sort.
I have ranted and ranted on these topics. Perhaps because I have never let go of an understanding that life is unpredictable. Good days aren't forever, and tomorrow could be a bad day. Death haunts our everyday lives. Which is also why I critique the "bucket list" that people have, because the list is almost always about trivial pursuits instead of focusing on "the things that matter" that we need to address before we die.
More than anything else, why the monomaniacal devotion to work? In the grand scheme of things, our existence will not even register in this cosmos. More powerful and rich and famous people have lived and died, and most of us don't even know any damn thing about them. If they don't matter, we do?
I will end this with how Wiley's mother ended hers:
If we’ve learned anything at all, it’s that life is fragile and time really can be so cruelly short. We wish a lot of things were different, but mostly we wish we’d had more time. If you are a parent and have any capacity to spend more time with your kids, do. When it ends, there’s just photos and left over things and time is no longer available to you. It is priceless and should not be squandered. Take your vacation days and sabbaticals and go be with them. You will not regret the emails you forgot to send. From now on, if you email or text me and my reply takes longer than expected, know that I am with the people I love sharing my time, creating my new identity and I encourage you to do the same.
Not being able to figure out the day, when it happens day after day, makes one worry about the more fundamental, existential questions. Perhaps that is all the more that we report to work, even if it is not the work that we love to do because the alternative sucks and even frightens us.
Even before getting into the engineering program, I worried that I wouldn't enjoy it. Four years in the program certainly confirmed that.
Working in India upon graduation erased even the tiniest doubts I might have had. I hated waking up in the morning and heading to work. I barely survived ten weeks in my first job, and then it was a quite a few months before I took up my second one, in which I didn't even last a month. After a couple more months of "unproductive" existence, which perhaps triggered quite a few heartburn episodes in my parents' lives, I took up another job in which I served the longest--six months!
And then it was off to the US for graduate schooling.
The "work" after graduate school was not one that I had planned on, and I certainly felt ill at ease there, while it certainly paid immensely more than what I currently earn. But, I was no longer in my early twenties, and being older meant that I had to be more "responsible." So, I faked my way through those nearly six years.
Lucky breaks I got.
I do not even pretend to my students, however, that they can always get to do whatever they want to do. I warn them that "you can be whatever you want to be" is more often than not a lie. A big fat lie. To those who engage me on this topic, I remind them that very, very rarely in life are we able to do whatever we truly enjoy doing, and that they ought to be mentally prepared to simply suck it up and get going.
In truth, we can’t be anything we want, nor should we try, because dreams are imprecise, and wants are insatiable. It is far better to focus on what we can do, where we can help. Our duties are a surer guide in life — and we are happier for embracing them.
But, the key is to always keep that dream and passion alive within.
Early in my life in Bakersfield, when I was impressed with the public-minded work a much older couple was doing, I decided to invite them for dinner at a local restaurant that served fantastic food.
The restaurant, incidentally, was a lucky outcome for us locals--it was a failed business that brought the man and his family to what Johnny Carson called the "armpit of California." And boy did they know how to make tasty food in an awesome ambiance!
We did dine with this older couple. And that is when I noticed something for the first time ever in my life.
The couple often looked around the room to see if they knew people there, and they did. After having been public figures for a while in town, of course they knew people and people knew them. I felt letdown though that they were not focused on the people with them.
In all fairness, I should also note that despite me initiating the dinner meeting, the older couple insisted on paying for the dinner, which they did.
The more I became a real adult, the less I became keen on meeting with people at restaurants. For that roving-eyes-reason and more. It is difficult to have meaningful conversations with all the noise in the background. And then the constant interruptions by the waitstaff. And, finally, the reality that we cannot linger on, even if the conversation gets to be mighty interesting--the restaurant tables are very short-term rental units.
Most restaurants are open only from early evening through the night. They have plenty of unused space for a good chunk of the day, even when the prep work happens in the back, right?
Restaurants are taking this to the next level as tech apps like Spacious, Reset and WorkChew
turn their dining rooms into co-working offices during off-hours. Most
participating restaurants only serve dinner, so they function as
workspaces from 8 or 9 a.m. until 5 p.m., at which point workers must
leave.
N.Y.C. Czech restaurant Bohemian Spirit
has been using Spacious for about three months. It didn't take much
work on their end — Spacious brought in high-powered WiFi, copious
extension cords, and manages the crowds.
If you are like me, you are wondering who might ever want to use that kind of non-office as office.
About 41 million Americans (approximately 13% of the population) work as freelancers, consultants and contractors, which equals more people seeking temporary workspaces.
