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Comment by ericmcer | Hacker News Reader

We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life. Why would we not bring the same level of planning, anxiety and pursuit of excellence to our attempts to be happy? When you spend 40-60 hours a week trying to optimize your output at work it is difficult to not have an anxiety ridden vacation where you try to optimize your happiness.

I am sure many people can relate to the first 2-3 days of vacation being needed just to get into 'vacation-mode' where you can actually start to forgive yourself for 'wasting' a day.

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> We are taught and continually retaught that discipline and hard work are the keys to success in life.

Maybe we should work on that presupposition first. If we're talking about career and material success it's probably true, but these very rarely bring true lasting happiness. You also have to look at who's telling you to "work hard" and why it's in their interest for you to do so.

Imho once you go above a very low threshold of income (allowing you to live comfortably without excesses) you should have better things to do with your time than spending 7+ hours a day working.

Vacations are the proverbial carrot on a stick. "Be a good worker this week and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself this weekend", "be a good worker this quarter and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during the next vacations", "Be a good worker all your life and you'll get to spend your money and enjoy yourself during retirement". Fast forward 45 years and you spend literally 70% of your life either working or sleeping, the rest being divided between distraction that barely keeps you going (daily Netflix or video game, weekly party, quarterly vacations) and chores. You're now physically and mentally a shadow of your past self but you have all the time you want, success!

It's extremely easy to get lost in all the little made up games we play days after days and miss the big picture.

If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture?

I understand and agree with the bit about not slaving for someone else throughout your life, but I'm curious what you mean by the "big picture" otherwise?

> If one finds Netflix, video games, partying, and vacations enjoyable; and they spend time pursuing those after becoming financially independent & retiring early, are they missing the big picture?

Each of us has to define the scope of his life, I personally have a hard time imagining that a fully developed human being will be deeply satisfied by consuming media. In French these things are called "divertissement", which literally means "diversion". There are many other things to explore than mere consumption. It's kind of the junk food of life, it makes you feel good for a short while but not that good in the long run. I doubt anyone will remember binge watching breaking bad as a milestone of there life (Or remember it at all).

I'm not saying these things are intrinsically bad, we should just be careful about how much of our life we dedicate to them, especially when work already takes most of our time already. If your life is work>consumption>sleep and you feel like you're missing something your probably are.

What else do you do every evening? For me, its working out, doing chores or Netflix, podcasts and video games. There is nothing else I could do. Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge.

Meditation and writing are goods ways to both relax and learn more about yourself. Learning an instrument, drawing, painting are also a very good ways to relax while learning a skill that will follow you all your life and be productive instead of passively consuming content.

With internet we also have access to books summing up the knowledge of each era/geographic area. If you're asking yourself metaphysical questions you can be sure someone already wrote a book about it. Working out and listening to certain podcasts are solid activities too. Stretching/yoga can also help unfuck our bodies after being in a chair for 8 hours.

I don't think Netflix has the ability to make you evolve and become a better version of yourself like a good book can. Unplug and take it slow, it might feel weird at the beginning but you won't look back.

Forgotten to put reading into that list, I have weeks or months where reading is my goto activity (although less last 12 months). But honestly, despite my curiosity for everything, I don´t believe books can help me become a better version of myself. Books like Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari are interesting, but that´t pretty much it. Then you have books about how to be better at something (yourself), by forming good habits and so on. At the beginning (when I didn´t known much about anything), these books had been useful. But now, nothing I read touches me / changes me a bit. It´s all more of the same. Still useful for conversations, though.

Meditation, tried it several times. I don´t get it. Sometimes, nothing happens in my mind and I just sit there for minutes, observing nothing. Other times I can observe thoughts appearing and wandering off, then I refocus on my breathing technique. Both experiences do nothing for me. I feel the same afterwards, I do the same activities afterwards.

I find books on business beneficial. Self-help books do reach a saturation point as you said, they regurgitate similar advice.

I'm surprised meditation has no results! If I focus on breathing and maintain no thought (latter took practice) for 10 minutes, I get a very strong sense of peace and calm -- it's better than drugs. Do you not notice any reduced anxiety/stress?

I thought about it, getting more calm is definitely happening. But I attribute that to the breathing technique and not the "observe mind" part. I'm feeling hardly ever stressed, so don't see any need for it. Maybe I expect too much.

Thanks for your input, though! Appreciated.

"Too tired to learn new things and I need to recharge." This is the part where optimising for happiness kicks in. I was in a similar situation and it involved investing less energy in things I was doing to open up energy to learn music. Music probably won't help my career or physical fitness, but I'm gambling that it will pay off in happiness down the line.

Being able to play music / an instrument is certainly a great skill to have. Can´t do it myself, due to a shared flat, but a great thing to do!

Even working long hours for money can bring meaning & happiness if one donates a lot of that income to worthwhile causes that make the world a better place for everyone. Movements like Effective Altruism seek to find the most effective ways to donate. This of course does depend on what work one is doing and on not "wasting" non-work time on meaningless "entertainment"..

Which is why I place a high price point on my work actually being something I like working on and care about the end result of.

Spending that much time of your life on something you don't for a bit more money... it doesn't feel worthwhile.

It's almost insane how social conditioning plays into every aspect of work life including how we take vacations.

You were taught wrong things. Most cultures value things outside of work much more and are therefore able to enjoy then more. Not to mention that discipline and hard work most often don't lead to success. There are many disciplined, hard workers working two or three minimum wage jobs. Hardly what anyone would call success, barely scraping by an existence let alone a life. People should question their culture and propaganda a lot more. Most of it is bullshit.

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