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Comment by JasonFruit | Hacker News Reader

I agree with a lot of this article, but much of the suggested action at the end strikes me as flawed.

> Don’t force yourself to do anything you hate. If you get too good at this, you won’t be able to figure out when to quit.

I'd moderate this a bit. Maybe, "If you are forcing yourself to do what you hate, step back and think: is the goal worth the slog to me?"

> Be suspicious of roles that compensate you with status or non-financial rewards.

This is the worst, to me. Purely financial motivation is one of the surest ways to be trapped in a role you hate. Make sure what you do offers you personal and social rewards that you value.

> Join Twitter — there’s no better way to reduce tunnel vision.

Twitter is the most awful social-pressure tool ever created. Please, I beg of you, do not join Twitter!

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I came here to post the same comment about financial compensation.

Focusing on money is just another mimetic trap (though one with very nice side effects). There are a lot of dudes in our demographic hitting their thirties and realizing in despair that they are financially comfortable and yet their life feels utterly empty and meaningless.

The best metric I know to avoid this trap is that the things I spend my time on should scratch at least one of:

1. Be relaxing, enjoyable, or personally rewarding. It should help me recharge and unwind to prepare for the rest of this list.

2. Gain or improve a useful skill that I can then apply to the last item on this list.

3. Benefit other people.

In other words, be healthy so that I can be effective so that I can be helpful. When I stay centered on this (without obsessing about it), I'm generally happy with how I spend my time.

> Twitter is the most awful social-pressure tool ever created.

Twitter, perhaps to a larger degree than any other social network, is whatever you make it into. Yes, if you follow a bunch of hustle-culture drones (or people who retweet that), your feed will make you miserable. Follow different people and you'll get a totally different Twitter. My feed is generally nourishing, supportive, and rewarding, though it takes fairly frequent gardening to keep it such.

I focus on money now, in early/mid career, so that in the future I'll have total freedom to do whatever I want.

Then the odds are good that you are already falling into the mimetic trap I'm describing.

The article describes mimetic trap as "it hurts to leave, and there’s nowhere to go".

Being able to retire at the middle of the career sounds like the opposite of that.

Will you, or will the urge to make more take over? I don't know you, so I can't assume, but I've heard a lot more people talk about retiring at 40 than do it when they could.

Two observations:

1. A lot of people who focus on their financial ability to retire early get so obsessed about the feelings of financial security that comes from that level of income that they are unable to give it up even when they probably could retire.

The parent commenter says, "total freedom to do whatever I want" but there is no level of wealth that gives you "total freedom". No matter what, there is always a potential calamity of sufficient power to knock you down. But the more you lock yourself into the mindset of "I just need to have enough money to prepare for anything" the less you are able to gain the resilience needed to actually be happy now.

2. I think you're equating "money" with "somewhere to go". It's certainly true that wealth gives you options. But if the goal is to ultimately feel satisfied with your life, then having many things you can afford to buy none of which make you happy can put you exactly in the position where you have "nowhere to go".

The time you spend focusing on earning money is time not spent figuring out what choices are actually deeply rewarding to you. And knowing the answer to the latter is critical if you want to know where to go.

>> Be suspicious of roles that compensate you with status or non-financial rewards.

> This is the worst, to me. Purely financial motivation is one of the surest ways to be trapped in a role you hate. Make sure what you do offers you personal and social rewards that you value.

Money is fungible for a great many things in life- the risk you take working for other things (ideals, status, etc) is that, if you become disillusioned, you're left with nothing.

This has happened to friends of mine in social work. They believed they could make a difference, went through all the hoops, kept up with the continuing education and licensing requirements (not covered by the state, obviously) and after years completely disillusioned from the bureaucracy and human nature.

> the risk you take working for other things (ideals, status, etc) is that, if you become disillusioned, you're left with nothing. > This has happened to friends of mine in social work.

Yes. Worse, after that many years working (e.g. in social work) for ideals|status|etc., whatever other employable skills (e.g. coding) that you may have had has now atrophied.

Even if you kept up your skills in your own time, you still have this long employment "gap" to get over in your job hunt / resume / interviewing.

So if you become disillusioned, you're left with nothing, and might now be stuck continuing to work in that disillusionment (to put food on the table).

Joining/using Twitter is in direct conflict with the first goal of "Don't force yourself to do anything you hate"

> Join Twitter — there’s no better way to reduce tunnel vision.

Maybe this is a slight over-reaction, but if a person made that recommendation I would view everything else they said with strong suspicion. How can a mind go so wrong that they think that's good advice? Even seemingly sensible advice from that person would merit extra scrutiny, because of the tainted source.

I agreed with all his points but the Twitter one.

Alternatively I would propose to work a job in a wildly different field for a few months, for example waiting tables, in a grocery or at a recycling company. Your horizon will be exploded by the people you meet and work with.

I've found twitter to be a kind of mimetic testing ground where you can put your mastery of certain mimetic forces to the test. Not sure what the ultimate test is, I think it might be to quit completely, but without skipping the test of becoming a user -- there's a lot to be learned in going through that wringer.

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