What happens when your career becomes your whole identity | Hacker News Reader

What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

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544 pointsr0n0j0y264 comments

In my experience extreme workaholism can often be a way to avoid or defer major life decisions that someone doesn't want to make or even consciously recognize. High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated, all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date, even (perhaps especially) in highly rational or analytical thinkers. Eventually the debt comes due but sometimes not until many decades later.

Boy, did I learn this the hard way.

How so?

For me, as I got older, lost passion for what I had been doing for 20 years - and being on the old end of the ageism-specrum-stick... it is hard to deal with.

I have left 'Silicon Valley Tech' -- as I am no longer interested in any of the things I did before and seek positions which are more fulfilling in other industries and pay about 25% of what I used to make...

I am in exactly the same boat. Could not have said it better myself.

Me too, but I need help. I have been working on ideas for my "2nd career," well, really it will be my 3rd, but that's beside the point. I need a way out of tech. I have enough money already, I just need a freaking path to another kind of work. It's not been easy. It's either I do what I am doing or it's $15/hr Target cashier type of job. Not bashing the Target cashiers, just making a point.

If you have enough money, why restrict yourself to gainful employment?

Have you thought about entrepreneurship? Building a product? That's normally fairly risky, but it seems to me that it's entirely worth a shot if your wealth provides the basic necessities.

What sorts of industries or positions are you currently working in or seeking?

There is a comment that replied to mine that is now dead but is fairy accurate for me as I do not have a college degree. I’ve been able to some what transition to a technician/mechanic path but I make barely enough to support myself without kids or any other expenses. I have found myself in many ways much happier with my work, but the instability and low wages definitely add stress at times. Unfortunately, I have found few opportunities where my many years of software development experience mean much to potential employers outside of the industry. Of course this is very anecdotal.

I have a PhD in machine learning and have had a fairly productive career now spanning almost thirty years. Even a few years ago, I used think that I would keep at it indefinitely. Lately however, I'm finding that the field simply just does not interest me as much as it used to. Contributing to this is the knowledge that I am financially independent - I just don't need to work at this point. I'm planning to quit later this year and spend more time on hobbies and studying cognitive science on my own.

Can I ask why you are not interested in the field anymore? It seems to be having a major, major renaissance at the moment.

Gary Marcus has articulated it much better than I could in his new book with Ernie Davis: https://www.amazon.com/Rebooting-AI-Building-Artificial-Inte...

I really dislike the single minded focus on deep learning to the exclusion of everything else.

What I struggle with is the issue of health insurance. What are really the options of safety when chasing your post-tech dreams? That risk and uncertainty is what keeps me from moving on with just taking a few years to try something else.

Just the other day I met an artist, 50 years old, he currently plans take multiple years of to travel the world and make and display art - just like that.

If you have very little income, health insurance actually becomes affordable. The trouble comes when you make enough not to qualify for subsidies but work for an employer that isn't large enough to negotiate good rates.

Threw myself head first into 80+ hour weeks of work, career climbing etc to avoid dealing with issues (incl. some trauma) I had since childhood. Told myself I'd be "married to my work", because while people leave you, money lasts longer. Gained some modest success, but woke up after 5+ years to the realisation that no matter how much I worked, none of the success, money or appreciation from peers would ever feel whatever void/emotional avoidance I had inside and was trying to mask by marrying myself to my work. By this time, I had a severe eating disorder and probably some sort of severe burnout.

Thank you for sharing. If you don't mind me asking, what helped after you had the realization?

It's because when you're young, you're just happy to be making it on your own.

But I'm not sure everyone does reach the second stage. Some people seem to be content just living their lives and enjoying themselves without really wondering if they could have done more or whether they need to leave the world a better place than when they arrived.

I think maybe it depends on how much exposure to death one has had. Death tends to make one reevaluate ones own life, at least in my own experience.

That implies they are not really content so much as ignorant about the realities of their mortality.

I think the desire to make a mark on the world, leave behind some “legacy”, etc is itself a denial of mortality, and in some cases/to some degree a desire for validation from others. If you can put down that desire for validation, and come to accept that we’ll all soon be dust, you can focus on living a life that works for you.

I think society expects individuals to “live for some higher purpose” because that’s what produces beneficial outcomes for the society. Hard to argue with that. But I have found that the times I lived my life in accordance with those expectations were the times I felt most trapped and resentful. And conversely, when I focused on doing what I wanted, I encountered resentment from others for not “sticking to the script” (living for their benefit). But I’ve found that to be a heckuva lot easier to live with.

I still help others in my life quite a bit, but it’s on my terms, rather than a structural obligation built into my lifestyle.

Of course, I wouldn’t deny that some who attempt to impact the world succeed. And some of those impacts have benefited those who come after. And I doubt the world would be a better place if everyone were like me, but then that is true of anyone.

No, that’s just the human condition. Having an outlet for it is good!

To play devil's advocate, what is to come of deliberating on existential meaning at great length?

Do you think you'll find an answer, rationally speaking (that is, using the tools of reason and logic)? Notably, Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest these tools may be insufficient. More specifically, if you try to rationally "justify" what you ought to be doing, you will always be able to - legitimately! - impugn its logical foundation.

This suggests that consciously reasoning about what someone's fundamental purpose is may not be the best way to go about things. Rather, just as how we make most decisions, an intuitive and heuristical approach may be better. In other words, "do what feels right."

What feels right may materialize as a family, as charity, as building a business, or even building a career. My point is that all of these can be challenged as "deferring existential questions" - again legitimately - because they cannot be justified rationally. (All of these, equally, can be criticized in hindsight as being "wrong": wrong marriage decision, wrong way to raise children, wrong work-life balance, wrong charitable/activist cause.)

As a result, I don't think the criticism that a career - even an all-consuming one (as a family may be) - is somehow less justified. This is not to invite pure relativism: some things do seem to be more meaningful than others.

But! It is precisely that this "seems to be" is intuitive, and not rational, which constitutes the foundation of our belief. And so if a career-focus seems "intuitive", then I think it's meaningful enough.

---

EDIT: One other thing to note is that people who are fairly content with their lives don't often ponder _why_ their life is meaningful. They've specified a priori assumptions for what makes it meaningful (e.g. charitable giving, helping others), or intuitively feel what is meaningful (e.g. family, friends, happiness), and that is that. It's precisely the people who end up endlessly questioning these assumptions - facing the meaning of their life head on - that seem to be most depressed. This is because it's an intellectual deadend - it cannot be deduced rationally. One way, then, to answer this existential question is to simply defer: don't question, do what feels right, and avoid what doesn't.

I don't think OP is referring to meaning in an existential or epistemological sense, but rather discussing workaholism as a "practical" avoidant behavior for those who put off dealing with some kind of dysfunction or trauma.

Ignorance may be bliss, but only if you can remain ignorant until the absolute end. I see evidence of a paradox whereby the most powerful analytical minds are able to most effectively construct defensive counter arguments to their own inherent existential needs, allowing them to defer these needs until a criticality is reached and existential crisis manifests as a state of limbic terror which is impossible to ignore. The crisis is ultimately inevitable, and thus the ignorance only temporary, because they are in fact smart enough to realize deep down that something essential is out of balance. A polish psychiatrist named Dabrowski labeled some of these experiences 'positive disintegration' and wrote prolifically about their role in psychosocial development.

After nearly 500 hours of meditating in relative isolation, i promise you, the collector collects.

Something inside us, wild and free, wants to be happy, and we stand in its way.

Beautifully said.

> the collector collects

Can you expand on this?

—— Short answer ——

I experienced some things in meditation, consistent with Buddhist cannon.

I encountered a “judge” mechanism, that manifested as an emotion. It “knew everything” (makes sense, it was basically me pointing the finger at me) and it wasnt interested in talking things out. It wants to be happy, and it blames me for its unhappiness. It was a terrifying feeling, very painful.

I believe non-meditators experience this during death, and that “wild part” of us comes back to have one last conversation, and a settling of debts.

——— Long answer ———

Ive spent some time doing vipassana, exploring my inner world -

I also read a lot of carl jung, and come from a family of non religious mental health practitioners. So i dont consider myself clueless, or particularly naive or impressionable.

After that intro ... i experienced some deeply disturbing things: bodily convulsions and pains, which subsided after some time too, and were experienced on an emotional level (meditation shuts/slows down thinking mechanisms, to stop generating mind chatter) -

when the silence increases inside our head, mind chatter disappears but something else takes its place .. emotions, deep intense emotions start to rise - its during those moments of deep mind silence that some pretty bad feelings start to arise inside me, of something deeply unhappy about how im living my life, because it wants to be happy, and i am in this body, is its tool. it wasn't just angry, it was full of grief, and so scared to the point of terror.

Again, it wasn't a discussion, i got the feeling it a prt lf me that wasnt interested in talking things out (it knows everything about me already, its me) it was a deep emotion of intense meaning, and terror and loneliness.

I didn't give my feelings significance before, im also still an atheist - but i now think/believe that being human has a truth we are blind to, and some of these truths are experienced at death, so if you lived a life against your “conscience” - if you ask me, id say it will hold you responsible for its happiness. (I havnt experienced the other part where its happy about what i do, in a way it was a corrective self-bitchslap. Life is still ongoing - so its not all terrible, yet)

Today it is pretty well established that it is your thoughts create your emotions. Dabrowski was on the path to discovering this but he missed the latent variable here and was too focused on having an individual having a crisis in order to bring about positive change which is not necessary or required.

Certain individuals may not require an existential crisis to achieve the uppermost stage of conscious integration but for others (most) I believe it to be absolutely necessary.

What exactly is an existential crisis? What differentiates it from a regular crisis?

I agree with you that being right about these things isn't possible. As you say, values are not deduced. But being in agreement with yourself is possible and that's really the whole point.

Some people may intuitively fall into agreement with themselves, but most do not.

In my own attempts at reasoning this stuff the only meaning that I've been able to find is that life is meaningless. Therefore the only thing to do is be comfortable with that null of an answer, and live as you see fit.

same but that leads to another locked door for me. Statistically speaking, the quality of life I want to get (expectations reduced by 5x for being extra cautious) still has a chance of 2-5% given my background of ever being real. Why should I place my bet on such a shitty investment package which most people get for nothing? Fixing my current problems alone would take me years and that will put me near average person by the time, the gap is probably already widened.

Sounds like you have a goal. Making progress toward a goal can be satisfying. Even more so than reaching the goal. One problem I see is that you are comparing yourself to others (you mention the average person). Whatever landed you where you're at is unique to you. It's your challenge to overcome and should not be compared to anyone else. There's only you today and you tomorrow. Keep moving toward that goal even if it takes a lifetime.

I am aware of that. I am not comparing my experience but rather taking average as a baseline.

If 40 out of 50 people end up in poverty in my neighborhood, then chances are I will given how similar metrics for ending in poverty is. Of course it's not always good but not sure where I can draw a line when I feel 'something' is not satisfying.

You can compare it to people who are unaware that they are depressed or have mental issues after pressure to accept it and reinforced narrative that everyone goes through it surrounding them.

Some comparison is needed :/ and it is too hard for someone who feels mostly the same when achieving something valued by society vs achieving nothing. Enjoying the journey is cool and all but it's a trap if all your motivation or enjoyment comes from self praise and you are not dependent on external stimuli for it. Being too critical of your self can be addicting itself but I haven't really find a way to balance things out and I doubt I ever will unless I change the fundamental blocks of who I have been so far. That is a disturbingly challenging thing to do and seems more effort than being a druggie and early death :3

I wish the voice in my head had a turn off button ugh. It's always a second person commenting on everything it sees.

You need to set your aspirations at a reasonable level and have goals that are relatively close (say, one order of magnitude away by some metric) to what you have now, with a plan that can get you there.

Also:

> If 40 out of 50 people end up in poverty in my neighborhood, then chances are I will given how similar metrics for ending in poverty is.

