We Are Working Too Hard | Mia Mulder
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We work too hard. Let's be lazy and talk about why.
This is a chill video about the nature of work, why we do it, and why we shouldn't. I wanted this to be a calm video, much shorter than my usual stuff to give me more time to rest, and yet it ended up being almost 40 minutes anyway because I can not be stopped.
It starts slow, some personal stories, and leads into a longer discussion about ideology of work and technological progress.
Other good videos on the topic:
Philosophy Tube: Work
• Work (or, the 5 jobs I...
Kathrin: Why productivity is ruining your life
• Why productivity is ru...
Watch some of my other videos!
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Anti-intellectualism: "Facts vs Feelings | Mia Mulder
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The goal of a socialist society should not be full employment, but rather full unemployment
Communism is free time and nothing else!
introduction of automation should be met with "yay less of us have to work" instead of, "aaah the robots are taking our jobs, how will I pay my bills?"
FALC gang
@@Totalitarianizer omg i know you from Twitter!!
@@lucycoleclough1182 automation doesn't abolish work
The irony of listening to this at 2x speed so I can make it to my bus on time to go to work.
I edited this on 1.5x so I could work faster lmao
@@MiaMulder What program do you use to edit?
@@EZOnTheEyes any Non linear editor will work perfectly to edit this. from movie maker to blender to premiere pro. (davinci resolve is the best free one) but the labor of selecting the clips that is what makes this amazing
I will always watch these type of videos (politics) either on my way to work, work break, and on my way back home from work...now I'm in house so I'll watch them as I work
@@mauro_o_cesar I'm just working with Vegas 14 and looking to upgrade soon, Idk the current landscape and I'm seeing what some good creators use
Work is bad folks
But Mia, work sets you free!
Hey Mia, I hope you see this. I really liked the quote from Paul LeFargue, so I looked for the pamphlet so i could read the rest of it. Then I got confused and did some research: that quote isn't in The Right To Be Lazy, it appears to be written by Henri Rabasierre in Dissent Magazine, Winter 1956 issue, in an essay of the same name. As evidence, part of that quote appears in the book Post-Sixties Narratives as Cultural Criticism by Lin Xiang, and is attributed to Rabasierre. Thought you'd want to know. Love your show! Also loved your guest spot on WTYP!
Work is canceled y'all
I'm very sorry. I wanted to work as an engineer in automation, but I wasn't able to complete my study because I had too little money and was too overworked for my health.
I'm afraid I cannot bring about fully automated gay space communism now. My apologies. :(
@@kenjisakaie6028 lol
The struggle of "do a job that's meaningful to you but put your whole life into it because you care about it" vs "do a job you don't care about and theoretically leave time for passions... Just Kidding you're still too tired usually and now feel bad about having a 'meaningless' job"
This
100%. And then, do a job you deem acceptable and meaningful but still want to start at 8 and leave at 5 but then get pressured into working more because it's meaningful work and people's lives depend on it......and why doesn't your life depend on a healthy balance and the company's responsibility lie in adequate staffing?
"seek a job doing something you love and you'll never work a day in your life"*
*because you'll be unemployed, since successive austerity governments have obliterated any work roles that aren't strictly "productive"/that only require you to do the work of one person instead of three
@@soupalex I'm not sure what "austerity government" has to do with the original comment, nor does a googling reveal what it refers to in this context. In good faith, do you want to elaborate?
@@spacefacecadet i was spinning off what you said about doing a meaningful job, a job that you care about… i hear it said that we should aspire to do jobs that we enjoy because then we'll "never work" (in the sense that it's easier to keep doing something if you enjoy it; i don't think that e.g. illustration is _not work_ just because you might enjoy it)
my joke was that, following this philosophy, you really will "never work" because austerity governments (meaning governments such as the tories in the u.k., that have pursued economic policies of "austerity"-i.e. cutting funding for arts & heritage, social services, etc.) have made it almost impossible to find or get paid for a lot of jobs that many people find "meaningful" but that the state finds "unproductive".
I’m disabled and the expectation that you must work and be productive has been an extremely traumatic force in my life. There are so many things I am simply unable to do that are required to survive in the wage labor market and I have always felt such a heavy burden and so much guilt because of that. My life isn’t worthy to the society I live in, and I’m still healing from internalizing that belief myself.
im an artist still honing my skills with an autoimmune disease, so i think i understand
I really needed this... Btw, in Portuguese, the word for work is "trabalho", and its etymology is, I shit you not, torture
The Portuguese get it 🤧
@@quinnlove5777 Yeah, Brazil is pain hahaha
I'd imagine that "trabalho" has a similar etymology to Spanish's "trabajo".
@@alexsitaras6508 Yeah, it seems to be the translation
damn
God, as a school teacher, I would like nothing more than to nerd out with some interested kids about Physics and Language and Poetry. But I'm expexted to make them "productive members of society", which hurts 😢
Itspretty disheartening when you find out how hard economics hace society by the balls
That's so frustrating, to know that you could inspire their curiosity and really add deeper value to their education just by giving them that "spark," but there's just no room for that in the current system 😔. Instead of exploring the joy of learning, school becomes just our first exercise in drudgery
Honestly the best moments of learning I had back in school was whenever teachers took time away from the curriculum they were forced to teach and just talked to us about something in the subject that they were really interested in and wanted to share with us. The school system is just wasting the potential of these teachers every day.
