Would I do this for 10 years? | Hacker News Reader

Would I do this for 10 years?

danshipper.com

95 pointsdshipper29 comments

Asking a 20 year old what they want to do for the next ten years is pretty silly, but I don't think it's as silly to ask the same question of someone older. My experience is that my ability to predict who I'll be at some point in the future scales as some fixed fraction of my age. Personal development seems to be logarithmic, at least for me.

They may not have an immediate answer, but it's not silly to ask - the sooner they begin thinking about this question, the sooner they arrive at that answer.

I see no reason why this would be true.

They may not be able to accurately answer the question, but that doesn't prevent if from being a helpful question. If your answer to this question is "no, not at all," you should be aware of that fact and use it to guide decisions you may be able to make.

I asked myself (now 27) this question when I was only one or two years older than 20, and realized I needed to make a change from what I was doing. My mind has certainly changed several times since then, and I expect it to change several more, but the initial "no" answer was crucial to getting me out of what was essentially a career in tech support.

> Instead, it’s more helpful to ask yourself questions whose answers don’t depend so entirely on how things have been going that day. For me, the most helpful one was this:

> Am I learning? Importantly, am I learning what I want to learn?

This was the key takeaway from the post for me. It's something I ask myself regularly as well.

If you are a curious enough person, there are so many thing you would be happy learning though. I've found it much harder to assess: "Is this the thing I want to be learning more than any other things right now?

I think the "No" answer to this question will quickly weed out anyone who isn't incredibly driven by the task at hand, whereas a "Yes" answer is obviously not considered any type of guarantee that someone will actually spend 10 years on it. It's a filter, and like most filters it's rather imperfect.

Yes. I came here to say essentially the same thing: if you don't see yourself working on it for 10 years you probably should be working on the task that you do see yourself working on for 10 years.

In other words, if you see yourself working on something for 10 years then it is probably the right thing for you to be doing at the moment. If you are still in the 10 year camp it means you probably are good with a 2-4 year commitment. That is important and helpful for a startup. Making that a metric doesn't mean you will actually be there doing the same thing in 10 years. If you do it with commitment you likely will not be in the same location, role or both within 5 years.

If you're using it to filter out employees or companies to invest in, it may be helpful. But if it's advice for people trying to figure out what to do, I think it falls quite short, in the same camp as "do something you're passionate about".

I have 2 successful companies (one consulting/services and another subscription business) and neither one is attractive to me for 10 years. I'm in about year 5 for both. I went into both knowing that they wouldn't excite me for 10 years.

They both excited me to build though. Entrepreneurs often like the challenge and the process of the build. So having a shorter time frame or commitment is not necessarily a bad thing. Some people are good at, and enjoy, incubating.

A better question for a VC to ask would be:

"Can you stick with anything for 10 years?" or "What else have you done that demonstrates long term perseverance against adversity?".

The real question is whether the person has the ability to persevere in adversity.

No matter what you are starting, your activities will be quite different far sooner than 10 years.

Passion for a particular mission is helpful, but you must be able to handle the drudgery and adversity -- even the most exciting and pleasant pursuits include many tasks that quickly turn to drudgery, and things will go against you often.

It is not passion that gets you through the drudgery and adversity, it is the perseverance. Many passionate people quit when things get tough, while many people with perseverance have made a success of projects with merely "worthwhile" goals.

[edit: clarity/punctuation]

THIS! THIS is key! :)

I have managed to procrastinate for 10+ years without much trouble :P

Ha!

... but, just curious, is your procrastination the same in year 10 as in year 1?

"I think it’s a bad question because we’re just not good enough at predicting our desires over the long term to be able to answer it. We’re capricious animals. We’re generally fickle and impulsive. We’re maddeningly mercurial"

The conclusion is — motivation is complex. It's hard to understand what makes people stick and no set of objective questions can possibly answer if people will be resilient if things fall apart (which usually do in a startup). Gabriel Weinberg worked for more than five years on DuckDuckGo before getting the first taste of real traction[1]. Some may have worked on a similar scale without even getting any significant success.

Although, humans are fickle by design, it seems some motivation is sticky. That's probably the difference between doing Supply Chain Management and building a Google competitor. The former seems to be an impulsive idea triggered by recently gained facts but the latter seems to be working on something you actually believe in.

[1]: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/motivation-being-cusp-somethi...

Here is a pretty good article about people who persevere for decades to end up with nothing https://www.wired.com/1995/06/xanadu/

This reminds me of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, and his advice to his kids (paraphrased): I don't care what you do, as long as you do it every day for the rest of your life.

