I think it's useful to distinguish between a job and your work. Your job is whatever gives you an income. Your work is the thing which you feel makes the best use of your creative and productive powers, and towards which you feel a sense of duty. A hobby, by the way, is like work something which you feel makes the best use of your creative and productive powers - but towards which you feel no sense of duty.
If you are lucky and/or have organised your life well, then your job and work are the same. But they needn't be so. For example, there's many a man who does a job like rubbish collecting, so he can support his work of being a husband and father.
For a roof over your head, you need a job. To keep your body, mind and soul healthy you need work - and a hobby.
If you're not sure whether it's a job or work, simply note whether you're checking the clock to see if it's time to stop or if it's time to start. Nobody loses themselves in their job, but people frequently lose themselves in their work.
If playing GTA all day makes the best use of your creative and productive powers, then I would suggest you need to develop your creative and productive powers to a higher level - it's less creative and productive than a rubbish collector, who at least helps keep the streets clean of filth and thus prettier than they would be without him. And if you feel a sense of duty towards GTA, you have problems, I'd say.
So the man used to illustrate this story had neither work nor hobby. He was just passing time. We all do that occasionally, but he made it a lifestyle. People are instinctively disgusted by people without work or hobbies, even if they can't articulate why. That's also why we dislike "hustle culture" guys - they demand we treat a job like work.
This brings up something I've been thinking a lot about lately (and that I hope to write about soon): the incompatibility of optimization and values as modes of deciding.
FIRE guy is doing the "optimal" thing. In the *game* he was playing, he scored as many points as possible (money) and now he has abundance (time). But because optimization relies so heavily on quantification, it must consider any hour spent or dollar gained as good as another. It can't distinguish between an hour of volunteering and an hour of day trading, an hour with your grandkids and an hour of GTA, a dollar spent on groceries and a dollar spent on a bigger boat. I actually think most people, if asked, could draw a pretty compelling picture of the good life, but when they make choices in reality, they optimize themselves out of virtue.
Ya. Said, another way, in a somewhat different context by Upton Sinclair: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Thanks Jeff. I've read much of it and find it super interesting. Much of my own life revolves around it. Anything in particular you feel someone should check out?
Esp interesting b/c it highlights how eudaimonic pursuits align with the experience of meaning but also how more seemingly hedonic experiences - like simply being in a good mood - are associated with the experience of meaning.
I suspect the loser in this reddit post retired from a bullshit job. The whole FIRE movement is heavily predicated on bullshit jobs: if you get some value or feel like you provide value to the world (and want to do so), then you would more likely be happy to keep working. But if you don’t get anything from your job besides money, then what incentive is there to work, if you can get money some other less energy- or time-intensive way? The modern bullshit job also really conditions you to be a dopamine slave. If you have to spend eight hours at the office (or even virtually “clocked in”), it’s a lot easier to use the 5-15 minute sections of downtime that arise just to scroll through instagram than to work on something valuable that isn’t part of your job portfolio. And that conditions you to do the same when you leave work for leisure time at home, and when you retire from it entirely. If you’re alienated from the value of your labour, or worse: if your labour has no value at all, then why bother? Why not aim for the highest earning job, and fulfill your 17-year old self’s fantasy of greeting high and playing video games, if you haven’t given yourself an opportunity to do anything better on the way? It’s a recursive cycle where money is the only thing valued, because society doesn’t demonstrate that anything else is of value.
It's significant that a number of the FIRE people spend 1-2 years doing nothing, and then find themselves a job or start a business. They tend to enjoy it more than the pre-FIRE days simply because they can walk away at any time, and/or refuse customers they dislike. This rather takes the pressure off things.
My partner leads a similar life at age 42 and I don’t think he’s a loser. I literally think he won life. He figured it out. He’s one of the happiest, most relaxed people I’ve ever known. He never gets sick even when everyone else is sick and he will probably outlive us all. I can only admire him for it.
