It's all work especially finding the appropriate YouTubeVideo!

i might have to add some further definitions for the conversation.

from Labour power via Marx:

"By labour-power or capacity for labour is to be understood the aggregate of those mental and physical capabilities existing in a human being, which he exercises whenever he produces a use-value of any description."

Marx adds further on that:

"Labour-power, however, becomes a reality only by its exercise; it sets itself in action only by working. But thereby a definite quantity of human muscle, nerve. brain, &c., is wasted, and these require to be restored."

so, in other words if you work for yourself and surf the net or stare out the window it can be considered work, whereas if you work for someone else it is considered goofing off?

describes it quite well...

what if someone is paying you for surfing the net or by surfing the net you are generating some value?

Is that person hiring?

Life is work, but work ain't life.

I don't know why that is.

work is only work if there is hiree and hired involved?

i eat, sleep, and dream work these days, but i don't think i can bill a 24 hour day.

vado, that billy wilder video is very telling. your check is in the mail.

more hypothetical;
what if someone is paying me for starting this thread?
what is the value of all the threads in archinect etc..? why are we posting? why are we questioning things, asking and providing information, learning and teaching? sure the whole world is not doing what we are doing.
if work has an exchange value to it and providing information is work,
so, what is the value of all this? sure we all say information and knowledge worth something, so why are we not calling this work? and thinking it has a value?

it opens a lot of thoughts and i know i am going all over the place with it.
i have some answers but i am not sure yet if i want to volunteer putting them up here yet.

I'm self-employed, and everything is work.

Though in my mind, these days, everything for most people is work. Especially for those involved in the creative service fields. Everyone I meet is a potential client or a potential consultant or a person I want to connect to someone else I know because it will benefit their work.

Archinect is work because it's 1. networking and 2. a way to keep my brain involved the myriad aspects of my profession that I don't typically cover in my day-to-day labor.

sure, its all work in a sense, and it all has value, just not a monetary one

thanks for the responses so far.

i bet some of you consider all kinds of things as work. we just need to see your income tax statements! .;.)

i work really long hours and very late hours into the morning for my old age and without any drugs. the type of work i am doing allows me to do it that way and i like it. i still get up on the am part and take our dogs for a walk every morning. most people in my neighborhood used to think i am some kind of dandy walking dogs when everybody is at work. now, a lot of them know what i do and it is a little better relationship.

there is a real close friend of mine who is a well known conceptual artist and always look like he is doing nothing. in fact, he has done couple of major shows in europe last year alone and one of the work he produced with the show was a substantial size book. he gets upset when people in his neighborhood who don't really understand what he does and jokingly say, "hi ...., busy busy?"
i always tell him, "how the fuck you are going to explain to them you get hundreds of dollars per hour for your work? better don't tell them or they will shoot you!"

this is an appropriate thread for this forum because as architects we also have a value on what we think.
we spend a lot of time looking at drawings and just think for minutes or sometime hours or sometime days.
there is always this dilemma when the time comes for billing the clients. we certainly just don't bill them per line on the plans and how much time it took for that physical drawing right? the billing must reflect all the time we think about the design, non drawing problem solving, aesthetic styling, things that are hard to quantify in short.

i wonder, how marx would revise (or not) his main book (das kapital) if he was living in today's society. any ideas?

I make a distinction between my job and my work.

My job is what I get paid (or recently, not paid) to do, working for demanding or difficult clients sometimes, carrying the stress of being an employer and a principal.

My work is what defines me. It is the promise of architecture that keeps me going. It may be the optimism of a new project or the feel of a pencil on paper or having a breakthrough moment with a client or setting off laughter in the office.

Work is what I get paid for, the rest is a hobby. Thankfully, being the guy that decides where pay goes, I can pay myself for typing this. Working on a Saturday ain't so bad ;-)

for me, eating is work. getting out of bed is also work. everything else is kind of fun.

A related question - my old professional practice prof. used to ask: 'How long does it take to have a good idea?'

work is the opposite of vanity.

work feels as if it is soul-destroying (it is just the opposite, but always hurts)

Orhan,

I have the same thing happening, because we work out of our house two of us with 3 PCs and one Mac, a plotter, three printers, and our library all around. We do the work that it takes to get a project done to our satisfaction which from time to time results in some long nights. On the other hand if my boys(dogs) ask for a walk in the middle of the day, I take them. I figure no crisis is so large that a client can't wait for me to walk around the block. I find it frees my thought process as well. The funny thing is the dogs seem to know when not to ask me for a walk and know when it is ok to ambush me.

I get alot of strange looks from people wondering what the heck I do for a living cause well I never really caught onto the "Coporate Look."
I wear a tie on a rare occassion and well a suit is something that does alot of hanging in my closet. The largest project I have landed, I was dressed in a gator shirt and shorts on a hot summer day. I guess the people just liked me.

I do attend alot of public meetings and often my wife will send me for a haircut even though I don't have alot of hair on top of the head and well she will remind me I'm not Santa....at least yet. I always speak my from my heart at these meetings, keeping in mind one should always keep it short and focused otherwise people will think your just another raving citizen who believes there is only one solution and it has to be theirs. This has left me with many friends in the business community over the years whom one would not suspect were my friends.

Work for me.... is sitting down an paying the bills at the end of the day. Mrs. leaves me with my pile of papers and knows it is never a good thing to bother me when I'm putting them behind me.

addendum to my earlier post. my tan is work. i'm so jealous of all those dark skin people who don't have to spend 4-5 hours per week at the beach (adjusting position with the sun and watching the clock to flip over every 30 minutes) just to gain a healthy color. what a pain in the ass.