Wow i don't know it ALMOST sounds as if capitalism simply just sucks :).
said every good teacher i've had ever
I genuinely used to be a workaholic. In high school I was in multiple clubs and worked since I was 15, which wasn't even legal for me to do. In college I was going max credits every semester and working 20+ hours on top of it. Then I had a breakdown, had to go to a mental hospital, and haven't been able to work for over 5 years now. I wanted to be dea a lot. And now I know I should just apply for disability, but in my state they reject you outright the first time, even if you have cancer, and I'm scared the process will hurt me more than it can help me. I literally have no idea how I'm supposed to plan for my future anymore. And the worst part is I know there are so many people just like me out there. Much love to you all ♥️
💛 you deserve peace
Attaining disability for anything other than a physical disability can be such a struggle and I wish you all the luck with that endeavor! I struggle with complex-PTSD from childhood abuse - undiagnosed for ages. Tried going through the rat race undiagnosed, ran into the late 20s breakdown and am stuck unable to work. The struggle with chronic depression, rejection sensitivity and disassociation leaves me with a pretty bad avoidant personality... Went through the first rejection for disability and now I'm just resigned to die. I don't know if I can get through with more pushing since - here's the kicker - no insurance to get the proper diagnoses I would need to push through all the red tape.
Really hope you the best and all the rest and relaxation that you deserve
I'm in the same boat. My mother abused me because she wanted me to have good grades. She was a teacher. She abused me to the point of me developing learning disability and complete inability to work. Now every time my brain tags something that I'm doing as "learning" or "work", I start to have flashbacks re-living internalized abuse that was done to me. It's CPSTD. What my mother did to force me to work and learn is she made me believe that I'm in a life-or-death situation every time she needed to force me to do something. I will probably won't have any money left in a couple of years. I will probably die soon, because I can't go back to work, I just can't put myself through this emotional and physical hell. Honestly, kms looks less scary.
I haven't worked in 5 years either! My boss coerced me into working 7 days a week, never paid overtime and kept throwing responsibilities at me without compensation. I'd rather kms then have a real job again.
I relate so much to all of these comments. Thanks.
I never get tired of Mia saying "We live in a society"
What's particularly wild to me is that this fetishization of productivity has very little to do with actually producing something. There's a wealth of evidence that suggests more rest leads to higher productivity, i.e. 32 hour work weeks are more productive than 40 hour work weeks, especially for knowledge workers. And then, there's a plethora of jobs that are literally non-productive or counterproductive in most organizations, usually in the form of middle management, meaningless secretarial positions, or rotating C-suite positions. This is becoming even more true as automation technology catches up to us - soon, even pharmacists will be automatable.
This is all to say that these problems are highly ideological and sociological. Your boss isn't really telling you to work to maximize productivity. He's telling you to work because it satisfies his notion of who deserves his wages and who doesn't.
omg being a Greenpeace recruiter was also my first job. why is nobody talking about the Greenpeace shill to trans girl pipeline
Mother earth sees the dedication and gives you a reward
One of my first (and only) jobs was one of those door-to-door "save the bees" campaigns.
I got fired cause it was a pretty sunny day, and we get like 2 of those a year, so no one was home.
My quota (and like 6 other people's) was way to low that one day. Immediate termination.
@@ThrottleKitty People were out looking at the bees (and flowers). :)
@@ThrottleKitty How ironic is it that an environmentalist employer would adopt such a cutthroat mentality of productivity for their own workers. Can't they draw a linker between this productivity fetish in human society leading to greater environmental damage?
@@moscanaveia Oh, it's because these companies don't really care about helping anything or anyone at all, they just want to sign up to donor so they get free money.
Yes! I have so many friends who say that, not considering the financial aspect, they would be bored if they didn't work. And I, having be only very partially employed for the last years, I don't understand that. First of all, being a bit bored sometimes is awesome. And even then, I will never have read all the books, watched all the shows,played all the games, walked in all the forests, cooked all the dishes, visited all the people, learned all the things... that I could dream of. It makes me actually sad to see that the idea of work is that much ingrained in them.
(English is not my first language, i hope my comment makes sense)
Your comment makes perfect sense.
I feel you on this! I do think an extra layer to it is that when growing up constantly being told to work as hard as you can it can cause someone to not even know what to do beside work...I notice this in myself a lot .. I feel like if I’m not working when I could be I’m not allowed to do anything else which then causes the thought ‘working is better than whatever this is’...when in reality I just never learned how to do something that isn’t labeled as ‘productive’ bc it feels like a waste of time (also sorry for the long comment hahah your comment sparked a thought)
I think a lot of people also don't have many interests and aren't very curious. They literally have no idea what to do if they weren't at work.
1. Your English is great, don't worry
2. Yeah I feel you, honestly life is all about survival and barely making ends meet everyday here, I don't get to enjoy life or even *think* about what I'd want to do in life, because making ends meet constantly fills up my mind. If there were a way out of this, I'd be the happiest I've ever been, but I'm not completely certain there is yet. It's pretty damn sad.
@@johannageisel5390 don’t have many interests cause they have to work, work more cause be bored without work
The unpaid "out of job" duties to jobs are the main thing that gets me. Working is horrible enough, and eats up so much of your time, but expecting your life to revolve around your job and litterally be ready to drop anything you are doing at a moments notice do to the fleeting whim of an uncaring boss, who is likely making their decisions as much to spite the workers they don't like as they are for any logical reason. I have general anxiety disorder, and just can't take that.
I guess capitalism just sucks very much.
This video has honestly improved my day so much. It has inspired me to a.) go home from work on time for once, and b.) to play stardew valley when I get there.
Glad to hear it! Remember to grow pumpkins in 9x9
@@MiaMulder Thank you you are so wise.
@@MiaMulder Up to now our play has been modeled after the image of our work [...] We have to renounce efficiency and productivity as human attributes. Return to monke. Grow pumpkins however you want!
The endless gaming of late stage capitalism against the downward rate of profit has the average person completely drained. Can you imagine what we could have accomplished if we weren't chained to some capitalists compulsion for ever rising profits? I literally can't.