He did win, but is that a reason to throw away time? She married a man she could look up to. She cant look up to a guy who spends his days stoned, playing video games.
If he spent part of his time volunteering, on a creative pursuit, or doing anything outside of the house, I believe she'd be fine with it.
Thats a good point. If my partner made 75k for doing nothing, I'd try to move somewhere cheaper where we could live on that alone and spend our days frolicking naked in the woods.
I would never take photos while not wearing any clothes against a landscape of snow and ice. And I would never take a photo with a robe half off, doing an impression of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. Only a completely insane person would engage in such behavior.
As a lawyer seeking financial independence, this post really resonates with me. I struggle with "why" I am chasing financial independence and its corollary, early retirement. Is it because I don't like my job, or would I like the job more if there wasn't the pressure of money? And I fear that reaching financial independence would reveal that it was just another goal, and now that I have met it, I am dissatisfied.
I've always been fascinated to talk to lawyers about why they do their job. My experience, from my admittedly limited sample, is that in many firms it's the very worst clients (morally) who generate the most business, who actually keep the lights on. The people/business people who are above board and rational may have an occasional lawsuit, but it's the crazies and immoral who are constantly pushing boundaries, breaking laws, and getting caught up in courtroom dramas.
Which puts lawyers in a tough spot. Did you become a lawyer to spend your life helping immoral people out of jams? What is the cost to you?
I've no idea what your field of law is or if this applies to you. But I don't think your uncertainty is unanswerable. I think you could experiment and find out.
Also, if you can find a way to manage one by putting aside some money and it wouldn't destroy your career, sabbaticals tend to reveal both what's missing and what direction might be desirable. I've taken a few and found them enlightening, revealing what I couldn't see when enmeshed in the 9-5....or 6-7, or whatever.
Every Universal Basic Income apologist (or shall I say slave?) should read your article !!!
Twice a day !! ... at least !!!
For sure you know about the outcomes of restricted studies done on the topic; they're a complete disaster and highly detrimental.
Useless eaters indeed !!
The poor guy mentioned before seems to be practicing a new form of leisure: POTium ...
Most probably good ole' Ben nowadays would shut himself up in his estate because the old-way, cohesive, high mores society of the days gone by that he successfully tried to improve from inside, does not exist any more ; a detrimental colatteral damage since the dubious advent of mass-mobility ...
As a UBI apologist myself I wrestle with these questions.
I’m a free time aficionado, well versed in its ups and downs. Would endless downtime allow us to appreciate life, dedicate endless time to interesting hobbies and learned pursuits? Spend more with the people we love? Or would it be like an endless weed bender weekend full of video games, doomscrolling, and never finding the energy to tidy up? Like we’d all be bored and depressed in short order?
I like to believe in the former, and at the very least we should also recognize the unpaid labor that allows society to keep going (childcare, elder care, etc). But the risk of the latter is there.
I just think the employment apologists are in an even worse position these days. 150 years ago 50% of people were employed in food production. Now it’s 1%. Some have said how wonderful it is that we always find an outlet for that unused labor, but the truth may be that employment has well overstated it’s welcome. Are we really all doing essential work, or have bullshit jobs, pointless training requirements, and endless email and meetings expanded to waste ever more of our time. Does society really need 8 hours a day if 4 of those hours are spend slowly looking through email before you can go home?
I’m writing from my own semi BS job right now. These days more and more jobs are ‘stepping stone’ positions that pad the resume without offering opportunity for advancement. If you are a smart industrious worker you probably use AI to write code to automate the worst parts of your workflow, leaving you with more time to kill. I frequently find myself wishing I could work 2-6 hour days then go home.
I just worry that as much as weed and GTA is a pretty depressing vision, so is the 9-5 as ‘Redundant Data Spreadsheet Analyst II’
We all face this question no matter whether we are retired or not. What do we do with our free time? For some that question is about 1 hour of the day, for others it is 3 or 10.
Do we fully indulge in hedonism? do we push our experience to its maximum potential? or somewhere in the middle.
