Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2muchcoffeeman | Hacker News Reader

I guess this is why you should work less hard and do more to cultivate hobbies. I can’t imagine retiring and doing nothing. So many projects.

View on HN

I don't understand how so many people can anchor their lives to work. If you do that, when you retire, you've lost your meaning of life. I have a list of things a mile long that I just can't get to because 40 hours a week is already spoken for. Early retirement speeds cognitive decline? Maybe if you sit on the beach and/or watch TV all day long, but that sounds kind of miserable if done for more than a few weeks.

Some of us see work as the meaning of life. Traveling and doing things just for the experience alone seems kind of meaningless. Great for vacation, but not great for long term goals. Perhaps if you're at a dead end job, then work might feel meaningless, I agree.

totally agree with you. if i love my job then no reason to retire.

Good luck keeping a job in technology into old age.

Except that if you retire early you can still "work". It's just that you can work on whatever you want, not just on what someone will pay you for.

But is it work if no one is willing to pay for it? I would consider that to be hobby.

For me, the separation between hobby and work is more of a matter of responsibility than pay. If I feel responsible for some activity/task/project I would classify it as work. It does not matter if it is taking care of kids, growing a garden, being a board member of some charitable organization, or one of my free software projects: I do not get paid, and I like doing it, but I think of it as work rather than a hobby.

Building some software prototypes for ideas I have, that I count as a hobby. Reading all the books I do, however more time I spend on it than some work activities, I still think of as a hobby.

To the people downvoting this: why is this an unreasonable perspective?

The commenter isn't advocating one way or another, only pointing out that there are people that exist who are content with work as their self-perceived life meaning.

I can absolutely see how this can be true for people in the sciences. There are many academics who devote their entire career - and often their life - to finding the answer to extremely difficult problems. For those people, I imagine they must feel their work as more of a life mission rather than a regular job necessary to pay the bills.

There are a lot of people who find significant meaning in their work (perhaps greater meaning in their work than they've been able to find outside of it). That doesn't necessarily mean it's bad or unhealthy.

These type of people may be few and far between. But they exist.

I don't even think you need to be in the sciences. Perhaps it's a result of a protestant upbringing, but I grew up in blue-collar America where virtually everyone was a tradesman. If I may generalize: these are people that while they might complain and dislike going to work, they feel deep satisfaction about contributing back to society.

Or maybe it's that with trades you have a direct connection to the work you do and the effect it has on the world.

Either way I think we could learn something from them. White collar types seem to want to avoid work at all costs. Work isn't to be avoided. In fact if you measure your life by how much it affects others, it's probably the most important part of your life.

As a developer, I feel a deep disconnect between the work I do and any results. At home I make things and I get way more satisfaction from designing a simple 3D object that serves a function and printing it out.

I can see why tradesmen may have better job satisfaction. You can directly improve the life of someone else.

I understand without really sharing the parent’s sentiment. I’ll probably continue doing some of the work I do now when I retire. But at some point I do want to spend more time on hobbies and travel that’s more in the more time than money (eg backpacking) vein.

But I understand how someone might find fiddling around with photography or home software projects frivolous if they could instead contribute to projects they find significant-but are of a nature that they really need to work on more or less full time.

I find immense meaning in my work, and I've gone through long stretches in the past 10 years where I would've said more or less what the parent commenter said, that experience for its own sake is meaningless.

However, my perspective has evolved somewhat, or changed might be the better word.

Just because something is productive and rewarded by society doesn't mean it can't be addictive. And just because something is rewarding and meaningful doesn't mean you're fully enjoying your life as the present. It can be easy to get caught up in always working for the future as life passes you by.

A life algorithm that's always focused on improving future moments, but that never takes the time to enjoy them when future arrives and they become present moments… it's almost like some sort of tragic Greek myth.

I guess there is work under employment (or as a founder, or whatever), and then work outside of this.

Considering a large definition of work, when you are cooking, cleaning your house, taking care of your children or grandchildren, maintaining your free software or participating in your association in your "free time", you are still working, only perhaps with less strings attached for some of these things, and unpaid for that (note that you can see your retirement leave as an indirect payment).

And that is very comforting to me: you can still work as a retired, on things meaningful to you, without anyone telling you what to do.

And sure, you may have the chance to pick a (paid, employed, founder's) job that is meaningful to you. Best to ensure that you'll still be able to achieve meaningful things to you (on your own) after you leave that job if this is important to you.

I think ones health and perhaps even perception of its imminent decline makes people avoid commitments such as taking a role in their association that requires some activity. The same may mean people in their retirement do not engage in long term projects.

