Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by borplk | Hacker News Reader

Try to adapt your lifestyle so that you can tolerate the 9 to 5 office job without getting depressed.

That could mean consciously making the best use of your time outside of 9 to 5 (take vacations, exercise, healthy diet, good sleep, relax after work, enjoy the weekends, etc).

Then slowly and over the longer term improve the situation to your liking strategically (for example by strategically changing jobs).

Taking extreme steps is very unlikely to lead to a good outcome.

You will probably not enjoy being a Ski instructor as much as you may be tempted to think.

For example instead you can aim for getting a remote job then go skiing for 1 month somewhere and ski and work.

In summary try to find a way to peacefully co-exist with a 9 to 5 office job while you progress in your career and strategically and steadily shape it to be more to your liking.

This way you can set things up on the right track so that in 5-10 years you have a well paying and comfortable job that you can quite happily live with.

If you take a more extreme step today like becoming a Ski instructor you may enjoy it in the short term but in the longer term you trade one set of problems for a whole another set and in a few years you may be painfully forced to go back to "step 1".

It is probably better to start somewhere uncomfortable and work towards comfort and balance over time than jumping straight to something dreamy.

Consider that there are probably 35 year old ski instructors who would kill to be electrical engineers with 10 years of experience sitting behind desks in offices, earning good money and taking yearly skiing vacations.

And yes it's all a lot easier said than done.

Along the lines of "step 1", don't try to gamble/invest/go-all-in on stacks of chips, stocks, or start-ups. That will amplify and prolong your misery, as you fall behind more on your mental ledger.

I've done it before and lost 10 years of time (well, assuming I'd have used the time better). And, only in the last year did I get a second chance by basically making everything back.

And now, I'm left with the same question: what do I do now?

In retrospect the cause was definitely the rest of life being unbalanced and unfulfilled. The job is only part of it in that it takes up time and doesn't fit your desired persona.*

Unfortunately I don't have the answer except, as above, try to improve your life step by step. If it means changing careers, great. Just know that it's not a cure all and you should take the long view rather than expecting instant relief.

* Maybe crude but at the base level I think we're unhappy in our 20's when we don't feel successful enough to bang women on the regular. Then everything else gets lumped in.

For me now past my 20's, and as a parent, it's still bothersome but maybe not with the same urgency. I'm now thinking what I can do that's meaningful or interesting and has a better quality of life.

So don't create your own startup? Doesn't creating your own startup give you a more invaluable skill set? People say you learn faster when you start a startup. What do you think of that statement? How is doing a corporate job a smarter move than going all-in on startups?

The point is that emotional need should not be a factor in deciding whether to take a bet. If everything else makes sense, go for it. Otherwise likely your judgment is clouded.

This is another reason why scratching your own itch is important.

IMO everything borpik says hits the mark.

But if I were you I'd save up for a few years, throw away my career and work as a Ski instructor for a year or two anyways just to see how bad it turns out.

It's one thing to hear from others how extreme steps are unlikely to lead to a good outcome, and how we are trading one set of problems for another, but it's quite another to never have taken extreme steps in life and wonder "what if"?

Then once you're through with skiing, come back to programming. :)

Take the job, work a couple of years, then go Ski to your heart's discontent.

Yes I agree with this especially if you are at the beginning you can just "delay" your normal career stuff a bit and go screw around for a year or two.

It's good to try things out and either it will work or you will just "get it out of your system" and go back to whatever you were doing with more appreciation. Just keep it "cheap" and don't sacrifice too much just for an experiment.

Best advice ever.

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