[cjfont]

In each of those cases, none of those occupations can be really be interwoven into your life as tightly as a job where +90% of your labor is done via a laptop computer. If you're a farmer, woodworker, etc. you still need a separate place of work from where you live, be it a workshop or the fields. In the evening when the farmer returns to his house to rest, there is no question he's done for the day, and he can fully relax and sleep.

The dangerous mindset is that if you're capable of working whenever and wherever you are, then why should you ever really disconnect? This problem is an epidemic with people who don't know how to create a mental separation between work life and everything else, and I would argue that although it's easier to fall in the trap if you work over a VPN, it can also happen for any worker that is permitted/encouraged to work at any time of the day regardless of the situation.

[mikestew]

In each of those cases, none of those occupations can be really be interwoven into your life as tightly as a job where +90% of your labor is done via a laptop computer.

Software development is not a special occupational snowflake, and I'm going to guess that you've never been within the property boundaries of an actual farm, let alone actually done farm work. Your job is interwoven into your live so much because you choose to allow it, and don't know when to say "no" to your boss. Close your laptop. There, work's over. Farm work? Yeah, well, those fences aren't going to mend themselves.

You don't live at the office, do you? Not metaphorically, I mean literally sleep there. No? Guess where the farmer sleeps? At work. Every day. Extrapolate from there.

[s73v3r]

At the same time, you probably own the farm if you're living on it. Someone who's doing unpaid overtime for their company isn't getting any benefits from it.

[nradov]

Done for the day? Relax and sleep? Ha ha, I can tell you've never taken care of farm animals. What happens when they get sick, or have babies, or get loose, or a storm suddenly blows in, etc?

[abakker]

I can't help but think that the key here isn't Software vs everything else, but level of abstraction. It really seems the with software, and much computer driven work, your work as well as your products exist as purely abstracted projects. Woodworking requires abstract thinking, but the end result is usually something made out of wood, or the conclusion that you can't make what you were thinking about out of wood.

I do plenty of woodworking, including woodworking with CNC/Software. But, I do know when I'm done with a project because the abstractions are over, the plans are drawn and implemented, and the project is built. Then, its done.

[pjc50]

* farmer ... separate place of work from where you live*

For quite a lot of human history, and still in some countries, farm animals were kept at home. The "done for the day" was enforced as much by the lack of electric lighting as anything else.

[afarrell]

what about the mending of things around the house or the keeping of animals?