I was once in a position where I had nothing to do for around 5 months straight after starting a job. It was an open office plan, we were clocked in 9-5, and I had a supervisor from another team who sat across from me and meant to keep an eye on me. I was also young and naive enough that I didn't know how far I could push limits slacking, so I didn't really push them at all. I desperately pleaded with everyone for work, but was always told the equivalent of "next sprint we'll have some for you, go read some documentation for now!".

I had never been more depressed in my life than those 5 months.

The closest thing I could compare it to is imagine printing out a copy of your current project's documentation, locking yourself in a room with it for 8 hours, then doing that 100 more times. It's a special type of hell.

No matter how well you think you can divorce your work time from your personal time, it starts to cross over. Work becomes so boringly painful that you actively dread it even in your time off. You know that tomorrow you're going to have to wake up and pretend to stare at documentation. For hours. And hours. And hours. And then repeat that the next day. And the next. And the next - with no end in sight.

Reminds me of school. One of the coping mechanisms I found was daydreaming while pretending to do the work.

The way I see it, "work time" is usually quite a big chunk of a person's life, especially if you throw in commute time. It also tends to take out the most "useful" time of the day.

Want to go hiking? Swimming in a river? Build some furniture? Build a house? Watch birds? Go shopping? Wrench on your car? Race your motorcycle? All are best done during the "work hours".

So while I can see the appeal of not tying one's meaning to one's job, I also completely understand the sinking feeling of having to postpone these activities for doing... nothing.

Because even though you can "find something to do" while at work, most of the time, you're not fully free. You may not just pick up your stuff and go fishing. You have to stay physically at the office and sometimes even have people dropping by asking random questions. So even getting engrossed in a book / music is out, since you'll be randomly interrupted. At least if you're WFH you can do random chores to free up the time afterwards (do the dishes / laundry / bake a pizza).

Of course, if you have to work to live, you have to go through this. But I don't see how its being necessary can make it less soul-crushing. Quite the contrary. I'm lucky enough to be able to find things to do on my own, or if not, work for one of my hobbies which happen to involve computers and don't require me to be physically somewhere precise. But not everyone's so lucky.

Well said.

I don't know. Why do you like chocolate ice cream? At least for me, despite all my efforts in every direction, the things I like or dislike fail to alter themselves that much at my request.

I have mechanisms to deal with them and to ensure that I do certain things, but the inner will always directs in a certain direction. I can summon the motivation to do other things, but I have so far failed to modify that inner desire.

If you're different, then do share what interventions let you modify.

Given that, your question is more like "Why would you like chocolate ice cream?". And the answer is simple: There is no 'why'; there only is.

All meaningful progress requires labor. You're specifically talking about labor paid for by a corporation, but that isn't mutually exclusive with that labor also being a goal or passion that you're interested in.

Meaning is subjective, and many do find it in their work. For example, many software devs like the work of learning about and creating software. To be paid for it is a bonus, not something detracting.

You are missing that people are different. It seems extremely easy and intuitive to compartmentalize aspects of your life.

More power to you. Not everyone is like that. Personally, I find compartmentalization unnatural.

Even the “work hard play hard” aspect of weekday/weekend. Unnatural to me. I do think everything has seasons. I don’t view those seasons as literally on an hourly granularity though, that’s what is unnatural to me.

I think it's the "faking it" part that's draining.

> Work time is labor time for me, and any amount of it is actively detracting from me being able to pursue the things that I do think have meaning.

Exactly, that's the problem. The article is not about not having enough work to do, it's about the work not having enough meaning to want to do it in the first place.

Also the issue that generally you still need the job (because you need income) and more importantly, you need to ensure you have a usable reference from your time there.

Of course you could see it that way. However, what about ethics? If work is just some no meaning thing to do, will you care about the ethical aspects of your work? And I think we need a lot more of that in tech jobs.