I would be a pilot.... I’ve gone gliding a few times and it was amazing. If i had an extra few hours everyday, thats what I would do
I like my job, but I don’t like the amount of time I spend there
I could practice martial arts without having to worry about working two other jobs at the same time just to keep the hobby alive
We could actually cut the bullshit and admit that we have no idea what we even are, and that life is a huge mystery that we’ve been kept from trying to figure out. We’d actually be able to sit with ourselves and explore our own minds, for as deep as they go (much deeper than we’re allowed).
I can imagine it!
We'd live in such an awesome world!
Btw. I believe everybody should be well educated in astrophysics and planetary sciences. Understanding how many criteria had to be fulfilled and how many coincidences had to happen to make Earth the planet it is helps tremendously with realizing how precious it is. All those stupid capitalists just don't know how rare planets like ours are and that you cannot simply go somewhere else and try a second time.
We would have achieved the ultimate goal of humanity which is to finally erradicate the Cisstraight lifestyle and the Spanish Monarchy.
*stops the video after two minutes because i have to finish reading something for university*: i am doing something wrong here, am i not?
we've all been there
oh god same why do I do this to myself
I got a slack reply... and I think my build finished, so let me pause... fuck.
As a teacher passionate about my work, this hits too close to home.
I was working 12 hours a day, and when I expressed a desire to leave two hours earlier, I was told that good teachers stay until the work is done. It was during my engagement and my fiancee hardly saw me at all. We were basically strangers for that year, because my job took so much of my time.
When I did my degree my stress got so bad I started having hallucinations, and it still took a suicide attempt to get me to stop and rest, still haven't fully recovered four years later
most people don't realise how long it takes to recover form burnout. I had a relatively mild case, and I'm still not right over two years later, it can really fuck you up
I'm still recovering from a mental breakdown I had at my university two years later. My grades went from near flawless to the unthinkably low that I previously associated with lazy, non-intellectual greek lifers. I had little emotional connection with my parents growing up because they were always working late hours at jobs my Mom constantly complained about, so I tried using school as a way to replace their validation. I'm now so low functioning I struggle to do basic things like schedule appointments and show up for my brother and girlfriend. It's like I'm waking up to every shitty nightmare about failing a test I had growing up. I make cynical jokes about leftism and post-capitalism to my few friends, and it's because I'm mortally terrified that I can't escape the system.
@@Andrew-ow6fq
try LSD
Good luck and much love to everyone in this thread.
Yes. This. This resonates. What if we didn’t feel defeated and drained by the things we spend 1/3 of our adult lives doing? And what if that thing didn’t determine whether or not we eat, end up shelterless, or can access healthcare?
fucking sucks that it's more than a third of so many folks' lives. oh god, stuff down the existential dread...
The laziness thing hit home because I joke that I'm a strange kind of lazy. I spend a lot of effort trying to automate my work so I don't actually have to do it, even though my job (CNC Programming) is literally to automate other people's work.
If you automate the automation, won't you need to then automate the automated automation?
@@thatboringone7851 In an automatic way, yes.
Best man to employ is the lazy man! they work hard to find ways to make things more efficient and work less hard.
@@thatboringone7851 an that's how you get SkyNet I guess
no I don't know the plot just memin' lol
Commenting before finishing the video to say I, too, am a trans woman who did Greenpeace canvassing early in my transition, in a cold place! I did it for 10 months -- it was traumatic. Much love to ya, Mia
This is like the third trans woman saying this. The Greenpeace transition is real
@@MiaMulder the most ironic pipeline, in a way
It's Mother Nature's way of scouting for her daughters. 😆🤣
As a lifelong lazy person who found out in their 40s that they also have ADHD (which basically means even if I weren't lazy, I'd act like I was, so how could I tell if I'm actually not?), I have always felt like an outsider for not being on the productivity bandwagon. I've always wondered why others didn't value their time with themselves, to themselves, just being and relaxing, as much as I do my own. Thanks for making this video.
I have a good job and sometimes i just feel bad about it. The worst thing is that I feel bad about this thought cause literally people would love to interchange jobs. Sometimes i don't want to work, I just want to have a walk through a park or just stay in bed listening to music. I hate feeling bad for wishing for a break.
There's always this little voice in the back of our heads saying "you should be grateful for what you have, other people would kill for this job", and it's not WRONG, it's just...only one side of the story. Gratitude for what we have is nice and good, but we shouldn't use how far we've come be an excuse not to go farther...or to want better. Especially when that better is something that should be considered the baseline, but isn't, because our society is messed up.
We've all internalized society's bad messages to some extent, so you're not alone in this. We all feel these things. It's definitely good to talk about it though. Makes us feel less alone in having these thoughts, at least. :)
Same here. I love the work I do. But I hate that I see my colleagues more than my own wife. That’s wrong
Sounds like internalized "but children in africa" bullshit. Even if I build the best car, I can still find mistakes it, because perfection is impossible.
It's human to want to improve our own circumstances.
Edit: wanting to say that no, you shouldn't feel guilty. We want things to be better then they are, instead of being content with being better of then others.
@@concibar4267 >Sounds like internalized "but children in africa" bullshit
Reality isn't turn based. A person can care about multiple issues at once.
I mean, it's complicated. We can consciously oppose many of society's values while internalizing them. In a way, that's important, because we need to expect society's values in random people we meet, or at least anticipate them. We live...in a society (breathy Mia).
Besides, it's our second thought that matters most. That reflects what we actually believe.
As a wee 22 year old doing full time and having to pay all my bills for the first time I really needed this
Yeah, I'd been working for 3 years when covid came and dunked on my job this year, so i at 24 just decided to go back to Uni, at least here i can work on things that matter in my mind, even if i will be borderline starving/no luxuries for the foreseeable future.
There's a terrible irony to being sponsored by skillshare, when the underlying point of the site is to gain skills to produce goods or services that can be sold
haven't even had a job yet but poor mental health means I'm struggling to keep up with schoolwork and it's my fault. There's a guilt to not being productive. half term is always so refreshing until you start thinking about the all things you should be doing.
