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by mschuster91 1923 days ago
> and employees are demotivated and must therefore look to anything but work for fulfillment

It is a sad state of affairs that people are looking for "fulfillment" in work at all. Why are we still forced to work 40 hours a week or more to barely survive?

4 comments

Note how I never said that work should be your main source of fulfillment.

But yes, I whole-heartedly believe that people should derive some meaning out of work, as they devote ~40 of their waking hours to that activity, and it can be a cornerstone of a person's identity. And meaning can take many forms: that you're doing something for yourself, for your family, for your community or your nation, that you intrinsically enjoy the task at hand, or a combination thereof.

This is a common characteristic of thriving nations I've observed in my travels and readings, and conversely, I think that nations that do not have this trait are bound to decline or even crash.

Note how I also do not entirely blame Spaniards for a problem that is clearly systemic; on the other hand, I do believe that we as individual citizens should remain strong in the face of adversity, and not succumb to providential fatalism, as this will also inevitably lead to national misery.

People should make living wages, without forced overwork, burnout, and other sorts of abuse. But if I get fulfillment out of my work, could I please? It's not for everyone, but for me it's everything.
We don't need to work 40 hours a week to "barely survive", these 40 hours give people a standard of living that was unthinkable centuries ago. If you accept the lower standards of living of the past you can work much fewer hours. On the other hand if you want modern housing, electricity, water, gas, Internet, a modern house, a car, a smartphone, a computer, fridge, freezer, washing machine, dishwasher, etc., then of course you need to work to afford them.
Well, you don't want to design work to be anti-fulfilling, do you? I suppose it's OK if it's neutral.