Defending my own brain against enshittification

askonomm

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.

m_w_

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.

jdw64

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.

Apocryphon

> The floor plan of my office is basically glass doors along the perimeter with private offices for executives and cubicles throughout for the rest of us. Highly normcore. It’s normie these days to have cubicles, instead of being in an open floorplan? Not in Silicon Valley, I don’t think.

apercu

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.

shrekmas

This was well written and easy to read. I will have to look into Miyazaki now.

Havoc

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

sublinear

> 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.

Semkas

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/ ).

shermantanktop

Dissing Biscoff cookies in the opening paragraph? Not sure I can read the rest...

kccqzy

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.

mekane8

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.

dayvid

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.

ratelimitsteve

I very much like the idea that tolerating discomfort and inconvenience is something we have to actively train ourselves to do.

stinos

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.

throwitaway222

> Approach the impossibly tall black glass that is my office building. Badge in. A dozen or so floors later, step off the elevator and swing into the day: say hi to coworkers, settle into my cubicle, plug into monitors, sip coffee, gradually get subsumed by unstoppable vibrancy of caffeine high, and we're off to the races. Every part of his day except for this part was awesome. Family, Train ride, etc... But the glass building and cubicle. I'm desperately trying to get out of knowledge work and into something else. Enshittification is knowledge work now. I would rather be in an excavator digging footings.

m463

> enshittification I was a little worried that "Belvita" was an ai-inserted advertisement in a blog post that had been enshittified.