What do people do after work?

What do people do after work?

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2 min read

Out in the working world, people often talk about "work-life balance."

In environments like military basic training or college, your schedule is either completely mapped out for you or you may completely pack your days with stuff, but in most other environments, there is some expectation of respect for a person's free time.

Work-life balance in the modern day is a simple concept. The traditional idea is that an employee would spend 8 hours in a day working, 8 hours of free time, and 8 hours sleeping, 5 days per week. This is what we've been trained and expected to do since Kindergarten (K-12) and beyond. (Note I am using the most generic case here).

So as a curious individual in the world, you might ask, what do people do after work? Go to YouTube and you'll find one video that addresses this called What do people do in Silicon Valley after work? by Supermatt. The video consists of Supermatt asking employees at tech companies in Silicon Valley their age range and what they do after work.

In summary, nothing special.

This is only an anecdotal study, but it's a curious thing that people would go home and do "literally nothing," as some call it. If those 8 hours working = Work, then those 8 hours of free time = Life. If the Work you do to make a living does not define you, then what does in Life?

I am not saying "follow your passion and the money will follow," hyping "work-life integration" like Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington, or telling people to become nurses and work 16-hour days every day.

But surely there's more to Life than Nothing.