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Comment by schneems | Hacker News Reader

A quote I think about often in a variety of contexts:

> It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond

In my HCI class we read about a paper talking about the tech that was supposed to save everyone from so much toil: the washing machine. It explored how we originally thought home appliance innovations would bring us leisure. Instead they’ve brought us more time to spend working. I wish I had the paper name at hand.

I think the quote and observation go hand in hand. Anything that could be used to provide ease, can equally be used to buttress performance and when humans have to choose between the two…the systems aren’t set up to reward those that choose the route of joy.

While I definitely enjoy programming more than I enjoy hand washing my own clothes. I wish I had less stress and more ease in my life.

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> It never gets easier you just get faster – Greg LeMond

Yeah! I had this insight when I started running. There's a hill on the Harlem side of the Central Park loop that used to kill me (I'd start my run at Columbus Circle so by the time I got to the hill, I was already exhausted -and- there was a bunch more to go!) I used to think "man once I get good at running, I am gonna eat this hill for breakfast" and then I realized you never get to a place where you love/don't notice it, it just becomes something you end up doing at a higher pace or as part of a longer run, etc.

More recently, I realized that my Peloton rides "feel" about the same as they did 2 years ago when I started. I still sometimes feel "rusty", sometimes out of breath, etc. What changes is that the mileage/output I produce for a given amount of "feeling" has gone up a lot.

Maybe broadly, I don't feel like I am working much harder now that I have a ton of work responsibility vs when I had smaller scope. Or now that I am a husband/dad vs when I was a single guy/dating. Life feels about the same level of difficulty, but there's a lot more being accomplished.

The positive thing is recognizing how much more is being accomplished. The "other" thing is recognizing how much MORE can be accomplished if I reprioritize/focus/etc.

your two analogies are interesting, because it shows your exercise regimen has kind of the same 'goal' as capitalism- always more! If you get faster and stronger, run further. If you become more productive at your job, increase the expectations. If you exceeded profitability this quarter, set that as a baseline and exceed it by more next quarter!

Notably, it doesn't _have_ to be that way. If you were running with a set destination, the hill would become easier over time. If we were paid based on our productivity, we could work less and enjoy the same lifestyle.

Except an exercise regime that eventually gets "easy" eventually gets harder again too. The value is being able to put in the work, not the outcome (the outcome you get elsewhere: if I can lift more weight, gardening will be that much easier - but that's not the point of my exercise regime).

The word that I think is missing from your analysis is "better." I don't "run further" because of some random need to do more, but because this is an input into my health, and more health is always better.

Then you say:

//If we were paid based on our productivity

We are paid for our productivity in the grand scheme of things. To make this obvious, many things that would have taken hours/days for a worker to do 200 years ago may be done in seconds with today's tooling. So if you want to live like people did 200 years ago, you can do that with minimum work (in fact, in the west you have a much better life unemployed today than a worker would have 200 years ago). But the reality is, you want the improvements of safety, quality of life, etc that have occurred in that time too. Because you want your life to be "better."

> I don't "run further" because of some random need to do more, but because this is an input into my health, and more health is always better.

Pretty dubious claim. You really think that running and health are related in an even remotely linear fashion? It's likely doing it at all puts you way, way up the effort/benefit curve. Constantly pushing yourself for "better" eventually just becomes a waste of time you could put into something else.

Yeah, and the stress of telling your body that it always needs to do better to survive probably makes you age faster.

There’s diminishing marginal returns from exercise. So there’s probably a sweet spot of how much you want to do it. Same with work. And for many people, same with spending time with friends and family.

There’s an implicit belief in a lot of this thread that more is better and that happiness is down the road of doing more things. That’s stupid and wrong for almost all of us. And ironically, your career, health and relationships all suffer if you push too hard and don’t let them breathe. The real joys are found sitting watching the sunset, with a good meal with the people we love. It doesn’t get better than that.

I mean if you want to split hairs and miss the larger points sure. Yes you can be at diminishing returns so you are right there's a limit to more is better. Not the situation I am talking about here, both fitness wise and economically because frankly 99.999% of people are nowhere near diminishing returns on either of those.