This isn't the case at all. Most people don't prioritise wealth generation. They prioritise things like staying close to family, maintaining old friendships, not moving, working in a specific field or on specific problems they enjoy, etc.

If you actually go out there and seek it, yeah, it's hard, but the odds aren't anywhere near as stacked as you're making out.

The odds are mostly stacked against you in the sense of things like health issues, or passports, etc. Growing up simply with not much money isn't that hard to get out of.

That was an example, not exactly my situation. If wealth generation alone was a metric, I wouldn't have that much problem but regarding the last statement, most research would disagree. Growing up in poverty fuels a mindset of poverty, I have experienced it first hand. Maybe things are different in other places so I am not gonna make a generalization about anything else. Poor countries with overflow tends to have people who put wealth accumulation above all.

And I think I set a reasonable expectation. That is one thing I am afraid of doing the most, setting expectations high that you would never reach for myself or others. I don't find any balance here. I don't have any metrics to compare or find a reasonable solution to what I should expect of others or whether at all. Do I expect my family to be reasonable or not? Do I expect my environment to be friendly or not? If overestimate, disappointment. If you underestimate, trap of trust issues and general existential crisis of why bother.

I just decided I want an average first world life quality eventually but THAT is hard. Eh, getting average quality of life removing the wealth as a metric here is hard.

I guess I could call it cultural, environmental or social disintegration?

I don't know a lot about your situation but it sounds to me like for the most part you need to 'get out' and somehow manage a visa or whatever to a first world country. That seems like a reasonable goal to me?

Different magnitude of situation, but I felt the same way about my hometown. It wasn't really about money, though it felt that way at the time - I just needed to find my people, and they weren't there.

> Growing up simply with not much money isn't that hard to get out of.

I might be misunderstanding but are you saying that upwards class mobility is easy, specifically from the lowest end?

Not at all. Upwards class mobility, in the true sense, is essentially impossible within a single generation. Speaking from a British perspective, a child with a poor upbringing is unlikely to be able to convince others, at least on close inspection, that they aren't actually a prole. (How might I know that?)

I am specifically talking about, as I say, "growing up without much money". A poor individual getting from the bottom, or close to it, up to a solid income (say 80th percentile). From there, the wealth is a matter of financial discipline. Some of the 'class' might come, but life is not an act, and Tarquin will always differ.

At least where I'm from (UK), it's a trivial problem in the sense that an equation might be trivial to solve, for an individual. The ingredients are there; an individual must apply themselves to the task at hand.

If you are healthy and of reasonable intelligence, obtain a degree from a good university, and apply those skills to a job, it's quite hard to fail at that catastrophically.

In a collective sense it is impossible, at least the way that society is currently set up. A lot of people have to not be on top.

What confuses people a lot is that they look at these statistical averages and assume that because most of the poor remain poor (and most of the rich remain rich - wealth is sticky), the same likelihoods apply to them.

But if you're actually trying to get out of that situation (most people honestly aren't - they might say they are, but it's not their #1 priority) you're not in that same cohort and you can quite easily be more competitive than those brought up in middle income families.

This is all based on my experience in Britain. In the US it's probably different.

If you're born in a poor _country_ then you probably need to get out first, and I imagine the whole passport visa situation is rather a challenge.

If you're born with severe disabilities, and poor, you could well be shit out of luck. So it goes.

Life doesn't have external meaning. But that doesn't make it meaningless. We still have feelings and preferences. Some are short-term, some are long-term. The internal meaning of life is encoded in these preferences.

The preferences aren't stable, because we and others have influence on the meaning of life. You get some choice! Others can affect the meaning of your life. Hopefully for the better.

To say life is meaningless is wrong to me. Because we experience these profound moments of meaning on occasion. Either positive or negative. So to me, these moments of meaning are my guide. This means deep friendships, being there for people, contributing to society, trying to become a better / stronger person, and just trying to enjoy myself most of the time.

Have you not met anyone who went through a period of questioned assumptions, got to their answers, and consciously chose a path that fulfills them? Those seem to be the happiest people around. Many people who have gone through this process do end up at the answers of family, or helping others. I'm unclear from your writing if you accept those answers as valid, or if you are being dismissive of those answers and assuming that anyone focused on family must not have gone through a self-discovery process in their youth.

The older I get, the more I find that almost everyone battles through the questions of who they are and what they are doing with their lives. Most people question their values and purpose. I disagree wholeheartedly that content people don't ponder their lives. On the contrary, they are content because they are past that phase of life, and content because they are living a well-considered path. We are not deferring anything - we completed the process, made our choices, and are living them.

I agree with your initial assessment but for second, It depends. I have gone through that or so I believe. And yet I don't see point in living in current circumstances.

The irrational or rational mind compares the experiences of others as a measure for their own happiness when they feel that something is not right.

Going by what feels right works as long as there is positive reinforcement otherwise it will have a negative side effect on life. Some people aren't for example aware of choices others have made in their life because they don't focus on them, those choices lead them to happiness or better standing ground but for others, those choices that aren't in their control leading to a very negative event may disproportionately affect them and questioning.

You can't control for your initial years or childhood and That I think has the biggest impact on whether you will come across solving it.

It feels right to cry out in misery but rational or irrational mind would think it might be pointless if for however long you cry, no one comes to help or nothing improves.

I don't know what is considered rational or irrational thing to do given anything may seem rational for someone in specific circumstances and irrational for bystander. Is there such a thing as objective rationality that can be verified?

> EDIT: One other thing to note is that people who are fairly content with their lives don't often ponder _why_ their life is meaningful.

Is meaningful the same as happy? What I think is there are a great deal of unhappy people who attempt to make it as if their thinking and point of the way they feel is representative of what others are like or even should be. Many of these people have either things going right in their life (job, relationships, money) and are still not happy (maybe because they suffer from depression). Or they have addictions they can't shake and are not happy. Or they are simply trying to be something they are not and are not happy.

Small example - Do I question why I comment on HN? There is no reason I just like to say things. I don't need to break down any impact other than 'it is something I want to do that makes me feel something that I like to feel'. Ditto for other things.

Look at how presumptions the title of the article is to begin with "What Happens When Your Career Becomes Your Whole Identity". Right off the top it is saying that it's wrong for your career to be 'your entire identity'.

Would anyone say 'what happens when being healthy makes you happy?'. What's this judgement with deciding what is enough for one person is the same for most people?

Then things like this:

> Dan’s story is not uncommon. Many people with high-pressure jobs find themselves unhappy with their careers, despite working hard their whole lives to get to their current position. Hating your job is one thing — but what happens if you identify so closely with your work that hating your job means hating yourself?

Not uncommon? Why does that matter? If I have a hobby that 'is not common' or feel a way 'that is common' so what?

Thanks for this comment, it puts into words some ideas I've been considering in a very concise manner. Also, the replies are quite interesting.

I agree with your point, just want to add; I think the point of existential deliberation at it's root is to overcome existential despair. I think for 'typical' people doing what feels right is an effective means to overcome this, but people who deliberate on it obsessively do so because they either don't know what feels right or are unable to extinguish their despair by doing what feels right, and are driven to search for answers. Like you said, trying to use reason to find some meaning in life is probably not going to be successful. Some people, I suspect, might be unable to stop obsessing about the meaning of life and that could be the cause of their despair. They'll never find an answer and get relief in that way, but they also don't have the power to stop themselves from trying

I think it doesn’t need to be due to deferring major life decisions, but rather just youth and inexperience. I spent a few years of my life working 80+ hour weeks, advancing my career. It wasn’t due to deferring some life decisions but rather was just something I felt I needed to do to prove myself and get ahead. I’ve since grown out of this, but I notice this in other younger people around me. Super enthusiastic, always on and available and ready to jump in to work on anything.

So the question is then if that phase is truly necessary for success or not. A lot of people say, "They grew out of it," but then to look at people who "know their worth and limits" early, they're not nearly as successful, on average. Part of that is that if you're not seen to be working hard, no matter how effective you are, you will not be seen to be effective, and will not reap the rewards of that effectiveness; the people calling the shots will not have it. So, if the expectation is overwork, and it is necessary to advance, is that something untenable to how work in America should be? Or, on some level, do we like it or view it as serving a purpose?

For me work is what I enjoy the most about life. I would do it for free - In fact I worked on open source projects for free for almost a decade. Including some successful/popular ones.

That said I still feel burned out. I've come to realize that not only did the work I do for free not give me any financial advantage (which I expected), but the people who've hired me over the past few years don't seem to recognize that work as being valid work experience.

I'm 30 years old but what I've found over and over again is that managers will give promotions to 35 year olds who spent most of their lives playing video games.

From my perspective, the people described in this article sound like they have it pretty good. What I need is merely for people to realize that I'm actually a 40 year old work-machine trapped in the body of a 30 year old human... Maybe if I can achieve that, then I will eventually reach a high point in my life when I can afford to have problems with self-actualization like those described in the article.

You expect them to spontaneously have a spiritual epiphany about your "old soul"?

Please man, stand up for yourself and learn the measures of business ethics.

You're jumping to conclusions. I often asked for raises and tried to negotiate. I quit companies several times after they failed to promote me or they failed to give me a raise. I'm pretty sure it has nothing to do with business skills. Just bad luck.

My last boss was so upset when I told him I was thinking of quitting that, in front of the whole company, he threatened to throw me out of the window but then he apologized multiple times and asked me to come back after he regained his composure (I had a lot of leverage at the time)... But I quit the next day to save face and find better opportunities. This company had tons of money (millions to spend on development) but they wouldn't give me a 10% modest salary increase after 2 years of excellent work. That's the kind of irrational people I worked for. There was no indication they were going to be like this when I joined. You only find out about this stuff after several years and then you already wasted your time and have to start again at a new company and hope that your next employer will be fair or rational at the very least.

Larger and older companies tend to have much more structured and consistently positive annual salary adjustments. You should try to find one of those before you turn 35.

You're taking my comment in bad faith.

I claim nowhere that you don't negotiate, I claim you do it badly and point to the area of knowledge that is required to change that.

It's bad pedagogy to even acknowledge you playing the victim card, that's your psychological issue and I'm not about to play therapist to a stranger.

Edit: thanks for the negativity I suppose, I'll make sure you profit from my advice in no shape or form as requested.

Would you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've done it quite a bit already, and it's the opposite of the spirit we're going for here, so we actually ban accounts that do it.

If you'd please read the site guidelines and follow them when posting to HN, we'd be grateful.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Seriously. Here's how the software business works: There are people in management with MBAs who follow the same template no matter what company you are talking about. Management sees everyone non-management as part of the infrastructure. Developers are not human beings to them, they are a commodity. A developer is the same thing as a printer or an office chair to them. To be in management, you have to also be "good" at dehumanizing others, drinking a lot, saying "yes" to anything regardless of how ridiculous that thing is, and generally going along to get along.

I have job-hopped many times hoping to find a place that values developers. After 9-10 jobs I now realize my mistake. There aren't any. Every place I have worked is more or less as I just described to you. This is 21st century business. This is what they didn't explain in college. This is what is wrong with all business in general is this commodification of people--they don't care if you're a good developer or a 10X problem solver, most are happy with cheap. If the labor comes from India or China or anyplace with a contract that puts the laboror in a one-down position of servitude, all the better because those people can be exploited much further. Again, they don't even care about quality, they desire only "good enough."

Now, there is something worse. White males are considered less attractive people to hire. They are trying to punish us for being intelligent and successful. If you don't believe me, just wait, in time you will experience it yourself.

It's also a psychological issue caused by bad parenting and disinformation in the media, which leads people to seek meaning in work, leading to various forms of codependency with their employers, which in turn cultivates learned helplessness.

