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- Hacker News
- Dissing Biscoff cookies in the opening paragraph? Not sure I can read the rest...
- I've been wfh for about 5 years now. I go to a nearby coworking space with a dedicated desk. It's the best compromise for separating home and work-life.
I remember years ago my office had an issue and I worked from a cafe. It was so relaxing. I asked my boss at the time and he freaked out and that was the end of that.
The worst feeling of working in an office is feeling like you have to be there when you're not doing anything. That's outside of the commute.
by dayvid - This was a beautiful read. I work from home 100% but I do enjoy occasional trips into the office to see people in 3D. I completely relate to the decompression time of the commute - I used to have a 20 minute bus ride (no transfers) which was perfect.
Saving my brain from attention fracture via smartphone is a big theme for me right now as well. That's a whole other effort, but I appreciate the use of workday routine as a countermeasure against phone addiction.
by mekane8 - I want to work at a company like that someday. All I've known are factory equipment call-outs, temporary container offices, bosses threatening to kill me if the equipment stops, and clients saying they'll bankrupt me if the code fails. I wonder what it feels like to work in a proper downtown office. What I experience is being sent as a contractor to good companies, writing the code that generates their core revenue, but then eating at cheap restaurants nearby with my own money. I wonder when I'll ever get to feel those small everyday happinesses.by jdw64
- It's a rarer and rarer thing. Most people's experience of work is nothing like this, just a desperate struggle to stay employed at all, ideally in an industry where their skills give them some kind of leverage.by ElevenLathe
- Don't glamorize it too much in your head, the modern downtown office isn't too great in my opinion
Big open office spaces crammed with people working elbow to elbow. Very noisy. The problem of bosses threatening to kill you still might exist, asshole bosses exist in every work setting
It's probably still a better workplace than factories but probably not as much better as you're imagining
Edit: My favorite workplace ever was located at an industrial building. We had our own secured parking lot we didn't have to pay for, we had actual cubicles, and lots of space between people and teams. It was awesome not having to spend all day with headphones in to block out the sound of people on sales calls. We had a gym that was just for people at the company! It was awesome
Then they moved us downtown and it sucked. My commute got so much longer and my workspace got so much worse
- But taking comfort in activities that deliver small drips of dopamine slowly instead of a truckload of it instantly is helping me a lot, I think
Would be pretty interesting to figure out if the amount of dopamine really is smaller. I'm not convinced.
But anyway: the bigger picture I've been wondering a lot about lately is whether this dopamine addiction is ok to begin with. I've never had much issues with the 'truckloads' OP names but all things considered my life is basically a journey from one dopamine shot (coffee ritual, sport, problem solving, sex, music, drugs) to the next and everything in between feels not too interesting. And I'm fearful for what's going to happen when I can't do some of those anymore when getting older.
by stinos - I have a "rich" life outside of work - guitar, gardening, prairie restoration, gym 3 times a week, dogs, and I work security or bartend 1 event per week (typically music).
I can only have this "rich" life outside of work because I don't commute to an office daily.
But we're all different. Kudos to the poster for a good read and for finding something that works for them.
by apercu - I was about to say something similar: OP talks about how in office days support their routine but adding the office to my day would do more to disrupt a routine than solidify it. As of right now my workdays, despite being WFH, are shockingly rigid in their form. Wake up, coffee, weightlifting and a podcast, start work, coffee break around 1030, lunch at noon with wifey, back to work until the afternoon doldrums set it, then exercise bike to try to force some oxygen up above my shoulders, then finish out the day, then dinner. Adding everything that an in-office day entails would mean developing two routines, one for office days and one for wfh days, and also that the number of ways that my routine could be disrupted on office days going up significantly. I'm not here to prescribe my way of life for everyone, I'm actually quite strange, but I do think that it's important to point out that there are ways to get the stability that people thrive on in WFH situations or in the office.
- > These exercises in slight discomfort tolerance throughout the day increase my defense against going full vegetable...
As much as I absolutely wanted to veg out doing full WFH, I saw the light and was inevitably forced to do the same.
I was enjoying a social life that revolved around drinking and staying out late. It caught up with me in the form of some mild health symptoms, but it caused significant anxiety.
I was suddenly hyper aware of the damage I was doing and had to drop the bad habits. I'm doing much better now, but can only wonder in horror what that very well-traveled road looked like. Many generations before me would have grit their teeth and suffered under that inescapable inertia for decades.
The symptoms that come with obesity, drinking, and a terrible diet like an elevated A1C, high cholesterol, hypertension, etc. are easy to ignore when you are stuck running the hamster wheel to earn a living. I had to admit they weren't just temporary from the hangover anymore and could become permanent.
I'm very thankful I got to turn things around in private without the office peer pressure.
by sublinear - It's interesting that this article is mostly focused on the merits of living a simple / predictable life, whereas I get the impression that the main improvement here might be just not working from home anymore (I guess the author agrees since they link to this older post: https://mrmarket.bearblog.dev/remote-work-is-bad-for-you/).by Semkas
- Like the author, I enjoyed wfh for some time, but also found this creeping crushing loneliness settling on my brain after some years. My solution was to find a co-working space that actually has a community (most spaces are just places to rent a desk). It's helped me set up a routine and get some water cooler talk in a few times a week.
But more importantly, through the community I've met some new friends, so my social life blew up. Now I rely less on the co-working space and more on meeting with the new friend group for sports and debates.
