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Apprentice comments on Be Happier - Less Wrong
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Humans pine for excess leisure but revealed preference shows that they find excess leisure stressful. People go stir crazy after 2-3 months. I can't say I wouldn't eventually find leisure boring, but I was unemployed for 8 months a couple years ago and it was unequivocally the greatest time in my life. The only lasting negative thoughts I had during that time were thoughts related to it ending. Don't get me wrong, I don't think I'm some wonderfully atypical snowflake, I suspect that many creative/intellectual types would love carte blanche to pursue random projects. But this proportion of the general populace is far smaller than the portion who profess to want it.
Define A as "the stuff I would spend my time doing if I got tenure". Define B as "the stuff I would spend my time doing if I became unemployed."
I've been wondering how close A and B are to being identical.
If you are unemployed, you are running out of money, and you know the time is running out (unless you manage to make something that brings a lot of money soon).
This anxiety can make a huge difference in how you will spent the time. Even if you made the same plans, I would expect more procrastination in situation B.