| The recreational / downtime aspect shouldn't be overlooked. There's nothing wrong with taking time off for non-productive activities like dinner/drinks/hanging out. Living to work is a completely meaningless and pointless life. The problem with rationalization about time off is its a non-productive activity squared. Just admit it, wanted to hang out and goof off, and talking about work a bit made it not feel as inappropriate. No need to submit everyone else to illogical rationalizations. It takes a certain level of bravery to just say "One night, I wanted to drink, eat, and hang out, and that's OK" There are other, in some cases highly toxic, reasons to go on about networking. One scenario is dude at the bottom of the primate dominance hierarchy takes a night off from his 120 hour work week therefore is a worthless slacker who's not worth his salary, but if the boss at the top of the primate dominance hierarchy takes a night off from his 120 hour work week, he's a "professional networker developing leads". I'm not even remotely implying this is the case in the related article but I have seen this specific behavior in several other unrelated situations. One way to identify pathological behavior is to list specific concrete results. Not metrics or vague feelings. "Its helped me in the past" or "I've met people and talked about things" is a strong indication of uselessness. "I have 50000 followers on twitter" is a strong indication of uselessness. On the other hand a concrete result like "I met my current tax accountant at this mixer" or "I hired two guys I met at such and such con" are examples of non-pathological specific concrete results. This paragraph has to be read with respect to the "nothing wrong with occasional recreation" because if you have a side hobby of collecting twitter followers, no matter how useless that is, if it makes you smile that's all the justification you really need. Just don't make the rest of the world sit thru illogical attempts at rationalization about a hobby or recreation or faith or whatever. |