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We dont but if you spend your life energy at a company, they are very grateful and you may get a watch after 30 years of service.
“Here’s all the time you’ll never get back. Now shoo so we can pay someone younger less money to do your job.”
It’s simple, I’m not.
It’s even worse when you have one or more small children. When they’re awake they need most of your attention and when they’re asleep you can finally try to undo all the chaos they wrought.
Who says people do? My house is clean and I spend a lot of time with my friends. But I still don’t have the time to work out and I haven’t worked for 4 months.
When I was in my last relationship, it was always a struggle between spending time together or going to the gym.
I lost my job a few months ago and so I’ve had an inordinate amount of free time and it made me realize the same thing. Even with essentially infinite time I can’t get everything that needs to be done, done.
“Things that need to be done” is a gas-state that grows to fill the volume of time that you have.
High pressure gas state
Your time may be endless but your fatigue level won’t care.
great quote!
I think most people don’t. I live in a small house with my wife, no kids, and even that gets overwhelming somehow. Some days are just lost to work, cleaning, and maintenance.
We do aim to have at least a couple of days a week where we don’t have to do anything at all. Sometimes it works out, sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it doesnt take long for burnout to set in.
The trick is to live in a big public space together with all your friends and share the labor, the rewards, and the love. Then reap genuine enjoyment and physical/emotional growth from the work you’re doing while you support others doing the same.
The problem is when you forced to compartmentalize the tasks, with the expectation that “exercising” and “working” and “socializing” and “eating” and “cleaning” are all distinct activities you micromanage. Living together with people you enjoy spending time around goes a long, long way towards killing many birds with few stones. Then making and eating and cleaning up food isn’t something you do distinct from hanging out and relaxing. Biking around gets you energized and sends you where you need to go. Many hands make light work of seemingly onerous tasks. Hell, sharing a shower with your partner(s) can be as intimate as it is efficient.
But all of this is predicated on a foundation - social roots you build up over years/decades. Every time you change schools or look for a new job on the other side of the country or having a falling out with family/friends or switch housing leases because the rent went up or chase a new zip code because the school your kid goes to sucks or watch a close friend or old neighbor do the same, it fucks everything back up to square one.
People who have this close-knit, long-term social circle and don’t need to constantly uproot themselves can “do it all” easier than the folks who are told to endlessly hustle in search of that next nut.
It doesn’t help that I don’t particularly like most people I meet and living with or close to anyone other than my own family has been hell everywhere I went.
The “exercise” part for most of the world just comes from the fact that every trip isn’t just a walk to your mobile couch that takes you to another place with static couches.
I swear to god though. I’m not “weak” everywhere. The small muscles I use to move the mouse on my computer, shake my leg all day sitting because I don’t want to sit, move my foot to drive, they are all MASSIVE for their size.
I’m so exhausted from trying to NOT move my body all day that I’m way too tired to do actual healthy exercise. Yoga, helps but it’s just a means of keeping things from getting worse. If I could avoid all those awful things I’m sure yoga would improve things over time. But 90% of waking hours are forcing me to hurt my body.
For every 1 time I remember to squat instead of bend my back there are 100 times I’m too focused to get distracted for 30 minutes at how I need to do better.
Too bad the only way to achieve this currently is joining a fucking cult
A fucking cult you say? 👉😏👈
Look into co-housing communities or eco-villages. There are ways to do this even within our overly bureaucratic system.
Do those communities just accept anyone in your area? In all the cities I’ve lived, you have to apply to these communities with a desired skill from a list; it’s necessary for filtering out people who think making lattes and doing tarot readings are key skills.
I don’t mean to offend at all, and in a co-housing situation those are nice and probably welcome, but not key skills, no.
Not a bad idea actually. “Join my cult, it’s just a social club I swear 😅”
Translation: people that aren’t forced to live in isolated boxes and work in isolated boxes have better lives
Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky tacky
What you describe is accurate for non-wealthy, mid-class and above.
It’s working as designed.
It’s hard. And it’s an ultra-nightmare setting playing irl with ADHD on.
Most people don’t. Social media makes it seem like they do, but most people’s lives are at least somewhat messy.
Eh, it’s not so bad. I build walking time into my commute everyday, and most of my meals are quick, easy, and cheap with minimal time required for preparation and cleanup. I do my more time-intense cooking, grilling, and smoking for fun meals on the weekends.
I stay relatively tidy anyway, so most cleaning tasks aren’t too arduous, and I keep a few evenings available during the week to hang out with friends, play vidya, or watch movies.
I’m sure all of this will go out the window when we have our first kid in six months or so, but at the moment I’m feeling like my life is pretty balanced, all things considered.
Enjoy this balance, in 6 months it will be gone immediately. (Also congrats)
Thanks! :)
It never fails that once I finally start feeling like I’ve gotten control over my life, the universe finds a way to throw me a curve that starts me over at the beginning again.
I suppose that’s what keeps life interesting and keeps me growing as a person.
Literally every week, at least one of these things gets sacrificed and then I try to make up for it next week.
That’s the neat part, I don’t!
Yeah the secret is not staying on top of all of these at once but finding a good balance
What the hell are you spending your time on?
Even my anxiety, ADHD, depressed ass manages to find time to socialize a bit. That’s accounting for several hours a day of being stuck before acting.
Wait if I assume you are Americans, do you have limited work hours per day over there?
Wait if I assume you are Americans, do you have limited work hours per day over there?
Yes and no. Depends wildly based on industry, job type, and income level. Generally we stick to a 40-hour a week at your place of work, unless you’re a wage earner (which could be much more or less). That said, it doesn’t always work that way.
The worst case is a suburban or rural lifestyle that is one hour (or more!) from the office, where logistics (e.g. groceries, auto maintenance, healthcare) and friends are almost as far away from home. That adds up to a ton of time in transit, with a handful of hours to yourself each working day for the rest, if you want to sleep a healthy amount. Then you add kids, daycare, after-school activities, and there’s literally no free time left.
Do at least two at once
Have enough space
Use company time to do all of them
Nothing about the American lifestyle helps with any of this.
I like cooking a hands-off kind of dinner that takes a while, so I have time to clean or whatever while I wait. If I have to schedule appointments, that happens while I’m on the clock. I wish exercise wasn’t such a focused task. Feels like forever just doing one tedious thing.
Exercise should happen during commute, social time, any time you’re sitting and not doing anything important, a real job that requires you actually do things.
Social also overlaps nicely with food.
The best way to manage life is to just rub one out to extreme German pornography every time you complete a task.
That’s just more cleanup!
I just lick it off. I call it recycling.
Is rubbing one out considered completing a task?
Depends if you get distracted by something on the internet that isn’t porn half way through.
Depending on the method it may be considered exercise.
And thus an infinite regression was born
The Germans aren’t going to like this…