Why don't they simply work from their homes then? For "the sense of community established while working alongside others."
We live in strange times. People looking at their electronic screens sitting next to others looking at their electronic screens, and this provides them with a "sense of community."
"This points to our social nature
and the fact that many feel isolated and just want to be around others,"
he explains. "The alternative would be working alone at home. So the
mismatch idea — that our modern environment is very different than that which we evolved in — has led to people feeling isolated and desperate for 'social connection,' even if it's merely sitting around others."
Surely there are other more productive, constructive, and fun-filled ways to feel less isolated and more connected. Even this hermit knows of a few. Like hosting a few people for dinner that was cooked at home. Lively conversations. Laughs. Good times.
I maintain office hours during the academic terms. Faculty announcing office hours was something new for me when I came to the US for graduate school--I don't recall faculty giving us their office hours when I was an undergraduate student. Heck, for that matter, we didn't even have syllabi for the courses that we took. We went to class, doodled, and it was exam time when the term ended.
We faculty are required to maintain office hours--essentially to tell students that we will be available in our offices, waiting for them to talk to us about whatever it is that they want to talk about. Students do not show up though. Rarely ever do students walk in during that appointed time.
Increasingly, if they want to contact me, they email. Almost always, their emails are like text messages to their friends. No salutation. No grammar. No signing off.
I have often pointed out to students that a great deal can be easily accomplished in a couple of minutes of real-time face-to-face conversation in the real world. But, I can't seem to convince them about that.
It is the same way with colleagues too. Once, I walked over to a colleague's office two buildings away, and told her that I preferred this to email exchanges. She was shocked, as if it was the most unnatural thing to to!
As e-mail was taking over the modern office, researchers in the theory of
distributed systems—the subfield in which, as a computer scientist, I
specialize—were also studying the trade-offs between synchrony and
asynchrony. As it happens, the conclusion they reached was exactly the
opposite of the prevailing consensus. They became convinced that
synchrony was superior and that spreading communication out over time
hindered work rather than enabling it.
The very people who birthed the concept of emails were beginning to see that real-time communication was superior and more productive!
It was in the nineteen-eighties that business thinkers and computer
scientists began to diverge in their thinking. People in office settings
fixated on the organizational overhead required to organize synchronous
collaboration. They believed that eliminating this overhead through
asynchronous systems would make collaboration more efficient. Computer
scientists, meanwhile, came to the opposite conclusion. Investigating
asynchronous communication using a mathematical approach known as
algorithm theory, they discovered that spreading out communication with
unpredictable delays introduced new complexities that were difficult to
reduce. While the business world came to see synchrony as an obstacle to
overcome, theorists began to realize that it was fundamental for
effective collaboration.
If you want an example, here you go:
As the distributed-system theorists discovered, shifting away from
synchronous interaction makes coördination more complex. The dream of
replacing the quick phone call with an even quicker e-mail message
didn’t come to fruition; instead, what once could have been resolved in a
few minutes on the phone now takes a dozen back-and-forth messages to
sort out. With larger groups of people, this increased complexity
becomes even more notable. Is an unresponsive colleague just delayed, or
is she completely checked out? When has consensus been reached in a
group e-mail exchange? Are you, the e-mail recipient, required to
respond, or can you stay silent without holding up the decision-making
process? Was your point properly understood, or do you now need to
clarify with a follow-up message? Office workers pondering these
puzzles—the real-life analogues of the theory of distributed systems—now
dedicate an increasing amount of time to managing a growing number of
never-ending interactions.
The next time a very serious person talks about email overload, maybe you can send them the link to that essay?
At work, I have even joked with colleagues that I sometimes intentionally ignore bureaucratic emails--if it is truly important, either I will get another email or the person will walk over to my office.
We must, therefore, develop better systems—ones that will almost
certainly involve less ad-hoc messaging and more real-time coördination.
I am all for it! You know where to find me in the real world ;)
Perhaps you are nodding your head in agreement with the title of this post: Work builds character.
Are you sure?
Let's suppose the work is with the mafia. Does that work build character? How about as a butcher? A teacher? A soldier? A ...? You get my point.
Perhaps you then argue that "work builds character" is applicable to young people. To kids. To Teenagers.
If we are what we repeatedly do, well, "to see if work really builds character, then, we need to ask: What do we repeatedly do at work?"
