Yeah, I think it’s worth reflecting that most people with families work 80-hour weeks. Richer people can pay others to take on part of that workload so they can do 50 or 60 hours of work for a company and still actually be working less. Which is fine, I guess, until they’re all like “why are you poors always so sluggish and tired and wanting to clock out right at 5 on the dot?”
Nah. This kind of person tends to do more family stuff, and participate in more community events, and do more work.
It’s ok to not be a busy body. I’m not one because it makes me miserable . But these imaginary tradeoffs we invent in our heads are often just justifications.
I'm not following your point. I've got a solid 30 hours of unpaid work a week, and it'd be closer to 40 if I had to commute, and when my kids were younger and I still had a commute it was around 50 hours, all on top of my actual job. I could and, if it weren't wildly financially irresponsible, absolutely would pay to make about 20 hours of that vanish at no harm whatsoever (benefit, actually) to my personal relationships & family, and then I'd have a lot more time and energy for other things. That's just... how clocks work, IDK. This is overwhelmingly the norm for people who can't afford to pay others to do lots of stuff for them.
What you're not differentiating here is between optional and mandatory tasks. If you're paying someone to cook, clean, grocery shop, or provide day to day child care you have time to do optional things, and people mistake that for being more efficient when in reality it's having the luxury to decide what to do with your time.
No adult with jobs and kids gets home and says “huh what will I fill my extra time with”. Everyone is busy. Now it’s up to effort, prioritization, and efficiency
The person who can't afford a cook and maid now needs to full those duties, cooking and cleaning, the person who can doesn't. The food is already made, the house is clean, the laundry is done, the kids are bathed, the fridge is full. They have time to decide what to do with. Sure, they could cook or clean, but that's now their choice. The activity is optional and can be prioritized instead of being mandatory.
There are certain tasks that people need to do every day that take time and, if you can afford to have someone do those tasks, suddenly you have more time you can do other things with.
The people I know who accomplish a lot of things also cook and clean for themselves.
Of course paying someone saves you time.
But the question is whether that’s the key differentiator holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no it’s not. There are people who do X, Y, and Z and don’t have a maid.
Maybe on some psychological level getting help is the only way you personally will have time (feels true for myself), but you have to recognize there is significant personality and skill difference when it comes to being busy.
> But the question is whether that’s the key differentiator holding you back from X, Y, and Z. And no it’s not. There are people who do X, Y, and Z and don’t have a maid.
As with a lot of things: individually, yes, this is the only useful way to look at it. Statistically? Over a population? No, of course high levels of unpaid obligations keep people from accomplishing things, in the sense that if you ease those up they accomplish more.
More to the point, I didn't make this about how it was "holding people back" so I'm now seeing why you're so resistant to it, since you think that's what I was getting at: no, it's about attitudes from executives who live life on easy mode then complain that their underlings are lazy.
I think his point is that such people exist, and they're on the upper end of some "distribution". The experience you're describing is more of the median experience.
Perhaps he's simply pointing out that with the right set of skills, you (or others) could also move yourself up (down?) the bell curve, and that your position on the curve isn't necessarily fixed. Treating it as such is inherently limiting.
I'm not saying that people can't do X, Y, and Z, there are people who are just that driven, or people who have a spouse that fills in those roles, but it's far easier for people who the necessities of life are optional, and when you're surrounded by people for whom it's all optional, they are going to assume it's optional for everyone and no assume why everyone isn't doing more.
People with enough income have a whole list of things that do not fill their time unless they want them to, that aren't really optional for people without enough money to pay to make them go away.
Laundry, cleaning, cooking, shopping, lawn work, home maintenance, car maintenance, hell even managing your schedule—for an awful lot of executives (among others) much or all of that is optional. They have more freedom with their time because they pay to make a bunch of problems go away (and if they don't, it's a choice). They come home from work and choose what to do—they may still be busy, by choice! But they have far fewer demands on their time. The people who work for them come home from work, work two to four more hours, then, maybe, choose what to do. And you better believe they work weekends, too.
Your comment doesn't make any sense to me. A single kid sucks more time than you have in a regular day. You are sleep deprived, and in survival mode for the first part.
If you have a lot of kids, after a certain age, the older ones can start to help around depending on age. It's how humanity survives in self-sufficient conditions.
For serial kid rearing families there is a plateau in difficulty, and then a steady decline (depending on the personality and health of the kids of course).
> My point is busy people do even more of the things that you think make you busy.
I don't think it makes me busy. It does.
> You think kids are taking up all your time? They have more kids and volunteer at the school, and run a church group, etc.
I'm not counting extremely-optional stuff.
> The clock is secondary because using time efficiently, planning, and classifying which hours you are awake and available are all skills.
Money puts this on extremely-easy mode, because for a huge variety of things "this is a problem that will take much time and attention" becomes "just pay someone to make it go away". I know, because I have enough money that sometimes I can do this (I didn't always, and I didn't grow up that way) and holy god, it makes life so incredibly easy when I can.