It's eerie how accurately this describes folks I know who have gone through several cycles of excitement, codependency, and disillusionment. Finally, I no longer "seek" meaning in work -- the only meaning is that it is a "means" to an end, and the closer I get to finding the good enough solution, the more simple I make things for myself.

But it's still work - you call it work, for one. I mean you enjoy doing it, doing it for free, anonymously, without recognition - although the recognition part is starting to sting now - so why not? But there's other things to life than work as well. Find things you enjoy doing that aren't 'work'. Broaden your horizons. Even if it feels like a waste of time.

So, there is an important distinction between technical skills vs the softer political skills. I ran into this problem as I had up-leveled myself before a job, but I was a complete n00b at the people problem.

Sadly, the people problem dominates most companies, and even pure technical tracks require people skills of a different nature due to the parallel power structures.

what I've found over and over again is that managers will give promotions to 35 year olds who spent most of their lives playing video games

They must be special be special because they place such a high value on their time, whereas you give yours away for free < the implicit premise at work in such transactions. It's sort of a personality thing; the more effort and diligence you put into getting hired, the needier you seem, whereas the insouciant entitled-seeming person is able to arouse the managers desire to hire them by being a Shiny Object. Appearances matter, not because they are such a good guide to substance but because of the social fact that so many people respond to them. It's also possible/probable that these managers were 35 year olds who spent most of their lives playing video games (or sports, or cards, or whatever) and consciously or unconsciously hire people with similar personality types.

Not only are life and business not a meritocracy, there is not a singular ordering of competence. Social rewards most often flow not to someone who knows how to do something but the one who knows how to get others to do that for them. So, you have good technical skills at whatever it is you do, you're good at working on your own, and you are also a Nice Person who likes to share. This pretty much guarantees you will be treated like a worker bee.

Now, consider a large project that is beyond your individual capabilities and would require 10 people with your skills and diligence to realize in a year. Can you work 10 times as hard? No. Can you do it over 10 years? Maybe, but you'll be short of money the whole time and someone else would probably pass you by or make your project obsolete. You could find 9 other people with similar skill sets to yours and then cooperate, but that seems a bit unlikely.

Or you could find 12-13 people who you think are 80% as good as you and then tell them what you want - in other words, give them your high-level understanding of how the project should be built and then making sure they have the resources to do it. So instead of thinking of development as a problem of memory, storage, CPU time, and bug hunting, it becomes a problem of resources, budgets, reliability, and HR issues. Managers are in the business of instructing developers while relinquishing control of (and eventually competence in) the lower-level stuff of actually programming the machines. Another way to think of it is that while you are programming the electronic machine to make current flow to do blinkenlights, managers are people who have learned to program/hack the corporate machine to make money flow to make people do things.

To sum up, you will never get promoted/resourced for your technical expertise. The better you are at solving technical problems, the more you will be taken for granted as an extension of the machine you program. The best route out of this is to come up with a small project that you could do yourself, but instead parcel the sub-tasks out between 5-7 different people, and then lavish praise upon them when it's completed.

You can do this by stealth or with the agreement of your own manager, but focus on the objective and be vague on the details of implementation; this is what gives you the room to solicit help from others. You're not stealing their effort, you're providing the structure and taking responsibility by giving them a clearly defined task that they can easily perform without having to think too much. Your bosses want a result and don't want to be bogged down in understanding the details. Your peers want clearly defined tasks and enjoyable rewards and don't want to think too much. You become a manager by taking responsibility; you worry about stuff for other people (the details for your superiors, the big picture for your team members) by sitting on the border between their comfort zones without asking anyone to actually leave theirs.

That positive feedback loop is one of the key things to watch out for.

Work tends to have many mechanisms which directly links what you put in with positive feedback in a relatively short amount of time, which leads people to optimize for that short term maxima. Putting in more effort, more hours, etc for a positive outcome on a project, a promotion, etc is an easy decision to make, can be almost addicting for many high performers.

However, the neglect that one does to long-term feedback cycles, like not spending enough time with your spouse, children, friends, family, personal hobbies, only manifest negatively in the long run. The investments on the positive side also play out mostly in the long run as well, so the direct feedback cycle isn't quite there.

Using work to get those satisfying consistent wins can have its costs if you aren't deliberate about balancing against investments towards the long term maxima.

> High status careers are often structured, full of positive feedback loops, and well compensated

Problem is when people are in 'high status careers' that can't take the pressure or the heat of the high status career. And try to keep up with those who do.

I am not sure you find many athletes who once they make it complain that they wish they had chosen another path. My guess on why that is? Less luck involved (sure luck with everything). Less luck means more likely the strong or talented survive and they are appreciative for what they have and less likely to crumble and complain.

> all of which can strengthen the urge to defer existential questions about meaning, purpose, community, and identity until some unspecified future date

I've quit my Software Engineering job twice now to spend years of my life doing whatever I want. First time I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina [1] and second time I just spent three years driving right around Africa [2]. Both times I had no job, no boss, no timeline and I did whatever I wanted every single day. Hiking, camping, taking photos, cooking food, learning a new language, writing when I wanted to, etc. etc. I had ultimate freedom, living off my savings.

Without a doubt, the "freedom" life is much harder for me than the "desk job" life for exactly the reasons you listed above. After about six months for me I started to really, really think about the meaning of my life, what direction I want my life to take and a ton of other things that simply don't enter my mind when my life is on autopilot (i.e. going to work every day).

Going to work everyday is easy, because it means you don't have to decide the direction of your own life if you don't want to.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/expedition-overview

[2] http://theroadchoseme.com/africa-expedition-overview. & http://instagram.com/theroadchoseme

What is your takeaway? What did you mine from really thinking about the meaning and direction you want to take with your life?

*clarification: I mean it earnestly, as I have not done anything that you have.

My takeaway is that I must make decisions and take action if I am to live the life I want, in a manner that makes me happy. Nobody else will do that for me, and if I live my life on autopilot I will be extraordinarily disappointed when I look back over my life and see that I never took life by the horns and charted my own course.

It's on me, and that is equal measures exciting and (some days) terrifying.

I lost my Mum to cancer earlier this year, and she was exactly 30 years older than me. If I live to the same age as her I only have 30 summers left for all the hiking and camping and exploring I want to do. I only have 30 winters left for all the snowboarding and winter fun I want to have. Most important of all I only have 30 years left to spend time with family, friends, community, food, laughs and good times.

I have a lot that I want to cram into those 30 years, and I'm going to be my own pilot to make damn sure it happens.

In my humble opinion, as it applies to me and me alone:

Earning money is the worst of all false gods to chase. We in the western world have lost our path, and it's making us miserable. I met thousands of people in Africa that are happier and more joyous than virtually everyone I've ever met in Canada, Australia or the US.

Money is not the path the happiness, and I don't ever want to fall into that. I only ever want to earn enough money for food and shelter, and every minute otherwise I don't want to be at work making someone else rich. I want to spend those remaining 30 years enjoying myself and bringing happiness to those in my life, not earning money thinking it will somehow get me there in an abstract way.

But, what do I know? I'm only 37 after all. I have a lot to learn.

>Earning money is the worst of all false gods to chase.

Moloch is pretty bad, but Gnon is worse. uwu

Well you can make money alleviating other people's suffering. I mean the work you do should have some utility in someone else's life.

If you only make enough to help yourself then you have nothing left over to help others.

Making a good amount of money and then giving it away to causes that can meaningful help others is a highly underrated pursuit.

Aimlessly traveling is not happiness. I predict you’ll learn that lesson soon.

Clear thinking and good priorities.

I found it difficult until recently to make decisions about career and money, mostly because of the way status and security are attached to them.

Giving that up has been really hard, but as I’ve learned to live with less security, my happiness and freedom have increased to the point where I’m happier than I’ve been since I was a kid.

> "I don't want to be at work making someone else rich"

There's no point in thinking this way and it just creates more stress. Think of work as something you do for yourself. There's no shame in earning a living to then pursue your passions. Don't worry about or compare yourself to others.

Yup. Making a living for yourself only in such in a way that you purposely don't make a living for anyone else is limiting and self-defeating. And if everyone did that, society would collapse.

It's not like the economy is zero-sum anyway.

> Earning money is the worst of all false gods to chase. We in the western world have lost our path, and it's making us miserable. I met thousands of people in Africa that are happier and more joyous than virtually everyone I've ever met in Canada, Australia or the US.

I don’t disagree with your point.

IMO earning money isn’t the problem. The key is the balance between earning enough money to not struggle to do the things I enjoy, but not letting work and responsibility become the only thing in my life, blocking me from the things I enjoy.

But I will concede that western society has placed an emphasis on consumerism and we evidently all need more stuff. Consumerism is killing our planet as well as making us spend more and save less.

I’m similar in age to you, and despite my privilege, life can seem pretty pointless without time to self-direct, enjoy our interests and not be consumed by our jobs without a break.

Also, losing people close to you can change your perspective on what you spend your time doing. If I only have 20 summers left, I wouldn’t want to spend them working. But I still have to eat and pay rent for that amount of time, and working is the way I pay for it.

> Money is not the path the happiness, and I don't ever want to fall into that

Oof, that is a very uncomfortable statement for me to ponder upon. For the last couple of years, I have been focused on saving, saving, saving. Your comment makes me think about whether that's wise. Thanks for sharing that bit of wisdom.

Saving makes sense if the security blanket it gives, gives you peace of mind you need. Beyond that, unless you are saving for something, it might not be the best thing to focus too much on.

Absolutely agree! I'm 11 years younger than you and I realized this myself recently after having 2 unfulfilling jobs out of college. I'm absolutely tired of making other people rich d ppl ing something I don't enjoy.

I really just need enough to survive, and more free to time to actually pursue my passions and dreams. I think that's the true way to live.

My coworkers are obsessed with working as hard as they can, putting it all into their 401k so they can retire in 30 years. What an awful way to think about life.

"I'm only a slave for 40 years then I can do what I want".

No, do what you want now!

‘I don't want to be at work making someone else rich. I want to spend those remaining 30 years enjoying myself and bringing happiness to those in my life’

How do you expect to live out those 30 years without working consistently? Do you have means of enough passive income ?

You can still do it even if you don’t really want to. That’s pretty much the definition of work regardless.

Once you’ve saved a certain threshold of money, say $1M, it becomes relatively easy to make your money work for you at a high level so that you can live off dividends.

Until it dont

Limit your drawdown to 4% (3% during recessions) and you’ll have money forever

Harder than you think. It means you need consistent 6% returns (2% inflation, 4% return).

There's nothing out there that I know that gives you a consistent 6% return and the stock market is a fickle mistress. 2007 to 2009, VTI dropped over 50%. That 1% reduction in drawdown isn't going to be of much help much when your $1M turned into $500K, you'll need a job.

But you stopped working for a while, so now your resume makes you less desirable than the competition and exactly when you need more income (at the bottom of the recession) the job market is at its worst. Likely it took you a few years to get that $1M and age discrimination is rampant in IT, further decreasing your odds of finding that job.

I think realistically, you need a significantly lower drawdown, more likely in the order of 2% or less to weather economic downturns. Without subsidized healthcare, that's going to be very hard to do with $1M, but I think it's doable with $2M.

It’s up 30% this year and we’ve been in a 10 year bull market.

Index and real estate funds pay actual dividends, which you didn’t mention, outside of just relying on rising share prices.

There are some slightly more advanced ways to generate income like selling options premiums that can generate income when prices are relatively flat.

You wouldn’t have your retirement 100% in equities though, you would be way more risk adverse. So in 2007-2009 you may have only took a 20% hit only to see that rebound by 120% within 2 years. In fact if you were paying attention in that time you likely would have loaded up on equities and rebounded a lot further. But you can see this is an edge case. Remove those years from the last 30 and you’ll see the 4% drawdown would have covered you perfectly through that time.