In the first chapter of his 1776 treatise The Wealth of Nations,
Adam Smith marvels at the division of labor in a pin factory. He writes
that someone who had to perform every step of the pin-making process
himself would struggle to make a few pins a day. Put him on a team of
ten, though, and assign him only to sharpen the point of every pin that
comes down the line, and he can contribute to the manufacture of
thousands.8But who do you become if you sharpen pinpoints all day long? Do you advance in virtue? Do you attain moral excellence?
You can now see where this discussion is headed. Imagine the work that the "cleaners" do every single day as Facebook content moderators. What character does that build?
So what should we do? Repair the whole rickety heap of our work
ideology? Redesign work so that it delivers the dignity, character, and
purpose it’s supposed to? Pass laws that limit employers’ control over
workers’ bodies and public behavior? Push for transparency regarding the
actions workers perform, and establish norms that they specialize less
narrowly and have rotating duties? Set humane limits on service work and
eliminate the pointless tasks most professionals do during the workday?
It wouldn’t hurt to try. These are all worthy short-term goals that
would help work in America live up to its promise. But making these
changes would likely either reduce productivity or increase costs,
leading companies to accelerate the rollout of machine labor in every
aspect of their business. The changes would be self-defeating.
Eventually, there would hardly be any jobs at all.
What exactly are we working for?
I am not sure if we ask ourselves that question even once. We seem to have been brainwashed into believing that we have to work, and work is the answer to the question of our existence. So much so that if we come across a person who cares not about work, but who does not depend on others either, we have only negative things to say about them.
Of course, I am channeling my life here, as I always do in my blog. I know damn well that I could "work" a lot more than I do. Instead of playing bridge, I could spend time writing essays. Or even books. But why? What for? The typical response is about fame and fortune. But, what is the big deal about all that fame and fortune that I might have given up, and am continuing to give up? What does this say about my "character"?
A few weeks ago, a big-time economist, with plenty of fame and fortune, and with a lot more left in him, died. He committed suicide. I have no idea about what troubled him that severely for him to end his life. What a tragedy! Imagine if he had sacrificed a chunk of his fame and fortune, and had worked "only" as a high school teacher, and enjoyed his life.
We are born. We live. We die. Within this there is work. "We just need meaning, wherever we might find it." I am confident that work does not offer any meaning to our existence. It does not build any damn character either!
His wealth is way above average, but he does not want to call it quits because he doesn't know what he would then do with his spare time.
He asked me if I have changed my car. I told him I have, and that it is a small little car. His is a northern European luxury car.
He has added quite a few pounds since I last saw him. He doesn't have the time to regularly exercise, he said.
He is not the only one either. I know of quite a few--my age and older--who work despite being well-beyond a comfortable retirement savings and investment. And they also complain about not having time for the things that they might enjoy.
Such is the life of the wealthy and the miserable!
It is not as if they have not heard, or read, or talked about the cliche that a dying person does not ever think that they should have spent more time in the office. Yet, the lure of money keeps them doing time in the office, even when they hate themselves for doing that!
One classmate described having to invest $5 million a day — which didn’t sound terrible, until he explained that if he put only $4 million to work on Monday, he had to scramble to place $6 million on Tuesday, and his co-workers were constantly undermining one another in search of the next promotion. It was insanely stressful work, done among people he didn’t particularly like. He earned about $1.2 million a year and hated going to the office. “I feel like I’m wasting my life,” he told me. “When I die, is anyone going to care that I earned an extra percentage point of return? My work feels totally meaningless.”
Earns $1.2 million and gripes. It is more than the work being meaningless--it is about the feeling of a meaningless life.
Perhaps they never constantly ask themselves a simple question: "What if today is the last day of my life?"
I have blogged in plenty about meaningful jobs that may or may not pay well, versus bullshit jobs whether or not it pays well. I, for one, am glad to be doing something that provides me with meaning, both at work and in my personal life.
The author of the piece in the NY Times that got me thinking about these, Charles Duhigg, is a journalist. A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. And, with an interesting academic credential: He is an MBA from Harvard Business School! He writes:
Some of my classmates thought I was making a huge mistake by ignoring all the doors H.B.S. had opened for me in high finance and Silicon Valley. What they didn’t know was that those doors, in fact, had stayed shut — and that as a result, I was saved from the temptation of easy riches. I’ve been thankful ever since, grateful that my bad luck made it easier to choose a profession that I’ve loved. Finding meaning, whether as a banker or a janitor, is difficult work. Usually life, rather than a business-school classroom, is the place to learn how to do it.
I am all the more convinced that I am a lucky guy!
A few days ago, I asked a colleague if everything was ok because the colleague was not looking all good.
