Tangentially, the physical labor jobs I had when younger never really tired me out the way that the mental/bureaucratic/political job I have now does.<p>Physical work actually energized me, I mean this is all confirmed today as well, we know all the benefits exercise brings on well being.<p>There's something about desk jobs that is frankly soul sucking and literally mentally draining in a way where when the day ends, it's as if you suffer from temporary depression. Even getting motivated to do things you want to do is hard, resorting to the laziest activity is often what happens, phone, social media, television. Sometimes I can't even get myself to play a video game and I love video games.<p>And when the night comes, you'd think sleep is what you need, but that same day of desk job actually gives you insomnia, falling asleep is hard, and while you sleep it's as if all of that mental activity is still happening in your head from the work day.<p>If physical labor work paid me as well and provided the same benefits, I'd probably switch back to it honestly.
This analysis is solely focused on the "job" aspects of pre-industrial life and includes almost none of the domestic considerations. I'm not sure if it would be fair to call all non-wage time "leisure". Once work was still over there were still things to clean, fix, prepare, butcher, etc.<p>Although, I think it goes without saying that before affordable lighting and heating, we all underestimate how lazy winters were for the average peasant, whether idyllic or not (accounts I have read make it sound incredibly, incessantly dull).<p>And I think the best evidence we have that we are overrating the quality of pre-industrial leisure time is that people developed almost no leisure activities! Common people had almost no sports, no games (beyond precursors to Bocce or backgammon), no literature! They supposedly had half a year of doing nothing, and perhaps singing and drinking was sufficient to fill the time, but you'd think they would show lots of other innovations. Or even steal the activities of the rich (organized sports)!<p>Instead you don't see leisure activities develop <i>until</i> the rise of the 40 hour workweek and the availability of consumer appliances.<p><i>Edit:</i> I hope people understand that the argument the article presents is largely a romanticization of poverty.
> And they worked only as many days as were necessary to earn their customary income -- which in this case amounted to about 120 days a year, for a probable total of only 1,440 hours annually (this estimate assumes a 12-hour day because the days worked were probably during spring, summer and fall).<p>This goes against everything I've been taught, that the plebian class basically toiled endlessly, from Feudal Times to Industrial Revolution before labor laws to today's "multiple low-wage-jobs to survive".<p>EDIT: Also odd that the author doesn't point out that ~2040 hours is the yearly hours in a modern 40-hour workweek in the US, give or take a few holidays.
I can speak to Irish history. Long considered one of the most poor and wretched places for common folk, the rural poor had numerous issues in Ireland. While they had dance and a lovely folk music, they also had starvation, disease, lack of political representation, and a lack of basic economic ladders. They did have plentiful turf to warm themselves, in contrast to many other poor folk in other areas of Europe. They also had the gulf stream, like Iceland and the UK, which kept their climate relatively warm for it's northerly location.<p>There's no better demonstration of the decimation of the rural Irish than the potato famine of the 1840s. It wasn't just one year, multiple years, their monocrop of the Irish Lumper potato, which had led the widespread growth in population, failed them due to fungal blight. It's estimate 5% or even 10% died of starvation in some rural areas. Moreover, millions more left in droves for the UK and USA, recognizing the crushing poverty and lack of food vastly outweighed their love of the land and culture.<p>In my estimation, the rural Irish had leisure time for the arts despite their poverty and destitution. The abundance of time didn't help, they were too poor to own many games and objects. Yet, through music and dance and writing, they kept their spirits alive and, by some cheer, were able to Banish Misfortune.
This feels off.<p>Farming <i>today</i> is a seven day, every day work week. There is no day off with livestock, no matter what century, and what season. If the sun sets, or the weather is bad outside, there are plenty of work to be done indoors.<p>I would presume it was even harder without all the automation and technology in the Middle Ages. Maybe they did not labour for the employer all the time, but all the 'free time' was spent labouring for sustenance, and other life's maintenance.<p>If I recall correctly, the 8 hour day, 40 hour week, and five day work-week are all 19th century trends.
I would take a 10 hour day in almost any job in the 21st century over an 8-16 hour workday for a 14th century farm laborer mowing hay with a scythe or plowing behind a team of oxen. I get meal and rest breaks too, and even though they may get more days off than I do, what are they doing on those days off? Chopping wood? Thatching their roof? Hauling water from a well? The amount of labor done in a day by peasants in the European middle ages dwarfs everything but the extreme outliers of today.