It's been an adventure in finding out what makes me tick and finding ways of addressing it in healthy ways.
- Having a routine itself is incredibly useful to me as well. On my WFH days I don’t have a routine so my time devolves into something amorphous, resulting in me spending time without fully understanding where the time gets spent. Having a routine changes that. When you do things consistently on a schedule, you become more aware of time itself. For the same reason, a commute by train is better than a commute by car or by bike because the train forces a schedule.
I like the idea of a fixed 3pm tea time. This is another fun way to inject more structure into the passing of time. I’m going to try it.
by kccqzy - Yeah starting to feel the need to play Defense here too. Especially on YouTube. Even with a subscribe driven flow of known creators it’s getting bad. Everything is about something negative with emotive thumbnails and clickbait titles even from the better creators. And Google has now crammed their unwanted “relevant for you” along with shorts into the top of the subscribe feed. So now even that last trick to get a non algo feed is infested.
It’s rapidly getting unusable even with Adblock etc
by Havoc - Now that Shorts removed the dislike button it seems to have gone to complete shit. I used to get shorts that were obviously a bit engagement-bait but also relevant and interesting. Now it's just 100% engagement slop and there's no way to give negative feedback. I tried "liking" everything that wasn't slop - made no difference.by inigyou
- There's a nice extension called unhook which blocks a ton of the YouTube trash, you can configure it to hide different things. At this point, they only thing I see on YouTube is a search box and my subscriptions.by rozap
- This was a very pleasant read. There's (justifiably) a lot of debate about AI prose on this forum, which has become tiring. It's refreshing to read something so grounded. Doubly so while looking at a packet of Belvita breakfast biscuits on my own desk.
As far as lo-fi goes, I must recommend Leavv. Mind Garden and Tales of a Flowing Forest. Both pre-AI music albums that are lovely to work/study to.
by m_w_ - To each their own of course, but I personally don’t get the point of avoiding AI music when what you’re listening to (lofi beats) is essentially elevator background tier noise anyway. I listen to various types of it all the time and I honestly couldn’t tell you the difference between AI or not in this genre.
Listening to Tokyo Echo Sounds right now, is it AI? Probably, but how tf would I even know if I did care?
by phoghed - I couldn't get over the amount of time lost to commuting. Not saying that OP is living their life wrong or anything, to each their own of course, but I prefer working from home precisely because of how much more _life_ I get to live as a result. The time most people spend commuting, I spend going on hikes with my dog in a forest or working out. For those who lack social activities as a result of working from home I suggest making friends to go out with or join activities that are positively minded towards strangers chatting, like indoor bouldering, which is my workout of choice, and every workout session is always filled with great conversations and fun.by askonomm
- Minutes spent transporting to work is one of the best single factor predictors of turnover and workplace dissatisfaction.by threatofrain
- I've been in multiple car accidents this year, none of them my fault. Commuting might actually be the death of me, I can't express to a future employer how much I'm willing to trade just to not have to do it anymore. Doesn't help that I deal with some of the worst traffic in America...by tiznow
- I think I once read that commute distance happened to be a strong predictor of adult happiness.
I don't know if the source was reputable or not.
by golly_ned - It’s not time lost to commuting. For some people, without the structure of a workday imposed by commuting, they devolve into doing other time-wasting activities. In fact the author said without this commute they would “be on my phone/on Reddit/read HN comments all day/etc.” From this light, a commute doesn’t cause any more time to be lost, but rather it restricts the amount of time lost to be the commute itself, rather than the entire workday. This is something I’m seen very often in people who are dissatisfied with WFH. They lose focus, lose the sense of time, and waste the entire day without the commute.by kccqzy
- > Not saying that OP is living their life wrong or anything, to each their own of course, but I prefer working from home precisely because of how much more _life_ I get to live as a result.
They have to find a job that allows them to do that, and such jobs are increasingly difficult to find.
Where I'm based, even though it might be the smallest startup that could save a good bit by getting rid of their office costs if they gave people WFH, they won't.
- I think the quality of a commute is very different depending on whether it's by car or by train, since you can actually read / write / program / draw on a train. Obviously I'm still pretty glad when I get to work from home and sleep in a little and make some good coffee though.by Semkas
- I did the math during COVID. I was putting in about 30% more hours when I had to go to an office, and all of them were unproductive. I wasn't being paid any extra to do that - which was especially unfair since I also had additional wear and tear on the car, lunches out, fancier clothes to buy, etc.
I may go back to the office someday if I'm forced to, but I won't do it for free. Companies need to compensate in office employees not just for the extra work, but for the expense.
Now I use some of those extra hours for the company, and some to work on my side projects. It's glorious. I'm both more productive at work and happier than I've ever been. I also don't get sick when all the cube-dwellers do a few times per year.
- I would have agreed with this a few years ago but it's more nuanced than that.
Commute time is built-in decompression time that can be very valuable. For example we have small kids and it's just not going to happen that I am going to tell my wife on a given morning or evening "take care of them while I go on a hike" or whatever.
So on days they I decide to go to the office - I get about 2 hours (one hour each way) of reading time (or podcast time, if I were driving in) which realistically would not materialize any other way.
I think many dads that are my fellow commuters see the commute as a sort of sacred solo space that's hard to maintain otherwise (eg the unspoken etiquette is if you see someone you know on the train you don't sit next to them so they can have their peace and quiet)
by xyzelement