Sometimes it's possible to get a pretty good bead on someone's worldview from even a short excerpt. In this case, the author not only has a low internal locus of control, but seems to adopt it as a core belief. Here's the key part:
"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
I find this fatalism both increasingly common and increasingly odious. The opposite attitude may be irritating - Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" - but I prefer to reason from agency when there's a decent chance the more empowering view is right. Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?
It's my experience that when you find yourself thinking, "I can understand this person's entire worldview from a short statement, and I can use that to dismiss what they're saying," it's a sort of self-inflicted strawman to protect yourself from ideas that make you uncomfortable to the point where you refuse to believe they originated from a reasonable human being. It's simpler and safer to imagine they came from a caricature. (Not throwing shade, I'm describing my conclusions from observing this behavior in myself.)
That doesn't mean the idea is good, maybe it's a terrible idea, but you should seek to challenge your thinking on the subject, not protect it and keep it precious.
I'm not sure how under your view you could ever disagree with anyone at all then. To not fall into the same trap you articulate, could you explain what holding a viewpoint against another where you disagree with it for good reasons looks like? Maybe with an example that works here?
Great question. You disagree with them, but you don't expand the scope of your disagreement past the matter in dispute (eg, you don't go from "we disagree" to "this person's worldview is hopelessly flawed"). You don't tell yourselves narratives about why they came to that conclusion. Narratives about how they will always think in a certain way are especially dangerous. In practice, for myself, this means more recognizing that these things are happening & terminating that line of thinking, and reminding myself how little I know about people on the other end of a screen. Oftentimes these can be restated as constructive questions, like instead of saying, "you are a fatalist," you can ask, "this seems fatalistic, this doesn't match my own experience, can you help me understand?" Remember that most strong disagreements are a mild disagreement wrapped in a misunderstanding.
To give a concrete example, maybe you see someone say something you find deeply objectionable, like "I support affirmative action in college admissions" or "I support the right to bear arms." You could say to yourself, here is my political adversary, they're a snowflake or a nut job or a useful idiot, they are buying into this or that media narrative, I can discount them. And that could all be true, but you don't actually know any of that at this point. So you say to yourself, "the world is a big strange place, there are many paths to form this opinion and I don't know which one this person took, but if I ask questions and keep an open mind we both might learn something." That doesn't mean you have to agree with them, you're just not derailing yourself with narratives that only serve to reinforce your biases.
And to be honest a lot of people are nut jobs and a lot of people will bite your head off no matter how politely or open mindedly you disagree with them. Which makes it difficult to maintain this, and I won't pretend that I'm not a hypocrite who regularly fails in this respect. But it's important to maintain a headspace where it is possible to change your mind, as often as you are able.
> But it's important to maintain a headspace where it is possible to change your mind, as often as you are able.
Every single time I look at myself 5 years prior I always think that my opinions and ideas were stupid and how much more cult and evolved and smarter I am. And then I realize 5 years from now I'll think the same thing about today.
Best remedy to keep yourself from judging other's opinions too harshly and thinking too highly about whatever positions you hold. Big +1 to your whole sentiment.
That was a good comment for me to read. I like to think about myself that I am of a similar mindset to you but now that I think of it I very often discount others' opinions because of how I view them and don't catch myself often enough. Here's hoping I remember this comment next time it happens :)
You just skipped down the levels of abstractions in a way that does not address the OP's point.
> you see someone say something you find deeply objectionable, like "I support affirmative action in college admissions"
I have no idea why that person thinks that, and can form no opinions about them. Even more specifically, outside a US context they are meaningless.
Contrast that to the OP example:
> "Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
This is not a statement of opinion about a thing. This is not a "policy is X is good" statement. This is the framework for how this person forms ALL their opinions. This statement could be made by almost any human anywhere in the world.
There are, without doubt, things people can say that give you "a pretty good bead on someone's worldview from even a short excerpt". These are NOT "I support the right to bear arms." They are vey much "I am a strict and devoted Mormon and follow all the churches teachings", or "hard work is all that matters" or "no matter how hard you try, life is out to get you".
If someone can't deduce things about a person from those sorts of first principle short sentences, that is a bit of a worry to me.
My apologies to those for whom US politics isn't salient. Thank you for that feedback, I'll try to speak to a broader audience in the future.
There's a world of difference between a statement giving you a clue about someone's worldview and assuming you understand it's entirety. In not saying you shouldn't infer anything from anything, I'm saying you should be honest with yourself about what is knowledge and what is supposition.
Knowledge is justified, true belief. I can come to believe something as strongly as I may from scant information, and that thing could be true - and it still wouldn't have been justified. Alternatively, you could take those reactions and interpret them as untested hypothesis, and test them by asking followup questions.
I don't agree that this statement represents a broad assertion that life is out to get you, as much as that the author has made a decision about how to allocate their efforts because they observe rapidly diminishing returns in certain areas. I don't have a fatalistic attitude towards life broadly, but there are aspects of my life that are treadmills which I try not to step on to.
Yes! I feel like a good fraction of the content on Reddit and Twitter are people extrapolating on the world view and psychology of other people on the platform, and comparatively little on the actual content of what was said.