"An important piece of evidence on the working day is that it was very unusual for servile laborers to be required to work a whole day for a lord. One day's work was considered half a day, and if a serf worked an entire day, this was counted as two "days-works." "<p>Presumably because in the other half of the day, they'd be working to harvest and grow their own food. I'm not sure what the difference is between working 8 hours, and getting enough money to buy food, and working 4 hours and then another 4 hours to make your own food.
Leisure is the both the opposite of and an essential component to work. An anarchist group in the UK last century had their motto as "neither work nor leisure" which I found interesting.<p>Recreation is different than leisure. It's about re-creation and renewal, more like play.
Working in a building site under sun and rain is not fun. And it is dangerous.<p>My father had a blast in a farm, because he is the boss and the manual work he has done is symbolic.<p>Swinging a machete (blade) under rain and sun for days on end is not fun, I can tell you from experience.<p>I only hear the opinion manual labor is "better" from some people who have never known any alternative, politicians who won't have to do any, or desk workers who can afford doing some manual "work" when feeling like it.<p>Any work you don't like will be tagged as bad, but I personally took the desk bad alternative over the manual labor alternative.<p>Manual labor is so bad that you have to import immigrants to do it. You could truly argue the wages are lower. I will elaborate realistic higher wages aren't enticing enough to get more nationals to embrace that work. That is happening in England right now, by the way.
This is especially interesting when I think about all the discussions I had about bosses and recruiters.<p>People would say I'm lazy, because I'm come to work at 11am or wanted to work from home.<p>Many even got angry and said I'm insolent for wanting to work like this, while the rest of the world simply does as they're asked.
For context: The article is an excerpt from the book, <i>The Overworked American: The Unexpected Decline of Leisure</i> by Juliet B. Schor, published in 1991 (though maybe there are later editions). Here's a review:<p><a href="https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/business/9806schor-overworked.html" rel="nofollow">https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/business/9...</a><p>I wonder what later research adds.
What if work is leisure? Jack Welch used to mention that he couldn't wait to get back to office in weekends. I personally feel that large part of my work is really leisure: researching new algorithms, building POCs, writing whitepapers and narratives, having brainstorming meetings, and etc. I don't think I can get such meaningful activities outside of work, either. That's because the work gives real use cases that demand scale and efficiency, which drives my projects. To me, an activity is leisure if I want to do it and I have freedom to decide how to spend time.
Hunter-gatherers actually worked even less: about 1 1/2 to 3 hours a day<p>As discussed in Stone Age Economics by Sahlins:<p><a href="https://archive.org/details/StoneAgeEconomics_201611" rel="nofollow">https://archive.org/details/StoneAgeEconomics_201611</a><p><a href="https://bigthink.com/big-think-books/vicki-robin-joe-dominguez-your-money-or-your-life/" rel="nofollow">https://bigthink.com/big-think-books/vicki-robin-joe-domingu...</a><p>The biblical expulsion from the Eden of gathering fruit to the toil of agriculture also makes that point.
people also worked for themselves, which is intrinsically more rewarding. i use to order meat and baked goods from the butcher and baker, respectively. now it's the minimum wage employee that they hired to run the cashiers and the minimum wage employee they trained to work the machines.
The submitted title ("Our ancestors may not have been rich, but they had an abundance of leisure") broke the site guidelines. Please don't do that. The rule is:<p>"<i>Please use the original title, unless it is misleading or linkbait; don't editorialize.</i>"<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html</a>
Sure they had a “shorter workweek” but it also took women a full workday to wash the family’s clothes, hours of walking to get water for the day, and if you wanted something from the town over that was a 3 day trip.<p>So many everyday things we take for granted were incredibly difficult and involved a lot of manual labor and/or waiting around for hours and days.<p>I wonder how much of that leisure time came from being blocked and technology/communications imposing a maximum throughput. You couldn’t work faster even if you wanted to and so you leisured. “Hurry up and wait” as some like to say<p>PS: there’s also stories of medieval peasants in France basicalky hibernating over winter because if you didn’t sleep for 16 hours every day, you’d burn too much calories and starve[1]. I’m sure that was a very fun reason to have short workweeks<p>[1] <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25robb.html" rel="nofollow">https://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/25/opinion/25robb.html</a>
When it comes to creative/mental jobs, the most productive form of work I've found is start when you're ready and work until you lose focus (forcing it is where diminishing returns kick in). Expect that to mean days where you work for 3 hours straight and days where you work for 14 straight (or days where you do 2 in the morning, stop for 3 hours, then do 3 in the evening) but don't throw a tantrum when that flexes.<p>Employers would be blown away by how much better the output and quality of work would be if they just left people the hell alone (fire your managers). People would also focus less on petty BS because they'd be happy instead of acting like children clawing at an ideal that only exists in their head.<p>Assume people are lazy idiots and you'll get a bunch of lazy idiots. Assume they're smart and generally well-intentioned: put your sunglasses on. You'll get the occasional clown (who you fire) but most will respect you for not treating them like cattle.
