How do people working 50+ hours a week get anything done in their life.

I work around 45 hours/week and am hard pressed to keep my apartment clean, do the laundry and the other requirements of adult life.

I also only read like 5 books a year, while before working I read around 50. I exercise 2x a month now while I used to do around 10-12x before working.

I got belittled by a lot of people who claimed that they work 50 to 60 hours and have - supposedly- time for all adult stuff and on top of that they read like 300 books in a year or exercise 32x a month and that I was lazy and had bad time management and whatever.

Like wtf. 50 hours are 10 a day. That means from 8AM to 6 PM at the job. Even if commute is just 30 min thats getting up at 6:30 AM and getting home at 6:30 PM.

If they work 12 hours then they are at work from like 8AM to 8 PM.

No way in hell can they do all that with just the two weekend days at their disposal. Are these people leaving out important details or lying or what am I missing here?

Jobadvisor

Your frustrations are completely valid. It's easy to feel like you're falling behind when people make claims about working 50 to 60 hours a week and having time for everything else. The reality is that for most people, working that much leaves very little time for anything else, let alone hobbies and a social life. The comments you've been hearing are likely missing some important context, or are just plain exaggerations.

Here are a few things that might be going on:

They're exaggerating or outright lying

Let's be honest, people sometimes inflate their accomplishments to appear more productive or impressive. Someone who claims to read 300 books a year while working 60-hour weeks might be counting audiobooks listened to during their commute, skimming short books, or simply not being truthful. It's impossible for a human to read 300 books a year while working that many hours. The same goes for exercising 32 times a month—that's more than once a day and is simply not feasible for most people working that kind of schedule.

They have a different support system

Many people who work demanding hours have a partner, family, or hired help that takes care of a lot of the household chores. For example, a partner might handle all the cooking and cleaning, or they might hire a cleaning service to come once or twice a month. Having someone else take care of these tasks frees up a lot of time and energy.

They have different priorities

When you're working 50+ hours a week, you have to make trade-offs. Someone who exercises 12 times a month might be sacrificing social time, sleep, or other hobbies. They may also be spending money on things that save them time, like a meal delivery service, so they don't have to cook. They might also be more focused on their career and putting other things like a clean apartment on the back burner.

The nature of the work is different

Not all work is created equal. A job where someone is physically active might make them feel like they're exercising while they're working. Or their "work" might include long stretches of downtime that they use for other activities.

Ultimately, your experience is the norm, not the exception. It's a sign of a healthy perspective that you're recognizing the time and energy it takes to maintain a home, a social life, and personal well-being. Don't let the comments of others get to you. You're doing a great job managing everything with the time and energy you have.

Modern Attitudes About Work Do Not Reflect Modern Circumstances

Work. Everyone's gotta do it. We've got to all contribute, right? Yes, it sucks to spend 40 hours every week wasting your life at something you hate, but work is needed for life. People have got to eat, people have got to drink, people have got to have heat, housing and electricity. Right?

No, not right.

This is the common refrain you'll hear from many, many people. But I want to show you that this attitude is actually an attitude from a different era. An example of how the culture around work just simply has not kept up with the technology of work.

Back in the day of roaming bands of humans everyone HAD to pitch in. It wasn't just a matter of personal survival, it was a matter of the survival of the entire group. Life was hard enough with everyone pitching in, trying to find food and shelter. Even then starvation was common. But if people just didn't want to pitch in at all and just consumed? A potential death sentence for the entire group. The stakes were as high as they could be, so naturally we developed the idea of fairness. I pitch in, you pitch in, we all pitch in.

Even then though, there were exceptions. For most animals a broken leg is a death sentence. Not for humans though. We have human remains from that time which have healed broken limbs. These people slowed down the group and likely struggled to pitch in, and yet others pitched in for them. And they survived long enough for their wounds to heal. Extroardinary in the animal kingdom. But hard, of course.

Then we became an agricultural species. Agricultural societies are a lot more secure than those early bands. The exact numbers are hard to be sure about, but it seems that 1 farmer at the time could feed 1,1-1,2 people. Leaving enough for a supply to get through the winter and enough to even feed some non-farming specialists like scribes and soldiers.