As for cooking, cleaning etc one can optimise those activities to do them almost mindlesly I imagine.

didn't downvote but I do feel an instinctive distaste at seeing the sentiment expressed, not because it's a bad sentiment (it's actually a great one) but because of the role it plays in our public discourse.

As you pointed out, the people who share this sentiment are a minority - I'm less convinced it's tiny, what I've read suggests it's a sixth to a third, depending on how satisfied we mean. But that group is heavily weighted towards high-status professions.

As a result, a high-status minority is actively opposed to any social reforms that would increase leisure time, and I do believe we all suffer as a result. I don't think we can really put a price on Albert Einstein staying in that patent office, but I think it's very high and I think we all pay it. That's what I associate with comments like the grandparent - such a person is in a good situation, and good on them for recognizing it. But they often generalize their experience to a majority of the population where that is actually very much the wrong conclusion to draw.

I think that the gp is using "work" to mean one specific job or at least only the work one does in their career, while you're using it to mean all work.

I don't think they're mutually exclusive views. I think it's possible to do meaningful and impactful work outside of your job and career, like volunteering or running a side business as a passion project or even creating artwork, and I can imagine that kind of work being the kind of thing you never retire from.

Work is the way you contribute back into society. Going to work and doing my job is my way of knowing that I'm giving back into the system that allows me and my family to live. I find it far more fulfilling than anything else.

Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well. At my job, I get to exercise the skills I'm best at.

I can't do any old job though. I have to be able to trace at least a thin line from what I'm doing to the broader society.

I know this isn't a common opinion, but I encourage you to at least consider that work—while not fun—is at least a fulfilling way to spend your time. This should be the case regardless of what you do or how much you make.

> Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well.

Depends. If no one else is doing that particular thing, then by definition you're the world expert. It doesn't matter if there are other people who could hypothetically do it better; they're not in the game.

I have a current hobby that most able-bodied technically minded people could do better than me (genetic joint condition), but as far as I can tell I'm accomplishing things no one else has.

> Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well.

Doing it as a hobby just means that you don't do it for money, not that you aren't good at it. For example often your hobbies overlap with your work. I program games as a hobby and program/design extremely performance sensitive things at my job, they overlap quite a lot.

> Hobbies I hate. By definition I'm an amateur and I don't perform well.

If you love doing something (which is the origin of the word "amateur"), you're likely to be good at it. If you're a professional, it just means you get paid.

Amateurs care primarily about the pursuit itself, while professionals care primarily about their paychecks.

Well, unless you live alone or don't work at all, you will always be spending much more time working than on your hobbies, so you will inevitably be better at working.

I agree, it's really not related to work at all. To me, this sounds more like propaganda that falls under the elitest premise that "...people need to be assigned work tasks to be productive members of society."

Perhaps this study gives some merit to this premise, at least for cognitive use, if there's really any relationship at all and it's not purely genetic/age related (past data conflicts with some of these findings).

I find myself far more intellectually stimulated doing activities outside work than during work because people don't want to pay me enough for the things I find alluring, so I often compromise and do some bit of what people will pay me to do.

It's quite common for people to die within months of retiring, even if they retire healthy. It's down to a lack of purpose.

Well, most people I see did have other plans before they retired, but when finally retired and having no one to force them to do anything, they actually do nothing. The hobbies they complained they had no time for, the charities they wanted to work for, etc all quite rapidly vanish. Smart people with high profile jobs who end up watching tv and doing the odd sudoku puzzle. New generations might be different (although I cannot imagine the much reduced attention span of people helps against this) and ofcourse this is anecdotal but I do see this a lot. I know people who are now retired 10+ years and kind of assumed they would be dead by now while they ofcourse have 20 years more probably. At least 3 I know died over 95 in good health (for 95) while being bored shitless (travelling, which somehow is a retirement obsession, apparently gets boring too) for the past 15-20 years.

Being self-motivated is actually incredibly difficult. Just ask any PhD student who has hands-off supervisors. Learning to chase your own goals independently is a skill you have to cultivate. You need to learn your weaknesses, what tricks you can employ to get working, and what you actually care about enough to achieve.

Yup. You can get all the time you want, buy all the equipment you need and even then, you sometimes feel like just watching Youtube.

Do you think there's demand for a motivation as a service non-profit?

Hmmm there is a market for self-motivation advice to PhD students but they aren't exactly a wealthy audience, and atleast some of it is purchased by education institutions rather than individuals. Beyond that, there are plenty of motivation oriented smart phone apps and etc. And there is 80,000 hours who sometimes take that as their purview.

https://80000hours.org/

When you spend years going to work every day in the presence of external sources of motivation (a boss who could fire you, a mortgage to pay, coworkers who depend on you, etc.), it's easy to underestimate just how much of a factor those sources play. It's quite difficult to have to rely entirely on intrinsic motivation to get things done if you don't have a lot of practice doing so.