The problem is that the more we automate, the supply exceeds demand in the labor market. That in turn allows employers to easily suck up the excess potential workers at low wages, and also makes further automation or even repairing the machines we got uneconomical.<p>Stagnant weak demands screws over big things like nuclear power plants and subways.<p>We need things like a UBI and further shrinking of the workweek (perhaps as an "automatic stabilizer" based on pop vs total working hours vs popuation!) in order to not stagnate technology and get back our free time.
In all the progress we made economically, it's disappointing how both economic security and shorter work weeks have stagnated.<p>It's truly odd for example when women joined the work force, this massive influx of labor didn't move work hours by an inch. Likewise for all the automation that happened.<p>We seem to be able to dramatically improve on everything in record time except for work conditions. It's a work for work sake situation, where some 50% of our economy basically consists of keeping each other busy.<p>Keeping each other busy is made possible by mandatory consumption. Marketing, social status, inflation, planned obsolesce all create a strong incentive to consume.<p>So, that's the system. Work, regardless of purpose. Consume, regardless of purpose. Just do lots of both. Keeping velocity at proper levels requires constant stimulation, which tells us its unnatural.<p>Isn't it odd that our species sees consuming lots of resources as a good thing? Isn't it odd that we glorify labor even if that labor does nothing to advance mankind? Isn't it cruel how some 80% of people hate their work, yet we force them into a humiliating 50 year rate race anyway, consuming their life energy?<p>Is it all worth it? Are we sure we can't do better?
For a deeper dive, James Suzman the anthropologist wrote 'Work: A Deep History, from the Stone Age to the Age of Robots'. Published in 2021. It's worth a read if anyone wants understand how the industrial revolution changed work patterns and (perhaps more importantly) how the agricultural revolution changed how people spend their time and how much leisure time people have had throughout human history
Not quite: the workweek described still sounds like at least 40 hours.<p>What the article says is that they had a shorter work week than many people did during the early/middle years of the industrial revolution. Modern day capitalism, while significantly flawed, seems to have moved on from that early horror: I have ancestors from ~100 years ago that died of black lung after spending decades of 60-70 hours/week in coal mines.<p>The author also ignores the time outside of "work" necessary to keep a household going. Time spent outside of the fields wasn't just idle time: everything from cooking to home maintenance was added labor that would eat away at those off hours more so than similar tasks today.<p>And sure, today some people still have no choice but to work long hours, and some people choose to do so, but I imagine that was the case in the supposedly more idyllic workers' environment described by the author as well.<p>Other aspects of these claims of a more leisurely life are refuted here: <a href="https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulation-industry/medieval-peasants-really-did-not-work-only-150-days-a-year%3fformat=amp" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.adamsmith.org/blog/regulati...</a><p>We also shouldn't forget the <i>conditions</i> of work & life for the average person. Peasantry was certainly a big step above out & out slavery but freedom was still significantly curtailed. There was not for example universal freedom of movement. Absent approval by the local lord, a person was bound to the land they were born on. The quality of low/middle justice for what rights people did have was highly variable & subject to capricious whims at times. (Which isn't to say that's a completely solved problem today though)<p>All of which is to say that <i>workday</i> hours, even granting the author's central thesis (which I don't), are not the yardstick to use when measuring quality of life. At best it's just one data point in the constellation of factors involved.
Life in the preindustrial world was incredibly poor and dangerous by our standards.<p>World population was 1/10 of today, so there wouldn't have been food for most of us.<p>Of course, our ancestors living then didn't have that comparison, and were possibly much happier than we are.
This isn't the first time I've seen this sentiment displayed here on HN with regard to historic European civilization. What I haven't seen is a comparison to other ones. I'm particularly interested in Asian civilization.
this reminds me of a part of Sapiens where they discuss how agriculture actually ended up taking up more time then foraging for early settlers. They also mentioned how their nutrition and teeth suffered initially as well.
Um.<p>Considering famines were common, 1/10 women died during child birth, infant mortality was absurdly high and most people stayed in the same town until they died, I prefer now.<p>Running water is also nice .
