[soared]

A recent HN thread I cannot seem to find discussed the idea that currently in the US work is the default state, and leisure exists to refuel for work. At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure. This context affects everything in life - IE a microwave frozen meal is excellent in the work viewpoint (time value ratio), but if you enjoy cooking it’s horrible in the leisure viewpoint.

[Saline9515]

At which time exactly was leisure "the default state"? The only way to have this is by having a slave-like class while the idle elite could enjoy "leisure", or live in very low density, caloric rich environment, which doesn't last long or ends up with wars (and being enslaved by the neighboring tribe, if you are from subsaharian Africa).

[citizenpaul]

I think there is a growing online mix up of "leisure" time in the past. 99% of people were farmers, farming season is 3-4mo a year. That doesn't mean they had 9mo to do whatever they wanted. The time off was technically not their job but they were doing work on other survival tasks. If you consider re-roofing your shelter leisure time then yeah past people had more leisure time.

We have much more non-survival leisure time now.

[Insanity]

My girlfriend and I were talking about this the other day. We both have full time jobs and can only cook “real meal” in the weekend now that WFH ended.

It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least somewhat health conscious…

[Aurornis]

> We both have full time jobs and can only cook “real meal” in the weekend now that WFH ended.

Do you have extra long hours and/or an extreme long (1 hour) commute?

It’s common in my social circles for parents to work 8-5 or 9-6 and still cook weekday meals that are healthy. With some meal and grocery planning it’s not that hard, unless you of course have on of those 90+ minute commutes and a job that keeps you in office until 8PM.

Unless your definition of “real meal” is something more than I’m thinking of, like something that requires hours of prep.

> It sucks, I enjoy cooking and want to eat at least somewhat health conscious…

There are a lot of healthy meal planning (ahead of time prep) or quick and easy recipes out there. It’s pretty easy to prepare a healthy meal with steamed vegetables and a warmed protein in 10 minutes. We can even make an entire healthy meal in 30 minutes start to finish after doing it for years.

[Insanity]

More traditional “French” cuisine is not typically ready in 10-30 minutes when starting from scratch (or I’m just incredibly slow).

Cooking a full meal would at least take me an hour end-to-end. As a sibling comment mentioned, it’s more that when I finally get home (6:30 -7pm), I rarely have the energy to put in that kind of time.

So I end up making a quick pasta or other such dish that is ready in 30 minutes.

[Aurornis]

> More traditional “French” cuisine is not typically ready in 10-30 minutes when starting from scratch

I was responding to the part of your comment about not being able to eat healthy.

Cooking traditional French cuisine on weeknights is not the only way to have a healthy meal. Eating homemade French cuisine every weeknight would be a luxury for working class standards just about anywhere.

[RyanOD]

How many hours does your job and commute require?

I'd genuinely like to understand a job that is so time consuming that a person wouldn't be able to cook dinner. That doesn't seem ok to me.

[hnthrowaway121]

Super normal. Let’s say at the simplest, you take 30 mins to get ready to leave from waking up, 30 mins from front door to sitting at your desk, 30 mins to get to bed and sleep that’s 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the bare functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left with 12 hours. Work plus breaks at work is probably 8-10 at the best.

So OK, 3-5 hours left over for everything else, assuming perfect execution on the other parts. Do you have family or pets that need something? Do you have dishes and laundry and trash days and bills to pay? Do you want to watch TV, play a game, do any kind of hobby or leaning? Are you sick? Do you have friendships? Are you tired from work being physically or mentally demanding? Do you need to exercise?

All of those things need to be handled in the same few “outside work” hours each day.

[Aurornis]

> that’s 2 hours of your 24 just kinda handling the bare functional minumum. Sleep for 8 and now you are left with 12 hours.

24 - 2 - 8 leaves you with 14 hours, not 12 hours.

Sounds pedantic, but 2 hours is a lot in the context of your argument that we only have a few hours per day to do anything.