I am not wealthy, but make enough to live a good life with my family. I find myself constantly thinking about this, how much fun is too much fun? After a weekend of leisure I can't help but feel I have untapped potential to make a bigger impact on the world.
Its one of the reasons why I spend time on substack, where I feel there are important conversations - and the potential to leave a legacy behind.
I'm fascinated by the concept of too much of a good thing and how somehow the mind/body knows even when we can't rationally explain it (or is there some sort of delusion going on?). I've had vacations that were fantastic that nonetheless went a day or two too long — I was being called to do something constructive. Often, a day or two in inspiration strikes and I really want to work on something.
It's like meals of cake. The first bite might be fine. But a plateful is sickening and leaves you full of regrets.
I wonder how much this "too must idleness," awareness relates to:
1) Lack of focus. If I could deeply focus amid the vacation/idleness, would I feel the same?
2) Lack of purpose. If my vacation was directed toward some concrete purpose I found valuable in addition to relaxation, would I feel the same?
3) Lack of skill: If the vacation/idleness required the utilization of skill, would I feel the same.
Anyway, I'll be coming at this question and how it relates to money/goal-oriented doing in next Monday's essay.
Diversified, adventurous, productive, challenging hobbies that hopefully interlace various fields whatever they might be, solve ALL these problems recently created by a highly efficient, modern society with almost 100% division of labor.
No 3rd. country citizen (local cleptocrats exempted) will ever have to spend a single thought on these topics ...
I think it's useful to distinguish between a job and your work. Your job is whatever gives you an income. Your work is the thing which you feel makes the best use of your creative and productive powers, and towards which you feel a sense of duty. A hobby, by the way, is like work something which you feel makes the best use of your creative and productive powers - but towards which you feel no sense of duty.
If you are lucky and/or have organised your life well, then your job and work are the same. But they needn't be so. For example, there's many a man who does a job like rubbish collecting, so he can support his work of being a husband and father.
For a roof over your head, you need a job. To keep your body, mind and soul healthy you need work - and a hobby.
If you're not sure whether it's a job or work, simply note whether you're checking the clock to see if it's time to stop or if it's time to start. Nobody loses themselves in their job, but people frequently lose themselves in their work.
If playing GTA all day makes the best use of your creative and productive powers, then I would suggest you need to develop your creative and productive powers to a higher level - it's less creative and productive than a rubbish collector, who at least helps keep the streets clean of filth and thus prettier than they would be without him. And if you feel a sense of duty towards GTA, you have problems, I'd say.
So the man used to illustrate this story had neither work nor hobby. He was just passing time. We all do that occasionally, but he made it a lifestyle. People are instinctively disgusted by people without work or hobbies, even if they can't articulate why. That's also why we dislike "hustle culture" guys - they demand we treat a job like work.
I agree with most of this and have a piece set for next week going into it further
This brings up something I've been thinking a lot about lately (and that I hope to write about soon): the incompatibility of optimization and values as modes of deciding.
FIRE guy is doing the "optimal" thing. In the *game* he was playing, he scored as many points as possible (money) and now he has abundance (time). But because optimization relies so heavily on quantification, it must consider any hour spent or dollar gained as good as another. It can't distinguish between an hour of volunteering and an hour of day trading, an hour with your grandkids and an hour of GTA, a dollar spent on groceries and a dollar spent on a bigger boat. I actually think most people, if asked, could draw a pretty compelling picture of the good life, but when they make choices in reality, they optimize themselves out of virtue.
Ya. Said, another way, in a somewhat different context by Upton Sinclair: "It's difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it."
Shiny things are shiny.
Great piece. You might be interested in the psych research on eudaimonia and hedonia.
Thanks Jeff. I've read much of it and find it super interesting. Much of my own life revolves around it. Anything in particular you feel someone should check out?