Or you've seen the same ideas over and over and once you spot the pattern you save yourself the time. Your approach sounds good if you're young or have infinite energy/time.
Dumpster diving is not a good way to find value even if you occasionally find gold.
I certainly feel this way regularly and choose not to engage with people when I don't believe it will be worthwhile. The nuance is that, if you tell yourself you have the power to see into people's hearts and understand what makes them tick - rather than you've simply chosen not to engage with this particular person at this particular time - you may exercise bad judgment in circumstances that require you to understand other people.
For instance, one that causes me problems personally is that I'm prone to doubting that people will change their mind no matter what evidence you present to them. And that's not a bad heuristic when you think someone is wrong on the internet and don't think that you'll be able to disabuse them of it. But I've had to learn to suppress this instinct when I get into conflicts with people, because I can't resolve a conflict if I'm convinced that it's impossible to come to an understanding. But this isn't just an irrational idea I've picked up, I have had conflicts that couldn't be resolved because the other party wouldn't give me a fair hearing. But I can't allow myself to believe that no one will ever change their mind, even if I see all the hallmarks of it.
And indeed I've had the experience more than once where I see someone dig in their heels, fully anticipate this matter is irresolvable, and when encouraged by mutual friends to try anyway (or, later, when I tried to be optimistic because I was aware of this pattern), I've gone on to be surprised for the better.
> The nuance is that, if you tell yourself you have the power to see into people's hearts and understand what makes them tick - rather than you've simply chosen not to engage with this particular person at this particular time - you may exercise bad judgment in circumstances that require you to understand other people.
eh. If someone says, and says it seriously so you know that they mean it, "I really love being a serial killer, it gives me a great feeling of freedom and relief."
I don't know about you, but I kinda am getting their entire worldview from that short statement. What else am I supposed to ask? If they like piña coladas and getting caught in the rain? If they're not into yoga, or if they have half a brain? If they like making love at midnight In the dunes on the cape?
I'll leave it to you to go to their house some some dark and stormy night and strip nude, lie down on their table, and put a cleaver across your chest, waiting to hear his story about his other thoughts.
I'm not trying to caricature. I'm just saying that you can go hang out with a serial murderers. I admit that you are a better person than I am because you are ready to hang out with serial murderers and I'm not. I'll judge the serial killer on just the one statement, thank you very much.
Not a strawman, I don't think. More like reducto ad absurdum. But in whatever case, I think what I wrote was kinda humorous, too, so I'll go with humor as an additional failsafe.
I interpreted this statement completely differently. The author isn't fatalistic at all, he's merely advocating for a more thoughtful approach to spending your time.
If the only reason you work on something is out of a fear of falling behind, then you ought to reevaluate your priorities and, if you deem it necessary, choose a path that seems more fruitful. "Getting ahead" implies judging your life relative to others, based on metrics that are societally accepted, but may be completely misaligned with your actual desires. Spending some time to introspect and to get a grasp on your own idea of a meaningful life can be very beneficial.
I think the treadmill analogy is a reference to the hedonic treadmill, where you may assume that spending oodles of your time pursuing greater wealth or reputation will surely be worth it in the end, but are faced with the reality of feeling the exact same way as before.
The author is suggesting finding a corner of the world where you can play a better game. The better game they are suggesting is to hop off the treadmill of external validation, and figure out how to find it internally instead.
Like many or most of us here, I spend a lot of my time around software people. But I just spent a bunch of time this weekend with a group of people for whom music is their way of making money in some way or another; teaching it, playing it, writing it, etc. Something very striking to me is how much different the internal vs. external validation thing is between them and me. These are people who get little external validation, always scraping by with unstable income, struggling for recognition in a crowded field. But they all do it because they just freaking love music, they're excited by the possibilities, and almost always happy when they're playing. On the other hand, most software folks I know are compensated richly externally, but often struggle to find peace and contentment internally.
To be clear, this was a "melding of the worlds" kind of event with different families and sundry friends coming together, not a "musicians hanging out with programmers" social event.
But as is always the case unless you work as a professional pollster, I don't have any idea how representative my samples are. It was just an observation from my experience.
There’s a lot we could learn from artists about creative practice and enjoying other people’s work. I often wish I could have gone to a programmer art school.
I think it's the opposite: the purpose here is to say that pursuing efficiency so that you have more time will not give you more time; it will just give you more work allotted to that time. Instead, you first need to prioritize your goals, giving your personal goals a relative weight to professional ones, or your personal goals will get lost.
But you are going to make more money, invest it and have your wealth snowball. Then you can retire earlier and choose to do the exact thing you want to do earlier since you have money.
And at certain curve the amount of money yoh make matters a lot, if you have base expenses. Making 4k vs 2k is technically infinite gains if your expenses are 2k. If you become more efficient, but don't make more money, then you clearly need to work on your ability to sell yourself. And if your expenses also grow equally to what you are making more, that is also on you.
First, it assumes that you will be paid for said productivity. If you are doing piecework or sales or something where your income has direct proportion to your paycheck, this is true. For most people working hourly or salary, this is not true. As you mention, you're paid by how you sell yourself. This is only nominally related to how well you do the job above what is expected.
