alt Hacker NewsI agree, but hard work is nothing new. Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it. I'm uncertain how to think about burnout in this context. Did they have burnout and were forced to work through it? Were they better at pacing themselves? Maybe the type of work (mental rather than physical labor) or circumstances (working for a corporation) today are more conducive to burnout?
Replies
> Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do? I doubt it.
Recent anthropological and archaeological research is challenging the traditional view that ancient lives were "nasty, brutish, and short." Instead, it appears that many ancient peoples worked less than eight hours per day and frequently took time off for festivals or to travel long distances to visit friends and family. And unlike today, work usually had a more flexible rhythm where short periods of hard work were separated by long periods of light work and rest.
I'm not sure how environmental factors play into this either. As a Gen-Xer, it often feels like the current late teens and early 20-somethings all have a crippling level of "anxiety" over what should be relatively simple human interaction, and this started well before COVID solidified this influence. Does this in general have an outsized effect on burnout?
I've felt true burnout twice in my life, the first time was after several years without any vacation time taken and about 3 months of 60-80 hour weeks. I literally hit a wall and couldn't even open a project in front of the computer, I was in a haze and not safe to even do anything. My brain was like, "nope!" More recently, a couple years ago it's been a larger state of dissolution about my career without a clear alternative so much as something that I would consider a disablement.
>Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do?
Yes. In the middle ages (and presumably in any agrarian society) people would work intensely for a few weeks and have the most of the year free.
> Did the average person throughout history have more leisure than we do?
Unambiguously yes. This is well documented and impossible to ignore.
Marshal Sahlins described it best in Stone Age Economics but reading Graeber will get you there or Levi Strauss if you’re into the whole structural anthropology thing
It's not about leisure time. It's about the meaning of work. In the past, effects of your work were very direct - carry shitload of stone from one place to another together with your cousin, build a house for you and your family. Nowadays it's all very abstract - have a useless Teams meeting with people you don't care about so that you can do press buttons that maybe change some metrics you don't even understand. What was the last time you felt "I'm happy I built this"?
I don’t have any citations, but I don’t think that “work” was at all similar to what we do now. Early hominid work would have involved many different tasks throughout the day, such as tracking, hunting, cleaning, gathering, building, repairing, traveling, etc, right? Compare that to “do this one task 8-16 hours in a row,” and it does seem like a mode of work we would be particularly ill suited for. Orrrr maybe I’m wrong, I’m using general knowledge and inductive reasoning, so I would not be suprised to learn I’m off base here.