This review on the psychological science of meaning is well worth reading:
https://www.annualreviews.org/docserver/fulltext/psych/72/1/annurev-psych-072420-122921.pdf?expires=1736973889&id=id&accname=guest&checksum=8F1178A770B9BA4DB9F1ED86EC120CF2
Esp interesting b/c it highlights how eudaimonic pursuits align with the experience of meaning but also how more seemingly hedonic experiences - like simply being in a good mood - are associated with the experience of meaning.
Related, check out @ToddKashdan 's recent work on the science of purpose: https://toddkashdan.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Kashdan-et-al-Purpose-AP.pdf
I suspect the loser in this reddit post retired from a bullshit job. The whole FIRE movement is heavily predicated on bullshit jobs: if you get some value or feel like you provide value to the world (and want to do so), then you would more likely be happy to keep working. But if you don’t get anything from your job besides money, then what incentive is there to work, if you can get money some other less energy- or time-intensive way? The modern bullshit job also really conditions you to be a dopamine slave. If you have to spend eight hours at the office (or even virtually “clocked in”), it’s a lot easier to use the 5-15 minute sections of downtime that arise just to scroll through instagram than to work on something valuable that isn’t part of your job portfolio. And that conditions you to do the same when you leave work for leisure time at home, and when you retire from it entirely. If you’re alienated from the value of your labour, or worse: if your labour has no value at all, then why bother? Why not aim for the highest earning job, and fulfill your 17-year old self’s fantasy of greeting high and playing video games, if you haven’t given yourself an opportunity to do anything better on the way? It’s a recursive cycle where money is the only thing valued, because society doesn’t demonstrate that anything else is of value.
It's significant that a number of the FIRE people spend 1-2 years doing nothing, and then find themselves a job or start a business. They tend to enjoy it more than the pre-FIRE days simply because they can walk away at any time, and/or refuse customers they dislike. This rather takes the pressure off things.
My partner leads a similar life at age 42 and I don’t think he’s a loser. I literally think he won life. He figured it out. He’s one of the happiest, most relaxed people I’ve ever known. He never gets sick even when everyone else is sick and he will probably outlive us all. I can only admire him for it.
Guy needs a new wife.
I was going to make a “Thanks for the Roman history lesson, but why can’t this guy just get high and play GTA all day?” joke in response to this.
This guy might benefit from sone hobbies though.
He did win, but is that a reason to throw away time? She married a man she could look up to. She cant look up to a guy who spends his days stoned, playing video games.
If he spent part of his time volunteering, on a creative pursuit, or doing anything outside of the house, I believe she'd be fine with it.
Idk. She’s probably just jealous. I’d advise her to also quit her job.
Thats a good point. If my partner made 75k for doing nothing, I'd try to move somewhere cheaper where we could live on that alone and spend our days frolicking naked in the woods.
at this time ??? ... 🤣🤣🤣
Better, just wait until the next solstice ...
I would never take photos while not wearing any clothes against a landscape of snow and ice. And I would never take a photo with a robe half off, doing an impression of Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs. Only a completely insane person would engage in such behavior.
100%
As a lawyer seeking financial independence, this post really resonates with me. I struggle with "why" I am chasing financial independence and its corollary, early retirement. Is it because I don't like my job, or would I like the job more if there wasn't the pressure of money? And I fear that reaching financial independence would reveal that it was just another goal, and now that I have met it, I am dissatisfied.
I've always been fascinated to talk to lawyers about why they do their job. My experience, from my admittedly limited sample, is that in many firms it's the very worst clients (morally) who generate the most business, who actually keep the lights on. The people/business people who are above board and rational may have an occasional lawsuit, but it's the crazies and immoral who are constantly pushing boundaries, breaking laws, and getting caught up in courtroom dramas.
Which puts lawyers in a tough spot. Did you become a lawyer to spend your life helping immoral people out of jams? What is the cost to you?
I've no idea what your field of law is or if this applies to you. But I don't think your uncertainty is unanswerable. I think you could experiment and find out.