I think you are right $1m is becoming shallow these days, but that doesnt change the significance of my statement

By living a simpler life and not consuming for the sake of it. Earning ~$25k a year will easily pay for the life I want to life. When I drove around Africa and to Argentina I only spent around $17k a year while on the road.

All very impressive -- hope this guy is as happy as his scrupulously cultivated brand requires and celebrates.

But I wonder if this represents a cautionary tale -- someone who took their non-"desk job" and assiduously commoditized their adventures. The 110% workaholism never stopped.

Click here to buy the book, follow the instagram, subscribe to the YouTube.

Or maybe this is what can happen if you don't indulge your wanderlust in your early 20s. The scariest, hardest and most rewarding thing always turns out to be connecting with the people around you. Instead, "Rabbit, Run"...

Your comment reminded me of Ralph Waldo Emerson’s thoughts - how wanderlust can keep us from leading meaningful lives. Worth a read: https://www.frontporchrepublic.com/2019/04/wanderlust-keeps-...

We probably need an antidote to the current instagram driven travel as consumption lifestyles, but I think they protest a little too much. Most people who go full nomad seem to realize quite well on their own after a year or two that no matter how much they learn, being always rootless and disconnected is not a great life and go back to build a life in one place. Most people aren’t privileged enough to even get this far but for the ones who want to why stop them? Some of my most memorable times have been travelling/living abroad but I realize indefinite travel would not be great.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm currently into my third year of traveling and third new country. I'm getting pretty exhausted of starting again (new engineering job, new environment and new friends) and I'm starting to yearn for roots. It does take it's toll on you as now nowhere feels like home.

Then you settle down and the yearn to travel again takes over. It never really settles until you have kids.. and then I wonder if it’s only temporary (really want to travel now but the little one won’t remember it, so I’m rooted to his hometown)

FWIW I don't think it dies down. RVs are a huge thing amongst older folks for a reason.

They don't have to remember it. They won't remember anything before about 5 anyway. The time with them is (in a way) a very private experience only you & your partner will remember. You're making memories- for yourself.

Or, to put it in different terms, they fly free until they turn 2. Get at it.

Lol oh I did that, but it was to visit family. I had companion pass so we only needed to purchase one ticket and just went to different cities. Now we are beyond that free ticket age, and we value the experience as much as our time together that we want to wait until they do remember. So our first REAL family vacation is still three years away but I’ve already got our Paris adventure planned out!

One thing about traveling in general while children are young is that they become accustomed to it. Getting on a plane this weekend was a nothingburger for us, because it was like our 18th time going into the clouds. Same with 3 hour road trips, it becomes another facet of life

Speaking for myself only, the yearning does not go away. It gets overridden by the realization that trying to fulfill that wanderlust was never going to make me happy. For me, travel was just a way of trying to find a place to belong, and once I realized that was my goal, I also realized that going from place to place was the exact opposite of what I should be doing.

That said, the longing has not gone away. I just know it to be a siren song.

This is how i see travel bloggers too. Constantly updating the world about your whereabouts, framing every experience as something to be shared, it sounds exhausting to me - just like work!

I don't begrudge them, though. If this person ever needs to go back to work "in the real world", they've kept a brand going that proves they have a work ethic. And if they don't, then presumably at least they've found a way to earn enough cash to maintain the lifestyle they want.

One of the things i wrestle with as i get older is meaning. I don't have a partner and don't want a house or kids. I don't have the killer instinct needed to become a corporate bigwig or an entrepreneur. I keep puttering along as a senior dev, quitting when i have enough cash for a sabbatical, then going back to work somewhere else when the savings run out. I'll never have the means to retire and live my perfect life. I'll just die somewhere, poor and aged out of the profession i never really wanted to do anyway. I suppose that's how most humans go out, but it feels a bit pointless.

I envy people who are very driven and have a clear goal in their lives - whether that goal is to be a rockstar desk jockey, to travel blog the world, or to connect with the people around them. It seems life would be much easier that way. I just kinda drift about, mostly having mediocre or boring days, occasionally having good days, and one day i'll die. It's far from a terrible life, but i can't help but wonder if goal-driven types feel that their lives are more rewarding.

Why not make it your goal to find a goal?

Due to hedonic adaptation, the journey of working toward something is usually more rewarding than reaching any particular destination, especially if you're getting lots of feedback along the way.

Also, I've spoken with literally thousands of entrepreneurs, and most don't have what I'd describe as "killer instinct." Many of them gained a purpose through their business, rather than starting their businesses to satisfy some pre-existing purpose. It's a bit like how people find a new mission in life once they have a child.

What we think impacts what we do, but perhaps less obvious is the fact that what we do impacts how we think. Sometimes the first step is to throw yourself into a situation and then allow the motivation to come.

Finally, I'd say I'm an abnormally driven and goal-oriented person, and even I often think about my inevitable death and the purpose of it all. I think it's just part of being human and thoughtful.

I've come to the conclusion that living a good life is largely about being proactive. We like to think that given enough money and freedom we'll all do things that make us happy, but instead we tend to stagnate. It's easy for anyone to settle into simply letting the days pass: whether you're single or in a relationship, an employee or a founder, traveling or stationary, it doesn't matter. You can get into a routine of simply doing the least effortful thing.

For most of us, being proactive about living your life in a fulfilling way requires effort, the same way work does.

This is great career advice, but by the end of your comment it felt like it went in a circle that leads back to the status quo. If humans really need to work to find fulfilment, then why bother trying to find fulfilment outside of work?

I don't hate my job. It's okay. I'm pretty good at it. The pay is fine. If this is as good as it gets - the joy of seeing someone you're mentoring "get it", the pleasure of getting a complex refactoring done, the accomplishment of shipping a cool feature - then i'm already there.

What i find sad is that it's not viable to spend time on idle things that i enjoy more than that workplace success. For me, my happiest times have been when i was doing nothing productive at all. Watching shows. Reading books. Dancing till dawn. Learning a new language. Cooking something nice. Talking to strangers. Wandering around aimlessly. Playing a computer game. Sitting on a bus to anywhere. Getting drunk apropos of nothing. Those are things i love to do because there is no pressure involved. What makes them satisfying is precisely that they are journeys without a destination. If there's a goal, if there's purpose, then it's exactly like work, so what's the point?

I am not sure that given enough money and freedom everyone would stagnate. That may be true of some, but not of others. Having discussed this with retirees it seems like it is a very individual thing. Some people don't do well with retirement - they get antsy and want to keep occupied, so they join social groups and take part in community events. Others gladly enjoy the chance to live an idle lifestyle. It's unfortunate that those who prefer the latter lifestyle have to work 45 years for it, and (depending on circumstance) may even never get the opportunity to enjoy that time.

I can't speak to what we need to find fulfillment. I haven't met many people who've said, "I'm fulfilled." And is fulfillment even the right goal? Once you reach it, is it not something you must constantly strive to maintain, or at least avoid losing?

We have a significant divide between working and living that I personally hope to erase, or at least minimize, in my own life. I've had some success this year, mostly through being more human and less down-to-business in my interactions with coworkers and colleagues. For example, previously I'd always prioritize speed and efficiency at work, which spelled disaster for experiencing real happiness at work. But recently I've begun to do things like having long, meandering 1-on-1 meetings that feel indistinguishable from casual chats with old friends about life, love, and whatever's interesting. Because why not?

Does having a purpose make something exactly like work? Well, if work is something that can be truly enjoyable, then the question is somewhat pointless. So let's imagine it can't. Then I'd posit that enjoyment depends less on having or not having a purpose, and more on what that purpose is. Trying to rush to hit some metric, or prioritizing speed and efficiency above human connection, or always having standards for success or failure, or doing things alone instead of a group… these approaches likely sap a lot of happiness out of spontaneous endeavors. But I don't think there's anything wrong with a purpose such as, "I'd like to have a lot of fun and make memories with my family over the holiday," and using that to guide you to say yes to some activities that you'd ordinarily ditch in favor of the easier choice to be stagnant and do nothing.

I also agree with you that not everyone would stagnate given time and money, by the way. I didn't mean to imply that. Only that many of us do stagnate instead of being as proactive as we should/could be to get the happiness or the lifestyle that we desire.

> We have a significant divide between working and living that I personally hope to erase, or at least minimize, in my own life

This, in a nutshell, is why I plan to never retire. "Retirement" for me is finding a business that holds my attention enough to want to do it for the rest of my life. Right now it has to fit into the interstitial bits of time between "day job" and "family time" and "sleep."

BTW: I love your podcast!

> This is how i see travel bloggers too. Constantly updating the world about your whereabouts, framing every experience as something to be shared, it sounds exhausting to me - just like work!

A few years back, I took a ~yearlong backpacking trip which gave me a lot of exposure to travel bloggers, both personally and when doing research for my travels. The impression I got from many of them was that they didn't consider the blogging work, but rather a natural outgrowth of the journaling practice that many people do privately anyway, for the ostensible personal benefits. Once they had already gone through the work of framing and articulating their experiences, polishing it and sharing it with others wasn't a lot of marginal work (and added an extra layer of fun).

I'm sure there are people who treat it like a daily grind, but my impression is that, for most travel bloggers, it grows pretty naturally out of something they were doing anyway.

How did you get across the Darien Gap?

Covered in the links: http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-...

It isn’t crystal clear, but it looks like they went in on someone with a shipping container.

I shipped the Jeep in a shipping container from Panama to Colombia. Full details on how you can do it too, and price breakdown are here: http://theroadchoseme.com/shipping-across-the-darien-gap-pt-...

For a brief period of time I thought the “quit job to travel” was the dream life, but I soon realized, at least for me, that traveling for the sake of travel was just another way of running away of my problems.

It also made me realize that most people are happiest when they feel like they’re contributing to society in some way, and traveling non-stop feels like you’re side stepping your role in society rather than making any contributions to it.

Though I do think there’s a ton of value in mini-retirements or sabbaticals of maybe a few months to a year, and travel during those times can play a huge role in helping break up your routine and provide some perspective.

Why does traveling non-stop make you feel like you're side-stepping your role in society?

One of the things i like best about traveling is that i have the time and mental energy to engage with the people around me. I eat at restaurants, i go to bars, i listen and share stories, i'll contribute to the local economy and perhaps put a smile on someone's face.

When i am working i suppose you could say i am contributing to society, in the sense that i am helping to build some software that performs a function our customers appreciate. But most of our customers don't live in my community. And even if they did, i'm not really employed to serve those customers, i'm employed to increase growth so that the company will make more money for its investors. Trickle-down theory says that's still a net contribution to society, but it feels very abstract to me.

Meanwhile, when i work i am too exhausted to spend any of the money i earn doing those things that i would when i travel - i don't spend money at local businesses, i don't talk to other people in the community, i just go home and sleep and go back to work again. It's the life most of us are forced into to survive, but i wouldn't really call it contributing to society, or at least not in as direct a way that people do when traveling.

Solo travel is an inherently selfish pursuit. You are just consuming, and not creating anything of value for society.

They're likely helping to create positive experiences and memories for other people during their travels. Some of my best memories in life are thanks to random solo travelers I've met during various trips.

I met a solo traveler waiting for the airport bus in Thailand, and the next week we did a road trip across the country and back together. I met a solo traveler in Hungary on the train that needed accommodation, so they stayed in my living room and we spent a few days traveling. I met a solo traveler in Italy, and the following week we decided to hitchhike to various coastal cities. Their "selfish pursuit" brought me all sorts of value.

What a pessimistic, consumeristic and consumable view of travel. Are stories of travels not value? Are people who's lives you touched not made greater for a friendship, even if for a short time? I'm not saying theres not a way to be a total consumer and a net negative on society as a traveler, but I'd rather society be filled with thoughtful people who've met and made relationships with people of other than someone who slaves away all day at a draft board creating the next phone with 5 more megapixels.

I’m not particularly inspired by people who run away from their problems. I’ve met many people while traveling myself who were perpetually traveling and the vast majority were aimless and uninspired. The worst are the ones that resort to actual begging (yes, it happens) to continuously fund their travel.

