Parent time
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The way Paul words it is like this:
> Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. (...). If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. (...)
(...)
> When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience.
> If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
This reflection in general has transformed not only how I look at time, but also how I look at work. I ask myself, is _my work_ bullshit? Is this _task_ bullshit? Is my way of spending _time_ bullshit?
I found it quite eye opening: https://dkb.show/post/life-is-not-short
So basically any job?
Not every job is bullshit and not every way of working is bullshit IMO.
So would you sign up for these jobs? Probably not, because they often require a lot of work or not much money (very region dependent) or something hard to deal with. In comparison, you can be paid insane amounts to code skinner boxes or ad optimisation in a well-lit office.
Even if we drop the semi-religious way people speak of him, or even view him in the most uncharitable light, he has a ton of awe-inducing projects going on. At the same time, he seems to spend a lot of time getting embroiled in the most inane nonsense, to say nothing of his social media activity.
Most work stuff can be considered bullshit, but it pays the bills.
For those 8 hours - 8 hours I'd spend anyway - I play the game in the way it needs to be played to paid handsomely.
Sure I guess I could go and do my own start up and be my own boss, but life is too short for that. Swallow the corporate pill, play the game, and come out at 5pm with loads more money you'd make unless you were one of the 0.0000001% who are unicorn founders and walk away with xx millions.
but to get there you need much more dedication and smart work than you currently do as employee
so, instead of trying that, you choose to lease 8 hours a day to a corporate overlord
you will earn money, but no legacy and no respect
At a former employer, I was part of a team of a couple dozen engineers and digital designers who were working on an LTE remote radiohead and base station product. Around the time we were releasing this product, Fabrice released this [0].
Fabrice is a tremendous talent, in our world he would be analogous to a Kobe Bryant or a Wayne Gretzky, so I find it flatly obnoxious that this is the bar that's being raised in this thread.
It doesn't matter how hard I eschew the bullshit in my life and everything else "standing in my way" to try to build a legacy. I am not like Fabrice. It's unlikely anyone in this comment thread is like Fabrice. There are so very few people who are on his level, you could probably count them all on 2 hands. It's absurd to think that this is what everyone eeds to strive for in life.
The reason I'm asking these things is that we often hear the words legacy and respect in specific contexts similar to this one, but there isn't much follow up as to what this respect and legacy entails for the individual or exactly why it is so important compared to other aspects. This is a crucial part for our life plan because we consider people like Fabrice in retrospect after they have already succeeded, in a fun twist on the anthropic principle, but we don't consider the alternative Fabrices who have failed in other universes and risked everything for legacy. And we rarely consider the past Fabrices in our own universe from previous generations whom we have already forgotten despite their success.
You could grow as a person, you could be very passionate and driven, etc. - but you could also end up quite depressed when things die down (speaking from experience sadly).
I still think startups are awesome, but if you view work as a transaction, having a good corporate job can be a better transaction for many folks, especially if work is only a part of your life, not the defining feature. Time with your children when they are young is often the easiest to explain, but same goes for time with parents/grandparents, time to work on passion projects, etc.
Working a regular 9-5 that pays me well is so much better than the stress and time sink of starting my own company. It's stable, it's easy, and it gives me plenty of time and money to spend with my family.
Not everyone searches for meaning in their work. I enjoy my day job, but my satisfaction in life comes from what I do off the clock.
My family is my legacy and my respect. IDGAF what my peers think of me - why does that matter? I get a raise based on performance each year, and that's enough for me.
I guess.
Success is not guaranteed at all, and the statistics show more than half of them fail.
Better title: "If you see your mid-sixties parents once per year you'll see them 15 more times"
The actual tweet (3 down from the first one which is all just suspense building)
``` The moment of vulnerability sparked an interaction that changed my life:
George: “How often do you see your parents?"
Me: “Maybe once a year now.”
George: “And how old are they?"
Me: “Mid-sixties."
George: “Ok, so you’re going to see them 15 more times before they die.” ```
Nitter link without login wall [0].
[0] https://nitter.net/SahilBloom/status/1571137341997318147
I think waitbutwhy (or someone) had a blog post about this a long time ago. This thread doesn't add to that thought, and then asks to follow him..
[1] https://twitter.com/SahilBloom/status/1571137376969453575
IMO it’s good for these sentiments to be rephrased and restated repeatedly. The reason is that these things have to hit you at the right time and in the right way to make the impact that they’re “supposed to.” The first 999 times someone says life is short, you shrug it off and walk straight into another day in zombie-mode (nothing wrong with that!). But the 1000th time someone says it, and you happen to have just gotten off the phone with your mother telling you she has some illness… that’s the time you need to hear it. So you pack up and move across the country.
I believe that’s called “telling a story”.
You should check out the comments on any New Yorker link posted on HN. “The author seemed to use a lot of words and took a long time to get to her point in a very roundabout way. This could’ve been 90% shorter.”
It’s the literary equivalent of Twitter-is-a-weekend-project.
