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Optimize for meaningful work
The history of capitalism has been about making the GDP number go up. A lot of what goes into GDP is nonsense that doesn't make lives better, so the conversation should be about how to have a meaningful life.
A meaningful life includes being productive, having income, and having financial freedom. It also includes being creative, enjoying the people you work with, being in settings you enjoy, and aesthetics.
Replit's founder found that the most fulfilling times of his working life didn't feel like work. Inventing Replit and the technology it was based on felt like pure invention and creation, with no second of work in it. The grindset that has come to Silicon Valley sounds lame as hell to him.
Why does GDP miss so much of what matters?
Gross domestic product counts the market value of goods and services produced, so unpaid work such as childcare and housework is left out. Simon Kuznets, who helped build the US national income accounts, told Congress in 1934 that the welfare of a nation can scarcely be inferred from a measure of national income. GDP also counts spending that repairs damage, such as rebuilding after a storm, as output. The measure was designed to track production and employment during the Great Depression.
Why does inventive work feel effortless?
The psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studied artists, chess players, and rock climbers who described getting so absorbed in a task that they lost track of time. He named this state flow and wrote about it in his 1990 book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. In his research, flow tended to occur when a challenge matched a person's skill closely and the goals were clear. People in his studies often reported being in flow more at work than at leisure.
How did the eight-hour workday become standard?
The Welsh reformer Robert Owen proposed a day of eight hours of labor, eight of recreation, and eight of rest in 1817. Ford Motor Company moved its plants to an eight-hour day and a five-dollar daily wage in 1914. In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 set a maximum workweek of 44 hours, which dropped to 40 hours in 1940. Before such rules, factory workdays of ten to sixteen hours were common.
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