Dragonball "Chamber of Spirit and Time" applied to a "useless" job

[lillo9546]

Hi guys!
There is a very popular manga story called DragonBall, in which a hero fights darkness, and saves the planet every time, but, story after story, the protagonist must increase his powers and knowledge, in order to do so.
This time, He actually needs more "time" to learn new skills and be stronger, but He doesn't have it, but luckly, He has the opportunity to enter the "Chamber of spirit and time". Inside this special room, time flow is distorted; one full Earth day outside the chamber is the equivalent to an Earth year inside of it. (If you are new to this story, you can read more here -> https://dragonballuniverse.fandom.com/w ... t_and_Time). Now he could train for a 24-hour day, but his training would be worth 8760 hours, or 365 days. In this case, our hero is fit to face each new enemy that will oppose him, and will be able to protect the planet earth from evil.
End of the story.


Thinking about what is happening in today's job industry, in which every new thing that is studied at school, is either no longer applicable because it is irrelevant, or else it is overcomed by AI, it's like we need the “Chamber of time”, to get us back, or keep, on track. Man can perceive this "dissonance"; For example, philosophies like "it was better when it was worse", "yesterday was better than tomorrow", "let's go back to work the land", and many more, are born because the man fells that, in the present time, the kind of job he is doing, it's not satisfying him, and he feels ripped off.
Man, in today's society, feels inferior to the machine, since the super-optimized machine, which requires few resources in order to fully function, does not need rest or get sick; in short, the machine has surpassed man in many fields, and man can feel this. He feels his obsolescence.
Having said that, feelings of bad belonging to what is being done are born in today's workers. Take for example a modern office or assembly line job which could make you really feel the alienation, sense of uselessness in belonging.




But now we come to us. Let's say that the majority of us are on a daily job, and that, for some of us, this type of job is more or less a "9 to 10", instead of the contracted "9 to 5". In fact, due to the “high amount of work”, it is possible to dedicate about 80% to “free time at work”, because our actual job consists of that 20% portion only. Everyday.
Each person would spend this portion of, let's call it “surplus time”, “working” in different activities, for example: Social Media participation, Youtube videos, Studying, Writing, and many others…
But going deeper, we are not wondering if this is the "opportunity" given to us, to take advantage of this “surplus time”, in order to learn new things, or whether to use it as "consumer" time. In short, are we in front of an opportunity, like the protagonist of DragonBall, or not? How could we figure it out?
With this we would like to reflect on the fact that this “surplus time” during working days is actually a good thing, or that instead, we should be careful about doing something? And if so, what in particular? Quit your job for another? Take the “opportunity”, and study during “working” hours? asking to work only 4h instead of 8h?



In the process of acquiring the knowledge in order to become an ERE human, have you also gone through these feelings? Which is the perspective of ERE people on this topic?

[mathiverse]

I thought you were going somewhere else with this. I have experienced several environments where learning took place N times as fast as "standard." For example, taking an accelerated curriculum course (4 weeks to cover a year of material). Alternatively, joining a team at work that was working at a pace such that I learned N times as much in the first year as I did in my prior job where the pace was slower. One can also learn much faster in comparison to the normal curriculum via self study: https://www.scotthyoung.com/blog/myproj ... allenge-2/. Or private tutoring can improve your learning speed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_sigma_problem. To draw the analogy more directly, I see these methods as ways to get N years of experience in 1 year (or at least a better than a 1:1 ratio at any time scale, eg 6 months in 1 month or 4 weeks in 1 week), which is a more realistic version of getting a year of experience in a day like in the Chamber of Spirit and Time in Dragon Ball Z.

In each of these environments, the learning outpaced the standard speed. Though you didn't actually get any extra time, but you probably used more of the time productively (eg less slacking off, fewer avoidable detours down the wrong path, skipping irrelevant/useless aspects of other environments like not dealing with other disruptive students if you self study) and used the time better (eg more focus).

For job skills, you're more likely to learn the most relevant skills and information by joining a high performing, fast paced team than by joining a team with very little to do and using the free time to improve. In the former, the environment, coworkers, and expectations will push you to learn faster and better than if you tried to learn without the support. There aren't textbooks or classes to take that will teach you to be effective at most (all?) jobs day to day, so you can't recreate the situation at home. You often can't even do projects at the appropriate scale or with realistic requirements or with realistic team dynamics experience unless you're doing it on the job anyway, so anything you did at home wouldn't be quite as useful as doing a lot at work. On the fast paced team, you'll also have less pushback socially from trying to increase the pace or do more than you're asked. Some jobs like you describe don't actually have extra work with which to fill the rest of the time on the job to learn more.

Basically, it's useful to use spare time to learn if you have it and getting paid to learn what you want can be nice, but I don't think the set up you describe is a win in terms of being a superior learning opportunity to other environments/set-ups. There are jobs where you can be "paid to read/learn" in the sense that you have all this free time, but that doesn't make those jobs the best way to learn whatever it is you plan to learn.

Also this topic might be of interest to you since it discusses the types of jobs you're referring to: Getting paid to read.

[Walwen]

Kinda confused me but I think I know what you're getting at.

I work mostly a certain shift that is very quiet. I use this time to work on coursework, which happens to pertain to my job. I also use it to work on crafts that I hope to later monetize.
Other people might use the slow shifts as a way to just sit on their hands or phones, but I use it as development time while I'm paid to be there. I might guess I use 50% of my time this way.
If I worked nightshift, I'd be more like 80-90%. Of course this isn't a certainty and some days I'm with the cops and EMS and people in psychosis all shift long. This type of work is a lot better imo than being, say, a cashier, where you can't exactly whip out a notebook and your laptop between customers. If you hate unpredictability and working with vulnerable populations/get scared, you might rather be a cashier.

It really depends on what you do. The biggest barrier to career progression for me isn't lack of practice so much as money and diplomas. The new hire with his Bachelor's makes twice what I do even though I have three times the experience- but he spent 4 years in college. But if the way to get promotions is by being the faster/sharpest/etc, more work is more practice.

[lillo9546]

Also this topic might be of interest to you since it discusses the types of jobs you're referring to: Getting paid to read.

This is exactly what I am referring to. Probably the number 2 fit the best