Schoolwork is work in my eyes and nobody can convince me otherwise. I got depression in uni, 'cos of stress and studying 10 hours a day . Now I work a 9 -5 job and it's boring as sin, but a thousand times better than uni. Remember to take care of yourself!
@@tanasaky Idk but that cheered me up so much. Uni made me burn out and I quit after only one semester. I feel so guilty about it. I’m glad you’re doing better!!
Commenting for the algorithm, also commenting because I'm watching this at work. SUCK IT, CAPITALISM!
me too!
Literally gonna take a break from working too hard to watch this and i feel bad already
I think one of the huge problems relating to this topic is how we have changed our whole vision of the world in order to make this productivity part of our psychology. In my experience as a university student, I have found myself trying to reduce the time I spend in eating or in going to the grocery store as a way of maximizing my productivity. However, if I try to see it from the "outside" it seems pointless: no one is telling me I need to get the higher mark or to be the best physicist ever lived (as if it was possible). I am not even interested in being the "best". I suppose it all comes down to having internalized the messages of how "work is what we are made to be doing" and that bullshit.
There is a text from the Spanish writer Rafael Sanchez Ferlosio which talks about how we have changed our old gods for new ones while thinking we were liberating ourselves. As a society, we have adopted the "Future", the "Progress"(in an economic sense), as the goal of humanity. Although living in an individualistic culture, we are able to give everything for the idea of economic development. I consider that the Left should start to reconsider this approach to reality in which we think we are going "somewhere better". Maybe we should try to recognise that humans, as a species in the large ecosystem of the Earth, are going to far. The proposal from ecosocialist is to decrease our production. We dont need to produce the amount of goods we are producing. By doing so, we are destroying the planet and our own psyches.
Sorry for the long comment and thank you for uploading this videos, they give a lot to think.
Also, I apologise if my english is not perfect, I am not a native english speaker and I have been not talking it too much for some months.
My life got a lot better when I realized that being content is better than being happy. Happiness fades and you start looking (working) for the next high, and you spend more time miserable than you do happy. Sure, there's some happiness junkies that will tell you the bad times make the good times feel better, but man, I'd just rather not ever feel like shit.
Also, your English is fine. I didn't even notice until you said something.
@@stevegruber4724 that's something that makes sense, the pursuit of contentment. Mind if I borrow it?
O D, I'll have to read this again when I can give it more thought, but I wanted you to know your English is very good, I would mistake it for native.
Really loving this video, I have recently dropped out of a decade long career in the trade union movement in my country for some reasons that you touch on here - sacrificing everything (social, political, educational and other projects) in order to commit myself to a career I was deeply emotionally invested in. But I had this realisation that we worked so hard, and our members worked so hard in their lives to struggle for better jobs, better pay, more security. They would risk so much and so would I from time to time (risk of fines, arrest, etc because most effective union tactics are illegal). But I ended up having this realisation that we were working so hard, everybody was, and risking so much - but we were doing this without any analysis about how these efforts might ultimately serve to liberate ourselves from work itself. We learnt to love bureaucracy and making bullshit jobs more tolerable. Often we would strike and disrupt production in order to stop the automation of that production. And all those efforts were at the expense of saying how can we end the need for these jobs which everybody knows are unnecessary in a way that liberates us from work so that we might all enjoy a more leisurely existence.
We had glorified the 8 hour movement but forgotten the radical message of its initial idea - we should all be working less and living our lives more.
"Are you keeping busy?" Me having simultaneously done a ton in quarantine and absolutely nothing at the same time: 😐
Ought to start asking: "Are you keeping slack?"
Living with ADHD, the obsession with productivity is truly suffocating. I struggle to even take care of myself, yet I still have to hold down a full time job just to pay my bills. I don't have any other options, so I'm basically exhausted all the time, yet I'm constantly made to feel like it's not enough. I could be out volunteering, I could go above and beyond at my job, I should make some of my creative projects a reality, etc.
but I'm too burnt out.
I genuinely think if I could rest for as long as I need, left to my own devices I'd eventually feel well enough--and have the time--to do what I actually want, and make a difference. but we're focused on productivity for its own sake over personal fulfillment
This reframing of work as a matter of time really, really resonates with me! I've been sick for the past year, and not working as a result, but I'm also still losing time everyday thanks to my illness. In one sense, I'm desperate to get healthy and be able to do "productive" stuff again, but this new perspective suggests that what I really want back is my time.
YES. THIS. I so relate to this
Commenting for the algorithm even though I'm only 2/3 of the way through, because, relevant to this discussion, I just got vaccinated so I'm getting back on the looking-for-a-job horse, and I had a phone call today with someone about setting up an interview, and the anxiety and stress from that combined with the side-effects from the vaccine are thoroughly kicking my ass. So now I need a nap.
Naps are always good
Take care of yourself, OP. 💕
Watching this video after an entire day of not being productive and then feeling bad about it made me feel a bit better, thanks
SPACE!
Noted Not A Communist John Maynard Keynes once estimated that Britain could transition to a 20 hour work week and still produce all the *stuff* needed to live a comfortable life.
(He was also apparently bi and poly this isn't relevant but still)
It’s so Swedish to say “unhealth.” I’ve never heard someone say it, but it makes so much sense to say. So clear.
Honestly, I doubt most CEOs ever worked as hard as their lowest paid or “entry-level” employees do. As an American, my fellow working class Americans can attest to the unsustainability (and the income disparity) that our profit-driven economies necessitate.
I'm a supervisor at the company I work at. It seems there's this assumption among lower level employees, management, etc. that we must work harder because we are in that position and get paid more. I don't really think that's true. It's not that we work harder, we just have different work. I honestly don't believe I deserve to be paid more than the employees on my team.
