“The only ways I see out of this dilemma are 1) being in a relatively unstructured period of your life (ie, unemployed, college student, semi-retired, etc) or 2) having a completely broken motivation system which keeps you in a perpetually unstructured life against your will (akrasia) or perhaps 3) being a full-time computer professional who can multi-task and pass off reading online during your work day as actually working. ”
I really don’t see this. While I am (at present) in category three, until two years ago I was working first in a bank and then as a nursing assistant, both more-than-full-time jobs, and also married. I still managed to read a few books a week, two broadsheet newspapers a day, and spend a couple of hours reading and writing stuff online.
Admittedly, I’m in the UK, so have/had a relatively short commute and also decent public transport (so can read on the ’bus/train), but I really don’t think having a job stops people spending half an hour a day on their interests (in fact I did the above while doing part-time university studies and being in a band).
Indeed. I’m a middle-aged domestic suburban dad. I have a newly-chronically-ill girlfriend and a small child (and two step-teenagers). Thankfully I can work from home as often as I need to, which turns out to be most days of a week. And I’m presently looking for outside hours consulting income, because a family of five can eat all the money you can think of.
But I take LW out of my internet-as-television time budget. Time I am deliberately relaxing. I’m here because I enjoy it, while I enjoy it.
There are those who are not happy with this level of commitment, of course. So one should think carefully whether getting any of someone’s time is better than none, or if you really do only want committed time.
That’s impressive! Thanks for the data point. I’ll definitely take your experience into consideration. It seems that no one wants to believe that time might constrain their lives or the lives of other intelligent people.
Wasn’t meant to be impressive—like I said, there are several factors that helped (short commute on public transport rather than long commute by car).
Time does, of course, constrain people’s lives—I am in constant agonies about how much I could actually get done if I didn’t have to spend forty hours or more a week sat in a place I don’t want to be doing things I don’t want to do—but you’re talking about half an hour a day average, not some sort of huge commitment of time. If you bring a book to work and read on your lunch break, or even just spend three and a half hours on Sunday afternoon reading a novel, you’re doing that much.
As a matter of fact I don’t own a TV—I do watch DVDs and the occasional programme off the BBC iPlayer on my computer, though. I’d guess maybe five hours a week watching video material, something like that.
My point is just that pressures of time really don’t stop the vast majority from committing that much time to something they’re interested in. I can’t think of anyone I know who’s ever said “I don’t have time to watch TV for 30 minutes a day”, or ”...to play video games for 30 minutes a day”, or “to listen to music/have sex/watch sports/talk with my friends”.
What you’re seeing as a time pressure is actually a priority pressure—most people put watching TV as a higher priority than reading. Which is a valid choice—there is nothing about TV as a medium that makes it intrinsically any worse than any other, and one could get far more out of I, Claudius, Life On Earth, an old 60s Doctor Who story or The Ascent Of Man than out of, say, J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown—but it does put a limit on how much time they’ll spend reading rather dense pieces of text.
But that’s definitely not the same thing as a limit on their time, it’s a limit on their interest.
“The only ways I see out of this dilemma are 1) being in a relatively unstructured period of your life (ie, unemployed, college student, semi-retired, etc) or 2) having a completely broken motivation system which keeps you in a perpetually unstructured life against your will (akrasia) or perhaps 3) being a full-time computer professional who can multi-task and pass off reading online during your work day as actually working. ”
I really don’t see this. While I am (at present) in category three, until two years ago I was working first in a bank and then as a nursing assistant, both more-than-full-time jobs, and also married. I still managed to read a few books a week, two broadsheet newspapers a day, and spend a couple of hours reading and writing stuff online.
Admittedly, I’m in the UK, so have/had a relatively short commute and also decent public transport (so can read on the ’bus/train), but I really don’t think having a job stops people spending half an hour a day on their interests (in fact I did the above while doing part-time university studies and being in a band).
Indeed. I’m a middle-aged domestic suburban dad. I have a newly-chronically-ill girlfriend and a small child (and two step-teenagers). Thankfully I can work from home as often as I need to, which turns out to be most days of a week. And I’m presently looking for outside hours consulting income, because a family of five can eat all the money you can think of.
But I take LW out of my internet-as-television time budget. Time I am deliberately relaxing. I’m here because I enjoy it, while I enjoy it.
There are those who are not happy with this level of commitment, of course. So one should think carefully whether getting any of someone’s time is better than none, or if you really do only want committed time.
That’s impressive! Thanks for the data point. I’ll definitely take your experience into consideration. It seems that no one wants to believe that time might constrain their lives or the lives of other intelligent people.
Question: Do you even own a TV?
Wasn’t meant to be impressive—like I said, there are several factors that helped (short commute on public transport rather than long commute by car). Time does, of course, constrain people’s lives—I am in constant agonies about how much I could actually get done if I didn’t have to spend forty hours or more a week sat in a place I don’t want to be doing things I don’t want to do—but you’re talking about half an hour a day average, not some sort of huge commitment of time. If you bring a book to work and read on your lunch break, or even just spend three and a half hours on Sunday afternoon reading a novel, you’re doing that much. As a matter of fact I don’t own a TV—I do watch DVDs and the occasional programme off the BBC iPlayer on my computer, though. I’d guess maybe five hours a week watching video material, something like that.
My point is just that pressures of time really don’t stop the vast majority from committing that much time to something they’re interested in. I can’t think of anyone I know who’s ever said “I don’t have time to watch TV for 30 minutes a day”, or ”...to play video games for 30 minutes a day”, or “to listen to music/have sex/watch sports/talk with my friends”.
What you’re seeing as a time pressure is actually a priority pressure—most people put watching TV as a higher priority than reading. Which is a valid choice—there is nothing about TV as a medium that makes it intrinsically any worse than any other, and one could get far more out of I, Claudius, Life On Earth, an old 60s Doctor Who story or The Ascent Of Man than out of, say, J.K. Rowling or Dan Brown—but it does put a limit on how much time they’ll spend reading rather dense pieces of text.
But that’s definitely not the same thing as a limit on their time, it’s a limit on their interest.