(If you get a 2% raise for being adequate, 4% for going above and beyond, and 15% for working on your interview skills and jumping ship, your productivity system is not what matters.)
You are paid by a combination of how you sell yourself * the kind of work you do. It's not black and white. Work on grabbing the lowest hanging fruit and bottlenecks as in if you do a lot of good work, but no one cares, then work on presenting or finding a place that cares. Remove the block where good work is not valued.
True, but unfortunately we now live in a world where corporate landlords participate in a price-fixing cartel on regional basis and use income verification data to set your rent. This means, in many cases, an increase in pay means an increase in rent even if you change nothing else about your lifestyle.
Side note: price-fixing cartels are black letter illegal as fuck in the US, but we don’t seem to enforce the laws against corporate landlords
>Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
You got it backwards. The post specifically encourages the person to take action.
What they describe in that part is what happens when you're caught in that kind of work treadmill. In that case, anything you do within the context of the treadmill isn't going to make any difference. You need to escape/reframe the context.
>>"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
>>Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
It is also a statement of fact. Working hard on a job that pays a fixed salary is just pointless by definition after a while. Especially in a job that doesn't have overtime. The company has little incentive to reward free work they can get done, and get away with.
>>Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?
Yes. If you absolutely have to work hard, do it in a place that pays you for it.
You mean the author of the article or the book. It helps to know that author of the article started an Site Optimization platform and worked hard to build it, probably spending too much time on it as well.
Taking umbrage with any advice saying otherwise i.e don't spend too much time on performance, seems sensible since they took it personally.
It helps that inflation was very little and very uncommon at the time. Pikkety opens his book with a story from late 18th century, and if I remember correctly, he did look into this and found that for a centuries currencies hardly de-valuated.
I asked our all knowing friend to hash up the story for me, 'cause he remembers it better than I did:
Question:
Do you remember pikkety's book "capital in the 21st century", in which he opens with a story about people in french contemplating the best way to get rich. He also has a tangent about how money barely de-evaluated. Could you repeat that to me?
Answer:
Yes, I can certainly help you with that. In his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century," Thomas Piketty opens with a story about a dinner party in France in the early 21st century, where the guests were discussing the best ways to get rich. Piketty uses this story to introduce the central theme of his book, which is the study of wealth and income inequality over time.
In the book, Piketty also discusses the phenomenon of barely devalued money. He argues that in the post-World War II period, Western economies experienced a period of high economic growth, which allowed for the accumulation of significant amounts of capital. However, in the decades that followed, growth rates began to slow down, which meant that the returns on capital also began to decline.
Piketty notes that during this period, the value of money barely devalued, which had the effect of increasing the relative value of capital. This, in turn, contributed to rising income and wealth inequality, as those who owned capital were able to accumulate more wealth at the expense of those who did not.
Overall, Piketty's book is a comprehensive analysis of the history of wealth and income inequality and its impact on society.
The quote is more commonly attributed to John Steinbeck, who also wrote a (somewhat embellished) memoir / #vanlife travelogue in 1962, called "Travels With Charley in Search of America".
People err on different sides of issues. Some people struggle to get things done, other people struggle with a kind of productivity obsession. How people on the opposite sides of that spectrum cope is obviously going to be quite different and unhelpful to their counterparts.
Like how some people talk to me in response to my attempts at losing weight. I don’t have body image issues or an eating disorder, i don’t need to kind of self confidence or gentle speech someone in that situation needs. I’m just slightly overweight because I had too many cheeseburgers in Covid times. Different problems need different solutions.
I think this is why the Dunning-Kruger effect exists, and why casinos make money. Unreasonable hope is necessary if you are going to do anything interesting. Failure often teaches more than success. Knowing we will die is intimidating. https://www.google.com/search?q=wood+allen+the+universe+is+e...
The phrase that stuck with me from that book: tomorrow in not guaranteed.
I'm in my forties and have watched a few friends die slowly from cancer, and others die suddenly in car crashes.
During COVID, working from home in my dimly-lit basement during perpetual grey days, doing my bureaucratic middle management job, I kept thinking: I can't die like this.
My wife and I both quit our jobs and are on a sabbatical. It's glorious. Every day is sunny.
Now I'm mid deep contemplation about my next job and how I can find something that motivates me and fills me with happiness even if it's for less money.
Tomorrow is not guaranteed. Don't forget to act on that, everyone.
Candid question: how do you finance your sabbatical ?
I feel like a lot of people (I'm in there) are dreaming for exactly what your are living right now, but won't EVER be in the position to do it.
I am 36 with about 14 years of software engineering, and I need LOTS_OF_MONEY per month just to finance my mortgage, the school of my children and the basic living expenses that rose about 50% in the last year due to energy and inflation. If my wife and I quit for 3 month, we are out of our saved money and will be losing the house.
Mostly luck* that my wife and I worked for a company that compensated largely in stock, and we worked there (and both got promoted) during a period of strong stock performance.
We also planned our expenses around one base salary. So about 1/4 of gross income covered mortgage, child care (one kid), etc. We live way beneath our means. The rest (after taxes) went into index funds and a few lucky investments.
