How to be Idle

[Lezard Valeth]

Seems to me that this (http://www.mojones.com/cgi-bin/print_article.pl?url=http://www.mojones.com/arts/qa/2005/06/how_to_be_idle.html) might appeal to INTPs. It appeals to me, anyway, but I'd wager that it wouldn't sit very well with workoholic STJs. Life's too short, I think, to defer happiness in the rat race until you're ready for your dirt nap.


Ten a.m. is for sleeping in, three in the afternoon for a nap (waking fresh for teatime). Then a rambling stroll followed by the first drink of the day. Ten in the evening: pints at the pub; a midnight contemplation of the celestial sphere; meditation at four in the morning.

Who the hell lives like this?

Tom Hodgkinson, for one. His book, How to be Idle, just out in the United States, is a treatise on living a life of leisure and should be required reading for the Western world’s workaholics -- and especially for Americans, who with their collective 415 million unused vacation days last year and pathetic 53 percent job dissatisfaction rates could evidently use some edifying pointers on successful loafing.

(etc...)

TH: For most of us, the opportunity to become creative is being squeezed at both ends. We think, “Well, I’ve been doing all that work, and now I’m going to reward myself by doing a lot of spending.” What would happen in the days before time was money and money and machines weren’t quite so dominant would be you’d have all this other time when you’d do what turned into hobbies. Little things like making clothes, baking bread, cooking, even useless things like bird-watching, sketching flowers, playing guitar in the home--that sort of time is gone. And the time we have? We’re so exhausted, we want to let ourselves get sucked in to the escape world of TV. I’m speaking from experience; I’m not above all this.

I like the idea of becoming [fairly] good at lots of things rather than very good at just one thing. So it would be nice to be okay at the guitar or at the piano, a reasonable cook, perhaps able to fix your car or do some basic carpentry, and be able to write the odd article. Rather than being super good at one tiny thing, to be kind of average at lots of things. It might mean that you have a more kind of enjoyable, complete life.

(etc...)

I'm not sure how he can achieve this kind of lifestyle, and I can't judge from the article how easy it is for others to duplicate it. I'm intrigued, though, so I think I'll buy his book.

[Hypnos]

Yes, this sounds like the INTP fantasy, but then you run into the real world difficulties of paying for food, shelter, etc., since other people have to work to provide these things to you. Strategies INTPs have taken:

* Easy, leisurely work so they can ponder/sit idle on the job
* High paying annoying work, then retiring early
* High paying annoying work that's doesn't take up much time
* Changing careers every ~5 years
* Doing "jack-of-all-trades" work: writing, handyman, etc.

I'm in physics, and I think it largely falls in the last category. We'll see how long I can resist specialization, and how much generality I'll have access to if I become a college professor or something.

[Lezard Valeth]

My guess is that you would have a hard time being a generalist in academia. It seems like it would be difficult to juggle research, writing grant proposals, teaching, attending conferences, and playing politics and such to keep current in more than one area. And then there are things not related to your job, like if you want to have a spouse, a family, or some hobbies. The knowledge pool is much larger than it has ever been, and it is growing quickly, further increasing the difficulty of being a generalist.

There are options for physicists outside academia, though, like Wall Street. A lot of phD physicists who left the field found well-paying work there. You might be able to do something with math or computers (or other technologies), too. If you go into industry, you'll probably have to do applied physics rather than basic research. Not as much glory in that.

Some physicists have successfully hopped from one area of science to another. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of DNA, switched from physics to molecular biology to neuroscience. But it's probably a lot harder to do that these days, I'd bet.

PhDs.org (www.phds.org) is a great place to find information on this stuff. I looked over a lot of the articles because I also thought I about being a scientist (biologist is what I had in mind). Looks like a long, difficult path with no guarantee of success and few rewards even if you do succeed. It doesn't seem worth it to me.

[Hypnos]

*shrug* it depends. My officemate has worked on particle physics, cosmic ray physics, geology, paleontology and climate change during his career, as well as consulting on national defense technology. A family friend did his PhD in physics, worked on electronics, then optics/optoelectronics, artificial intelligence, communications and is now a DARPA project manager. Oppenheimer worked on quantum mechanics, nuclear physics, neutron stars, and other topics.

And then there are the myriad academics who are experts on their little cottage industries.

[Lezard Valeth]

That sounds encouraging. If that were commonplace, I'd give science a second look. I'm not sure though. It is difficult to tell what the situation is overall from anecdotes. Famous scientists probably have an easier time switching than most. Also, people who got their phDs during the "golden age" of science -- the decades following WWII -- have had a much easier time than the phDs and graduate school students today are having.

The things I've read are very depressing. However, it could be that the person who maintains phDs.org is disproportionately likely to link to negative articles. I don't know. But the sources were abundant enough and varied enough to make me second guess science as a career choice.

What I know is that there's a huge glut of phDs right now, and even if phDs stopped being produced, it would take years to absorb them into academic positions. This hurts the phDs who can't get those jobs, of course, but it also diminishes the bargaining power of (easily replaced) existing phDs. University officials can gut tenure with impunity. Department heads can come up with contrived "reasons" to deny you tenure and replace you with one of the couple hundred other people who will apply for the position. Before you have tenure, you rock the boat at your own risk.

Universities prefer to hire safe and incremental candidates rather than bold candidates who have taken risks. If you take risks, you may make mistakes, and if you make a mistake, they have a reason not to hire you. I read that this effect may be causing scientific stagnation. You can do everything right and still not get an academic position.

According to one article I read (by an astrophysicist), some people spend more time on politics than on science. Those people become the "stars". They aren't better scientists, but they are better at selling their science, so they get more attention. The code of conduct for being able to claim authorship to papers is not clear. Entire careers may have been built by people who did little more than raise funds.

Maybe it's best to keep an open mind about possibilities outside academia. But from what I've heard, graduate school trains people to feel like failures if they "sell out" to industry.

[indie]

Maybe it's best to keep an open mind about possibilities outside academia. But from what I've heard, graduate school trains people to feel like failures if they "sell out" to industry.

I've read that people w/master's degrees tend to get paid more than their PhD. counterparts, which intuitively makes a lot and absolutely no sense whatsovever.

[Lezard Valeth]

I've heard that phDs scare many employers because they feel that they are "overqualified". You open some doors with a phD, but you close others.

[Shai Gar]

you only close doors on jobs where the employer is a retard

[Warrior413]

That book was great. I read it a while ago and considered starting a thread, but was apparently too idle. It gets my humble recommendation.

[Imen de Naars]

Bertrand Russel revival.

[Hypnos]

LV:

* If you're getting your PhD expecting a faculty/research position at a comparable institution, you're fooling yourself. It's a nice goal, but a tough one to achieve. You should enjoy your time as a graduate student, and consider it as training for a wide range of endeavors. An analogy: not everyone gets a black belt to become a UFC fighter.

* Diversification is easy once you get tenure. Until then, you're sort of expected to pay your dues and prove yourself in a specific area -- your peers want an assurance that you are sufficiently talented, dedicated to the community and hardcore when necessary.

* Politicking is an unfortunate aspect to science. The obvious reasons are that not everyone wants to play the game, and there's a lot of asymmetry of information among scientists who are experts in different areas and with lawmakers/funding agencies. I have no ready solutions beyond what is in place today, except that the fundamentals of science need to be adhered to: high confidence intervals, peer review/transparency/repeatability, and wariness of systematic errors and poor logic.