Reminds me of Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930) by Keynes Definitely worth a read. I also finished Trekonomics by Manu Saadia which was a good attempt at trying to explain the economics behind star trek, essentially a society where the economic problem (scarcity of resources) had been solved and people live to pursue personal goals rather than income.
I didn't see it mentioned...why? What happened in the mid 19th century that labor lost the upper hand to "management"? If the tradition (of less work hours) dates so far back, what triggered its disappearance so quickly? And going forward, as if it never existed?
I'm also very curious about job organization, and teaching.<p>You can work hard but in a beneficial environment (efforts are well chunked and rewarding physically and/or mentally) or you can work somehow less but in toxic settings (adversarial relationships, bad tooling, etc).
Ugh, alright so if you have a farm with animals it’s a 7 day a week job. I’m having trouble believing they had a shorter work week generally. Now, if we’re talking just laborers.. maybe, but the majority of people owned farms and animals in the pre-industrial world.
Read The Undefeated by George Paloczi-Horvath. He's a 20th century writer who lived through the tail end of the feudal system in Hungary. The lives of the peasants were not great. They were mal-nourished and lived at the whims of their lords.
I disagree it's because of capitalism.<p>Capitalism was also people working in the fields and trading their produce, after paying their tax to their lord, not unlike to our income tax.<p>There are definitely many trends that led us to work more and more. There are increasingly more and more people in the few places people with ambitions want to live in. That's more competition which gradually drives the cost down. If the wage is already low enough that it's unreasonable for someone to live on it, the working hours will go up.<p>The real modern culprit in my opinion is the mandatory education system which indoctrinate kids to become employees for life instead of helping them find a place in society and in the market by providing value as a small business.<p>With less employees around wages would go up, with more small businesses the capital would be spread more and not concentrated in the hands of a few.<p>It's not hard to understand who is benefitting from this system: whoever owns capital and need workers.<p>I'm sure there is plenty of overlap with people controlling the media and telling people what to think and want - and people in the government approving laws.
I mean, I've been working 60-70 hour weeks and am working before the sun comes up and after it goes down so it makes some sense. They didn't have electric light, we do.
I saw an article years ago where the bones of colonial Americans were analysed. They found a lot of markers of major stress put on them. They also didn't live long.
Why is everyone so defensive? The author never says we'd be better off living in the pre-industrial era. It just points out one of the many lies we've been pushed on by the modern propaganda.<p>This kind of emotional reaction shows a level of insecurity that usually only comes out when we are attacked on something personal we feel fragile about. I don't understand how a discussion about the merits of capitalism can trigger the same response in people. You don't react like this when you're confident and certain that you're doing the right thing.<p>The point of the discussion isn't if we should go back to the pre-industrial era. The trillion dollar question is sadly left unanswered and, worst of all, undebated: If productivity has constantly risen since the first industrial revolution, why do we have less free time than ever? Where have most of the productivity gains gone?<p>Before I get answers about how we have less housework to do in our free time today, for most people working full time that is simply untrue. You commute ~1 hour daily, work 8 hours, when you get back home you've got to buy groceries, shower, cook, wash your dishes, etc. There's barely 1/2 hours of leisure left, and we usually feel too tired already by that time.
Small time farmers in capitalist nations who did not serve a lord should have even more comfortable lives than peasants. According to this anti-capitalist narrative, it would be absolutely absurd for these people to abandon their their small farms and family to work in a crowded factory for longer hours and more dangerous conditions. And yet it happened anyways, suggesting that the life a a peasant wasn't as idyllic as the author seems to think it was.
I remember enjoying E.P. Thompson's take on "Time, Work-Discipline, and Industrial Capitalism" in college. He has a lot of interesting commentary about how technology in the form of accurate timepieces played a role in our concept of labor. The article is here behind a paywall (<a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/649749" rel="nofollow">https://www.jstor.org/stable/649749</a>). Anyone with access to a search engine can likely find a free copy ;).
I am reading Jean Froissart’s Chronicles. It is a fascinating first hand account of English royalty and wars in the 14th century. I think people should also consider the higher classes in those times because they seem to have worked continuously at killing each other. It’s work none the less.
They also didn't have access to computers, credit cards, and often were exploited via Corvee labor because they had no money. I'd trade working more for a convenient life as opposed to a relaxed but difficult one. People died of disease, famine, and war often. I mean why would you work hard knowing those major things are constantly knocking on your doorstep?
Who cares? Pre-industrial life was brutal. You can experience it today by moving to an isolated pre-industrial village in places like the Amazon or the jungles of Myanmar.