The colleague motioned me to close the door. And broke down. Tears down the cheeks.
It was all related to workplace stress.
I listened. As I have noted many times in the past, I learnt a long time ago that when people share emotions it is not because a problem has to be fixed. Instead, it is about having somebody to listen to.
The colleague thanked me for listening.
A couple of days later, the colleague said, "I am sorry for having been unprofessional. And I am glad you didn't roll your eyes ..."
"Whether it is at home or at work, I don't roll my eyes in such contexts" I said. "We are humans, and we have emotions. We can't be robots at work. Sometimes the emotions overwhelm us."
Quite a coincidence that a leading peddler of fake news has a piece about crying at work and why you shouldn't feel bad about it. It is an interview with "Alison Green, who runs the career advice blog Ask a Manager and whose latest book, which has the same title, published earlier this year."
The bottom-line there is no different from what I told the colleague:
We’re human! We have emotions! Good
managers will know that, and it’s not the end of the world if you
occasionally show that at work.
I don't understand why this should be news to anybody. Right?
So, why the tears at work?
If you’re really invested in your work and care deeply about doing a
good job, you’re more likely to experience the sort of disappointment or
frustration that can result in teariness. And of course, employers want
us to be engaged in our work and to care deeply about it — and it’s
hard to do that but also be detached enough that you never have a strong
emotional reaction. So again, it goes to context and frequency. If it’s
occasional and relatively private, you’re probably fine. If it’s
frequent and/or public, if I’m your boss I’m going to be more concerned
and trying to figure out what’s going on.
Which is also exactly what I told the colleague: The emotions were because the colleague was so involved and invested in the work and the people. If this investment and involvement occasionally brings out tears, hey, we are human. "The key word there being “occasionally.”"
Even the retired folks these days don't seem to have leisure time. How can that be?
The more I think about my own short life thus far, the clearer it seems that the dream was about a technological future that would launch us into an age of prosperity in which we would do very little work and enjoy a great deal of leisure time. It would be a denial of gigantic proportions if we were to argue that we not incredibly prosperous now and, yet, leisure has become scarce?
To economists, this is no surprise. Because, to them, leisure in prosperity means that there is much higher opportunity cost in terms of income that is not earned by doing nothing. The more the income, the more the opportunity cost of sitting around. So, people work themselves to death?
It is a strange world in which we live. Ask yourself what exactly are we working for, and what exactly is it that we want to get out of the incomes that we earn? Go ahead. Do that first and then resume reading this post.
Yep, we earn in order to consume. Our highly productive lives--as in economic productivity--are not about working fewer hours and creating leisure time that we can enjoy, but are about consumption.
It is almost as if we set aside the golden years for leisure. When we can no longer do anything "productive." What a wasteful approach to life!
Most people haven’t been taught to find fulfillment in their free time. To the contrary, rather than learning how to cultivate lifelong interests, students—both in primary and secondary schooling—are increasingly being educated to meet specific labor-market demands, demands that may also disappear or be automated away. Meanwhile, “It just is assumed that everyone knows how to handle their free time,” Henderson laments. “Not true!”
Yesterday, during a conversation with a student, I yet again heard the familiar: "I pack a whole lot of classes and activities because I am at a loss if I don't have things to do."
Oh, do not for a second think of people spending time on the likes of Facebook as those enjoying leisure. Nope. As I have blogged in plenty, people are "raw materials" in those activities, with the businesses making money out of them. And, these businesses work on making addicts out of their users.
Over the past decade, more people have been spending more time on Facebook, whose business model is not all that different than the tobacco industry—it addicts its users, denies its own harmful effects, and expands its user base by targeting children and developing countries.
Commercial leisure and entertainment industries are undergoing a technological transformation that will be just as profound as the changes in work. But if the prevailing market incentive is to manufacture addiction, then the future of leisure could be bleak indeed. It remains to be seen if those designing social-media platforms, video games, virtual- and augmented-reality applications, and other technologies will feel pressured to do so responsibility.
So, where do we go from here?
Nowhere. We are screwed.
Not me though. Ask my neighbors--they will tell you that I rarely work. Ask my colleagues--they will tell you I am goofing around and my work is mere mashed potatoes. Mine is a life of leisure! ;)
There are a number of favorite topics that I keep blogging about. Like mortality, for instance. Despite the hard truth that we are all gonna die, apparently this is not a topic that most people like to talk about. They would rather spend a gazillion hours analyzing some stupid shit Super Bowl ad!
