Make meaning your vocational goal
hbr.org
hbr.org
I’ve made peace with endless meetings by just going to them and working and only half paying attention unless they need me for something.
We live in a world of increasing complexity. Especially in tech, it has become increasingly apparent that no one can do everything.
It is inevitable that you will need to collaborate with people if you want do something that will impact the world. There is no way around it.
I have mixed feelings about the people component. Many of the people I work with are smart, focused, rational and personable. I look forward to meetings with them. What I struggle with is all of the 'overhead' of the work. The time spent discussing, rationalizing, prioritizing, justifying. It saps a lot of the enjoyment out of the work.
I'm trying to figure out how to turn that into a problem-to-be-solved.
The good part is that the experiences have helped me realize I would gladly be compensated less if it meant being able to focus more on the actual work that directly translated to positive ROIs for the business.
However, I think that, for people who really despise meetings and all the coordination with other people, startups are a place to be. There's just way less stakeholders there to allign for any given initiative, plus the founders are super-conscious about wasting time and money, so they minimize devs involvment in meetings that could be handled solely by management/product people.
As one such, the only meaning I can find in life is "it's about other people, and sentient creatures. Treat them well"
There is nothing else.
But that's beside the point, really. I was hoping for an acknowledgement that I could be a moral entity without the influence of religion. A bit of bridge-building would have been welcome, and much needed in these times.
Rather it requires the opposite, to see the person fully as what they are _right now_, and to respond accordingly without a trace of ideology. To do anything else is to be engaging with your idea of the person, and your own idea of what is “good”, rather than what actually is.
Not saying the bible isn’t worth reading, but rather that your point kind of rings empty. As humans we can find meaning anywhere.
Unless that reduces to what you want for its own sake (e.g., you want to treat all sentient creatures well for its own sake, or you want something else for its own sake that follows from treating all sentient creatures well), then it sounds like you have a religion, whether or not it involves a deity.
Example: lots of people enjoy and want to be nice to dogs -- and not because anyone told them it's good/moral to be nice to dogs, or that society would work better for everyone if everyone is nice to dogs and everyone has to do their part, etc. That seems like wants separate from religion or philosophy.
Unless Edie Brickell was right, about religion being the smile on a dog. Then maybe we simply want religion.
40 hour a week for work
3 hour a week for commute
8 hours of sleep a night
2 hours a day outside of work for your meals
7*24-7*8-40-3-7*2 == 55
This obviously doesn't including errands and lord forbid you have make your own food or take care of a child. It also doesn't account for quality of hours(Ex: the hour right after waking up or right before bed are less productive). Not to mention you might want to have sex regularly or just be social with your friends. I haven't even account for basic grooming like showering or brushing your teeth.
So you've got 55 hours a week of being tired after a day of work to live your life.
Assuming you work starting at the age of 18 and retire at 64 you have a working lifetime of:
(52*55*(64-18))/(24*365) = 15 years
Meaning in life, however, comes from different things: family, spare time. It is called thus work-life balance.