We're at the "FU money" stage of wealth, and we'll go back to work to ensure we get to "very comfortably retired" stage.
*I'd like to take credit for being so brilliant as to land the job at said company, and maybe I should take some credit for that, but honestly it's mostly good luck.
One more comment, since there's a sibling comment about not having kids. I live in a US state with a pre-paid college tuition plan, and it's pre-paid for four years of tuition for my one kid. I know there's more to college expenses than just tuition, but it gives me peace of mind that at least that is taken care of. My kid will go to public schools until then.
Essentially, spend quite a bit less than you earn. Figure out how and where cuts can be made so that your financial situation is decoupled from your job. It’s not easy and a lot of people will find themselves in a place where they’re convinced they need to spend every dollar they’re currently spending (and find new ways when their income increases).
One method is to look for a better paying job, jump to it, and keep your budget the same as it is now.
Use your resources wisely and take time to think about the best way to use them.
Not OP, but I’ll tell you how my wife and I were able to take a year long sabbatical. I had some stock options for the company I worked for, which had gone public during my employment, and buying and selling it all provided enough to live very comfortably off of for about a year for the two of us.
I think the author is not stating "don't bear any responsibilities", but rather "work is infinite, do not try to finish it by dedicating 10 hours per day", which is a fallacy many people fall in (myself included)
I try to reason about this a lot, and the trouble is everything I aspire to do happens across decades. Nothing that can be accomplished in a day or a week seems satisfying.
But this is not the point. The point is not to engage in meaningless or easy stuff only. The point is to recognize that you should not dedicate more than 8h per day because for many jobs (including software engineering) there are no deadlines or most are made by people that are not involved in the actual process so they are artificial limits imposed to make you fret.
> All theory aside, the feeling that you’d be left behind your peers is very real. A millionaire lawyer in front of her boss still feels that she has a lot to catch up on.
It's not always a feeling though. Criteria for promotion can be all over the place. We've all worked with some idiot with a fancy title.
If you are not getting a fair shake, the solution is sometimes to run away. But you will usually be stuck for emotional or professional reasons (you don't want another short stint in your CV, you don't have the energy to go through a big tech hiring process, etc.)
This kind of contradiction inevitably leads to alienation, then burnout. Many workers will quiet quit instead of quitting for real, because even if they can afford not to work for a while, they still rely on income to progress towards some goal such as buying some property, paying off their student loan, etc.
I have been a quiet quitter before it was a term, but what worked for me was actually the opposite. Every time I have doubled down on some side project with the goal of getting a better gig, it has worked out. I make it clear to my manager I hate some aspects of my work so I would rather focus on others, and it's up to them to make it work. I would rather focus on the right productivity than being anti-productive.
The article (and maybe the book) has a nice message, I guess, but... this is advice for people whose fundamental economic needs are secure and already taken care of.
The vast majority of people on the planet are forced to be "productive" for most of the day so they can just have a few short moments at the end of the day or on a weekend to be "at peace with and bask at merely existing". Because if they didn't the alternative would be starvation of themselves or their loved ones.
This article is all a very "bourgeois" perspective. There are many things us middle class people could do to cut complexity and simplify and live in the moment. But the origin of "the hustle" is frankly just the material reality of every day existence.
It shouldn't really be a surprise that after people get past the brute force problems of not-starving, they run around pushing with the same productive drive elsewhere in their lives and producing needless complexity because it's just part of the fundamental drive that stops you from starving in the first place.
Also once you have kids, "striving for a future that never arrives" is frankly just part of your fundamental being. You will (hopefully) die before your kids or grandkids die. The moment you hold that child in your arms for the first time.. a huge part of you willingly and with deep love begins sacrificing a huge part of your present for a future you will never see.
I love skiing -- among other activities -- because it puts me in this mental space described in this article. But I also see that pursuit of this comes with its own problematic aspects. It is actually super easy to get caught up in the "live the moment", and lose grasp of the obligations that we have to those around us, or to responsibilities that actually bring long-term satisfaction.
I actually think our society has far more of a problem with people pursuing self-satisfying personal fulfillment (at the expense of social responsibility) than it does with people being overproductive.
This. The article alludes to Buddhism, when it comes to living in the moment. But it totally ignored the trap of hedonistic pleasure seeking that goes along with it.
> The message seems old. The entire self-help industry revolves around saying variations of it. Stay in the present. Enjoy the moment. Seize the day.
Plenty of old books too:
Art of War - Choose the right battles to fight.
Meditations - Live in the present moment and focus on what you can control.
Tao Te Ching - Live in harmony with the natural world.
The Bhagavad Gita - Find meaning in your actions even in the face of uncertainty.
The Bible - Make the most of your time on earth.
> Time is a series of nows. In that sense, the future never arrives.
It's a good perspective. Especially if you make the most of the present each day. But if you have nothing to look forward to, how can you really make the most of each day? That's the basic argument here.
Many philosophers believed you need to have a strong vision to make the most of your life. That can be found through one's acceptance of mortality/finitude/purpose/morals/desires/suffering/etc.
>> Many philosophers believed you need to have a strong vision to make the most of your life.