Relax, dear reader, this is not about death. At least, not the real one. After all, there are plenty of metaphorical deaths to talk about.
Like the death of free time.
I have blogged in plenty about free time. It is such a cliche to hear people talk about how they don't have time for anything--even to call, leave alone visit with, their parents. All because of their very important work.
I bet you also run into such people all the time. Especially those big-chiefs in those corner offices.
If you do send them that piece, be warned that you too might become friendless like I am. I have learnt it the hard way that people don't like being asked the obvious questions. People prefer to ignore the elephant in the room. I, on the other hand, am only interested in that big, attractive, elephant, and apparently do not care to have friends! ;)
So, why do they work like that with no free time? "At the heart of it is insecurity."
Your insecurities may have helped to get you where you are today, but
are they still working for you? Is it time to acknowledge that you have
“made it” and to start enjoying the experience a little bit more? And
if your boss is an insecure overachiever, recognize how they are
projecting their insecurity onto you — how they make you feel insecure
for not being able to keep up with them.
Work exceptionally long hours when you need to or want to, but do so
consciously, for specified time periods, and to achieve specific goals.
Don’t let it become a habit because you have forgotten how to work or
live any other way.
I have been extraordinarily lucky that I have never worked too hard chasing any imaginary trophy. When marks were the reward in school, I didn't care to work hard. When dollars were the reward at work, I didn't care. When people told me that I am capable of more if only I ..., well, I nodded my head and moved on. I am sure one of these days, these will come back to haunt me--when I lose my job because students don't sign up for my classes! Working 70 hours a week at the local McDonald's, without any sick leave, won't be fun. But then I won't have time to bug you with blog-posts either!
Now, it is not as if I don't work. Every single day I work. I even get up about the same time on a "non-working" day as I do on a working day. It is hard for me to not work. I am working, however, only for myself. No trophy-hunting. No insecurities.
I will wrap up this post with observations from my favorite philosopher, Calvin:
Life has become so much about work that I feel I have to defend myself when not working, even though the friend assures me that I am all the time "in my head" and that I need to get out of it!
In the bad old days, workers and prisoners were even be chained to their work. In these modern times, we have replaced those physical chains with digital tethers. People work, work, and work all the time through their various digital devices.
And, when they are not working in order to earn for themselves, people are working in order to help gazillionaires make even more money--their interactions via Facebok and WhatsApp and everything else are monetized by the corporations. Remember, you are their raw material that they mine so that you can be entirely replaced by machines!
What most of us do even now is darn useless. Pointless. Bullshit jobs. Which is why we refer to some jobs as "essential services" while most of the rest are, ahem, dispensable to varying degrees.
Soon, there will be such a huge number of useless people that there will be "the useless class. People who are not just unemployed, but unemployable."
The quest for meaning in work, and meaning in life, will become even more urgent than now. Because, when meaning is not to be found, then you can easily imagine any number of things going wrong in a human's life. Dystopia looms large without a sense of meaning.
I need to get out of my head and stop working for a while. Bye for now ;)
What a wonderful analogy! No wonder the author is a celebrated thinker, futurist!
I have quoted the author, Yuval Noah Harari, in a previous blog-post. I am now all the more convinced that Harari is now my go-to-guy to think about the future.
So, yes, those strange critters are invisible to me because I don't play that game, even though I carry a smartphone. A technological approach to understanding maya too? Nah, I don't want to digress.
If it were not for those religious "smartbooks" the stones of Jerusalem will be mere stone and nobody would fight over them. Of course, this fight over the stones is not a new insight. What is awesome about Harari's essay--read it in full because I am doing injustice to it by excerpting to tell my own stories--is how he compares religions to multiplayer virtual reality computer games:
What is a religion if not a big virtual reality game played by millions of people together? Religions such as Islam and Christianity invent imaginary laws, such as “don’t eat pork”, “repeat the same prayers a set number of times each day”, “don’t have sex with somebody from your own gender” and so forth. These laws exist only in the human imagination. No natural law requires the repetition of magical formulas, and no natural law forbids homosexuality or eating pork. Muslims and Christians go through life trying to gain points in their favorite virtual reality game. If you pray every day, you get points. If you forget to pray, you lose points. If by the end of your life you gain enough points, then after you die you go to the next level of the game (aka heaven).
Can one get addicted to such a virtual reality game that religion is? Harari has thought this through:
n Israel, a significant percentage of ultra-orthodox Jewish men never work. They spend their entire lives studying holy scriptures and performing religion rituals.
Talk about game addicts!
