Hacker News Reader

Thank you for sharing - 100% agree.

I always try to keep this Alan Watts quote in mind: “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”

What you say is true, yet we should aspire high standards, so that we can find out what we are able to achieve.

If you set your bar too low, you will never surprise yourself with doing what your previous self deemed impossible, but what your current self managed to do.

Most people I meet can do a lot more, by my assessment, than they think they are capable of. Their own thinking then hinders them from trying, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy.

The trick is to keep a positive-curious attitude about it "let's see if I can" rather than obsessing about others and comparing. Comparing is superficial (people who want to boast do it a lot), and never apples-to-apples, as no-one has the same starting point (parent connections, wealth, genetic disposition/talent etc.).

Aspiring to overly high standards risks viewing yourself as a failure. There's an extent to which being ambitious drives you to achieve more, but there's also an extent to which it just leaves you feeling depressed about your failures and achieving less as a result. I don't think it's possible for anyone to calibrate that level without help from others who can provide a neutral perspective.

I love “positive-curious” it’s amazing state to be in & inspire others to take. I enjoy helping people develop into their full potential!

I too used to think setting a high bar was the way to get there. Maybe at the start it is.

But then, when I consistently reached beyond what I was capable of, the cost of downfall became overwhelming. After years of that, I couldn’t get back up again.

Then I asked a new question:

What if I let go of “should?”

The justifications for taking action were masking something very beautiful.

When the “should” is gone, what’s left is intrinsic motivation.

Turns out I’m curious & love trying new things. I also attract people like that & enjoy hanging out with them.

Now I’m doing the most impactful work of my life, but with much less pressure on myself.

Sometimes I worry about all the things I didn’t do that I thought I would. Rather than turn that into “I’ll get back on track” I simply acknowledge that I’m feeling sad & experiencing some fear about the meaning of my life.

The gift I get in return:

I can be open with my team that I feel afraid, breath, and refocus on enjoying the day.

While I agree that folks tend to doubt themselves and it holds them back, I would caution against holding that against them though (I know you didn't say it explicitly, but it feels that way when you say "their own thinking").

Folks, like you say, come from a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences. Those who you think could do more, likely have experienced some "reason" behind their current situation or achievements (trauma, immediate concerns of taking care of family, etc).

And so, unfortunately, not everyone has the ability or opportunity to adopt a positive-curious attitude. I will say that such an attitude does tend to arise when coming from a safe / secure background (loving parents, a safety net, etc.). It can arise without those things, but no guarantees either way I suppose.

I'm getting to the point where I can myself, but it's been a struggle of getting to the point of feeling safe financially. My own situation is unique, no familial support (more the opposite truly), a need to provide enough for myself (I have chronic conditions). And thus while I'd like to "achieve", I must balance that with "survive". One day I'd like to do more, and I believe I'll get there. Fingers crossed.

I recognize that this is largely a tech forum, but I find it interesting that you choose being a founder or CEO of Google as your benchmarks as opposed to walking on the moon, curing cancer, or something else. Not a critique, just an observation.

Having spent time in biology, being CEO of Google is a way more realistic goal than curing cancer. As far as the moon, I grew up on Star Trek and the idea of spending my life in space and seeing new things was absolutely what I wanted. But once I found that Earth contained a lot of utterly fascinating people, being able to meet them mattered more to me than spending a shitload of time getting as far away from them as possible to do a fairly small amount of rock collection - I'm going to be exposed to more new ideas staying here than I am up there.

But it's a fair point! Our aspirational goals are influenced by what we believe is possible, and that's amazingly contextual. What we're lead to believe is possible changes what we believe should be possible for us, and that changes the standards we set for ourselves.

Well sure. But if one is looking to find "purpose" in life then neither a unicorn nor being ceo of Google does much relative to curing cancer or space exploration. I guess i found it interesting that the suggested "purposes" were so....meager.

Considering the huge role that Google plays in many peoples lives and in many other businesses, surely the CEO has a huge potential to do good (or evil). Hell, they could decide to invest shitloads of Google money into cancer research and space exploration.

It's not a career path I'm shooting for, but if you made me Google CEO tomorrow I doubt lack of purpose would be an issue.

Walking on the moon (or Mars) likely gets boring very soon.

The experiences as a CEO of a large company seem much more interesting, and you get to hire a team of experts working on those cures (or whatever floats your Boaty McBoatface).

Hi, Matthew!

I've always found your technical talks, blog write-ups, and mailing list posts to be interesting and educating. And thank you for all the work you did, and do, in the various FOSS communities — that's already a significant impact for the better.

PS: It was a pleasure to interact with you at a few Linux Foundation events. I still remember the Edinburgh speaker event (2018, IIRC) where you've regaled us with some interesting "security incident" stories :-).

This is an exceptionally kind take. Thank you!

That means a lot, thank you!

> I'm at peace with the fact that I'm never going to found the next unicorn company or be CEO of Google or even write some software that a lot of people care about.

There's nothing that's stopping you from creating that first personal project, which other people eventually care about.

> this is a great time to find a therapist who can help you work through that

this is probably the best advice i've read so far. Think about how, when faced with a hard technical problem, an SME is a treasure trove of answers. A good therapist is an SME in this problem space.