I'm a 1000x more productive when I have a support group that I spend time lots of time with. Usually that support group comes from being at the office with co-workers. If I retired and didn't find a support group I'm pretty confident I would not stay motivated.

It's not just having people around either, it's shared goals and shared responsibilities. I'm more productive when I know others need my work. We could be collaborating on a game at a game jam where the game designer needs me to add some new settings they can tweak and the artist needs a way to get some new data in the game and iterate. That pressure is very motivating for me.

But, for me at least, it's both the feeling of wanting to provide solutions for other team members, the feeling of a shared goal, and the feeling of camaraderie I get from actually being with people (vs being remote)

I've been lucky the majority of projects I worked on were things I wanted to work on and see succeed. I can imagine lots of projects where I wouldn't feel that.

What you describe sounds roughly similar to what parent op is warning about. Being reliant on external forces for your own happiness / fulfillment will probably suck in retirement - people generally lose friends, not gain them over the years. Find something that motivates you on its own, regardless of anybody's else involvement.

For me that would be travelling, hiking, and generally being in nature - but this requires at least OKish health for the age, which might or might not be there later. Reality is, we mostly don't know how things (and us) will turn up later in life, and if we end up in good spot it will be mostly by sheer luck.

Besides really bad ailments which restrict you to a bed or location or when your brain gives out (the worst option, but yes, it of course happens; stroke, dementia, etc), I try to build on two things; a) hiking/nature b) brainy hobbies and I try to combine them. I read/write parts while hiking, I program parts while hiking, I interact with my friends while in the middle of rainforests etc. If the a) falls away because of an ailment, I am perfectly happy doing b). I consciously try to prepare for the future as I have seen too many unhappy people and that really is so not needed.

the advice I lean toward is that you need to make an effort to have strong relationships and people in your life rather than find ways to learn to be strong without them.

What about both of those? Sounds like a win-win scenario

This observation is also very relevant to discussions on universal basic income.

Yes, that's exactly true. We need education to step up teaching people to enjoy solitude and not get instantly depressed/anxious and 'learn' how to have and enjoy hobbies. for both retirement and universal income.

It's not the same. Work requires you to finish. Just having a list of things is not the same. You get lazy, you shift to the next thing too early, etc.

That’s part of cultivating an interest in other activities. Figuring out how to make time for them and following through till completion.

The external motivation is not succumbing to dementia.

I’ve seen people suffer from dementia. At the moment I’d rather have the option of euthanasia rather than live like that.

I totally agree. I have so many interests and so little time. I can't wait until I can retire so that I can focus on the things that really interest me. I'm hoping to form groups of like minded people with similar hobbies. I envision my future as one of those old dudes playing chess in the park, except chess would be replaced with one of my many interests.

I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow.

You do meet the odd creative and intelligent senior but they are the minority. I hope I fall into that category when I retire!

I hope to emulate my father. He worked til 70. Then went back to university to study a Masters in Mechanical Engineering. After a few months off, he got bored, and has just started back doing a Masters in Aeronautical Engineering. He will be 77 when he finishes.

Damn, that is inspiring. Here I am whining about how late it is in my life to go back to school to get a Bachelor's and your Dad is racking up masters :) I wonder if there are age limits for PhD programs?

Also, I will say, I wish the US was more like Europe in giving people the ability to full-time type work but part-time. I think a lot of older people would jump at the chance to work 40-60% and make full time hourly pay.

> I also have this intention. I am about 15-20 years from retirement but I have palpable fears that I will forsake my dreams of doing something creative, falling into the rut that I've seen my older relatives and friends follow.

I really hope to shift down from 5 days / 40 hours a week to something that allows me to start pursuing my dreams long before I retire. It should help me develop the habit instead of being paralyzed by the sudden shock at an older age.

Actually the thought of having to wait to retire & be an old fart before you can get really started on the things you always wanted to do sounds very very depressing. (Unless you're making FU money and retire early, which I'm not)

If it's not too private, what kind of dreams are these?

I want a plot of land. I want to plant trees and see them grow. I want to grow my own apples; Finnish apples are second to none and you can't buy them in a grocery store. I want to grow berries, vegetables, flowers, birds, butterflies. I'd like to have a piece of forest too, though mainly for sake of preservation and relaxation. Maybe as a source of firewood for sauna.

I also want to make music, and possibly do other arts.

Dang, that's a nice dream you've got there.