Harari's essay is awesome. Lemme say it again--read the entire essay. Do not base your thoughts on whatever I have excerpted for my own selfish reasons.
Harari's point is that in the near future, when computers/AI will make more and more among us unemployable--the useless class, as he calls them--sophisticated video games will keep them busy and entertained, just like how religions have forever kept humans busy and addicted.
Harari ends the essay with quite a flourish:
In any case, the end of work will not necessarily mean the end of meaning, because meaning is generated by imagining rather than by working. Work is essential for meaning only according to some ideologies and lifestyles. Eighteenth-century English country squires, present-day ultra-orthodox Jews, and children in all cultures and eras have found a lot of interest and meaning in life even without working. People in 2050 will probably be able to play deeper games and to construct more complex virtual worlds than in any previous time in history.
But what about truth? What about reality? Do we really want to live in a world in which billions of people are immersed in fantasies, pursuing make-believe goals and obeying imaginary laws? Well, like it or not, that’s the world we have been living in for thousands of years already.
Most students work part-time, unlike my story when I was an undergraduate student. In contrast to these students, I was an idle, good for nothing, bum. I wasted away my time bullshitting with other students. My parents paid for my tuition and living expenses. Hey, at least I didn't waste money on alcohol and movies and cigarettes!
With my students, I am always worried that they are doing too many things with the hope that a real and well-paying awaits once they graduate. In one-to-one conversations, I don't bluntly burst that bubble that is the well-paying job--I do that in the group therapy sessions called classes.
Last term, a student walked in about five minutes late for a meeting with me. I gave her time to settle down. I slowly asked her, "you looked frazzled today."
"I just need more time to sleep," she replied. "After I graduate, with no school anymore, at least I will be able to sleep more," she added.
At least she has a part-time job for now, in contrast to another student who told me that she was finding it difficult to land any part-time retail job. "I have always been an excellent student, and I am reasonably good with communications, and yet nothing." She was frustrated. I told her about yet another student who was working at a retail store and how I told her to hang on to it because the retail industry is being decimated at a rapid rate.
Forever, I have been talking and writing about the destruction of the retail business here in the US. It was clear to us ever since we started using the word e-commerce back when the web was still in its infancy. Brick and mortar would be killed by click and order. Bookstores were pretty much the first to be caught in this, and then every kind of retail business. The latest news is more along these lines:
The battered American retail industry took a few more lumps this
week, with stores at both ends of the price spectrum preparing to close
their doors. At the bottom, the seemingly ubiquitous Payless Inc.
shoe chain filed for bankruptcy and announced plans to shutter hundreds
of locations. Ralph Lauren Corp., meanwhile, said it will close its
flagship Fifth Avenue Polo store -- a symbol of old-fashioned luxury
that no longer resonates with today’s shoppers. And the teen-apparel retailer Rue21 Inc.
could be the next casualty. The chain, which has about 1,000 stores, is
preparing to file for bankruptcy as soon as this month, according to
people familiar with the situation. Just a few years ago, it was sold to
private equity firm Apax Partners for about a billion dollars.
People click their orders on Amazon.com (and a gazillion other sites) and the retail brick and mortar stores go bankrupt. When businesses go bankrupt, jobs evaporate.
The rapid descent of so many retailers has left shopping malls with
hundreds of slots to fill, and the pain could be just beginning. More
than 10 percent of U.S. retail space, or nearly 1 billion square feet,
may need to be closed, converted to other uses or renegotiated for lower
rent in coming years, according to data provided to Bloomberg by CoStar
Group. The blight also is taking a toll on jobs. According to Labor Department figures released
on Friday, retailers cut around 30,000 positions in March. That was
about the same total as in February and marked the worst two-month
showing since 2009.
Those laid off workers now join the competition to find at least part-time work, which makes it next to impossible for students to find the kind of part-time work that was once typically done by students.
Payless is closing 400 stores
as part of a bankruptcy plan announced on Tuesday. The mammoth chain
had roughly 4,000 locations and 22,000 employees -- more than it needs
to handle sluggish demand. HHGregg Inc., Gordmans Stores Inc. and Gander Mountain Co. all entered bankruptcy this year. RadioShack, meanwhile, filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in two years. Other
companies are plowing ahead with store closures outside of bankruptcy
court. Sears Holdings Corp., Macy’s Inc. and J.C. Penney Co. are
shutting hundreds of locations combined, reeling from an especially
punishing slump in the department-store industry.
It is a tough world out there.
Meanwhile, the bullshitting Republicans continue to tell people that they should pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Very rarely do students have bootstraps like the ones my parents gave me for them to pull themselves up!