I'd say it's not to make the most of your life, but to make something of it. Having goals or purpose can be separate from the competition for "most". I also find that goals or principles help to make decisions when a course is not clear. Like a tie breaker.
Your summary of the Bible is off base. If you're summarizing the book of Ecclesiastes, you're almost there. Solomon provides a succinct description of the point of the book.
Ecc 8:15 15So I commended pleasure, for there is nothing good for a man under the sun except to eat and to drink and to be merry, and this will stand by him in his fntoils throughout the days of his life which God has given him under the sun.
But also
Ecc 11:8-9 8Indeed, if a man should live many years, let him rejoice in them all, and let him remember the days of darkness, for they will be many. Everything that is to come will be futility.
9¶Rejoice, young man, during your childhood, and let your heart be pleasant during the days of young manhood. And follow the fnimpulses of your heart and the fndesires of your eyes. Yet know that God will bring you to judgment for all these things.
As for the Bible, I'll direct you to the late theologian Chuck Missler.
I'm really productive. So productive, in fact, that I have to slow down for the rest of the team. a lot.
Rather than be frustrated by it, I use the extra time to do things like dig out a flowerbed for my wife (ow), or catch up on streaming stuff.
But I really like coding, and tend to spend free time coding; even though I don't have to.
It makes a huge difference, not having someone breathing down my neck, basically saying "Shut up, bitch. Just go out and make me money!"
I don't have a ton of money, but I have enough. I live frugally (many folks here, would have contempt for my level of living), I can afford good development systems (my toys), and I have a great deal of social interaction.
I’ve been coding and engineering for over thirty years. Most of us old fogeys are like that. I’m only middlin’ productive, compared to many of the folks I’ve worked with.
If you do something continuously, for a long time, you tend to get fairly efficient at it. That’s just basic common sense.
I don’t particularly care if I’m “better than” anyone else. I’m retired. I’m not looking for work, and I’m not interested in being BMOC.
I am pretty good at what I do. I am also the only person on our team that has the luxury of working on the project full time (see “retired,” above).
I’m a really decent chap. I like working with folks; particularly those that are better than I am, and I have no interest in fighting with you.
You call it “boasting,” but it’s really just a simple declaration of basic facts. I’m good at what I do, in my small context.
I’m currently starting to learn a bit more about stuff outside my comfort zone, like AI, and there’s no way that I could pretend to be any good at that. I’m learning here, and you guys are my teachers.
It’s really discouraging to see this level of cynicism. I consider myself to be fairly cynical, but I’m an amateur, compared to a lot of folks, these days, and that’s a real shame.
You know, immediately projecting the worst onto people we don’t know, isn’t conducive to a happy life. That’s something I learned, long ago.
In any case, I’m pretty much an open book. I definitely share stuff here, that I wouldn’t, if I were still in the rodent rally, but it is not my intention to make others uncomfortable, and I sincerely apologize for coming across that way.
Sorry, maybe my post sounded more serious than I intended it to. I wasn't trying to be combative, I was merely pointing out the irony of lecturing someone about insulting people on a professional forum, when your first post could easily be interpreted as bragging and insulting the people you work with. I'm sure you didn't mean it that way and had good intentions. There's nothing wrong in principle with saying you're good at something. I think it's the direct comparison with specific people and the implication that they are slowing you down that has the potential to be interpreted negatively.
Below (above?), I answered why I have to hold back. I'm working with a designer, who can't devote as much bandwidth to the project as can I. I have to wait on him.
It's all good. I spend extra coding time, doing things like testing, and adding animations (what I'm working on, today).
This is HN. People brag here, like crazy. The main difference seems to be that it's usually "LinkedIN bragging," or "humblebragging."
I'm not really into humblebragging. I find it rather creepy and dishonest, quite frankly, and I won't do it.
There's a lot of stuff that I'm really good at, and a lot more stuff that I'm not good at. I don't hide either.
It takes time for the rest of your team to stay up to date on what you are doing, and you don't want to release too many changes at once, so it's faster to pinpoint which one has an error
Because I’m working with a designer, who is working part-time, and have to wait for his renderings. He gets pissed off, if I guess. I don’t want to have to undo a bunch of work, if I guessed wrong.
What if i like work? I like getting things done and the fact that there is infinite work is an opportunity to me. I 100% respect anyone who have other interests, but I like how the work I do have an impact and I want to maximize that impact. Choosing to not engage is a perfectly fine choice, but if one makes that choice one should be aware that one will not have the same impact.
For most people the impact from their work is negative.
The "selling more shit, destroying more environment, make more people obese, putting more ads to make people buy BS to feel something, making everybody lonelier, busier, and more disconected and depressed" kind of impact.
If one's work indeed has a positive impact, say a doctor or a teacher or a nurse or a street cleaner, sure...
>Still reduces to to the same thing. Doctor? You’re extending the life of people who sell shit. Teacher? You’re training future shit sellers.
The difference being that a human life is valuable outside of what shit they sell in their job. They're also friends, spouses, parents, and, well, individuals.
People are not reduced to their job.
Whereas a job selling shit is a job selling shit. It doesn't "reduce to", it is 100% that and only that.
