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Comment by bwindels | Hacker News Reader

Ambitions don't have to be about material wants. I'd say the best, longest lasting ones, aren't even. And there is meaningful work to be found related to anti-materialism. I can think of writing/setting up software to let old hardware shine again, work on software to protect privacy, decentralize the internet, ... these are just on the top of me head. It just doesn't pay so well, and even if you are willing to accept the financial downgrade, these jobs are not so common and might require more work and dedication to land a position. Much like it is for most people outside of tech :)

You don't even have to make a job out of it. You seem to have strong beliefs. Do something with those beliefs and find something you feel is easy and worth it to put your energy into. Not easy, but can be fulfilling.

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I have had hard time identifying non-materialistic ambitions. My mind has always been able to short circuit the ideas, similar to the ones you mentioned, as a way to make more money. Effectively turning them into greed, which is supposed to be bad. But I think I have been making wrong conclusions. As mentioned in other comments, developing a stronger feeling towards non-self pain points and retraining my mind would probably be the way to go.

Most of my beliefs are for self. Mostly because of the idea that each of us is a random instance, executing for optimizing random functions. Some are aware of the functions, and for some it is a black box. This breaks the boundaries between right and wrong etc in my mind and so on. But also diminishes the idea of exposing these beliefs and doing something with them seems meaningless.

Don't let yourself confined by what's "supposed to be". Trust your emotional state derive from what's good or bad from first principles (i.e. from experience).

That said - it's good to do an exercise and imagine it's 10 years later, you've created a company startup for the sole purpose of making one billion dollars, think about what you can do with the one billion dollars, what opportunities you've sacrificed, what you've risked.

How do you feel about it? Was it worth it? Would you do it again?

The answer might be different for everyone.

You can repeat for any other number of ambitious goals - getting married to a very good person; spending two decades raising children; moving to a new country; or even getting divorced; travelling around the world; becoming the best at an activity; become world famous for something, etc.

For any one goal - think, what kind of person tend to achieve that goal easily, then the price of achieving that goal is to become that kind of person. Do you still want to achieve goal? If I didn't want to become the kind of person who'd marry my partner, it means to me I didn't actually want to marry her to begin with. Personally, to achieve X, is equivalent to, to become the person who achieves X easily.

It helps me re-focus on what actions to take.

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