On another note related to your post, the CEO of the company I work for actually started out as a low level line worker. Not trying to dispute what you said, in fact I agree with it, just thought it was an interesting anecdote.
It’s criminal that this video won’t get a lot of reach. Commenting for the algorithm, sending it to friends & family, Facebook, etc.
I've been thinking about this a lot. I'm unemployed and exempt from searching for work due to issues relating to trauma and mental health. I'm a full time single parent and have my hands full. Yet, I constantly feel I'm not doing enough. Like I should be more productive. You're right when you say you don't need a boss to feel this way. It's just so engrained into society and we've all internalised it in some way.
I love this Video. Very important message.
Honestly, even though I am a lowlife in most peoples eyes, have barely any money, and even though I am hardcore depressed, I think I live a better life than most, because the job I do (sport coach) gives me energy, makes me happy. I love sports, I love teaching, I love seeing kids, teens, and even parents having fun and overcoming challanges. I gain energy from my job (most of the time) and I may lose time, it is a lot less than most people. That is important to me. I still don't feel free at all, but compared to most I think I am a lot closer to freedom than most. Real Freedom would be a dream come true for me.
Similar story here. I also went out of college straight into burnout. I never recovered and now live on disability benefits. So now I have time and money, but lack energy and mental capacity to actually do anything with it.
I find it much more enjoyable to play Stardew Valley unoptimally because of production.
In the Before Times, when parties were actually a thing, the first thing out of people's mouths would be to ask me "How's work?" Not only did I not usually have anything good or exciting to tell them, but it was just instantly depressing to have someone ask about my job like it was the sum total of my identity.
So, yeah, this video resonates with me.
I used to live in Uppsala and constantly overworked. I would skip Fika and sometimes work off the clock, and I was sort of frustrated because people thought there was something wrong with me. I took pride in my productivity but I was extremely isolated and depressed. I kept telling myself I was doing what I loved, but I think it was just me trying to feel like I was 'worth' something.
Nowadays, I can't go more than 90 minutes without taking a break, and I'm not depressed anymore, but I can only smile as often as a Finn.
I actually somewhat like working, I work at a nursing home and I actually feel like I'm helping people somewhat, but I couldn't possibly afford to move out of my dad's house without going full time and getting a second job, or finding something much higher paying. Its impossible to get a living wage in so many places, and I hate it.
Capitalist: Capitalism is the only reason you have your favorite video game!
Tetris: Exists
"Yuo dont like capitalism yet you exist
Iphone venezuela bottom texxt 100 billion dead"
Sometimes people mod games and they are completely different from the original that it is an entirely new game and all of it was voluntary, they didn't need to waste hours making it but they did it anyway.
@@ZoomieDeer ''You criticize society yet you participate in it you dirty hypocrite''
Just like rush limbaugh, he was pro life yet he is dead curious.
Yea I want these people to explain the insanely time consuming task of making fan games for free.
I was used to a 50 hour work week, I did it ages 16-32.
Now because of RSI, I can't work at all.
And since most of that work was for minimum wage, I have only debt to show for it.
So now I'm a 'burden' on the state.
Shit is broken.
Weird thing is since I have adhd i constantly feel understimulated but the thought of getting a job makes me have panic attacks because I wouldn't be able to stop when I'm tired or hurting
im glad i dont feel alone in this :(((
Love to live in a society that expects everyone to be consistently productive when I have a mental disorder that prevents me from doing so!
that exact thing fucking destroyed me during my job, not being allowed to leave when I was fatigued drove me mad from frustration and I would have to bite my hand to stay awake or just go cry in the bathroom... and my immediate family are all knowledge workers with more than enough money to live on, but the problem with our work culture and lack of control over our working conditions is just invisible to them, even though they'd be much happier if full time work was half of what it currently is. They're just as exploited for their labor as anyone else but they still dream about becoming capitalists...
@@katerwaul9574 Also love how we expect people be at work even when they're not being productive, even when it's physiologically impossible to be productive for hours on end, even if we know our work is useless even if we know that everyone spends most of the work day on their phones or at the water cooler, we still aren't allowed to leave, I love how even the richest and most fortunate workers are still prisoners.... :(
I've been paid to stay home since the beginning of the pandemic (which is what every company should've done for their employees) and I was constantly harangued by people - made to feel guilty for not working during a pandemic, being asked if I was working somewhere else, being drilled about if I was staying 'busy'. Firstly, it's a pandemic - I was lucky enough to be paid to stay home, there was no reason to get in the public. Secondly, after the initial mental collapse...I started to love my free time. I have a delayed sleep cycle and insomnia, so I could sleep in when I needed. I could work on my art. I could play video games and spend time with my European friends online. This year, I was laid off, and now I'm panicking about trying to get back into the workforce. But I have savings and I can get unemployment for a while. So why do I keep feeling so guilty about not working? I doubt many people will read this and that's okay, but this video was nice to watch - it's good to be reminded that you aren't alive because you were programmed to work yourself into the grave. It's okay to sit in bed all day and play Stardew Valley because it makes you happy.
Mia gets all the rights ಠωಠ. Especially the right to be lazy, as do all of us.
Free time and nothing else!
I have been at some level of burnt out since 1st grade.
How, you might ask? Well, its rather simple: 6 hours of homework every night. Sometimes more. As well as classwork on topics I was basically forced to figure out for myself due to the infrequent nature of teachers doing anything meaningful for the class. And of course school projects. You might think this is insane, but that's the dominant mode of teaching in the west for you. 6 hours of work every night, not counting the schoolday that started at 7:30-8am and ended at 3pm-4pm. With no recreation, no ability to go outside and play, no ability to visit friends, no ability to even take a rest break without my parents getting on me for being lazy.