Doctors will also treat criminals if they're shot etc., as they should - and it's a good thing. Doesn't mean crime is good.
Do you like all your work? Or are there things you do at work that you do only because you are obligated to do so?
There's a saying, "Money ruins everything" which in this context is saying that even if you enjoy what you do for money, doing it for money makes it less enjoyable than if you did it for its own sake. When you aren't completely doing something by choice, you end up doing things that you wouldn't do by choice.
Do you like all of anything you do? Hobbies, raising children or pets, even going on vacation all have parts that can be frustrating or annoying, but many people do these things anyway because on the whole they find them fulfilling and enjoyable. Given that, insisting that 100% of work is enjoyable seems like an unfair standard.
Yes, I do. I'm not going to participate in my hobbies if I don't like all of it. That's what hobbies are for.
Raising children is an interesting one to bring up because the vast majority are forced into it, societal pressure mixed with accidental situations. I'm sure if you ask the older couple who have been trying for ages to have a child if they enjoy raising the child they finally adopted if they love all of it, they would say yes even the messy parts they find joy from.
Vacation is another one, there is no reason to dislike any part of going on a vacation, but a lot of people do because they go with people they don't really want to go with. They go somewhere because it's the top 5 best places to visit and not because they truly desire visiting that place. None of it stems from a serious desire to enjoy that vacation, but an obligation.
Which is part of the problem. A lot of people aren't actually taking the time to step back and question whether or not they enjoy doing what they're doing. They're just doing it because they're forced to, because they don't want to get left behind, or they already made commitments.
So I don't believe it's healthy to keep this going and then to make excuses for work that we have to hate parts of it - cause factually there are many people who LOVE the work they do, why can't we all be as fortunate? Step back and reflect. Maybe you'll learn something new about yourself.
I can't relate to the other things, but I dislike the majority of things that constitute going on vacation. I don't like planning the vacation including what to do, where to stay or how to get there. I don't like having the vacation planned and looming over my head preventing me from making long term plans.
However, after all that, there are moments throughout which make up for it and make me glad I didn't just stay at home.
A good hobby is one that follows the arc commonly seen in movies. Crushing defeat, hopelessness, despondency, perseverance, great triumph. I don’t think I’ve stuck with any hobby that you just do aimlessly.
I guess what I'm getting at more is not enjoyment but intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. A parent doesn't, for example, might not enjoy taking their kid to the doctor, but they do it because they want to, not because they have to. Nobody has to tell them to do it (in most cases--obviously bad parents exist).
Person A: What if I like water? I enjoy drinking it
Person B: Water in all contexts isn't great, for example you can drown. So what qualities about water do you specifically like?
You see how it's less absurd? Hopefully that's made clear now. For future reference, turning everything into exaggerated hyperbole is only going to keep you contained in your isolated bubbles online and make you all the more sensitive to any sort of pushback/disagreement/criticism.
I think the internet likes to treat basic human instinct as something profound. At least in the western world, I suspect that at most 1% of people actually over-optimize on productivity. This is different from the 9% of people who try too hard for their employer, which is often it's own form of laziness of sticking with what you're comfortable with.
I love this book. I read it not long after it came out. The authors newsletter can be found on his website (Oliver burkeman), is also a great read.
I love the basic productivity advice that I believe comes from Jung that he quotes, which is basically, figure out something worthwhile to do, go do it and then figure out the next worthwhile thing to do, complete forever. Something simple about that.
Jung points out that this is also a natural way of being, in that sense you are living from your true sense of self as you are deciding what is important moment to moment and actually living your life, rather than trying to make it fit some predetermined idea of what you think it should be.
I'm trying to get more into this mode of thinking / being.
Funny "enough", that quote inspired me to write a book called "Enough." as a double meaning for being fed up with the world and also being satisfied with what you have.
I read this story in Jack Bogle's book called "Enough". I had no idea where I came across these other words until now, but I did use them as a intro page in my book because they were so fitting at the time:
I had not. I wish I did when I was writing this book as it is a great word.
I have heard of "moderation" (stoicism), "goldilocks" (fairy tales), balancing yin-yang (daoism/confucianism), middle way (buddhism), golden mean (aristotle), etc.
I've heard of wabi-sabi recently which seems like a similar idea in Japan.
You're welcome. I'd forgotten where I heard it, too, but fortunately, you can just type a quote into DDG (or Google) and the top answers usually have the source.
I really do like this story, but there is also a part of me that reacts by thinking "Easy for world-famous novelists Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut to chuckle about they have talent, notoriety, and respect that no amount of money could buy and couldn't have been achieved by chasing wealth. For the rest of us toiling away in the rat race, hedge fund billions sound pretty great!"
Just finished reading this insightful article, and it resonates with my recent experience backpacking through Chile. I've been amazed by the slower pace of life here, where people seem to prioritize relationships, leisure, and hobbies over chasing career goals and constantly striving for efficiency. It's refreshing to see communities that embrace the idea of enjoying the present moment rather than being fixated on a future that never really arrives.
As someone in the tech industry, it's easy to get caught up in the productivity treadmill, trying to maximize every moment of our finite lives. But this article is a stark reminder that there's more to life than just work and chasing success. Instead of focusing solely on efficiency, we should actively choose what truly matters to us, like personal connections, health, and happiness.