It just isn’t an enlightened pursuit. If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer.

> If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer.

'Escape' and 'running away' are roughly synonymous.

What other escapes do you prefer?

The key difference is responsibility.

You can leave an unfulfilling job for another form of responsibility in life that is more fulfilling.

Endless travel is really just life without responsibility. Having zero responsibility actually does not make most people happy in the long term. It’s an unnatural human state, particularly for grown men, and most will wake up eventually (perhaps once it’s too late) and realize there’s nothing enlightening about a life lived that way.

These are the traditional conservative values and beliefs, yes.

A lot of us think it’s time to design new values and beliefs.

It’s not conservative so much as innately human. A society made of individuals who feel no shared responsibility to contribute to society is literal anarchy

As you point out, someone begging to fund travel certainly fits the description of non-contributor to society.

But many (most?) self-fund their ongoing travel, whether through odd jobs while traveling, savings from a previous stable employment, or "digital nomad" work on the road[1]. In that sense, they're just shifting a portion of their contributions from time period B to time period A, in the same way that spending during retirement works. I don't see how this can be described as "feel[ing] no shared responsibility to contribute to society" any more than someone who spreads their contributions more evenly over time: it's just describing the use of money as a store of value.

When my wife and I couldn't afford to travel we hosted couchsurfers, including solo ones, from around the world and very much enjoyed their conversation (and cooking if we were lucky!)

It's not any more or less selfish than the existence of 90+% of people just going through the motions to get through the day. The "value" most people create for society is a byproduct of that person needing an income. If they could get the same income without doing any work, most would choose that.

Travel has made me a better version. My worldview was so small before. After it, I've learned we are more of a global village than separate nations.

It kind of sounds like what you like best about travel is having free time. In other words it's not about how great travel is, but about how much you dislike like your (all-consuming) job.

I don't really hate my job. I think i would rather be a software developer than many other things. I do tend to work around 45 hours, but i don't take my work home with me. Well, not physically. It's more the emotional toll that it takes - having to be extroverted and "on" all through the week uses up all of my spoons. By the weekend i have nothing left.

I definitely would be happier if i had more free time. But my feeling is that i would also be a more productive member of society. At the very least i know i would engage more in the community. I am currently on day 5 of 12 days annual leave, and i am only just getting to the point where i feel i have the energy to venture out of my apartment. Surely this isn't the most efficient way to "contribute to society"?

It sounds like you are doing a lot of things right. I can offer one thought. A coworker of mine once told me that biking to & from work helped him decompress & be emotionally present for his kids when he got home, while driving just brought all the stress right home with him. I've come to agree. Bussing with a mile of walking down a nice lane has also had similar results.

Wow, didn't expect to see you on HN. A friend of mine and I have been watching your Youtube vids for a while now. They're wonderful (and I'm also a bit jealous of the J30 camper on your Rubicon).

I myself took this past summer off to travel the western US. I started to have similar thoughts. It was very hard to go back to work after returning. Not because I didn't want to work (I did), but because of what you said, I realized it was so easy to fall into patterns and let your career direct everything.

I realized when I was traveling every day that I was the one directing, and it wasn't always easy. I had to deal with new things every day, sometimes great, sometimes difficult, but it really pushed me both mentally and physically. It was the best thing I ever did for myself.

One positive about returning to work though is I care a lot less about my career path. It allows me to be more open and honest at work. I don't fear not getting a promotion or losing my job. I also don't care as much about being "right". That helps my stress level a lot. But it also helps that I'm planning my next adventure as well (6 months in western Canada).

If you don't mind my asking, what is your Myers-Briggs if you know it (Ex: INTJ)? I would guess it takes a rare personality type to leave behind the security of career to do what you have done.

Actually I have no idea, I have not done of those tests in maybe 15 years, and I can't remember the result.

I just view it the other way around. I don't think I'm leaving behind security now, I think I'm choosing to live my life now rather than wait for the possibility of living it later.

I just left a job I'd built an identity around. I was good at it, it was fulfilling and paid decently, but I spent all my time there and not much on anything else. Quitting was really hard. It felt a lot like breaking up with someone. It really does feel like leaving a part of myself behind.

I've been working somewhere else with less hours and far less responsibility so far. The first week or two was kind of a shock. Going back to the bottom of a place where I don't really have any kind of responsibility or even really knowledge of everything thats going on has been pretty tough. But it's refreshing in a way, i've gone back to a few hobbies and other things I haven't worked on for a while now and it's kinda nice just show up, do things I get told to do and leave without worrying about what I need to get done for tomorrow and stuff.

I'm 35, I have been trying to turn the boat around on this for 2 years now. You're exactly right.

I agree with much of this, both out of personal experience and that of my friend.

Work is a distraction from what is really gnawing at your ankles. Even if you start to burn out it still feels preferable to the alternative, if you're even aware of that in the first place.

And to be honest, it's valid even though it's massively unhealthy. Facing your underlying issues, whatever they are, is hard work but also, it's ultimately the most rewarding work.

I've a lot to share about the matter, but it's a bit much and a little too personal for a public response here.

I don’t know if this is fair to say. The trope exists, certainly, but I don’t know if we can pass judgement on a way someone has chosen to live their life just because it would not fulfill us.

It’s absolutely true that many people regret prioritizing their career later, but there are also quite a few people regret not investing in their career as well.

My takeaway watching many people regret, and having regrets my own - or as you put it, my “debt coming due,” is that it is up to each of us to do our best to predict what our future selves will want. That’s all there is to it, and it’s unproductive to say “careers are bad,” or, alternatively, “focusing on family is bad,” or any variation of the above.

I see it more as a way to fill gaps in someone’s life that they’ve either consciously or subconsciously rejected e.g. having a family.

This might be extremely controversial but does anyone else find it fitting that so many of the high profile Silicon Valley elite are single childless gay men?

Existentialism is a trap. Camus pretty much nailed it but here it is in comic/essay form:

https://moretothat.com/the-meaning-of-life-is-absurd/

Absurd nihilism is not a get out of jail free card for existentialism. It's a structure to answer the existential question in the same way Nietzsche's answers are a structure or any of the other philosophers. It has a fundamental axiom at the bottom and a logic that blossoms out of it. Saying there is 'no meaning' is to answer the question with avoiding the question to begin with.

Writer's block / drawer's block happens when you don't have a structure for your ideas. Nearly any structure you can think of can be useful for starting work. Hero's journey can be used to prop up your ideas like a tack weld until you get something better.

The character in the article cannot get their ideas out because they do not have a structure for their work, their ideas and their existence. One answer is to lump your existence into the "nothing" category and another answer is to see how deep the rabbit hole of existence goes and come out with your own thoughts, structures and opinions.

The point of reading philosophers is not to become them, but to develop your own perspective. It's not a trap, it's a necessity.

The absurd is the tension between the search for meaning and the inability to find any. It doesn’t mean there is no meaning as a nihilist would argue. Nor does it imply destruction.

Camus’s absurd is more akin to Gödel incompleteness than nihilism.

The article repeatedly leans on nihilism as it's counterpoint to order and meaning. Time is infinite therefore we are meaningless is nilihism. You can fill in time with what means something to you, it need not be empty.

>The thirst for more sounds comically absurd when you zoom out and see that nothing matters, so it’s about going deep into the zoomed-in life you already lead. Your health, your loved ones, your work, your interests, your desire to help others, your values, your existence.

>What could be more meaningful than that?

This quote from the article sums it up, to have a meaningful life you must accept that there isn't any meaning in some points of the world. That worldview leaves a massive gaping black hole of meaning in time and space around you. That black hole where there is no meaning is nihilistic. It clears out the greater story above you that could actually be an expression of what you find meaningful as a human, with which you could fill the universe and replaces it with a pre-determined story, absurdism that includes nothing.

Godel's incompleteness can be used for any argument. Mathematical and computational logic is not the basis of all philosophy, nor is anything we know or the field would be dead. Defining your axioms is part of the game. Defining a world view that includes meaning in all places is a far more sympathetic perspective than to rob the reader's worldview of it's potential to apply in most places, by defining that the vast majority of external existence is non-meaning. Asking the reader to read more is a more healthy perspective.

Arguing that absurdism gives a valuable middle ground between meaning and non-meaning is something I'd heartily disagree with. The reader is more than capable of finding their own middle ground and becoming their own person in the process.

Ignore the article and read Camus. The point is that existentialism is absurd.

Life having meaning is like life having a door. There is only one way to advance and for a lot of people that door is locked. If you instead think that the door does not exist then you are free to choose any path.

It's not clear what specifically is the problem that defines the door as locked in your comment. I'm going to assume it's life circumstances. The problems you have to overcome or sacrifices you have to make to unlock and open the door are part of what makes the corridor behind the door meaningful.

In the lock itself resides the conflict needed to be solved, maybe the non-door path includes things you find valuable and you really are conflicted between two corridors of different values. Maybe family is more important to you than a purposeful career or whatever.

It’s interesting you say that... arguably I am an extreme workaholic, I work 70+ hours every week. I learn all I can on top of that.

I get satisfaction from it, but it’s not my identity. If I was a janitor, I’d try to be the best janitor, because that’s what I like doing, I like being good at my job. I also plan 2 years out and intend to have $X wealth by specific deadlines. I’ll work harder to reach it.

For me, as I’m only 27 (but have been doing this since I was 14) my goal is to be able to “retire” by 35. That means I need lots of money in the bank.

After that I can choose what I want to do, but before that you’re right, I don’t want to think about life choices. It’s hard to work when everyone else is having fun. But I’m also on track to be financially free (I.e. high enough passive income for lifestyle) by 35. So I can have a much more fulfilled life for 50 years or so.

Remember investments grow exponentially- meaning you want to invest as much as you can while you’re young(er)

> Remember investments grow exponentially- meaning you want to invest as much as you can while you’re young(er)

*grow geometrically (with apologies, am pedant)

Per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exponential_growth, geometric growth is exponential growth.

A former boss of mine told me once: "if you think you need X before you do Y you will forever find Xs". He went on to be a very successful CEO of a F500 company so his advice likely has merit.

The takeaway I had was that you shouldn't wait to live your life by first toiling away at something. Live your life today because who knows about tomorrow. And work is part of life. Find a way to enjoy that too even if it's a means to an end.

This. It's so easy to escape in workaholism and ignore the "hard" things in life (relationships, health, purpose, etc). It's easy (for me at least) to fall into this trap.

> Eventually the debt comes due but sometimes not until many decades later.

It's a dangerous path if you don't have things to follow on through (like a family, kids, grown kids university, new wife, etc...). There is no meaning to life and it makes more sense to end your life right now. (at least with the info/data we have available).

Analogous to “putting all eggs in a single basket”, the risks are very high.

You end up becoming hyper sensitive at work, start taking everything personal -well, it is your identity or ego at stake. Leads be becoming very closed, guarded and aggressive. Everyday becomes a fight for survival.

I personally went through this phase for a long time. Looking back, some of my managers exploited this by reinforcing. They knew if they compare me with anyone, I would up the competition and perform even better. This did not cost them money since I had invested myself, my identity and ego 100%. Overall, resulted in a highly competitive team but extremely stressful and caustic!

After changing teams, I decided to take a step back and make a fresh start. I now work for the love of my work and do not let it represent who/what I am. It is my identity at work. Back home or with friends, I have a different identity. Having multiple things to fallback has made me more resilient and lot more positive.

Same thing happened to me. I realized that I actually do better work now that I'm more chilled out and my life is more balanced.

I wonder if it is an age thing. Paraphrasing but there is a quote along the lines of the difference between experienced people/managers and inexperienced people is they know which battles to fight. Sadly this is a right of passage, you need to fight the wrong battles first before you realise this. I am in my forties now and so much better at selecting which battles to fight.