This continued for my entire life. I'm still not recovered. Its developed into one of the elements of what could very easily be CPTSD for me, and definitely is some rather deeply rooted executive dysfunction. And nowadays I'm not even sure what I could do to fix my life since every action that requires focus or impulse control is now associated heavily with a trauma that for the majority of my life I never got a reprieve from.
I'm sorry to hear that. It's crazy the amount of work they expect out of kids. Wake up at 7:00 am to get to school at 8, sit in classes for 6 hours until 3. Then I had sports so from 3 to 5 I would run 7 miles and exhaust myself then get home at 530 and have to do homework for more hours. I got through it but at a major cost to my own physical health. It's just so much work all the time at that age.
Yeah I'm stressed out for the new school year to start, because I'm entering high school and I'm in every single honors class. Now my parents want me to pursue Honors Society next year because "I won't be able to enter a really good college without it." I keep telling them I don't want to be in Honors Society, as I would have to do an insane amount of community service, and that they don't realize they wouldn't have the time to put aside to drive me to the events I'm acquired to attend for Honors Society. Even the whole name, "Honors Society" is pretentious AF.
you got me when you said "one: is that true? and secondly: does it matter?"
i appreciate hearing this so darn much; it's okay to question the system even though it feels overbearing- no, *because* it feels overbearing it's time to question
Any day mia posts is a good day!
Well this is something interesting to listen to while cleaning.
When people talk about this I always think about that young adult series, 'Uglies' which was supposed to revolve around a dystopia where people got their faces ripped off and rebuilt into perfect pretty ones when they turned 13, but literally all I remember about it was that in the other, Pretty city, nobody had to work.
Society was completely automated, no one had jobs, they all just partied all the time. Even as a kid I was fascinated by the possibility of it, read through the whole series and still couldn't see the 'evils' of the other city. It's sortof alarming how few other literary works I've even seen try to portray it, like it's unimaginable to the human mind, even in pop culture.
i'm so thankful i found content creators like you. if i were on my own, my mental issues would have gotten the best of me. i lived life by the book and did my best in school, straight As, 9-5 job, but with a cynical and pessimistic mindset. i questioned "why" so often but never tried to answer, and instead picked up unhealthy coping mechanisms which led to multiple overdoses and terrible relationship choices. i started to binge psychology videos and talked to a therapist, which helped tremendously. i also started having deeper conversations with new friends and learned that i've taken a lot for granted. videos like this make me realise that i'm not alone, and i really appreciate it ❤ thank you.
As a fellow StarDew Valley aficionado to hell with those magazines! Now I need to get back to marrying my Wiafu Penny
I was with you until "waifu Penny" lol. I'm all about husbando Shane 😜
@@shilohstuart3841 If I'm gonna be honest. I download a mod that makes the Harvest Goddess an NPC in game and I marry her
@@comradeanthony4120 hahaha I think I've used that mod, it's a good one. But I didn't realize you could marry her! Such a missed opportunity 😭
@@shilohstuart3841 yuuuup. MAGIC BABIES!
@@comradeanthony4120 hahaha that's amazing! Well... I guess I figured out my weekend plans
This is so good. I'm disabled and literally cannot work a 40 hour week. The pandemic has allowed me to just exist and it is so nice.
I had to drop out of school because of mental health and everytime school is mentioned I can't move and try not to cry
same :I hope its gotten better for u
That mentaliy of being at work is something I am experiencing at college I don't feel like I have any free time and it feels I am always studying.
Working from home has made me more productive than ever. I'm at a place where I want to be with people I love. As a lunch break, I can play my favorite videogames, cuddle with my kids or "cuddle" with my wife. That's an actual break, unlike work breaks which are still work. Now I work sprints of 2 hours with actual break, rather than 8 hour marathons, which is much more manageable.
I'm very good about keeping my "work". I just wish I spent more time doing my pore creative hobbies instead of watching video essays and rewatching community.
I feel this. I put my entire life on hold. I didnt go to parties, seek relationships and only threw myself into high school and college on the promise I would be able to live my life when I got my first job. It took the complete and traumatic destruction of the life I knew to finally look up and realize I hadnt been living, just surviving. I structured my entire life around maximizing life and been so much happier for it.
As a lazy 20 year old relying on my parents work I appreciate this video because nothing I do is for monetary gain since I don’t really use money very often and my parents keep putting pressure on me to find work and I want to but I want to enjoy whatever I do and I can’t find jobs I like so I’m just indulging in my right to be lazy for as long as I can and this video just makes me feel so incredibly grateful I haven’t had to work the way you describe - I want a society where more people can be like me, and if they want to spend time watching TH-cam videos or doing photography or whatever they choose. The stress you described terrifies me and I hope you free yourself from the specter of productivity someday.
no way I was just thinking about a new video from you and as I am the centre of the universe I am directly and soley responsible for this upload
for sure, good work!
I spent soooo much of the last year trying to work hard and make something of all this time inside. But the last couple weeks I hit a wall hard. Thanks for making this just as I'm in a bad work funk.
I love that this exists. I always hated the idea of work, not because I don't like doing stuff, on the contrary, I like doing lots of stuff. Work is focusing on one thing for a third of your life, I never could accept that kind of wasted time, when I could enjoy and experiment so many things in life, and even be productive in most of them. Work may have been a necessary step in history, but it's far from the best social organization imaginable.
wow what a conincidence. i was just trying to get my friend to stop doing homework and to play stardew valley with me
'Laziness is one of driving creative forces behind progress' is a fascinating concept that I hadn't heard before, but really resonated with me. It's kind of a cliche thing to say but my best ideas/creativity/inspiration definitely comes from moments of 'laziness'. Thanks for the encouragement to take more time to be lazy and do nothing! Your work is awesome!
