Point 2 confuses me on an empirical level. I don’t know many people whose social/leisure life largely consists of locked-in regular weekend/evening plans that they can’t change if a work opportunity (or anything else) comes up. More importantly, whether the fun activities are flexible seems to be unrelated to their cost. In fact, the commitment/cost relationship is usually negative—it’s often cheaper to pay for, say, sport and exercise classes if you lock in a series of lessons rather than paying casual entry. Likewise, casual commitment-free leisure like drinking alcohol or going to a restaurant can be much more expensive per hour than a regular commitment like playing on a friendly soccer team.
I’m not disagreeing with the post’s final paragraph—I recently decided against picking up a particular sport largely because it seemed self-indulgently expensive. But I don’t think that point 2, in particular, is factually true, even if you agree that you should reduce your leisure time to work more.
Also, there are many ways that frugality can boost productivity that aren’t mentioned in this post. A major one would be that living in an apartment, rather than a large(r) house with a garden, substantially reduces the time spent on home cleaning and maintenance.
Point 2 confuses me on an empirical level. I don’t know many people whose social/leisure life largely consists of locked-in regular weekend/evening plans that they can’t change if a work opportunity (or anything else) comes up. More importantly, whether the fun activities are flexible seems to be unrelated to their cost. In fact, the commitment/cost relationship is usually negative—it’s often cheaper to pay for, say, sport and exercise classes if you lock in a series of lessons rather than paying casual entry. Likewise, casual commitment-free leisure like drinking alcohol or going to a restaurant can be much more expensive per hour than a regular commitment like playing on a friendly soccer team.
I’m not disagreeing with the post’s final paragraph—I recently decided against picking up a particular sport largely because it seemed self-indulgently expensive. But I don’t think that point 2, in particular, is factually true, even if you agree that you should reduce your leisure time to work more.
Also, there are many ways that frugality can boost productivity that aren’t mentioned in this post. A major one would be that living in an apartment, rather than a large(r) house with a garden, substantially reduces the time spent on home cleaning and maintenance.