You’re absolutely right. Around this age if not a bit earlier people have seen/experienced enough to see things more clearly. I wonder if this is the reason most SV companies prefer fresher meat.

Might also be why companies prefer youngsters over people who are 40+. The opportunity for exploitation is higher.

We have a saying back home that goes, "umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu" which literally translates to a person is a person because of other people. So in effect in Africa we care more about people than our jobs. Trouble is when your job is managing national electricity company it isn't a good approach because we tend to put our relationships above our jobs. Result is patchy electricity supply. It is one (just one not the main reason) of the reasons we are behind when it comes to development. Development as in clean running water, functional clinics.

I sort of straddle both worlds. In software development you need to get it right. At home people are more important. As an example just today in-laws visiting where supposed to go to see touristy sights at 11 in the morning. They eventually left at 3pm because we all had loads to catch up on. People first :-).

All drawings, paintings, and art I saw in Africa, all of them depict people in a group. There is never a single person depicted in any imagery.

You won't find any Mona Lisa in African art. :-)

This is a fascinating difference. I never really stopped to consider how individualistic a lot of western art is.

Ha I resonate with this so much. From from the motherland to the US and it's been interesting because I love some of the freedom of self expression the individualism gives me but often times have to be snapped back from the east coast rush-everywhere life I've lived recently and remember that it's okay to hang out till late because the time spent connecting with others meaningfully is hardly ever a waste.

Indeed, people, relationships and our connections make us who we are

Do you mind sharing from what country you come from and what language that is in please?

I just spent three years driving around Africa, and I usually say "People treat people like people" to describe everything that is amazing about the people there. It sounds awkward, but it's the best way I have to describe what you're talking about. I'd love to quote your saying, if you don't mind!

South Africa. And I guess Xhosa/Zulu. The electricity provider mentioned is Eskom. It's complicated.

Yes it is South Africa. Born in Zim to descendents of Mzilikazi who left South Africa during Shaka Zulu's reign.

The saying isn't mine but an African idiom. As you spent time in Africa experiencing it you have every right to use it :-).

I was just rereading this Last Psychiatrist article that this really reminds me of: https://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2014/01/randi_zuckerberg.htm... (Like with all of TLP it meanders a lot and will probably piss you off. It's also highly entertaining!)

This is the important bit:

> One of our time's great sociological questions is why we filled downtime back up with work, and the reason is it's better than alcoholism. At some point during the Truman Administration home life became more stressful than work life, where stressful is defined either as hysterical drama or rheumatismy boredom, and by Reagan II the home was no longer a respite from modern society's incessant demands to produce or at the very least a place to get a nap. ...

> Part of the reason work and home keep mixing despite our professed desires is that that's how Americans were taught to see an aspirational adult life. In every TV show and movie after Leave It To Beaver the gimmick has always been that the protagonist's job and personal life overlap-- doctors in love, CIA agents defending their family, late nights at the office trading zingers or abuse stories. While we no longer think we want the overlap, the shows reinforced the false psychology that a person is something, all the time and everywhere, and the backdrop world "sees" it, accepts it. This applies just as much to negative depictions of work/life overlap, e.g. the obsessed cop whose wife is now divorcing him because of the job: the point isn't that the overlap is "good", that's not the aspiration; the point is that the structure of these depictions represents the fundamental narcissistic fantasy: a fixed and clear identity-- a character-- seen by a potential audience. This is why home is not relaxing: we are working to not let it be all that we are. [emphasis mine]

That was a great read. I think structures mentioned therein like the medium is the message, the form of the argument vs consequences are excellent examples of cognitive or linguistic framing, ripe for hacking

My pursuit of financial independence consequently led to my career becoming my identity. I've optimized for raising my income and savings to reduce "time to FI", that by the time I get there -- about 4 years, give or take -- that I've become the thing I explicitly set out to remove from my life. It's not that I don't like working, but I wish to do so on my own terms. Maybe that means short-term contracts a few months out of the year, and having that reduced income cover my living expenses, supplemented with investments. I've done the numbers many times, but I've spent little time considering what I'll do with all that extra time.

Just curious - what's your financially independent number? Are you factoring in cost of living into your ideal scenario, or is there wiggle room for leisure and travel and the like?

$1M, or $40k annually. My rent is about half of my expenses, but I could downsize to a cheaper place and allocate the freed money for travel and leisure. I don't think I'll stop working once I reach $1M. I'd be more open to alternative work arrangements (e.g., temp contracting gigs) closer to $1.5M, to build in wiggle room. Some costs I haven't accounted for (currently subsidized by my employer), like health care, make me feel the "real" FI number is closer $2M as expenses will likely rise with age.

I’ve had the same goal in mind, to get to a point where I can be more flexible with work arrangements. Maybe work part time or work from any location. I’m struggling with doing that though. I’ve already accumulated enough for me to do this, but my income is at its highest currently, and mentally it’s been a struggle to give that up. For the last couple of years it’s been, well let’s just save a bit more to be safe.

I think that works as long as you have no spouse or kids. If you do, that number will be very hard to be independent.

What investments or instruments do you plan to put the $1M in to yield $40k/yr? Stocks, bonds, dividends, properties...?

U.S. large cap (S&P 500), international stocks, some individual public companies (RSUs/ESPP), some bonds. I don't own any real estate.

Do you intend to sell your large cap holdings as they accrue in value every year? How do you rebalance your portfolio to account for under performers and handle cap gains?

Sorry for asking so many questions! This is super informative. Thanks! :)

I haven't fully considered this, as I haven't crossed that bridge. A naive approach would dictate holding a 100/0 stock/bonds portfolio, which would never necessitate rebalancing. To date, I've likely experienced some drift, but not meaningfully since my portfolio composition was 99/1. However, of the stock portion of my portfolio, I do plan to hold about one-third international; so I should rebalance annually. This can be done in tax-advantaged accounts, to avoid capital gains taxes. (A common FI strategy is to maximize contributions to tax-advantaged accounts, as I do). I handle capital gains, currently, by simply not selling taxable investments.

IIRC the Trinity study (where the 4% SWR comes from) was for portfolios with a decent chunk of bonds? And that it only claimed that SWR for a horizon of 30 years? As in, running to zero in 31 years was counted as a success.

Separately, not to rain on your parade, but I'd really be worried that 4% might not be feasible based on current market conditions - that study was based on a period when the US was rising into the role of world superpower, and most of the industrialized world had just been decimated.

That skepticism is valid. 3.5% might be the new 4%. Personally, I don't worry too much about returns because even though U.S. standing has declined, our returns have been incredible, mostly due to stock buybacks. Corporations have been the net purchasers, by a significant margin, in the past decade [0], somewhat driven by debt and specifically, low interest rates. Returns are increasingly untethered from actual performance. For these reasons, the U.S.' waning hegemony may not lower returns.

[0]: https://seekingalpha.com/article/4271159-corporations-bigges...

They way I do this (in the UK using ISA's and mostly Investment Trust based) is when an individual stock gets to big relative is to stop reinvesting dividends in that stock and reinvest that dividend in other's.

At the moment I just invest once a month combining last months savings with accrued dividends - which rebalances a little.

For example I have stopped reinvesting in Witan, Lowland and TR Property - in favor of smaller holdings - which at the moment looks like this.

BANKERS INV TRUST ORD GBP0.25

CQS NEW CITY HIGH ORD NPV

BT GROUP ORD GBP0.05

LAW DEBENTURE CORP ORD GBP0.05

JPMORGAN EMER MKTS ORD GBP0.25

POLAR CAP TECH TST GBP0.25

SCHRODER ORIENTAL ORD GBP0.01

CITY OF LONDON INV ORD GBP0.25

Will that cover health insurance & expenses? That stuff gets pricey fast.

I went to my state's health insurance site. It took me about 3 minutes to pull a quote. If my income was $40k/year, I could get a gold plan ($0 deductible) for $4,300/year in premiums (about $350/mo). Bronze plans had $3,200/year premiums but a $6,300 annual deductible. To keep costs predictable, I'd choose the gold plan.

If I chose to live fully off investments in early retirement, my taxable income would be lower since than $40k since I would be spending some from after-tax accounts (which doesn't count as income). The lower income could mean higher subsidies, and lower health care costs.

I see this all the time, trying to live off dividends or low returns off something like $1m or so. The thing is if you retire early in 30 years time you’ve spent all of your returns and now inflation has eroded your principal.

I don’t see why you wouldn’t just keep working in a low stress easy job, part time or something, and continue to build savings.

The withdrawal rate isn't a fixed $40k. It's $40k, adjusted for inflation, annually. Year 1 is $40k, Year 2 is $41.2k (assuming 3% inflation). Purchasing power stays constant over time.

Though I didn't specify the portfolio composition, most of my holding are US Large Cap, which are the 2nd best performing asset class below small cap: https://www.compoundvalue.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/IR_..., but both classes are significantly above the others (Bonds & T bills), so I'm not sure what's meant by low returns. If you mean sequence of returns risk, most people use a bond tent to mitigate the risk.

Taking out more than $40k/year erodes your principal though, I thought that was pertymcpert's point?

Like, if you've got $800k and can reliably earn 5%, as long as you're withdrawing only $40k you're good. But if you withdraw $41k one year, your principal is now only $799k. Next year if you need $42k, the return from your $799k is only $39,950, so your principal goes down to $796,950, etc.

From a quick spreadsheet, if inflation is 2% annually and you can get 5% on your principal, you deplete your $800k in ~32 years.

Doesn't seem too hard to fix with some supplemental income here and there?

Not taking a piss, could you share your spreadsheet?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1RTa0rnMdk8VSPpK7qgkl...

He is not trying to live off the dividend (as far as I understand), he is trying to live off the principal and the dividend. At the end of the day, if his expected life span is something like 85 years and he accounts for 110 years in savings he would be left with very little principal, but who cares at that point. It is true however that getting that right may be very tricky, because if you miscalculate you have no savings left.

Yeah I guess this is fine as long as you account for it. Starting with $800k, $40k expenses, 2% inflation and 5% return, retiring at 35 you end deplete your money at 67, but starting with $1M takes you to 83.

One thing to keep in mind is the cost of healthcare dramatically outpaces inflation, too. It's not ridiculous to think that healthcare premiums alone could eat up most of the principal. And this is assuming that taxes stay low & good health.

> I've optimized for raising my income

I've had a lot of behaviors that would save money. One day I realized that the time I spent saving money was much less productive than time spent making money. I.e. by spending more time making money I had more free time.

Depending on the behavior, you can get some fun out of it. I enjoy snooping around the house looking for leaks & thin spots in the insulation.

If you enjoy doing it, that's another thing entirely.

This is a thinly veiled advertisement for the author's psychological services - the company they had to start to solve this problem.

It is hard to get anywhere in this world without working your ass off. It is a sign of extreme privilege to even have the freedom to complain about it.

It is probably a placed piece but it doesnt make the contents untrue.

Simultaneously, being enmeshed in your career is not the same as working hard, so why give people a hard time who are reevaluating their life?

Reasonable question. I can see how my comment comes across as me giving people a hard time but that was not the intention.

Working hard is probably step 1 on the road to enmeshment. Just wanted to put forward the opinion that most things worth doing require insane levels of hard work to succeed at. They will become part of your identity. That's not a bad thing.

Well put. The specific case was not compelling and I wonder whether it is even real. A son of highly achieving attorneys learns that corporate law is stressful? Do tell.

I was reminded of Tom Lehrer's quip about the fictional inventor of the gallbladder, "He soon became a specialist, specializing in diseases of the rich. He was therefore able to retire at an early age."[1]

[1]http://www.casualhacker.net/tom.lehrer/evening.html

A specialist in diseases for the rich might have to come out of retirement to treat himself.