I think one of the main thing this advice misses is that if you're doing a "lean startup" then you could very well end up doing something different than what you started. It's hard to know what exactly the continuation will be in what you do.

An equally 'deep' advice could be: I don't care what you do, as long as you don't do it for the rest of your life.

Yeah, there are two ways to find value in your life's work. One is to continually perfect your craft (Jiro), which means dedicating yourself to primarily one skill/career/industry. The other is to continually diversify your skill set by trying new things and experiencing the breadth of activities life has to offer. I don't think you can say one is more meaningful than the other, but it does seem that they are mutually exclusive.

One could argue that some paths are impossible to reach without diversification of skills.

Lean Startup is also based on consistency, except that what you do is not defining the kind of task as such. What you do is to keep learning, listen to your users and push the company into directions according to those insights. That's your One Task, even if it might encompass a lot of different subtasks.

It's unlikely that this interpretation corresponds to what Jiro meant, since it essentially tells you to practice being an opportunist every day, rather than to practice a more narrowly defined occupation in greater depth. But it's one way to accept both pieces of advice without disagreeing with either :P

I've worked for mobile gaming and fintech. Would I voluntarily do either of those? Hell no. But I love the experiences, the learning, and my awesome coworkers. I got insights into problem solving methods I wouldn't have encountered otherwise. I got an appreciation for new problem spaces. In short, I had a great time and wouldn't change a thing.

I'd work on my current engagement for as long as they'll have me because it's an intersection of the life interests I keep coming back to. I love going to work every day. But wow, am I ever glad I played those other "2 years, tops" roles.

The author states that people are too mercurial to know their own long-term desires. This is true for many young people - it was true for me - but you can and should define long-term goals for yourself. I spent enormous time in the last few years thinking about what I really wanted, and it was an enormously valuable activity. Tracking your thinking in writing is also highly recommended - writing clarifies and objectifies your own thoughts, and once you've accumulated a few years worth of properly-written notes-to-self, you have an incredible resource for self-analysis.

The secret is to rationally analyse your own values, identify why you value what you value, and try to define what unites the different tasks that you have found meaningful in the past.

This post contains some hints of the framework I used: http://aristotleadventure.blogspot.co.uk/2008/05/what-is-cen...

Early stage investing is largely about investing in the people, and their ability to execute, and less about the idea, assuming a reasonable business plan. VCs want to determine how steadfast and committed you will be to the company when the going gets tough. VC's ask this question if they cannot infer this from your background, employment history, or accomplishments. For early 20-somethings, there usually isn't a lot of history there to tell them, so they have to ask probing questions.

Once your time spent at a single company with high stress, multiple people, and fast growth is measured in years and not months, VCs stop asking you this question.

The best question that I was asked by a 50-something when I was a 20-something was about my team:

"Do you want to be bailing out a sinking boat with them for the next 10 years?"

Now that I am nearly a 50-something myself, I still think its the most important question to ask!

Both of these approaches seem to be looking in the wrong direction.

How does what you are working on now build on what you were working on before?

Steer toward hard and long-term problems, but keep the momentum you have already built.

The problem with this argument (and why it comes across as somewhat reductionist) is that it fails to acknowledge the sharp dichotomy between employment and entrepreneurship.

The question of working on something for 10 years is less relevant in entrepreneurship, because your role and the nature of what you're working on should be highly dynamic and therefore unpredictable.

One should question the mindset instead. Here's what I now tell anyone getting into entrepreneurship to consider: when what you're working on flatlines in 1 to 2 years, do you have the resources and the courage to keep going? I've seen untold numbers of very capable people try their hand at it and then give up after a year or two. That's a waste. And more to the point, it's also a good way to squander much of the value of what you may have learned in the process.

One thing that really surprised me was when I did the math on how long Steve Jobs was at NeXT.

To save everyone from looking this up themselves: 1985 - 1997.

1997 - 1985 = 12

The question "would I do this for 10 years" or "Do I see myself doing this in 10 years" allows for the possibility that they don't see themselves continuing for that duration and it allows the person to not look that forward into the future realistically. Rather an answer of "YES!" really shows enthusiasm and passion that they currently have in the present day.

The question is about the future, but the answer is about the present.

A better question, therefore should reflect this reality. Something like: "Do you feel like your current interest and enthusiasm for this would keep you going for years here?" (or better worded...).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com