Working
This. Capitalism got me so hard in its grips that I usually can’t do much else than working, sleeping, eating and repeating.
Right there with you. I absolutely hate working for the sole privilege of having enough money to buy food, but nowhere near enough money to save up for a home.
Well I’m paid pretty well but 42h work weeks kill all my enjoyment of life. I just bought a new car to use in my free time and it mostly only saw the road from home to work.
When I work from home, I usually work from 7 to 18 and after that I read some books or meet some friends or go to some cultural place (museum, show, concert…). During breaks, I study japanese, get ready, read a chapter of a book, go for a walk or running if I need it, I eat my lunch of course, do my chores… Home office is so great to be more productive and make free time better. Chores feel like a fun break and I have none of them to do on week-ends.
When I work at the office, I try to take as much time as possible to connect with colleagues. My job is mostly lonely so I do not go that often to office. I try to go twice a week, it keeps me motivated and it’s nice to meet colleagues. And I have way less time to do actual work there.
On week-end, I go for walks in the city or take the regional train to go to the forest. I meet some friends. Sometimes I play video games, sometimes I code on personnal projects. I plan my next week after taking a look at my yearly and long-term objectives
I don’t work (disability), so i used to mostly just go on reddit all day, but since they announced the API was going to cost money, i ditched it. Now I just go on mastodon and lemmy all day.
Work, commute, clean, prep for next day, walk the dog, maybe read a manga or browse the web. Repeat and wait for the end.
I work from home as a helpdesk, so I spend a big part of my day on my computer. Apart from working I usually have some free time between cases and during break so I mostly scroll through Mastodon or Hacker News in Emacs. After work if I’m not too exhausted I would play music or trying to write some blog entries for my website. Other than that I would just slack through the night watching clips on YouTube (through either Invidious or Piped.video) or just going out and have some food or chat with my friends.
On weekends I usually have more time to do stuff so I would mostly be chilling outside for most of the day, and then come back home and slack my nights like I would do on my weekdays.
- Wake up
- Fall out of bed
- Find my way downstairs
- Drink some coffee
- Look up and notice that I’m late
- Find my coat and hat
- Make the light rail in seconds flat
- Find my way upstairs and have a smoke
- Somebody speaks and I go into a dream
- Start counting holes in Blackburn, Lancashire
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I don’t
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wake up
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do some exercises
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have breakfast
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check email (if there is urgent issues, do some work)
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listen to music
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go shopping for food
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check email
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listen to music
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have lunch
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check email
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listen to music
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read books
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check Lemmy
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sleep
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repeat
How do you get away with working so little?
Non commercial, remote work. Low budget life (bikes, no cars), relatively low rent. Buying clothes at recycle shops. Don’t drink, no parties. Trying to be a responsible Earthling.
Non commercial, remote work.
Non commercial? So you don’t earn money?
Guess my lack of proper English got in the way. Non profit sector was the wording needed.
Not lemmyreader but some office jobs are chill because management sucks and they pay people to do pretty much nothing while other workers are burnt out
How do I exploit this? I work in tech, it’s pretty easy to spot when I don’t set up computers that I didn’t do my work.
We also optimise time spent by looking at the tickets we booked on, which means I don’t even have any possibility to slack off. The faster I work the more work I get, the slower I work the more work I get.
How to have more free time? It is basically the question you’re asking. What to do with my working life? It is the question you should ask yourself, because you will spend a ton of time at work.
You’re not exactly a slave. You’re not sentenced to work at your company until the end. You can find a useful place to work for and do something useful to make the world a better place. But it is hard, especially when you are young. Because everyone want a useful job and those places need people that are ready to work. You can also not care about your job in your entire life and just want to enjoy selfish free time. It is not because you choose one path that you cannot change. About career advice, How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You) from Waitbutwhy is good.
Anyway, I am not here to tell you what to do with your life. Here come the advices to do as few as possible at work.
There 3 ways to improve your condition:
- Change your mindset
- Change your team
- Change your job
Change your mindset
KNOW YOUR RIGHTS. In a lot of western countries, you can protect yourself from toxic workplaces by knowing your rights.
Changing your mindset is the easiest.
Analyze your job and the objectives conditions of existence it creates.
Who are you working for? Greater good? Old rich asses? What value does it create? For you? What are you learning? What impact on your health? On your personal life? For them? How much money do you create directly? How much money do you create indirectly? Why do I care about my job? Am I too poor to afford to get fired? Is it just conditioning that makes me fear to loose my job? …
A lot has been written to help you. Just learn from the bests!
Krisis-group wrote Manifesto against Labour It has an historical interest but I find the critics of that work more interesting.
Abolition of work is closer to r/antiwork philosophy.
But I find, the best books to be: Bonjour Paresse of Corinne Maier and Demotivational Training of Guillaume Paoli. I think the book you should begin with is demotivational training from Guilluame Paoli. I put the libgen link at the end of the post.
Bonjour Paresse is nice too but it is adapted to big companies. Depending of your company, it is not as useful. She is also too pessimistic in my opinion. Life is not that bad once you found a lazy job and you can make the world better with a useful job.
From the wikipedia page of Bonjour Paresse:
Maier’s Ten Counterproposals
Sometimes referred to as the Ten Commandments for the Idle, these counterproposals have been widely reproduced on the Web in a shortened form:
You are a modern-day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfilment. You work for your pay-check at the end of the month, full stop. It's pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger. What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next restructuring comes around. You're not judged on merit, but on whether you look and sound the part. Use much leaden jargon: people will suspect you have an inside track Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You'll only have to work harder for what amounts to peanuts. Make a beeline for the most useless positions, (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your 'contribution to the wealth of the firm'. Avoid 'on the ground' operational roles like the plague. Once you've found one of these plum jobs, never move. It is only the most exposed who get fired. Learn to identify kindred spirits who, like you, believe the system is absurd through discreet signs (quirks in clothing, peculiar jokes, warm smiles). Be nice to people on short-term contracts. They are the only people who do any real work. Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last for ever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system. The problem is knowing when...The most useful is “Make a beeline for the most useless positions, (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your ‘contribution to the wealth of the firm’. Avoid ‘on the ground’ operational roles like the plague.” for you, imo.
Also, be ready for when the bullshit will end in your company. When they will fire a lot of people (like in Meta right now for example).
Change your team
Try to change of team if they are toxic. Otherwise “change your team” by raising their social awareness. Create a trade union section with your colleagues. Take your time and don’t get caught. Even in places where it is illegal to bust union by firing people, you can get fired. Ask for help to unions close to your home.
It is harder to exploit unionized workers that are aware of their rights.
Change your job
Maybe, after reading this you will think that you need to change of job. Do it if your job sucks that much. Prepare yourself before leaving your job. Find some contacts in your network.
If you like the people you are working with. A union can make your job better. Making your job better is the most realistic goal that your union section can follow.
Link to the books:
Manifesto against Labour: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/krisis-group-manifesto-against-labour
Demotivational training from Guillaume Paoli: https://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=6154F6A6BDBB780E6782D27C8C70565C
Interesting. I’ve read Bullshit jobs by David Graeber and Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World by Rutger Bregman. Both books show how a significant amount of people is trapped into doing work which is not rewarding. The latter book reads a bit like a history book and also covers some history of how leisure time developed over time.
thank you! Reading up on all this.
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