Chile has taught me that embracing a slower pace and appreciating the present can lead to a more fulfilling and content life. It's a lesson we can all benefit from, especially in our fast-paced, efficiency-obsessed world. Let's not forget that life is a series of choices, and it's up to us to prioritize what truly matters.
> In an ideal world, such efficient folks like yourself would invest a few hours per day working hard, but then spend the rest of the day in a lazy glory
I detest laziness. There's only so much 'Netflix and Chill' a person can do, and after lazing around, I actually feel drained, rather than energized. You would think that laziness gives you energy, but it saps it instead. I guess this is because we're all human in the end, wired to be productive and working on at least one problem.
I think the author and you might have different understandings of "lazy". If I pursue a hobby for an afternoon with no financial upside (say, building model kits or painting) I might consider that a "lazy Sunday".
I was productive, insofar as I pursued an interest, but I was not productive in the "producing salable work".
I think there's a universe where lazy can mean different things for different people. For some that's lying on the couch, others might read or write or pursue art and music.
YES. I experience the same depletion of energy during “rest”. In fact, lots of down time without productivity (doesn’t have to be work!) leads me to depression. Going back to school and taking a single class has made me feel productive and filled me with pride.. with thought it’s not too impressive. Watching Netflix for hours, or browsing my phone, leads me to a bad outlook of myself and the world.
I think it’s a lot easier to become productive and efficient at work than it is at home (or generally tasks for yourself). Because of the structures built to support it only usually end up in one environment. That imbalance is what I think leads to burnout.
But saying that the solution to productivity is… productivity… is just as bad as telling people to meditate instead of taking time off work. Probably true! But very unhelpful.
I agree that it is complexity that is the enemy. It's not all about being a minimalist though.
The issue is in work, there are many things already decided by other people, you are just the cog in the machine making choices in your own lane, after work, in your own life, you are responsible for everything and you have to decide, those decisions are complex and energy draining and you have to make them constantly, your time is limited, so you can only choose to do a few things, but how do you know what is best and even worse you usually always don't estimate the time that is required at all.
Really, people working on software should be deeply aware of that. You can have both or neither. And if you go radically optimizing for one, you will certainly get the unwanted extreme of the other (because well, that's what "radical" means).
Simple living actually works. I've tried it. Complexity is not your friend. But that doesn't mean I avoid complexity at all costs. After all I'm typing this on a computer which is the most complex possession I have.
For me and all the sages from antiquity to present day and everyone I know who has been truly happy. If these things seem like hell to you, you might want to consider why..
That is such a hilarious oversimplification and overstatement of the “sages from antiquity” that I can only respond that you should go and actually read some of them. The balance and give and take will be surprising and a good use of your time.
Life is about doing things, if all you do is think about things you’re broken.
I’m not really looking for clients at the moment, and that’s also something you should try to tackle in person. That said, I don’t think you need my help, just try doing things. It might be uncomfortable at first but you’ll get there.
All my life I've liked working, learning, doing things, getting stuff done. I really like to make myself useful. I'm also the proverbial guy who, if left in the woods with an axe, will just start chopping trees and build something.
Some consider the emphasis on hard work and striving for its own sake to be less a default or inevitable value as an arbitrary confluence of history and Protestant/Calvinist doctrine.
One of Max Weber's theories is that working ever harder for more material gain once basic needs are met is not a universal part of human nature but more a cultural artifact of a certain time and place.
Not a message usually impressed upon us these days.
Why is dying without regrets the de facto most important thing? You don't take your regrets with you either. If you want to care about something, at least pick something that will last longer than you will.
Indeed... If I don't -- at least temporarily -- regret some things it likely means I didn't put much on the line.
Two kinds of regret: 1. Regret making a mistake. Making mistakes is part of existence and learning. Regret is a natural consequence of messing things up. Moving on from the regret is also part of the learning.
2. Regret for losing something we love, or for loving something we can't have. This can be problematic, if not framed correctly. But also something we learn to move beyond. But it's also, again, part of the richness of a life well lived -- to make or seek attachments and feel regret when they're lost and to constantly re-evaluate. We lost my mother in law to cancer 11 years ago. I often feel regret for not making better moments with her before it ended, and so on. That regret is just part of the nature of having love and attachment in my life. Giving it up would make me a poorer person.
We will potentially all leave this world with a sense of loss or regret. If I didn't, I would worry about what kind of dissociated detachment I was carrying with me.
I don't know, maybe I will live a rich full life and die after I'm just tired of living, with no sense of loss?
I'm an organism that feels both joy and suffering. I try to minimize the latter in favour of the former. But there's no formula to avoiding suffering that doesn't involve joyless detachment. It requires intellectual and emotional effort to analyze and deal with every situation. That's just part of the story.
Shameless plug but I wrote an app[1] with the same idea of anti-productivity in mind. Having read the book, the idea of 4000 weeks in your life can be scary but also inspiring.
This seems to be targeted specifically at people who are extrinsically motivated and do not prioritize family. In my humble opinion that's the worst quadrant of those two variables. But apparently, with how prescient this seems to most commenters, many people actually inhabit that quadrant. Could that really be so?