You could also say someone rambling on about something, repeating themselves, using lots of uh, like filler words and stuff and that sort of thing and just generally not really..not really getting to the point is 'called a conversation'; sure, doesn't mean it couldn't be done better.
Sahil Bloom is not Henry James.
> I was out for a drink with a friend.
> We’ll call him George.
> As we settled in, George asked about my life and how I was feeling.
> At first, I gave him the standard response that we’ve all grown so accustomed to:
> “I’m good. Busy!"
> He stared blankly through my empty words.
Where's the info, it's just noise!
God, it even has Buzzfeed formatting...
> Everything we do is in anticipation of the future. When that future comes, we simply reset to the next one.
> “I can’t wait until I’m 18 so I can [X].”
> “I can’t wait until I’m 25 so I can [Y]."
> “I can’t wait until I’m 45 so I can [Z]."
Really? Do "we"? I don't. Maybe Sahil does, but he also realised his parents were mortal and our lives are finite in his 30s (?). I find this trend on social media and in blogs where people make a personal discovery and frame it as if it applies to everyone really condescending. I don't even mean to sound so cynical, but somehow it just rubs me the wrong way.
The same with how he just assumes everyone was lucky enough to have parents who love and care about them (and each other).
He’s not assuming anything so much as writing for a target audience that perhaps of which you’re not a member.
“Should I come back to spend more time with you and the family ?” “Why would you ? Live for the future, contribute, do something new, teach some young kids some politics”
I think that do what’s important to you is excellent advice, it’s not remotely the same for everyone’s family though.
I hope you're finding peace and happiness in whatever you decided to do, friend.
Im not saying that this move was not the right choice for him, but it's definitely not a general advice.
Sounds like the author is well off and can afford to change jobs, move, etc. If their parents lived in a more rural area, it would be a much tougher decision since there's not much work there. Sure, there's remote, but we're not all great at that (and except for the top companies and specific industries, it's only a matter of time before wages are massively pushed down to compete internationally). Some of us might not be capable of landing another job anyways.
As an adult, you're making your own decisions and building your own family.
Your spouse might not really like spending that much time with your parents. And you might not really like her or his parents.
From my experience, staying close to the same people who raised you will keep you in that comfortable but limited childhood state for longer than necessary.
Yeah, this is 100% true. You can, and should, sever ties with abusive individuals where you have the power to do so.
You have the power to choose your family, but some people think it’s an unbreakable life bond and will try to guilt you for all eternity for disagreeing.
Heck, you might not even like your parents. There are a ton of selfish people in the world and many have children. I know my fair share of individuals who were (or are) held back in their own life, happiness, and mental stability because of their emotionally manipulative parents.
More than once I’ve seen someone in this situation being temporarily forced away (due to studies or a job) and flourish in all areas of life, only to regress when they return close to home. It’s harrowing.
Parents aren’t universally good, yet our society is constantly trying to sell us on the idea of “family above all”. Screw that. You didn’t pick your family. You’re under no obligation to suffer your whole life if they’re shitty. Pick good friends instead.
Distance also makes family relationships more meaningful, not less. My parents, grandparents, and siblings all live in different states or countries thousands of miles away. We still plan vacations and meetups and holidays each year, we talk on the phone, online, etc, so the idea I’ll only see them X times before they die don’t add up.
This despite me going back to see varying people roughly twice per year.
I've sadly learned that many of those relationships are a one way street of convenience. They're happy to see me when I come, to walk down memory lane. But they'll never put in the effort to come see me. Sadly this realization has been the demise of many of those relationships that I was carrying.
The difficulty of replacing the depth of relationships you have is a cost that few immigrants realize until "too late"[1], and making new ones is quite difficult because many people who remain in their place/culture will be reasonably satisfied by the quantity/quality of their relationships and thusly not really that open to starting new ones. This is one that that (at one time) made the bay area pretty special, maybe true of Austin now, it's _full_ of people from someonewhere else who are in the same situation -- looking to replace lost relationships and unable to break into calcified cliques.
[1] yeah yeah pedantic HN it's not to late unless your both dead, sure. But it's also awkward af to sit in a room with a friend you havent seen in 10 years and be like "oh what's your wife's name?" (and he gives you a smile "we've been married for 6 years, how can you not know <Jane>'s name?" or similar idea with their kids. You'll come to find their world has moved on and changed, and what you had is just a nice memory.
You don't owe it to them to spend your life living close enough to see them weekly. (or insert schedule you like).
If they want to see you or your children, they could equally move to be close or visit. And sometimes Parents do just that!
I drive to visit them often enough to keep them away from where I live.
So far, only 4 visits in 9 years. Still too many, but manageable. :)
Yes the author should do what he wants to do that maximizes his life utility (ie, go see them instead of doing lesser things). But also there's something about a relationship where the other person refuses to come to you, can't make the effort to travel, buy the plane tickets, or whatever their excuse is.