My two examples are intended to show the difficulty of optimizing for ease or joy in the force of a system with more influence.

Capitalism is one such system, but it’s not the only system. What you’re describing is possible, and people do it, but to do it they have to have systems that support it.

It’s not quite as easy as as it is in War Games to “not play the game”.

If you want more people opting into ease and joy you first identify the barriers (which I’m attempting to do) then you find ways around them or replacements. I don’t have answers, but at minimum I wish that “faster”, “easier”, or “more convienent” would stop being used as proxies for “more joy” or “more ease”.

There’s a different quote I also think about from bojack horseman when he is trying to get it in shape and is laying on a hill panting for breath.

> Every day it gets a little easier… But you gotta do it every day — that’s the hard part. But it does get easier.

I strangely feel these totally contradictory pieces of advice are somehow both true.

Though “easier” might not mean the in-the-moment-act (of exercise) but rather the ability to start an action and follow through with it. That consistency makes it easier, but consistency is also hard.

In the show though I think it’s more a metaphor for getting clean and putting your life back together.

It just shows the tension in improving efficiency. You can use the gain to do the same thing with lower cost. Or you can spend the same, and get more.

For most people, it seem we are psychologically disposed to use the improvement for more.

The hill I climbed on my bike the other day after finally getting back into it disagrees. It does get easier.

It gets easier but you never stop noticing it.

The Lemond quote is in the context of a professional sportsman while racing. If you're in a running/cycling group that always trains at roughly the same pace it definitely does get easier - indeed I stopped riding with one group partly because my fitness got to the point I found the rides too easy! So yeah, Lemond's quote can/does apply to amateurs taking part in their regular exercise routine but only if they choose to increase their average speed.

I think about it while lifting. If I’m not struggling, I’m not growing (literally).

I also feel it applies to my programming as well. I still get frustrated and annoyed and tripped up, but I can write more high quality code quicker now than I could ten years ago.

But generally that means I take on more tasks or harder problems, rather than call it a day at noon every day (though I do genuinely feel there’s a diminishing return and something like a four day work week might actually improve knowledge work output).

I'm actually not entirely convinced I do produce useful/robust software faster now than I did 10 or 20 years ago, mainly because the problem domains seem to have become a lot more complex. But I assume for any given set of requirements (including the exact platform(s) it would run on) I'd be able to write the necessary code faster now than I could in the past.

I think that's a solid example of what we are talking about. As you "level up" you are able to take on greater scope and greater complexity, at a given level of effort.

"The positive thing is recognizing how much more is being accomplished."

Is it? Are you spending more time with your loved ones? Have more time to enjoy nature? Spend more time on hobbies? Get out of bed later, take more time for breakfast, have fewer or shorter working days?

Compared to people a century ago, the answer is probably "yes!". Tech has made most people's lives more comfortable.

But compared to say, 20..30y ago? Maybe. Much recent progress has been funneled into producing an ever-increasing stream of movies, gadgets, kitchen appliances, bigger cars & houses, nicer clothes, roads, shopping malls, etc, etc.

Do we need those things to be happy? No. Do they make our lives easier? Sometimes. But also more complex to manage at the same time.

Capitalism's marketing machine has become extremely good at selling us things. In many cases, things we really don't need, don't improve our lives, perhaps not even wanted.

So a lot of that "accomplished more" is producing things of questionable utility. While under-estimating what we lose in exchange.

But hey: profit! (well... for some people)

Is that all true? I am 42 years old and I think I have an average amount of "non work" time for this generation, as my dad did for his. And I think I see my kids way more than my dad did.

There are a few obvious factors for that - eg my dad didn't get to work from home while many people nowadays get to do that at least a few times a week if not every day. Video conferencing basically removed the need for work trips for me although I sometimes chose to do them. I have way more flexibility (eg taking a few hours mid day for a family thing) that previous generations style of work never had. And even on days I am traveling, I can FaceTime with the kids for bedtime which is a game changer vs just not being there.

The famous song about a father not having time for his kids, Cat's in the Cradle, is from 1977. Clearly that sentiment existed then big time.

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