This conversation gets repeated ad nauseum on social media, yet in the real world it’s common for people to operate fine on normal weekly work schedules. Back when I was still reading Reddit there was an endless stream of posts like this complaining that there was no time left to do anything after work. Every time when the OP was asked where their time was going, it revealed one of two things: Either they were taking way too long to go through the basic motions of life (e.g 2 hour morning routines and 2 hour dinner prep every day with a 1 hour bedtime ritual) or they realized they actually had a lot of time but it was just disappearing somewhere and they couldn’t figure it out. That latter one could almost always be traced to spending too much time on phones or in front of TV.

[hnthrowaway121]

Yeah that’s a correct point, bad mental arithmetic there.

There are a few other unrealistic things too, but they fall in the other direction. Like I think it’s almost impossible to spend only 30 mins to leave my front door, get in the car, park at work and get into the building, get all the way to my desk and actually be in work mode. When I used to commute it was more like an hour, in busy traffic.

I have lived a lot of my life not having enough time to cook dinner mainly because I have often had a part time job in addition to a full time job, and was studying for a career change. So for a few years I was just kinda spinning plates. So that’s another way people end up caught out for time.

> in the real world it’s common for people to operate fine on normal weekly work schedules

I think it’s common but also maybe not even the majority of people are this way? There’s no good reason that “40 hours of work plus an arbitrary commute time” is a functional pattern for most people.

I think we have a mix of people who find this totally fine and have some energy left over at the end of the day, with people who are fully drained by their jobs. It’s hard for each cohort to relate to the other.

For some people, almost all leisure time is lost in an impossible quest to relax/recharge “enough” for the next day/week of work. Sometimes that explains the phone use or TV patterns. It’s an attempt to rest (plus their attention-taking and holding techniques work better on us when we are tired). It’s hard to plan on cooking if you know you’ll be in that state.

I tend to believe If you can find the right work and the right hours for you it’s a huge improvement in your life, and if you are on the wrong pattern with those it’s very bad and leads to a spiral. A lot of us have to accept the wrong pattern to make enough money to live and retire and support family.

[wiseowise]

Not op, the job is so soul and mentally draining that you “can’t afford” cooking.

[Insanity]

I should have clarified it, but you hit the nail on the head. I arrive home with little energy after a day in the office.

By the time I’m home it’s at least 6:30pm, usually a bit later. If I would work until 6:30 but from home instead of the office, I’d probably still be up for cooking.

Although you also need to get gym time in, family time, chores and other stuff…

[lentil_soup]

I have the same, my commute is a 10min walk, I have no dependants and make a good salary and I find it impossible to cook, I'm just depleted after work. If I add exercise and some social interaction then my time is spent recovering energy... It's probably a sign of burn out or of a bad job

[eru]

Have you considered cooking before work?

[bombcar]

Brutal comment because I’m a random Internet AI:

You can adjust what “real meal” means for you so that cooking at home is possible. The hardest part is finding time together if schedules don’t line up.

For two weeks write down what you do with your time, and then evaluate it afterwards and decide if it was the best use.

[Insanity]

Lol, fair enough, but I think this is a workaround rather than a solution.

[bombcar]

Don’t think of it as a workaround, think of it as a startup or MVP as you work toward developing a full product.

[Aurornis]

> At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure

It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of hard work was necessary to even survive through the winter each year.

What times in history had leisure as the default state? When was life so much easier than it is right now? Where were all the food, shelter, clothing, and entertainment materials coming from during this time and why was it so much more efficient than today?

[eru]

> It wasn’t that long ago that a lot of hard work was necessary to even survive through the winter each year.

Well, not all parts of the world have winters.

[Aurornis]

Every time this topic of historical leisure time comes up and people start bringing up problems with the theory, the goalposts start moving as fast as the conversation. Are we now only talking about people who didn’t live in areas with winters? Because those areas have different sets of problems including entirely different sets of insects, diseases, and predators that aren’t controlled by annual winters, among other things.

[jebarker]

> At other times in history, leisure was the default state and work existed to enable leisure.

What times/places are you thinking of when you write this?

[RobRivera]

The WHOLE US!?