I have been looking to transition to a 4 day week so I can surf and go back country trekking using the extra day.

Having a small garden as well would be wonderful, but I tend to be pretty lazy when it comes to routine chores...

Best of luck!

You do understand that your 65-year old self is radically different to your 45-year old self, right?

Retiree robot wars

Make sure your hobbies are far removed from your previous day job or you will probably lose interest very quickly in them after retiring.

> Ask a wage slave what he'd like to accomplish. Chances are the response will be something like "I'd start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I'd practice the piano for three hours. I'd become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I'd really learn how to handle a polo pony. I'd learn to fly a helicopter. I'd finish the screenplay that I've been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV." Why hasn't he accomplished all of those things? "Because I'm chained to this desk 50 hours per week at this horrible [insurance|programming|government|administrative|whatever] job.

> So he has no doubt that he would get all these things done if he didn't have to work? "Absolutely none. If I didn't have the job, I would be out there living the dream."

Suppose that the guy cashes in his investments and does retire. What do we find? He is waking up at 9:30 am, surfing the Web, sorting out the cable TV bill, watching DVDs, talking about going to the gym, eating Doritos, and maybe accomplishing one of his stated goals.

> Retirement forces you to stop thinking that it is your job that holds you back. For most people the depressing truth is that they aren't that organized, disciplined, or motivated.

https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/

This was so true for me, anyway. I've always had beer tastes on a decent income, so I was financially free five years into working. Now I have all the free time in the world and it's killing me. I do have so many interests but no motivation or discipline to do them.

Also, I realized slowly over the last six years how important it is to develop hobbies beyond just writing software. Sucks to have all your eggs in that basket and then burn out or decide it's a waste of time (which I consider every time I take acid or as my social life expands): now what?

Learning a new language was my gateway drug into trying different things for a change.

It's very hard with depression, but work is also hard with depression, though getting some stuff done is much easier with an actual job. Tried some woodworking stuff but it requires a lot of learning and patience. But I guess a lot of hobbies don't require that sort of effort, ie hiking. But you sort of need some sort of social contacts to encourage activity. It seems very easy to just stagnate in loneliness while consuming media these days.

Not simply hobbies or interests. Sheer curiosity in the reality enveloping us all would drive me to keep the same hours I work today, but with none of the work-related stress I experience at work.

Retirement for me is merely a financial milestone abstraction. The point where monetary wealth throws off sufficient income to meet opex and reasonable capex requirements for the foreseeable future. The Banksian phrase "money is a sign of poverty" operates here though, so that milestone is just a temporary, necessary means to an end.

Like many others in this thread, retirement enables me to go tinker my interests, fueled by an >10K line Emacs Org Mode "curiuoser-and-curiuoser" list. A lot of it is redneck tinkering to be sure ("What would happen if I attached heat sinks to Tesla solar roof tiles that ran a non-corrosive, thermally-efficient carrier liquid through the body of the heat sinks into a heat exchanger in my hot water supply? Damifino, fire up the CAD/CAM-linked CNC and let's go find out!"). Some is of a more serious philosophical/research bent ("What precise factors move the Coasean Boundary of an organization?"). Some of it is of more pedestrian ambitions (learn blue water sailing and open source my findings to extend boat design along Steve Dashew's philosophies). Some is for pure utility (build a bi-fold door shipping container that is a giant toolbox that extends with another into a climate-controlled workshop). Nearly all of it requires finding allies and co-conspirators if only to share and compare notes with, so they are intrinsically highly social activities.

That list goes fractal, too. Every time I tinker around adding to my notes to scratch my itch for one curiosity, I find other avenues I hadn't initially considered, and yet more curiosities are added. Makes me want to upload my mind into a computing substrate with physical world manipulators and clone myself.

I'm never going to approach even a tiny fraction of my curiosities, but fellow co-conspirators and I are going to have a hell of a lot of fun along the way!

I had the same reaction but then wondered whether the thing that makes work 'work' might help stave off cognitive decline. I.e. At least a few times a week I don't feel like working but, because my livelihood depends on it, I have no choice but to force myself to. On the contrary, if I don't happen to feel like engaging in any one of my numerous hobbies it's easy for me to veg out instead and thus risk cognitive decline.

Perhaps there's some threshold of 'vegging' that isn't obtained if one has enough hobbies.

Choose. What you happen to be feeling at the moment can control you, or not. See e.g. https://www.google.com/search?q=discipline+is+freedom

Alternatively it's an argument not to retire. Ideally you should be working with something you actually enjoy doing, though I suppose it's rare.

So many projects....

Reply on news.ycombinator.com