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Comment by matty22 | Hacker News Reader

Why do you WANT to work more?

You are in the enviable position of being able to work for just 10 hours per week to support your quality of life. Perhaps you could pick a new hobby and dedicate your free time to becoming a master woodworker? Perhaps you could find a cause you care about and volunteer your free time to helping in some capacity? Perhaps you want to learn to paint or travel or meet new people or, hell, just sit in the park and feed the ducks.

Or if you really do want to do more income generating work, what do you want to work ON? Just saying "I should work more" isn't going to cut it.

> It is not enough to be busy. So are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about? - Henry David Thoreau

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Why is the top answer to "how can I work more" always "work less"?

If you don't agree with that the poster is trying to do just don't answer instead of undermining their motivation.

Perhaps because a desire to spend more time working is, in the grand scheme of things, a colossal mistake.

You get top answers advising the OP to work less because some of us lived through the same problem and in the end realized what a colossal mistake it is to waste your life living to work instead of working to live.

How many people have laid in their deathbed complaining how they didn't spent more time at the office pushing some paperwork? Hoe many complained they didn't spent enough time with their loved ones?

Yes, the top answer is always "work less" because that's alwayd the right answer.

I disagree with this. Some people do not want to have families, and some people are really competitive and ambitious. Not everyone's goal is to spend their time with others or leisure.

Furthermore, I know for myself I feel like shit after a lot of social activity or leisure, and feel actually really great after working for a long amount of time. The only hard part is starting.

This hits the nail on the head. I feel like shit after too much social activity, and feel great after working very hard. I thought it was a given that everyone feels better after it and didn't see the need to mention reason in OP.

Because the question is impossible to answer without an understanding of why they want to work more.

Why is the motivation important? I mean if you see any athlete trying to increase physical stamina, they'd get a few responses. Why not mental stamina?

Athletes want to be able to run faster, jump higher, etc.

If OP's question was "How can I become better at coding", or even "how can I code for more hours of the day before feeling burnt out," I think the responses would be quite different.

I don't actually want to do any of those things. There's dozens of ideas to work on and I want to work on some of them.

Working double the hours more than doubles my income, which is nice, as I can do things like have a nice dinner or bring my kids to Disneyland.

But I do enjoy the things I work on, and I don't enjoy the period where I'm idling in preparation for the thing I intend to do. It sounds a little strange, but it's a lot like flipping through channels on Netflix before actually watching any shows.

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