I spend much of my life doing non-physical tasks, usually in front of a computer, thinking things out in Omnigraffle or talking in meetings. The last two months have given me a different focus, doing house repairs and decorating.
There is something immensely satisfying about making physical things, O'Reilly have tapped into this well with Make, but restoring and repairing a house is a pleasurable job. Getting to see the results everyday of a sanded step or firmly nailed down floorboard encourages you to do it well, as you have to live with it.
Something I have found from this is that jobs like painting are all in the preparation and the finish, the actual named task, painting the wall is actually the smallest part of the job. The prep in particular is key, you can't make things smooth with paint.
Lastly, doing these physical tasks has made me more aware of the passage of time and my ability to fill it with tasks of my choosing. Office life is slow in comparison, there is no meeting to have, just a list of jobs to do. The list is less apparent with intellectual tasks, as they are just not as real. If you sand a set of stairs, then you are absorbed in that task, then it is complete and you do the next task. There is less fallow time or maybe it is just more apparent productivity. Maybe it is just that these tasks are easier to start or have more obvious beginning and end points, compared to intellectual tasks.
They certainly have a different nature these two types of job, gardening is similar, but has a longer time span. Maybe if doing things with my hands was my full time job, I'd see things differently. In my job I do make things, but none of them have a physical existence, so perhaps this is just the appeal of change. Yet there are echoes of it in climbing, hiking and running, so maybe it is just the pleasure of controlling your body to make it do things correctly and making yourself physically tired in the process.
Building Social Web Applications by Gavin Bell.
Gavin - this is an extremely interesting post. Very thoughtful and insightful.
There is a lot of philosophy and philosophical writing which addresses this intuition and the implications are far reaching ... One of the main effects of this debate in philosophy is the (far too gradual) erosion of the distinction between mind and body in academic disciplines and "common conception" (the "ghost in the machine" fallacy).
As for gardening, it always makes me think of the end of Candide ...
Gavin, strange to read about you comparisons between the greatest difference in occupation, physical or intelectual. I work in demolition, not the same as building I agree but you do get an great buzz from seeing for example a nice clean office block in th city being gutted for refurbishment but what many people in construction miss is exercising the mind because after a while what your descibing gets a bit routine and the physically tired part can also do damage to you social life because your not tired but physically ache and don't have the energy to go out. You are right about being absorbed by doing physical work sometimes time flys at an alarming rate. Hope that helped.
I guess if I spent my days doing physical work, I'd crave a bit of thinking time. I used to rock climb and that or heavy DIY would leave me very tired, but my mind was still awake, which is an odd slighty trapped feeling.