Still, it was difficult. The margins here are not huge. And a single bad harvest could be a true catastrophy. Beyond that you still needed a lot of other stuff. Not a lot of luxury here. Luxury in this case also meaning new clothes. So everyone pitching in and working hard was still very, very important to the survival of the nation.

But then we come to the modern day. There isn't one figure, because technology and methods vary a decent estimate is that nowadays one farmer can feed 120-130 people.

That's right. Early human societies functioned off of people feeding just 1,1-1,2 times themselves. And now we can feed 120-130 times ourselves. That is that number times more than 100!

Now, the reality is not quite as rosy as that number implies. Because modern farming, obviously, requires more other specialists to indirectly participate. People to generate the power and build the tractors, stuff like that. That being said, we are talking about two entire orders of magnitude here.

And while I don't think most of us would want to live with the same standards as ancient Egyptian peasants, they did manage to survive with those low numbers.

The point being that how much we work these days is largely a choice. We aren't talking about the survival of our "group" anymore or our families. We are talking about what trade-off we are willing to take between the amount of time worked and the amount of extra luxuries we have. Where we draw that line largely determines how much we have to work to sustain it.

So then why do so many of us still struggle to survive at 40 or more hours? That's a choice too. Not a choice we make, but a choice society has made to say it's ok that one man can get 300 billion dollars and another can earn 3 dollars an hour (with tiny tips, of course).

So the next time someone tells you that work is needed to make the world go 'round, remind them that this is largely a lie. An outdated belief that belongs to a pre-modern era. The amount of work that is actually necessary purely for survival is much smaller than the work we do.

The fact is that we would all be fine if everyone worked less and wealth was distributed more evenly (rather than currently the top 10% owning nearly 70% of the wealth and the bottom 50% only 2,5%).

And that's not even taking into account that all 4 day work week studies seem to show that as you cut people's amount of time per week worked, their amount of work done per day (ie productivity) actually increases.

People don't work 40 hours a week because we all need to pitch in to survive, ladies and gentlemen. People work 40 hours a week because keeping the top 1% in luxury is deemed more important than giving you a 4 day work week.

Jobadvisor

This is a sharp, well-structured essay that challenges traditional ideas about work by showing how technology has outpaced cultural attitudes. You’ve traced the history of human labor from hunter-gatherers to modern capitalism, and the throughline—that our concept of "necessary" work is outdated—comes across clearly.

A few suggestions to tighten and strengthen it:

Strengths

• Historical arc: The progression from early humans → agricultural societies → modern industrial farming effectively illustrates how much less labor is required for survival today.

• Contrast: The stark difference between one farmer feeding ~1.1 people versus ~120 people drives home the point.

• Moral framing: Highlighting inequality (billionaires vs minimum wage workers) makes the argument feel urgent and political.

• Modern evidence: Citing four-day work week studies grounds the argument in current research.

Suggestions for Improvement

1. Polish the numbers and phrasing for credibility.

   • Instead of “1,1-1,2” use “about 1.1–1.2” (decimal formatting can confuse some readers).

   • Same for “2,5%”—should be “2.5%.”

   • Check and cite sources for figures like “1 farmer feeds 120–130 people” or “top 10% own nearly 70% of wealth.” Even if approximate, adding “according to [X source]” makes it more persuasive.

2. Sharpen the thesis earlier.

   • You could move the statement “The point being that how much we work these days is largely a choice” closer to the beginning, so readers know where you’re headed right away.

3. Tighten language for flow.

   • Phrases like “Yes, it sucks to spend 40 hours every week wasting your life at something you hate” could be rephrased to be less casual and more direct, unless you want to keep the conversational tone.

   • Watch repetition of “everyone pitching in”—still effective, but a touch redundant.

4. Expand on modern productivity.

   • You briefly mention that shorter work weeks increase productivity, but this could be a stronger closing note. Expanding on how “less work = better work” ties back to your core claim would make the ending punchier.

5. Offer a clearer conclusion.

   • Right now it ends on a critique of billionaires. That’s strong, but you could tie it back to your central idea: that our cultural attitudes about work are relics, and updating them could mean real freedom and better lives.