I went to listen to the president give his annual state-of-the-college address. He, like most educators these days, talked about how student enrollment growth is critical for the fiscal future of the university. He used phrases that one would hear from a factory owner: production, products, pipeline, and--of course--how more students mean more money. There was no detailed presentation, however, on how well the products (graduates) are selling!
Despite repeating the flat--or even a negative growth--enrollment scenario, the president talked in plenty about the new building construction that has been completed, and another that will soon begin. How is it that people with PhDs do not see the contradiction in massively increasing capacity even when knowing well that the demand won't be there? Was there a KoolAid drink that I missed sipping?
Was I also the only one who thought it was yet another profound evidence when the president said that female students accounted for 65 percent of the incoming freshman class? From 55-45, to 60-40, we have now reached 65-35. Amazing. Simply astounding. What is this evidence for? It adds more to the 'save the males" that I have been talking and writing about for almost two decades now.
For low-skilled men in their 20s, employment rates have fallen by about 10 percentage points over the last 15 years—from 82 percent in 2000 to only 72 percent in 2015. This decline is staggering. You might think it’s matched by a rise in school attendance for this age group. That is not the case.
The following may be the most shocking number I give you today: in 2015, 22 percent of lower-skilled men aged 21–30 had not worked at all during the prior 12 months. Think about that for a second.
Yes, think about all that data. Take more than a second. Take ten minutes. In fact, you should ponder those data for a long, long time. One in five young men between the ages of 21 and 30 had not worked (for wages) over the 12 months. One in five!
If you are a thinker--and you are; after all, you are here reading this--your immediate question is: "If they are not working, where do these young, low-skilled men live?"
You have an answer, right? And you are correct about that:
In 2014, 70 percent of lower-skilled men in their 20s without a job lived with a parent or close relative.
Are you now beginning to have a little bit of an anxiety? Perhaps a tinge of panic? If so, hold on to something, and get a brown-bag if you are beginning to hyperventilate.
If they are not working, how do these young men eat? We—the parents and relatives—feed them. When they are in our basements, they come up for food from time to time and raid our refrigerators. I have no information on whether or not they are showering.
Are these young, nonworking, lower-skilled men who are living in their parents’ basements married? You may be surprised to hear this: they are not. The age of marriage is increasing for this group. In summary, these younger, lower-skilled men are now less likely to work, less likely to marry, and more likely to live with parents or close relatives.
There is an interesting twist to all this. You ready for that?
If we go to surveys that track subjective well-being—surveys that ask people to assess their overall level of happiness—lower-skilled young men in 2014 reported being much happier on average than did lower-skilled men in the early 2000s. This increase in happiness is despite their employment rate falling by 10 percentage points and the increased propensity to be living in their parents’ basement.
Those young men are happy. The parents and close relatives hosting these young men might not be happy, but that is another story!
They are happy now. Yes. But, how about life after 30?
There is some evidence that these young, lower-skilled men who are happy in their 20s become much less happy in their 30s and 40s. They haven’t accumulated on-the-job skills because they spent their 20s idle. Many eventually get married and have kids. When this happens, living in their parents’ basements is no longer a viable option. Playing video games does not put food on their tables. It’s a bad combination: low labor demand plus the accumulated effects of low labor supply makes economic conditions for these aging workers pretty bleak.
These labor-market outcomes affect many facets of society. They affect the take-up rates of government transfer programs. They may explain voting patterns for certain candidates in recent periods. There is rising evidence that lower-skilled workers in their 30s and 40s are increasing their drug use. We have also seen increased suicide rates for lower-skilled workers in middle age. The effects of changing technology on the labor markets of lower-skilled workers will likely have repercussions within the US economy for years to come.
When I yell about the urgency to re-write the social contract, to find alternative outlets for testosterone, to figure out ways in which we can help people be productive if they don't want to, or are not suited for, college, well, all those are not random independent issues. Nope. These are all inter-related issues that require a great deal of our time and energy. Our time and energy as in all of us. And for that, in a democracy, we need leaders who understand these nuances, help shape the conversations, and work out strategies for collective action. Ain't gonna happen in the democracy that we have and the one that we will wake up to on November 9th :(
Oh, btw, if you thought all the quotes were excerpted from some left-wing nutcase's rants, ahem, it is from as academically rigorous right-wing economics as you can possibly get--Erik Hurst is an economics professor at the University of Chicago. So, when a U. of Chicago economics/business professor says all those, well, you ought to be scared shitless by now.
