Jonathan Blow on work-life balance and working hard [video]

From 1m in,

> People who talk about work-life balance do not bring into the discussion this situation where work is actually good for you, and enjoyable. And I think that warps the discussion terribly.

He then goes on to talk about Carmack also working long weeks because he wanted to.

It's just so exceedingly rare to have a small group, to be really vested in deciding where and how to go, and to be included in the rewards & returns too.

Closing this gap seems like one of the key, most vital problems civilization faces. Humans believing in their own potential, reaching, as Jonathan advocates in this video, is so important. But industry has scaled and scaled and scaled, and there's so few people left making decisions, so few opportunities. Vast systems working from the top down, ossified power structures are everywhere.

The social safety net is trash, the cost of living is sky high. Jonathan keeps talking about life choices, but most people don't have access to the high-return opt-in lean-in situations. Jonathan is raising up historical anomalies, very exceptional people, and it takes hard work to get there, but I also think he's missing what an exceptional Carmack rose through. A team of a dozen people working hard is not going to launch another John Carmack again, not going to be a major change to the industry: it was an earlier time, with more potential, operating at a different scale. There's still some great potentials about, for sure. And ultimately I agree, I want to see more work hard people, and I think it's fulfilling & a life greatly used is amazing. But I think that environmentally, there's much less potential for people to get into great involved work, and there's far fewer rewards & opportunities where being really good at your job pays off greatly.

Ultimately Jonathan just seems to want recognition that working hard matters, that you can become a far more productive & capable person by working hard. You can invest in yourself & become something far different by working hard. I can agree with that. But the list of caveats, the titaneous position against those who don't want balance but only want to tilt: it seems like such a vast & encompassing scope. It seems so unlikely to matter, & so likely to consume you, to use yourself up, without yielding a real difference. I'd like to see us- society- better amplify what we might become, through hard work. To enable us to stake ourselves in more directly.