Though I most always travel to see my mother, one way she helps mitigates is she frequently buys my plane tickets. She won't fly, but if I'll make the time, she'll bear the cost-- so there's definitely can be negotiation... but if someone will only see you on their convenience, and your expense, I'd rethink the value of that relationship
“Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.”
The math (and life) is even more cruel: there's more than 50% chance that at least one of his parents will die before 80. I'm right now on a vacation with my mom, but it's not the same as when both my parents were alive (a year ago).
I'm not a philosopher and haven't analysed this very carefully, but the "lesson" implied by the story strikes me as not just trite but also wrong.
Perhaps I'm just too cynical or the examples chosen (parents, Christmas) are particularly off-putting for me.
> If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times.
Yet, we do not plan to move back closer to our families.
The reason is simple: our relation to our parents is fulfilling as it is and our parents educated us in such a way that we build our own family for ourselves, because the one thing that was granted to us (quoting my own parents) was their unconditional support and love.
Distance sure prevents a lot of small yet meaningful interactions and it sometimes hurts, but the support that we received helped us settle where we wanted and become who we wanted, independently from any geographical or otherwise constraints.
We're infinitely grateful to our parents for that.
App: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.machineryc...
Source code: https://github.com/ethanmdavidson/DeathProgress
Then I started thinking about how many times I will experience other things that matter in my life.
- note-taking including writing down my own ideas - use audio books and trying to associate what I'm listening to with where I am (for me, exertion increases retention :-)) - re-reading or re-listening to books/chapters
I suppose if I could find people to discuss what I'm reading with, that would be even better. But I'd drive most people mad.
A lot of the fiction I read is just for entertainment then and there. Not retaining it isn't a big loss. In fact, it is probably just good for me to forget.
I read between 10 and 20 books per year that are worth retaining. The number of nonfiction books I read depends a lot on how much spare capacity I have for reading and absorbing them. They usually tend to take longer to read in total, and I often re-read chapters, make marginal notes, or take notes in notebooks. I don't often read my notes. I mainly take notes because note-taking itself helps me process and remember what I read. (In general I take a lot of notes and have notebooks going back a few decades).
One thing that helps is actually exercising while listening to the audio book version. If I can listen to an audio book while hiking or bicycling, and I vary the route, I can often remember where I was when I heard something and thinking about a particular hike helps me remember what came next etc. The harder the physical exertion, the better I retain what I heard. (For instance, 8 years ago I was listening to the audio book version of an introduction to immunology and the chapter I remember the most of was the one I listened to while carrying my broken bicycle down a steep hill)
Retention also depends a bit on how the book is written. Some authors write books that have low information density, which makes my mind wander. However, the real challenge isn't retaining the contents, but who wrote it and in which book. I remember ideas, arguments, and often quite a lot of detail - but I forget names and book titles. This is really inconvenient when recommending books I've read because I first have to figure out who wrote it or what the book's title was. (For work-related books I can usually check my notebooks).
I'm living far away from my parents. And I see them once a year (except the last 3 years because of COVID). I came myself to this math, the first time I was to them, and we had a pretty heavy discussion. I understood, I was going to see them 10 to 20 times, 20 days each time, which boils down to about... 1 year?
It really makes you take those 20 days very differently!
The fact that his parents survived until their mid-60s means that they have a life expectancy better than the ~80 year average, as that average includes many people that don't make it to their mid-60s.
Tim Urban has a great post on this, helps you visualize the timing: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html Anyway, this makes me a bit sad considering I've recently moved a 15 hour drive away from my parents. Happy that they have a guest room and for remote work though.
It also makes me ponder the differences in western culture and other places. I know in some cultures family is much more integrated, e.g. the grandparents move-in instead of sending them to a home or something.
I love my city life but I do sometimes imagine living in a compound with my close family. I think it would be tolerable if everyone had their own space but was close in proximity.
Month-to-month (and sometimes even week-to-week) I see how quickly she grows up, and it’s a bittersweet combination of joy and melancholy.
I also moved back to be near family and am working remotely now. I don’t like where I live at all, and I enjoyed working in the office much more than from my house, but seeing my daughter every morning and being next to family is irreplaceable.
(Although to be fair, I wanted to stay in California and just travel to visit family more frequently; my spouse wanted to physically move next to them. I suppose her solution is better for the planet even if I don’t like it as much.)
The other number is 80000 referring to the hours we have in our average working life. Again it probably seems such a small number and yet so many of those hours are filled with less than productive tasks like attending meetings that we shouldn't, and we aren't making the most of those others to make sure our career is fulfilling and productive
Either I took conscious decisions to reach this situation, in that case there is nothing to be surprised about. Or maybe things just happened one after other, then how can I suddenly change and take control of things and do it differently.
Eg:
* presume your parents have you at ~30
* Live at home 18years x 365 days per year = 6570 days
* You see them a week per year for the remainder of their life = 50 years * 7 days per year = 350 days
therefore at 19yrs old you have 350/(6570+350) days remaining ~= 5%
Somewhat along the same lines. I ordered one of the posters from the video (not sure I can link it here)
There are million internet reels about this