Time-Off Syndrome (After Work and on Weekends): The Fundamental Contradiction of Rest for Workers

I. Why Are Holidays So Good?

1. I can live, study, and work at my own pace, rather than by an external clock.

1. I can follow a natural rhythm. Occasional “mistakes,” “indulgence,” loss of control, and unexpected events are part of nature. Allow them.

1. Some things only emerge naturally once I relax and my inner resources are replenished.

Agency, being myself, being natural. Humanism.

At work, I am passive, tense, and depleted. My weekends are often busier than my working days.

II. Deeper Reflection and Awareness: Rest Syndrome

Precisely because I am passive at work, I have more agency during my time off.

So an internal overseer, a “task-doer ego,” comes into being, forcing me to strive harder during the “self-directed time” of my days off.

Instead, tension, fixation, and internal conflict consume even more of my inner resources, while rest and relaxation are neglected.

In the end, my time off yields mediocre rest and mediocre results in studying and working outside my job. I become severely disconnected from myself.

III. The Psychological Self-Manipulation of Procrastination

Then comes intense psychological self-manipulation and self-denigration: I tell myself I have a procrastination problem. At the same time, I belittle and berate everything about my past. I become severely disconnected from myself.

When my inner resources are depleted, so-called freedom comes with the curse of freedom, taunting me: “Even when you’re given freedom, you’re still useless.” The dizziness of freedom is, at its core, a lack of inner resources.

A vicious cycle of procrastination and psychological self-manipulation.

IV. Becoming Absorbed in Phones and Social Science Books Instead

So many people become absorbed in scrolling on their phones, because it combines entertainment, learning, work—gathering industry information—and socializing.

Xiaohongshu and Zhihu, platforms that are half entertainment and half serious content, are the workers’ night schools of our time. Bilibili is somewhat more direct. Or we could say they serve the function that storytelling and theater served in feudal society.

This complexity and depth, this interweaving of connection and entanglement, can hardly be explained by the simple notion of “tittytainment.” Humanistic philosophy means not underestimating the human mind.

For many people, reading books, including social science books, is actually a more sophisticated version of scrolling on a phone: a kind of learning that combines inefficiency and efficiency, a form of entertainment and relaxation. On the one hand, it relates to work in the investment industry, and there is often not enough inner energy to tackle many topics in mathematics, IT, and AI, so those efforts are intermittent. On the other hand, it is also a way of studying this very predicament in one’s own life and in the times we live in.

V. The Fundamental Contradiction of Rest for Workers

The fundamental contradiction facing workers is private ownership and the alienation of labor. The alienation of labor leads to the alienation of rest.

Rest has a dual character. On the one hand, it fulfills its essential purpose: processing the pain of alienated labor, offering humanistic healing. On the other hand, there is the alienation of rest.

Time off is workers’ only opportunity for self-directed learning and “self-improvement.” The reproduction of labor power is privatized. The pressures of technological change and being rendered obsolete in one’s industry turn social problems into individual problems. Moreover, this “self-improvement” is itself alienated: a tournament of escalating competition, with industries constantly evolving and no end to the demand to improve. Ultimately, individuals bear the costs of this friction themselves.

One’s main job often does little to support personal growth; instead, it is often an amateurish operation that keeps getting worse. So time off must be used to “recharge” and study independently, to build up knowledge and skills and “improve.”

The fundamental contradiction of rest: the contradiction between limited time off, eroded from within and without, and the enormous need for self-healing alongside a need for “self-improvement” that can never be fulfilled.

Zhuangzi, “Discussion on Making All Things Equal”: “Once we receive our completed bodily form, we hold on to it until it is exhausted. Clashing with things and wearing ourselves down against them, we rush through our lives as though galloping, with nothing able to stop us—is this not tragic! To toil all our lives without seeing our efforts bear fruit, exhausted by our labors without knowing where we are heading—is this not sorrowful! People call this being alive, but what good is it! The body decays, and the mind follows it—can this not be called a great sorrow?”

Elitism once again performs its imperial-examination-style psychological manipulation: “Other people can do it. Why can’t you? Look for the problem in yourself.” It always finds a few examples of people who achieved personal growth, broke through, and changed their fate despite grueling work and terrible circumstances, and uses them to psychologically manipulate other ordinary people. This is elitism’s safety net: the few who break through are always co-opted, becoming representatives of a new elite, while the old elites also bask in the additional glow they bring.

Capitalist ideology is systematically strangling the inner resources and self-care of ordinary people and those at the bottom of society.

I. The Luckier You Are, the Harder You Work

Those who are fortunate in their main careers—for example, people who encountered and fell in love with programming in primary or middle school, then went on to competitions, prestigious universities, major companies, and high salaries—naturally need only keep “focusing” on their main careers all along.

Those who are less fortunate, including people who are dedicated to and excellent at their main careers but whose fields do not pay well—such as the once-flourishing fields of literature, architecture, telecommunications, and finance—are systematically devalued. This is to say nothing of the vast majority of ordinary people who are even less fortunate, who feel lost and lack a promising professional direction.

The unfortunate must keep “working hard” outside their “main jobs,” continually subjecting themselves to strict self-management and harsh psychological self-manipulation.

A basic principle of social science: unsuccessful people face harder and more complex challenges than successful people do. The predicament of an ordinary Afghan child is clearly far more complex and difficult than that of an ordinary American child.

The fortunate petty bourgeois, the less fortunate with a tiny amount of capital, and the deeply unfortunate ordinary people at the bottom. Even among these three strata alone, the ideological gulf around elitism and chauvinism is severe. The lucky ones, smugly pleased with themselves: this is one kind of karmic obstruction.

Previous essays: “You Cannot Be an Elitist Only When Luck and Power Are on Your Side: A Common Pattern Among Programmers at Big Tech Companies and Finance Professionals”; “Elitism Turns Good Fortune into a Curse”

VII. Karmic Obstructions, Historical Materialism, Marxism, and Constructiveness

Social karmic obstructions, external karmic obstructions, and internal karmic obstructions become entangled: a complex set of challenges involving karmic obstructions.

The basic principles of Marxism must be integrated with contemporary realities.

The Marx-Zhuangzi framework, incorporating psychology, that I am exploring is a philosophy of survival for ordinary people in an atomized cyberpunk age.

Constructiveness: going beyond criticism. The practical focus is on nurturing our inner resources, caring for and looking after ourselves, and resting well.