Review
[ speculative; I see some indications of this in my personal experiences and those I talk with, but I have no idea how prevalent it is. ]
I've long struggled with motivation and akrasia - since before the Internet was a thing. It's gotten slightly better and slightly worse a few times, more based on my age and situation than (I think) on external factors. I AM more open about it in the last decade or so than previously, mostly because others have started talking about it, and I'm (slightly) less afraid that I'll be held accountable for my failings more forcefully when I admit it than when I hide it. It may be that it's harder for me to overcome it when I'm not trying to show the world it doesn't affect me.
I think this social acceptability and visibility plays a MUCH larger part in people's behavior than is often admitted. The tension between "accept and love people uncondionally" and "encourage cooperative/conformist behavior, even if that's not someone's natural default" may have no great equilibrium point. It's definitely shifted AWAY from "conforming enables cooperation", which seemed to be the common viewpoint in my youth and young adulthood, TOWARD "be yourself, even if it inconveniences others. Anyone who sees a downside is a bigot (even if they are only pointing out direct risks and suggesting mitigations that don't seem to them to deny someone's identity)."
It's massively exacerbated by the changes in media and scalable individual visibility - what we see as "normal" is the tail of the distribution that is shown to us over and over, and there are way fewer role models for conformist success in the mix.
This applies to a whole lot of topics, but "work ethic" is probably one that seems most impactful. I really do look forward to seeing if anything remains of a world where a large majority is not willing to be drones supporting the general equilibrium (including vast wealth for the oligarchs).
In my own mind, there's a very large tension between "nobody should have to do that" and "boy, it's going to suck if nobody actually does that". This applies to picking berries, office work, doing laundry, raising children (the MASSIVELY time-consuming and unpleasant parts, especially), and almost everything else. I don't have a good answer, and I don't have much expectation that "AI will save us" will happen at all, let alone happening before societal meltdown.
Similar here: Changes in motivation seem more related to age (and having kids) than whatever happens out there. When I was younger, I saw my career as an opportunity to learn and achieve something awesome. Now I see it as an endless and pointless necessary evil that devours most of my time and energy. Meaningful things happen in my free time, unless I am too tired for that.
My profession (software development) keeps getting worse. Twenty years ago, I had my own office where I could close the door a focus on my work in silence. Now I work in an open space, i...
Really interesting! I agree on the importance of some things becoming more or less socially acceptable and how it influences behaviours, for good or for evil (why on Earth did being very anxious become so okay?). In my case, maybe part of my concern was more specific to me: as a good, routine-abiding autistic person, I used to be extremely scrupulous, in addition to having akrasia issues, so on balance it worked fine. But now it feels as though akrasia and anxiety are more okay, while I get more signals telling me that I shouldn’t be so scrupulous, and that may be why I notice that I’m less able to control my akrasia than before. (All of this is of course pretty speculative).
This applies to me, my work ethic went down after 2020 partly because of timing. I turned 30 in 2020 and before then mostly just did what was expected of me without putting too much thought into what I wanted. I'm still hardworking but much more choosy about what I'll put time into and I try not to let social pressure affect my decisions.
It seems to me that my work ethic / tendency to akrasia / etc. has changed a lot since 2020, and many people around me seem to agree that it’s also become harder for them to keep working on things they don’t really enjoy doing.
But I find myself very confused about this topic, so I’d like to get a little more data from other people’s experience: is it true for many people? if so, why exactly would Covid (or, more likely, lockdowns) change our work ethic? what did change — are people ‘lazier’ or ‘more discriminating about which tasks they enjoy or not’ or ‘now often working with less rigid structures and rules’? is the change good or bad — to me, it feels like being much less able to deeply feel like I have a duty to do things really well (bad, probably), but maybe most everyone else feel like they’re more concerned about doing things which actually seem important to them (good)?