But, could he afford it? See this from The Flintstones: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGkPzDxd09I

Bad article, in part because of the incomplete title. It should be called "What happens when your career becomes your whole identity, when you don't like your job and think it's a waste of time". If this latter part is not true, there is much less of a problem, but for some reason current mainstream American culture wants to extrapolate all the way to "work should be compartmentalized and minimized".

The problem is, work is where a lot of people find meaning in life. For those people, more work means more meaning, and you're hurting them by telling them otherwise, especially if they are too young to know better than what you are telling them. And you're also preventing young people from becoming outliers ... what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount of time they spend thinking about physics stuff, they need to achieve good work/life balance.

A lot of people in China are working pretty hard. If you want your country to get whomped by China economically and geopolitically, spread the idea that it's bad to work hard.

Americans in the past, back when America was able to coordinate to do ambitious things, worked pretty hard. So if you want to have a country that is unable to recreate glories of the past, spread the idea that it's bad to work hard.

All this only happens if you have an idea of work as a draining thing, a net negative on the individual doing the work. But I am happier because of the work that I have done. I am a better person than I was before.

Nobody goes to the kung fu school and says "hey it's bad to exercise this much, you shouldn't kick so high or punch so fast, just make sure not to train that much, okay?" But for some reason we have decided it's okay to give people this advice in other realms. You know what, I never felt as good physically as I did when I was in serious kung fu training. (Never looked as good either).

If you are in a job that actually is damaging if you do it too much for too long, then by all means, minimize that -- but you know what, in today's world, there are always proximal things you can do that are not damaging that will improve your job or your ability to do your job over time.

But advice like this does not make the distinction between jobs that are damaging and jobs that aren't. We're losing the idea that the latter thing exists, and I think that is very bad for the overall development of our society.

What makes you think that young people will listen to anything you tell them?

The point of the article is that you can absolutely love your work today but hate it at some point in the future (even if it's not physically straining). If you invest yourself in a job it can always be damaging.

In that way, telling people to work hard to "build a thriving society" is like telling people to drive over the speed limit because they'll get there faster. It can work but doing it too much can be dangerous.

> what would be the cost to our society, and to the individuals personally, if Einstein, Dirac, Pauli, or whoever had been told to cut down on the amount of time they spend thinking about physics stuff, they need to achieve good work/life balance.

I think Einstein's balancing of work (at the Patent Office) / life (his academic hobby in Physics) served him well.

> Nobody goes to the kung fu school and says "hey it's bad to exercise this much, you shouldn't kick so high or punch so fast, just make sure not to train that much, okay?"

Overtraining is absolutely a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Overtraining

> in today's world, there are always proximal things you can do that are not damaging that will improve your job or your ability to do your job over time.

There's always an opportunity cost, even if those proximal things don't directly cause damage. For your impassioned knowledge worker, this might be not getting enough sleep, or not practicing your more general interpersonal skills, or not having enough downtime to let your subconcious mull over work problems from new angles. Working hard is great... to a point. Doing nothing but working hard can have some serious side effects, including to your productivity, that one should be cognizant of. Yes, even if you seem to enjoy your job.

> Einstein, Dirac, Pauli

It sure helps to be dead by now. Try James Watson for a really motivating example.

For many years my career was my entire identity: I really, really wanted to be a designer. I thought it was the coolest thing EVER.

Then my son was born and I couldn't quite make this designer career/life that I wanted. I also realized I wasn't AMAZING at it, but I was GOOD at it. I couldn't quite get over that threshold. So therefore, not being at the top of my game and trying to feed my family became a problem.

I gave it up and became a programmer, which I don't attach myself too as much these days. I tell people I'm a parent first, board gamer second, programmer third. Whereas before, I was a designer-everything.

Life is always changing-- change with it.

My mother was very much like this. When she retired, she found it quite hard to re-adjust. Fortunately she has a few hobbies to fall back on.

Personally, I find it quite a hard balance to get right. On the one hand, tying your identity whole-heartedly to your profession seems dangerous. On the other, being entirely apathetic about it seems like a waste of a life (that is, one spent mostly at work). I try to hang somewhere in the middle, but it's something I try to stay on top of.

Love your job and you'll never work a day in your life. Live your job and you won't have any love left to give.

Very succinctly put!

The problem I have with this is that love is a complicated thing. I love playing soccer, but without the social validation of my friends who also play it I would absolutely never practice. Similarly for most careers, even highly lovable ones.

same for jamming blues/jazz.

social communication without using words. amazing social cohesion.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17523149 I like that outlook

>> “Find something you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life” is another college-counseling standby of unknown provenance.

> That is probably the biggest load of crap foisted on pop culture in a while. I love what I do, and I work every day. This morning's task is reviewing a help file for accuracy. Hol-ee shite, that's not why I got into programming computers when I was 12. But it needs to be done, and I'm one of the ones that can knowledgeably review it. I really should write that test plan, but I keep putting it off for obvious reasons. Oh, sure, I get to play Puzzle Solver by shuffling some bits around, and it's what I spend most of my days doing, but it ain't all fun and games.

> And that's just Working for The Man(tm). Gonna start a brewpub? Maybe an online SaaS business? Oh, my friend, your crap work has just begun; so much so, you might have to leave the fun stuff to your employees. You will work every day, and hard.

> Don't get the wrong idea, I look forward to going to work most days, and I've been doing this for a long while. But there's a reason they call it "work", and there's a reason they pay you. Enjoy the hell out of the enjoyable parts, and when the less enjoyable work comes, remember that you are (if of the average HN demographic) paid handsomely for it.

“ The test of whether people love what they do is whether they'd do it even if they weren't paid for it—even if they had to work at another job to make a living. How many corporate lawyers would do their current work if they had to do it for free, in their spare time, and take day jobs as waiters to support themselves?”

http://www.paulgraham.com/love.html

If you aren’t honest with yourself about why you got into a profession it may wear against your psyche and burn you out. The lawyer knew chasing status would require a sacrifice of happiness, time, and relationships but didn’t want to admit it.

I think there's a bias against (corporate) lawyers here. The ones I know would definitely do something very close to their day job.

Also, it makes it seem like there's an endless supply of waiter jobs lined up for the the taking.

But this has been debated at length on HN https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2018/07/find-you... and https://www.theminimalists.com/cal/

I love my job. My work is interesting. My peers are delightful. I’ve had great jobs and a great career.

My job is not my whole identity. It is 0% of my identity. It’s just a job. If I had FU money I’d peace out tomorrow and work on hobby projects in my spare time.

These days I feel like I’m the oddball. I don’t associate my job or hobby with my identity. I couldn’t tell you my “identity” if I tried. I’m a soup of likes, dislikes, hopes, fears, and more. I don’t really understand why people try to put their identity in a tight box with a neat label.

Completely agree with this. It's one reason why I like being a teacher (and one reason why it'd be hard to leave, even if it's for a job that has a much higher chance of allowing me to make FU money). I have several months off (well, not off as I do have to do stuff, but I can work from home mostly), of the course of the year, to pursue hobbies and basically anything I want to, even if it's just being super lazy. I really enjoy that, and it makes for a much better work-life balance.

I’ve seen a few “20 year” or “30 year” managers. I can’t help but wonder how their methods might have varied if they had been exposed to even one other organization’s way of doing things. Also, do they subconsciously value “company-loyal” employees over others with equivalent or superior experience?

Generally I feel that varied experiences matter more, even if you get unlucky and spend a handful of years in a less-stellar team.

I’ve often seen it with military personnel who fail in their transition from their military to post-military lives.

Some people invest so much of themselves into just a singular self-identity they are permanently anchored to it unless/until a forcing function compels an existential change.

I believe competing interests for time such as passions/hobbies and side hustles provide bridges from one employment career to another.

However, the mirror to workaholism is having too many passions/hobbies and side hustles outside of work leading to distraction and dilution.

Broad, deep, and substantial focus on singular topics/areas is important, for a time.

People want their lives to have meaning, often measured thru impactful and measurable work.

But not at the expense of losing one’s option to seek balance and joy.

I wonder what the money equivalent is of the term "first world problems". Millions of Americans spend sixty hours a week at work and still worry about whether they need to give up their health insurance this year so they can afford to replace their fifteen year old car because they'll lose their job if it breaks down and makes them late again.

I read this as "we should be content with being well-paid wage slaves because there are lots of underpaid wage slaves". Having to give our best 40+ hours every week to simply exist is soul-crushing and society-weakening. If you "need" to have a job, you are more like those struggling millions of Americans than you are like the moneyed elite, even if you aren't stressed about money on a day-to-day basis. You still aren't free.

People by and large don't want to be free. Society is the choice to trade freedom for safety and predictability.

Happiness scales with income until about the $200,000 mark where it levels off. If you're making six digits you have more in common with Jeff Bezos than you do with someone making minimum wage.

I don't think that's true in the Bay Area or New York. Having a house instead of renting in either area, for example, has an appreciable boost in happiness.

Here's a common sentiment amongst those with too much time on their hands:

"When I am on my deathbed, I don't want to look back on my life with regret."

The deathbed part of your life isn't even that long. Probably a week or something. And probably you'll spend much of it being distracted by morphine and excruciating pain, leaving no room for feeling sad about how shit your life was. Maybe you should just tell future-you to suck it up and let you play your xbox in peace.

That is a good retort, very much reminds me of Parfit’s explorations of our relationship to our future selves.

That doesn't sound like a life sentiment you'd regret, even if you weren't on morphine.

> The deathbed part of your life isn't even that long. Probably a week or something.

Assuming you’re in a developed country, you’ve either been very lucky or haven’t yet had many friends or family on their death bed. It typically lasts several weeks to several months. If you have a family member who is dying of Alzheimer’s (I have), it can last years.

One week would be very fortunate indeed.

That said, I do kind of agree with your sentiment. Even if it’s months, your death bed is still typically a relatively small part of your life.

I recently started therapy because I relate to this. I'm a definitely a workaholic and I enjoy coding as an artform.

I found myself using work as an escape mechanism for my mother's suicide, and it has taken me 11 years to realize that was a mistake and I should focus less on career and more on being a caring social person.

I have a really nice job and I'm thankful for what it has given me, but it is clear that I have to walk away and work on being happy rather than productive.

>As a psychologist, I specialize in mental health challenges associated with high-pressure careers. People like Dan show up in my office every day — so often, in fact, I had to build a company, Azimuth Psychological, to focus on serving their needs.

Native advertising.

The 21st century should provide a new model for "lifestyle" and career choices as longevity hits its stride and more studies are published.

Between self, relationships, health, career and hobbies, you can only reasonably pick 2 or 3 for prime year successes (except for a lucky/talented/free-rided few) and causes many to spread themselves too thin keeping up with tradition to enjoy success on any them by their golden years.

Its hard to tell if its caveman logic or the females biological clock that dictates rushing into everything at an early age, but career burnout, high divorce rates and health/mental issues at an early age sacrifice too much for the meager returns.

We'll have to compare notes at a later time, but digital natives may hit critical mass this decade (or next) and kick much of the analog work ethics, career timelines and family syncronization theories to the curb in favor of delayed milestones (career and otherwise) as we inch closer to 100 year life-spans with proper planning.

I always feel a bit sad when I see people who are younger than me and much more successful with their career.

But on the other hand I don't work much (<20h/week) so it's probably okay.

People tell me that I didn't "live up to my full potential". I say, "I know. That would have been exhausting."

Good point.

It's a bit sad about the missed opportunities, but my privat life is awesome, so it's okay.

déformation professionnelle https://wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9formation_professionnelle

Furthermore I fundamentally believe that individuals in this state have their social and political opinions shaped by their enmeshed, single professional identity.

I believe professionals such as this are far more likely to only have opions which avoid controversy or are on the side of a social current consistent with those in their industry or customers at large.

Their personal choices become indistinguishable from that of a well thought out PR team.