>If you must work hard and be efficient, consciously pick that work
With this one sentence, the whole dichotomy proposed by the article falls apart. It all depends on what gives your life meaning and what your goals are. If you primarily derive meaning from having experiences with friends and family, then it absolutely makes sense to devalue productivity. If you primarily derive meaning from creating artifacts that will survive for a long time and provide benefit to humanity, then it's hard to see why you shouldn't optimize for productivity.
A lot of the anti-work, anti-productivity discourse seems to revolve around this assumption that some things are more meaningful than others independent of individual preferences. If people really value competence in a certain domain and "getting ahead" is important to them, what ground is there to stand on to say that they're wrong?
> If you primarily derive meaning from creating artifacts that will survive for a long time and provide benefit to humanity, then it's hard to see why you shouldn't optimize for productivity.
You are still devaluing productivity because this is actually an agility problem. Optimizing for productivity doesn't necessarily make you any progress towards creating long lasting artifacts, and instead will draw you into doing infinite work before making any progress on those artifacts
The key is to be agile and ensure that your productivity furthers the things you care about. Your speed towards irrelevant items is irrelevant, but there's an infinite number of irrelevant tasks to complete.
I don't think that contradicts what I said. The key here is how we define productivity. I agree that focusing on maximizing productivity in the short term can be a bad strategy. What you're suggesting is still what I would call productivity; it's just maximizing it over longer time scales.
I interpreted the book to be about living intentionally. I don't think the author would say advancing in a field you're passionate about is a bad thing.
It's fun being productive, being exceptional, being really good at what you do. It's the most fun I have in life, and I have done all sort of things (including drugs). I'm sorry the author doesn't have this worth living for, fulfilling feeling.
There is an arc to life. Life has phases. There are phases where building productivity makes the most sense, as results have time, runway to compound. Then there are later phases where priorities shift
Bingo. Nobody who ever won a Nobel Prize, competed in the Olympics, or, in Joseph's Heller's case, wrote several novels that each took years to complete ever got up in the morning and said "I've done enough."
Chasing money might be dumb but chasing excellence in your own personal goals might be the only meaning to life that there is or ever will be.
> Bingo. Nobody who ever won a Nobel Prize, competed in the Olympics, or, in Joseph's Heller's case, wrote several novels that each took years to complete ever got up in the morning and said "I've done enough."
I am sure that is true. That said, whether such a person lives a satisfying life depends on the motivation behind such a drive.
Do you pursue your research, your sports training, and your writing because of your love of the process and the activity itself? If so, you are doing great.
Do you pursue your research, your sports training, and your writing because you are "climbing the ladder" toward a Nobel Prize, an Olympic medal, or the status of a famous writer? If so, you are probably going to have a bad time.
The message I took from the book is not "don't excel" or "don't put your heart into things". Rather it is that excelling at something and putting your heart into something should be a conscious decision on your part, instead of a default response (e.g., mindlessly climbing the corporate ladder) because that is what everyone seems to be doing.
I agree. None of those people you’ve mentioned would recognize the concept of “work-life balance” at all. If you want to be exceptional at something then there’s no substitute for putting more effort in.
In fact, if you look at Google books ngram viewer [1] or Google search trends [2] you’ll find the term is a very modern one.
I think there are lots of ways to live a fulfilling life. Relaxing and not worrying about being exceptional is one of them, but it feels to me like there’s a trend towards demonizing hard work (whether at $dayjob or in personal pursuits) which doesn’t seem healthy.
“I wrote for two or three hours in the morning, then went to a gym to work out,” he said. “I’d have lunch alone at a counter, go back to the apartment and work some more. Sometimes I’d lie down and just think about the book all afternoon — daydream if you will. In the evenings I’d often go out to dinner with friends.”
I get this worry. I didn’t read it this way though. I read it as being more about being conscious in choosing how to spend you time and not assuming that productivity leads to open amounts of person or quality time.
I am lucky; I love the work I do and there is an overlap with what I do as a “hobby.” The place I find myself in this trap is that often the places I am most “productive” are not the places I can do the highest value work, which tends to be slower and harder.
Optimizing yourself into answering emails instead of building stuff is pigeonholing yourself into mediocrity.
Being more productive does not necessarily make you better at things, and the article really argues that increasing your productivity on the wrong things negatively impacts your productivity on the right things.
What's wrong with mediocrity and laziness? Once you do enough to put a roof over your head and food on your table there's exactly zero reason to do more.
"Constantly ask yourself why are you working so hard on this damn thing. If the answer is: 'so I can get ahead,' remind yourself that it’s a treadmill and you’ll always stay at the same place, no matter how fast you run."
Note that this isn't merely a statement that the world is unfair, but that it's unfair and any effort you make to deal with it will end in frustration.
I find this fatalism both increasingly common and increasingly odious. The opposite attitude may be irritating - Steinbeck's "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" - but I prefer to reason from agency when there's a decent chance the more empowering view is right. Rather than concluding that everything is a red-queen rat race, why not try to find a corner of the world where you can play a better game?