I think it’s important to draw the distinction between the choice to do meaningful work for its own sake, and the need to work to eat. Doing work does perform important psychological functions-but doing meaningless (or meaningless to you) labor for the sake of subsistence is not...healthy
My philosophy of work is more David Blustein than David Graeber, but it’s more David Graeber than “ora et labora”
I grew up in an ex mining town in Scotland and the 'Dignity of Labour' work ethic was driven into us from a young age. It doesnt matter what you do with your life, as long as your working. If you went to the pub, people would bang on about how hard theyd worked. What an existence, I decided early on that i wasn't going to waste my life like this. LIFE IS FOR LIVING, NOT EXISTING.
I haven't even started the vid but agree. I've had to go on sick leave + leave my job because I can't work a job + eat + sleep + travel to job + be social + work on my actual choice career that I went to school for(and almost 3 years later still hasn't paid off lol). My mental health is at a all time low(not even because of the pandem, existing stuff getting worse because of the need to be productive but not being able to), and have tried all my life to work hard(and it hasn't done shit for me). But I need money, so I have ended up in a shit situation, where I'm too mentally ill to work but need to work. im so tired ;-;
hi got through the video, I agree with a lot of the points. I have been trying to dismantle that hold of productivity = good always for years cause fuck man it's been drilled into me(thanks mental illnesses). I've felt even before getting my first job that everyone is working too much, that the 'adult landscape' sounds and looks like absolute shit. And when I was eventually thrust into it, only to not gain any of the benefits that my peers did. Instead it just kept tearing me down till now and still continues to do so, wooooh. I could rant about this shit forever probably.
On a completely different note, you didn't let us know if you married anyone in stardew and I feel robbed of that juicy info.
I feel like my job is slowly driving me insane. It's not that hard of a job and its a job I can do and it has good benefits and pay so I feel incredibly guilty even feeling this way. Like others don't have an opportunity to have a job like this, but I almost never feel happy anymore because I'm always thinking about my job.
I'm pretty-sure that's called "going postal"
I’m struggling with money and tried to start a ~side hustle~ on top of my part time job and university. It was so miserable I had to stop. I also have a bunch of hobbies, and often people suggest I monetise them, which I refuse to do because once it’s „work“, it’s no longer just for pleasure.
I really hate that we feel the need to monetize everything we do :( simple enjoyment and self care isn't enough for some people
I watched this video last year and it made me really depressed (in a good way). It helped highlight why I was feeling so miserable at my job. Now I’ve become self employed instead and struggling to ”Keep productive!! Work those 8 hours you lazy!!” so I’m watching it again to remind myself why I left my job in the first place. Love your work Mia!
Took the day off and it was great. I’m slowly learning to not guilt trip myself when I need a break from the grind. The sucky part is I have to “lie” and say that I feel sick or have a family issue, both of which are partially true (I need mental rest more than the 2 weekend days and I do need to see my family), but it sucks not being able to just say “I need a mental health day.”
I'd encourage you to give mental health as a reason next time. It's quite liberating, and it will help to highlight mental health issues as needing to be addressed in the workplace by your employer.
One thing I'd say is that often despite increased productivity owners would not reduce the hours that workers worked. Often it was the workers standing up for themselves, unionising and collectively bargaining or striking which got their hours down. An example from my hometown is that in 1877 the workers at the Armstrong factory (The same one that made all the large weapons for the army until very recently) striked for a 9 hour working day. They fought tooth and nail and got the 9 hour day and yet Armstrong is still celebrated in monuments and museums around town as a charitable man. Remember almost nothing is given to you in this world, you have to fight for it.
I work too much too. I'd love tot be able to take a full weekend off, to not feel stress when thinking about all the things I need to do.
Stumbled upon this video when I needed to hear it the most, so thank you so much for putting it together. I graduated from swedish nursing school in january this year and it took not even 3 months until I had to go on sick-leave and resign because of the immense pressure and worsening of my mental health and I've been wallowing in the guilt and self-pity from that decision ever since. Day shifts lasted from 6:45 to 15:30 and evening shifts from 13:00 to 21:30. Quite often (even though we could "request" our own schedules) an evening shift was followed by a day shift. Yeah, that's right, 9 hours in between those - where you're supposed to commute to and from work AND get some sleep, which was often impossible for more than 4 hours if you want to wind down after a long stressful workday. I went into it with such enthusiasm, too, so it was really heartbreaking to see how horrendous it would be to work like that long-term. I won't even mention the pathetic paycheck that was still laughable even though I was working overtime every single day. And I felt, and still feel, such guilt over having to abandon that but also such an essential job at a time when there literally haven't been a greater need for healthcare personnel. But I was broken every day, developed a lot of harmful coping mechanisms and got very close to hurting myself pretty badly. I always wanted my work to mean something, but not even the feeling of genuinely helping society could keep the intensity of it all at bay.
If there's one thing supposedly reaching the tail end of a pandemic has done, as I start returning to working mostly in the office instead of almost entirely from home, it's to bring into sharp focus how much work-related stress comes from the commute that I don't even get paid for.
ABSOLUTE banger of a video that actually made me feel more hopeful for the future. this articulates a lot of what I've been thinking about over the pandemic period essentially, just didn't know how to put my feelings into words. I went through an intense period of burnout that put me on sick leave for more than half a year: and I've come out the other side seeing this whole culture of productivity and work and hustle like a complete outsider, but in a good way; like, maybe all of this doesn't actually make sense but that maybe there are better options?
i've been working 50 hour weeks for the better part of a year, 4pm - 230am. My insides feel raw and my bones heavy. i only have 5.5 hours a day of freedom during the week. After basic maintenance of my body and food, i have little left to be who i am. Only ~45% of my time alive is mine, soul crushing
i think it was Felix Beidermann (idk if i spelled that right) that said your boss is like your middle school principal now, they can call you whenever they want, expect you to come in whenever, and you have to or you'll get "expelled", aka fired
You keep murdering my name and I love it please never stop ❤️
I'm really sorry! (Also, you can dm me on patreon and I'll learn to do it right if you want, otherwise I'll just give it my best shot every month)
Literally doing the nightmare search for a job as an "unskilled" and disabled (nothing I can recieve benefits for though) laborer right now.
