Ask HN: Why does a busy man build a shed?

Your question only looks like a puzzle or paradox because the word "work" is overloaded with many meanings and it includes simultaneous connotations of negative "unpleasant chores" and positive "fulfilling efforts". (related concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equivocation)

If those multiple meanings are not understood, one can twist themselves into rhetorical puzzles such as:

- if marriage is work, why do people get married? I thought people hated work.

- if raising kids is work, why do people have kids?

It's because the type of "work" above are activities where many people desire to expend the effort. There's a higher goal than any so-called "work" above.

Same idea as a home sewer that "works" for weeks on their own dresses and jackets while the factory sewer only thinks of needlework as a "working at a job". If one asks the hobby home sewer if making that jacket "took a lot of work", the hobbyist will say "yes" without any irony at all.

Also, it's fun?

Learn how to use my hands

Not just my head, I’ll think myself into jail

Now I know a refuge never grows

From a chin in a hand in a thoughtful pose

Got to till the earth if you want a rose“

— Hammer and a Nail, Indigo Girls

It posited that we each have x amount of capacity for different things and success in life hinges on figuring out how to hit x consistently across all categories.

Someone whose capacity for reading is 5000 pages per week who has a job that requires 4000 pages of reading will come up with hobbies that provide another 1000 pages of reading. If crunch time requires 5000 pages per week temporarily, the hobby will disappear. If he gets a job requiring 5500 pages of reading, the hobby will disappear and he will start to burn out.

Building the shed filled a different bucket. It required different skills and activities that met some unmet need. Kind of like still having room for dessert after you are too full for more of the main course.

OP: Admit it, you want your friends to call you 'two sheds': https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA8xTGP_M8g

I am 50 now and need a new focus. As you mention, we have x capacity. I am hoping that my "this time 5 years ago photos" in 2027 are not pictures of sheds :-)

I think a lot of us are type A, we can't sit still but also know our brains need to recoup and do something else. I tried to write some code but honestly I'd rather finish my ethernet project. Life is a marathon not a sprint. You gotta recharge sometimes and honestly you may learn something different that shapes how you think. Steve Jobs always said Calligraphy was the reason he thought about fonts on a GUI. Why the hell was he taking that class instead of hustling? :-p

It's completely wise. We aren't designed to just do one thing over and over. Life is so much more than building a SaaS or making money. You know we could go tomorrow right? Anything could happen and the future isn't guaranteed. Obviously, stay motivated and keep driving but sometimes you gotta replenish your gas tank and take care of your physical/mental health.

IMHO, software development is a rollercoaster of exciting highs and lows. While woodwork, creating something tangible with your hands... it's something else. It's a perfectly balanced sweet continuous feeling of pure zen that you don't want to stop.

I believe it can make you more productive when you return to your main work.

I think there is a confusion with working and relaxation in today's world.

We look at the world as work as the necessity and relaxing as the goal.

I think the Jordon Peterson line of 'purpose' is key.

'Work' is doing for someone else for a living. Purpose is doing for self. And building Saas infrastructure sounds like helping someone's else company, but that shed is for you.

For me I moved to a small farm a few years back and working from home. I'm always busy, like non-stop something to do between work and farm. I've had one proper holiday in 5 years as the farm consumes life outside work but the farm work is my purpose. While it's not 'relaxing' it's fulfilling and the moments I pause and take in the view while sweating away it completes you.

Now this next opinion I'm less confident in, but I think this ties in to above and there are certain personality types that need to do stuff vs relax. For me I don't do nothing well. It seems the dream but whenever I've tried it doesnt suit me. I need projects to be fulfilled. Sometimes when tired and stressed I wonder why I keep adding tasks to my life, but I'm more happy that way than going the other.

Anyway I feel I'm starting to ramble a little but I think it boils down to is adding work is not a negative, and more work is a positive within reasonable bounds and something you can feel achievement. The task is balancing between work for others purpose and your own is what matters.

Why do I find those interesting only when I am busy? My hypothesis is that some unconscious part of me is trying to escape the discipline.

https://winstonchurchill.org/publications/finest-hour/finest...

It’s also nice to have a low stakes hobby, I haven’t made a shed before but spent the last year getting into fixing things (automotive & household items) as well as home improvement.

(Highly recommend getting the basics of car repair, just being able to diagnose a problem will save you so much frustration)

I'm not a woodworker, craftsman, artisan, artist, etc. but tinkering in that shop has brought me more joy and peace than I've had in years.

As happy as I've been with some of the work I've produced on a computer it just isn't the same (to me).

I’ll see myself out.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mens_sana_in_corpore_sano

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polymath

I think there is truth in this statement and believe that asking my next door neighbor that has built two sheds in their back yard to help me with a job would work out far better than asking my next door neighbor on the other side that is always lounging on their deck with a drink in their hand.