In particular I suggest this phenom is right at the root of a lot of localist vs globalist antagonism. Most professionals would probably err on the side of economic liberalism in the more general sense because it makes sense for their enmeshed professional identity.

But the personal identity which is obfuscated may have much more connection with the community,uch more likely to know and empathize with those affected. Or maybe even just at odds with the professional identity for whatever reason.

When I left my very corporate job it took me months to realise how free I was to have basically any opinion that I wanted and didn't realize how much I must have been orienting my thoughts into a direction that would be acceptable to my peers. (or what I thought would be acceptable).

I'm very supportive of the fact there is research on this.

I feel like many workplaces push you to do this, regardless of the prospects. I've worked dead-end admin positions where I was expected to give inordinate amount of myself - my time, my energy, my focus - to work that was, as per the dead end-edness, not going to lead to positive renumeration vis á vis the investment. There was no awareness of where the job, the business, the industry really was, a predictable but unfortunate result of the decision-makers being either people in one of the few positions or people gunning (with realistic prospects of achieving) one. Just a sort of blind adherence to corporate dogma. Meanwhile, the HN et al. line is, "Those are only transitory jobs, it's okay that they don't pay a living wage or treat you with any dignity, you're supposed to move on from them." Not within the organization, apparently. So we're to betray the people who gave us the opportunity which we're supposed to be so appreciative of? Doesn't that go directly against that corporate dogma we're around every day?

The unspoken and contradictory of etiquette of the American workplace is frustrating and demoralizing.

Certain high achievers in their career use their career as a cover for general failings in other parts of their life. I’ve seen it a few times and it ends badly when it all finally catches up to them, often too late in life to do much about it. Some people are very happy to have their career be their whole identity, but most don’t think that way and define “success” as success across multiple areas of their life.

It's better than your whole identity and existence constituting clinical depression, video games and no career—let alone work history.

Different outcome, but similar cause. The high-pressure system of achievement is a cause for both high-profile burnout and hikikomori [0] [1].

[0] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/young-people-j... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikikomori

That drum major instinct is a real fucker if you don’t see it for what it is and point it in the right direction. https://kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/dru...

I disagree that “enmeshment” is always bad. What we do, especially when we are fortunate enough to choose and enjoy our careers, are fundamental to who we are and the narrative that work is solely there to provide income is not always true.

We spend the majority of our time, effort, and thought around our work. To say that none of this should touch on our identity would be doing a disservice to the majority of our time spent living.

It is true, that some people are not “enmeshed”, but are consumed with work, but what about the people that do find happiness and fulfillment in their “high-powered” job? Dan’s failure to recognize his own needs are not a reflection of “enmeshment” being bad, but a reminder that if you do not pay attention to your own wants and desires you will be unhappy, regardless of how successful you are. That if you do need the job and hate it, to make sure you’re making the right trade-offs to have a happy life - see the recommendations in the article for how.

This anti-work ethic you see crop up once in a while is delusion. Success comes from perseverance, not idleness or detachment.

A few days ago, there was an article from some CEO claiming that you don't need to work hard to succeed. Today, we have an article from HBR cautioning about becoming too invested in one's work. This sentiment is dangerous. It's harmful to teach young people to be cynical, indifferent, and lazy, because the vast majority of progress really is made by the passionate and dedicated genius, not the detached crank-turner that HBR writers want impressionable young people to become.

Have a few people succeed without trying? Sure. They were stupid and lucky. Are you one of these people? Almost certainly not. Look at the history of science and innovation: the truth that emerges is that breakthroughs come not from relaxation, but from a combination of passion and hard work.

It may be an effect of the economic bubble we're in. It's an ethos that doesn't survive a crash :)

Yes. Kipling's gods of the copybook headings return in a rush when a stock market bubble pops. I wonder to what extent you can predict a crash by sensing when the mood of a society has disconnected effort from reward.

Or maybe people are working harder each year for decreasing post-inflation-adjusted wages and decreasing benefits, wages are not keeping up with costs in many industries and places, they are stressed out and asking why they put themselves through this.

Or perhaps, a scenario that will be familiar to many in tech and I know I have personally witnessed, that some corporate cultures are so completely full of narcissism, and they sweep people up until they think this sort of beast is normal, having a toll on mental health.

Working hard is good, but working so hard that you completely neglect rest of your life isn't. For most people's well being things like family and hobbies are at least as important as work, and there's nothing wrong with that. If our economic system doesn't allow them to enjoy those parts of their lives, then the fault lies on the system, not on individuals.

This really depends on how you define success.

If success means creating something unique, new, and amazing that is known and loved by millions, whether that be a company, piece of art, or scientific innovation, then yes, it's unlikely you'll get there without an enormous amount of hard work, and unlikely you'll get there even if you put in that work.

If success means happily living with your partner in the suburbs of a flyover state in a moderately-sized house with a big backyard for your kids, you don't need to tie your life to your career.

People born with talent have an opportunity to both themselves and the world to make use of this talent to do great things. When you replace a drive for greatness with contentment with mediocrity, you make us all worse off.

Less than one in 10,000 will have an opportunity of "greatness".

Most people might get moderate success, and if they take than with good grace and leave space and time in their lives for their community and their health we will all be better off.

Guess what, nobody owes you, or the world at large, a thing. We only have one life and everyone's priorities are different. Want to spend your life chasing greatness? Be my guest. But if one would rather define happiness through friends and family, they have every right to do so. And plenty of people will be better off for that, themselves included.

Add to the fact, nobody chasing "greatness" (i.e. Outstanding recognition) had to be told to. They want to.

This anxiety surrounding advice advocating more self-awareness bc would-be influences might suddenly get lazy is ridiculous.

I think you are confusing "anti-work ethic" with the potential consequences of identity enmeshment with occupation, as this article describes. Western societies distribute social status, (read success) by occupation or by some community/world changing contribution. This puts pressure on individuals to sacrifice their psychological wellbeing in order to feel valued. But the choice to strive for social status and success is an individual one. Albeit not always conscious. You are free to work your ass off, but psychological health as a skill is neglected in our society. If people are to make world changing contributions, they should be aware of the consequences.

I almost downvoted your comment but decided not to, since I don't think it's good to do that just because I disagree with someone.

But I see your argument being repeated a lot, especially by successful people and the owner class, basically the people we think of as the top 10% and the 1%.

There are a couple of fallacies with your argument:

The first is that you view the unsuccessful as not hard-working enough. This goes back to the dawn of civilization and notions like republicanism (that some are endowed by the creator to be superior at handling matters of power, finance and government so their vote should take priority over the vote of the plebeian/proletariat) and continued up through feudalism and slavery. We still see it today in gerrymandering, voter suppression and the return of nationalism. It's a way to rationalize inequality by focusing on the individual instead of the system.

Which brings us to the second fallacy, which is that a person's situation is mostly dependent on individual effort. There are numerous studies indicating that upward mobility is falling in the US and around the world:

https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/07/social-...

So that the primary indicators of success today are being born into wealth or living in a wealthy community.

Personally, I think we're past a tipping point where wealth inequality is now too large to contain and we're in danger of losing democracy, which could lead to violent revolution and possibly world war III. Short of that, we're looking at the decline and extinction of all threatened species by the end of the century. Concentrated wealth is IMHO the number one threat to civilization and leads to the great problems of our time like underemployment and the failure to address externalities.

That said, I do agree that it's better to persevere than to give up.

I see your argument a lot more often that mine. Both are very old. This idea that success is random and therefore inequality is unfair also goes back to the dawn of civilization. Nevertheless, in history, it's far more often the brilliant individual than the expansive committee that's driven us forward. Do you really think that each person really is endowed with equal faculties for dealing with money and technology? Is merit an illusion? I just can't accept that.

Most non-inherited wealth --- not all, granted --- is deserved. (Inheritance of massive wealth is a problem because it grants unearned power to unproven people.) I think if we'd strictly applied the principles you invoke, our species would have never left the trees.

This is not so much about 'hard work' or 'idleness' it's about 'identity', which errs towards a certain kind of professional identity when one is working all the time.

It's a very real phenom.

Also - consider that most 'extremely hardworking' bankers and lawyers are not creating jack (!) rather, they're competing with one another for customers and status. If they all chilled down none of us would notice in terms of lower value creation.

I agree but many jobs today are seriously mundane and dont really allow for much creativity. I think it makes sense to put effort into other aspects of life and crank up your work hours towards something that'll have a lasting impact.

You ought to try to not think in extremes and false dichotomies. Suggesting that we refrain from fully identifying and enmeshing ourselves in our work is not advocating an "anti-work ethic".

"Success comes from perseverance, not idleness or detachment."

Beyond the false dichotomy, how are you defining success? By discovering/developing breakthroughs that earn a place in history? Given how few those people really are, it's a pretty good argument against not bothering to even try.

The problem is that we're often expected to make our career our identity. If you don't, then you get passed over for a promotion/hire while the workaholic gets a promotion.

This problem is especially acute in the U.S. where one of the first questions people ask each other when they meet is "what do you do"

What happens? Your marriage suffers (if you have one). Your children suffer (if you have any). And you suffer.

And it's not just work. If your side project becomes your whole identity, the same is true.

This is a framework for thinking about resilience https://www.theresiliencedoughnut.com.au/.

In a nutshell if you build all your esteem from work, you only get 1/2 of the 7 factors i.e. Skill, Money. But you need at least 3 and ideally more to whether life's shocks. If you lose your job/career you might be left with zero. But if you also invest in say friends and community, losing your job is less of a blow.

I've had four careers, and each one became pretty much my whole identity. For some years, anyway. But eventually, I found myself becoming interested in something else. And eventually, that something else became a career. After a period of chaos, anyway.

And now my privacy/anonymity hobby has basically become a career. Except that I mostly don't get paid. Which isn't an issue.

The Art of Manliness podcast had a great episode about this: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/podcast-547-achievin...

Made me think harder about the specific things I enjoy about programming.

The book Dark Horse expands on the topic.

Everyone who defines themselves by their job should move to LA for a few years. In LA everyone is an actor just working a different job until they make it.

I know many farmers.

Think only problematic insomuch as your career doesn't equal your higher calling, i.e. your career is status driven or following the herd.

My career is not a high paying one, or one that involves chasing trends. It is a thing I love doing and would be doing on the side if I had another career; I’ve done that in the past. It is still most of my life by default and this does feel like a problem.

It is a differently shaped problem than “infinite overtime and trying to constantly present as Rich Enough” but it is a problem.

(I am an artist who mostly draws independent long-form narrative comics.)

The problem is most careers don't really qualify as "higher callings".

Originally "higher calling" meant a much more important (e.g. scientific, humanitarian, patriotic, artistic, priesthood, etc.) not some person working up a management career in some BS enterprise selling BS through marketing...

So while a doctor might have his "higher calling" as career, I doubt that can be the case for the millions of corporate drones...

You might be surprised to find that many doctors fall into the very description in this article. Higher calling is a social construct and the reality is being a physician is a _lot_ of hours, a lot of BS, and a lot of patients who need self help more than your help. Its in most ways just like any other job, if you don't find some satisfaction in the actual work, you are going to be miserable. Many are.

>the reality is being a physician is a _lot_ of hours, a lot of BS, and a lot of patients who need self help more than your help

Sure. In the end though, you help people and occasionally save lives, you don't market and sell sugared soda water, nor are you a middleman in the paper market, or someone that devises new schemes to part people from their money via convincing ads, or tap away at some Dilbert style cube job.

So it's more appropriate to be a higher calling (and has historically been seen as such by many doctors) than some cube job.

Higher calling jobs still have drudgery and boring parts (plus useless bureaucracy to fight).

work as identity burnout as lifestyle - erza klien had a good podcast about this llast year.

It beats changing diapers.

You can love your job but it will never love you back.

If you’re the kind of person is always troubled by something (most people are), directing that unsettled nagging feeling into your work is the best thing you can do.

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