I started adulthood becoming very ill and racking up debt because I was still trying to do the right thing and work and go to college... while sick. In the end I always had to drop classes as I would inevitably end up bedridden for weeks at a time and now I am undesirable.
Can't get a good paying job that'll allow me to save to develop new skills (if it isn't certified its a waste of time) because I am unskilled. Cant get training for new skills because I can't afford them without a decent paying job.
The happiest period of my life that I can recall is one where I was in between college semesters. College was in the same city as my family, and there's a housing crisis here, so moving out was a no go. No jobs available either. I had no obligations, no requirements, no work. Ostensibly, I was being lazy. That period, the summer of 2019, led directly to the development of 4 new skills, all of which are passions that have changed my life, and far from causing effort or stress, lift that from my shoulders. Luthiery, computer building, virtual reality content creation, and leftist philosophy and praxis. On top of that, I was in the best shape of my life, in the gym literally every day, treating a bad knee, furthering my skill at my chosen sports. Being back in the college grind now, I can tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt that I could never in my life have got here without that period, nor developed skills to the same degree, in any condition where I was subjected to, as Mia puts it, work. But I made, in rough estimation, the sum of 5000 dollars, more than I'd made in the same time at any other form of work. I didn't sell anything that I made, and nor do I intend to, so that number is theoretical. But I was also *learning* those skills for the first time. If I'd wanted or needed? I could do them forever. Any of them could lead to greater ability, new passions, and as Mia also put it, the making of history. I still hope beyond hope to put myself in the position to do so. I graduate in 2 months. I could do so the very next day if work were emancipated. Instead I must do the same again with another degree, rather than learn the same subject for myself, with greater freedom, veracity, and voraciousness. And I know how lucky I am to be in that place now. I was suffused with the spirit of a kind of productivity that had nothing to do with this "work", but that was instead beholden to no-one but my own enjoyment. I know I shall likely never return to that state, and that this list of passions will only at best double in a lifetime what I created in a summer. But the world can stand to make that life a reality for everyone. Tomorrow. This very second. All that's stopping it are the ones who want to hoard that life. My "work" will be to stop them.
hearing that quote about "the right to be lazy" was legitimately mind blowing, thank you
My first depression came from my first internship when I was 16. As a lab assistant. And since half of my day was in tecnical school and the other at my job i ended up feeling like i was only living in the busses going to those places. I had no energy left when i had free time because i had to do homeworks and no energy
My first three week Internship fealt like hell. Everyone at the office seemed so nutured, the only time I saw an emotion was when my Boss lashed out at me for not folding letters fast enough. Nobody knew what the others where doing, people would give me tasks that would directly interfere with tasks I had already been giving and everyone tirned into a chain smoker to get a couple of more breaks.
I was raised on the idea that working hard is a virtue. I held onto that ideal and took pride in working long hours of strenuous manual labor. After years of continuing this trend, my body started falling apart. Hernias, slipping a disk, nerve and kidney issues left my body a broken mess. I've had great difficulty finding jobs that I could work around all of my medical issues. Between medical bills nearly bankrupting me, chronic pain, and ideal of hard work as a virtue, my mental health deteriorated as well. Now due to both severe mental and physical ailments, I'm unable to work. I've spent the last ten years trying to improve both mentally and physically but a lot of hardship brought on by those ailments have made it near impossible. I tried going to college but my issues hindered me even there. I feel absolutely horrible for not contributing to both society and my family, especially so since my wife works. I try to do what little I'm capable of doing but it never feels like it's enough. I sorely regret idolizing hard work as a virtue, it's destroyed my life.
It’s time to seize the means of production 🚩
Nah, I'm too lazy 😉
-to then continue working the same amounts to continue the same level of production, but for different boots
14:47 I solved that problem by doing more while doing it efficiently.
Endless emails: Auto trashes anything that isn't important
Tracking inventory: A script does it
Compiling reports: A script does it
Hosting live documents: A script does it
My job is constantly expanding. I take on a new task -> break it down -> automate it -> do the part that can't be automated (typically 20 minutes of work a month) -> rinse, repeat
1 year into a job and Ive typically taken over all admin tasks, reporting tasks, client communications, and my original job. I normally only work 15 hours a week. Most work is fake and fake work is super easy to automate
"immaterial labor" by Lazzarato is an excellent essay on this topic
This makes me feel a lot better about watching this video when I'm supposed to be working. My job has deadlines, so I tend to be "lazy" until right before my project is due, at which point I wind up working from 8 AM until 4 in the morning for a few days. I'm recovering from that right now since my last project was due yesterday.
Late to work as I listen to this
I'm so glad I discovered this channel. Thanks, algorithm! The lack of time and feeling utterly drained after work has added to my unhappiness despite having a decent income for where I live. It has sucked the creativity out of me (I used to draw daily).
Super interesting video, you've given me quite a bit to think about as I play Animal Crossing Pocket Camp :)
I can't believe I have became so workholic . I just have vacations and even when I didn't connect to job, I had that awareness that I should be doing something.
commenting to get that algorithm busyyy
Number machine go brrrrrr.
doctorate pharmacy graduate from US here. 240k in debt and almost every job requires 60 hrs/wk standard. needless to say i’ve decided i don’t care about the debt anymore and will be pursuing a different path in spite of it. for anyone who reads this by chance, avoid pharmacy like the plague. it will drive you into absolute madness. my mental health has been destroyed by doing all of this and everyone around you will gaslight you into thinking it’s your own fault.