I was led down that path of thought when the old friend, who has moved to the other end of the neighborhood, yet again stated his understanding of the world of education and money: "If college won't help earn more money, then why go to college?" he flatly stated even as I sat across from him sipping the rich and wonderful coffee that he had brewed for me with a fancy machine that only money can buy.
"I am the perfect example of how more college does not lead to more money" I remarked. I was reminded of the daughter's comment that I am the only one that she knows of who always decides in favor of less money, and she did not mean that as a compliment.
I recalled having read, some time, which was possible only because I always took the road leading to less money, the lines that Samuel Taylor Coleridge had written about his feelings of having been a failure. Google helped me track it down: “And I, the while, the sole unbusy thing,/ Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.”
If Coleridge, who is remembered well after his death nearly two centuries ago, thought that he was a failure, then what hope is there for lesser mortals like me? Upon my passing, as John Updike wrote, the world will simply shrug away my death with "The wide response will be, I know, "I thought he died a while ago."
Yet, I and the rest plod along, hoping that the decisions of today will lead us to happier tomorrow--even if the happiness will be tightly circumscribed by dollars and cents.
Here is the sonnet by Coleridge:
Work without Hope
By Samuel Taylor Coleridge
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair--
The bees are stirring--birds are on the wing--
And Winter slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring!
And I the while, the sole unbusy thing,
Nor honey make, nor pair, nor build, nor sing.
Yet, well I ken the banks where amaranths blow,
Have traced the fount whence streams of nectar flow.
Bloom, O ye amaranths! bloom for whom ye may,
For me ye bloom not! Glide, rich streams, away!
With lips unbrightened, wreathless brow, I stroll:
And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And hope without an object cannot live.
I have often wondered, in this blog too, why we humans tend to work so hard. Sometimes, if the context ever comes up, I even bug students in my classes about this. I tell them that biologically we are animals, and that for the longest time we even lived like that--the hunting/gathering ancestors of ours worked enough to get food for the day and then they called it quits. I tell them that the settled agriculture ruined it for us because ever since then we have been working hard from dawn to dusk and now we work round the clock thanks to artificial lighting and heating!
Of course, when I criticize the permanent agriculture, I am merely channeling Jared Diamond, who called that the worst mistake ever!
How do you show that the lives of people 10,000 years ago got better when they abandoned hunting and gathering for farming?
From the perspective of hard work and very little down time, the "progress" is questionable:
Scattered throughout the world, several dozen groups of so-called
primitive people, like the Kalahari bushmen, continue to support
themselves that way. It turns out that these people have plenty of
leisure time, sleep a good deal, and work less hard than their farming
neighbors. For instance, the average time devoted each week to obtaining
food is only 12 to 19 hours for one group of Bushmen, 14 hours or less
for the Hadza nomads of Tanzania. One Bushman, when asked why he hadn't
emulated neighboring tribes by adopting agriculture, replied, "Why
should we, when there are so many mongongo nuts in the world?"
Imagine a 14-hour work week. Oh, wait, that's the faculty life! ;)
In the contemporary world, in a life that the hunter-gatherers would not remotely relate to, we are proud of working hard. We are even suspicious of those who seemingly do not want to work as hard as some do. Ryan Avent has a lengthy essay pretty much defending himself while explaining why he--and many others like him--love to work hard and long hours.
BTW, perhaps you recognize the name Avent from having been a subscriber to the Economist. What I didn't know until I came across that essay by Avent is that the Economist has launched another periodical, called 1843.
The Economist’s bi-monthly magazine of ideas, culture and
lifestyle. Aimed at the globally curious, every issue includes in-depth
features, as well as culture, design, technology, travel, style, food
and drink, and body and mind.
You can guess what the significance of 1843 might be to that publication, right?
Anyway, back to Avent's defense of his long work days:
You might have thought that whereas, before, a male professional
worked 50 hours a week while his wife stayed at home with the children, a
couple of married professionals might instead each opt to work 35 hours
a week, sharing more of the housework, and ending up with both more
money and more leisure. That didn’t happen. Rather, both are now more
likely to work 60 hours a week and pay several people to care for the
house and children.
Why?
And that is exactly what Avent attempts to answer. Read that engaging piece.
I am not sold on the long, long work days. I remain convinced that it is pretty darn stupid to spend a good chunk of one's life merely working away. But, hey, if ever you are frustrated by all that hours of work and no leisure, then curse our ancestors whose brilliant idea it was to settle down and start farming and domesticating cattle more than 10,000 years ago!