Also, if you can find a way to manage one by putting aside some money and it wouldn't destroy your career, sabbaticals tend to reveal both what's missing and what direction might be desirable. I've taken a few and found them enlightening, revealing what I couldn't see when enmeshed in the 9-5....or 6-7, or whatever.
Nice, really NICE !!!👍👍👍
Every Universal Basic Income apologist (or shall I say slave?) should read your article !!!
Twice a day !! ... at least !!!
For sure you know about the outcomes of restricted studies done on the topic; they're a complete disaster and highly detrimental.
Useless eaters indeed !!
The poor guy mentioned before seems to be practicing a new form of leisure: POTium ...
Most probably good ole' Ben nowadays would shut himself up in his estate because the old-way, cohesive, high mores society of the days gone by that he successfully tried to improve from inside, does not exist any more ; a detrimental colatteral damage since the dubious advent of mass-mobility ...
As a UBI apologist myself I wrestle with these questions.
I’m a free time aficionado, well versed in its ups and downs. Would endless downtime allow us to appreciate life, dedicate endless time to interesting hobbies and learned pursuits? Spend more with the people we love? Or would it be like an endless weed bender weekend full of video games, doomscrolling, and never finding the energy to tidy up? Like we’d all be bored and depressed in short order?
I like to believe in the former, and at the very least we should also recognize the unpaid labor that allows society to keep going (childcare, elder care, etc). But the risk of the latter is there.
I just think the employment apologists are in an even worse position these days. 150 years ago 50% of people were employed in food production. Now it’s 1%. Some have said how wonderful it is that we always find an outlet for that unused labor, but the truth may be that employment has well overstated it’s welcome. Are we really all doing essential work, or have bullshit jobs, pointless training requirements, and endless email and meetings expanded to waste ever more of our time. Does society really need 8 hours a day if 4 of those hours are spend slowly looking through email before you can go home?
I’m writing from my own semi BS job right now. These days more and more jobs are ‘stepping stone’ positions that pad the resume without offering opportunity for advancement. If you are a smart industrious worker you probably use AI to write code to automate the worst parts of your workflow, leaving you with more time to kill. I frequently find myself wishing I could work 2-6 hour days then go home.
I just worry that as much as weed and GTA is a pretty depressing vision, so is the 9-5 as ‘Redundant Data Spreadsheet Analyst II’
We all face this question no matter whether we are retired or not. What do we do with our free time? For some that question is about 1 hour of the day, for others it is 3 or 10.
Do we fully indulge in hedonism? do we push our experience to its maximum potential? or somewhere in the middle.
I am not wealthy, but make enough to live a good life with my family. I find myself constantly thinking about this, how much fun is too much fun? After a weekend of leisure I can't help but feel I have untapped potential to make a bigger impact on the world.
Its one of the reasons why I spend time on substack, where I feel there are important conversations - and the potential to leave a legacy behind.
Ya.
I'm fascinated by the concept of too much of a good thing and how somehow the mind/body knows even when we can't rationally explain it (or is there some sort of delusion going on?). I've had vacations that were fantastic that nonetheless went a day or two too long — I was being called to do something constructive. Often, a day or two in inspiration strikes and I really want to work on something.
It's like meals of cake. The first bite might be fine. But a plateful is sickening and leaves you full of regrets.
I wonder how much this "too must idleness," awareness relates to:
1) Lack of focus. If I could deeply focus amid the vacation/idleness, would I feel the same?
2) Lack of purpose. If my vacation was directed toward some concrete purpose I found valuable in addition to relaxation, would I feel the same?
3) Lack of skill: If the vacation/idleness required the utilization of skill, would I feel the same.
Anyway, I'll be coming at this question and how it relates to money/goal-oriented doing in next Monday's essay.
Diversified, adventurous, productive, challenging hobbies that hopefully interlace various fields whatever they might be, solve ALL these problems recently created by a highly efficient, modern society with almost 100% division of labor.
No 3rd. country citizen (local cleptocrats exempted) will ever have to spend a single thought on these topics ...