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Comment by monological | Hacker News Reader

The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life. Unfortunately in modern society, we have to trade our time and focus, staring at a piece of glass all day, just so we can survive. It’s absolutely insane if you think about it. I’d bet that most ADHD, depression, anxiety is caused because we see no end in sight working on these meaningless tasks. My advice is to find something you love and also adds value to society. Start very small and watch it grow…

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Finding something you love is only momentary. Even if you find something you “love” to do it will have moments where it gets rough, boring, frustrating or cumbersome.

We need both work and rest, and typically burnout comes from pushing yourself in situations that are a net negative; either because you are over working in an environment that is compromising something valueable to you or because you don’t actually know how to rest.

We need work to make a living, make incremental and long-term growth and to stretch our capacity at a healthy rate.

We need proper rest (not Netflix, not social media, not mind numbing hobbies), active intentional rest to appreciate our work and the things we have. We need time to value things other than work because work alone is not enough to sustain us.

There are many good books on this I suggest the OP look into reading one in the time they have off if they chose. Fixing the underlying issues and habits is the way forward not just switching jobs.

Any book recs or tips for proper rest?

Two that I highly recommend

1. Subversive Sabbath by A.J. Swoboda

2. Garden City by John Mark Comer

* caveat they are both frameworked in Christian principles but the practical steps to get rest are still very good.

>Unfortunately in modern society

Not that in ancient societies was any better, your place in society was practically decided at conception: your father was a fishermen, well you know exactly what you will be doing in your life, that you like it or not. Almost all the disorders typical of this new millennium seem to originate from an infinite liberty without a guid, a paralysis analysis of some kind if you like. "What will I do with my life?" was not a question that pestered my ancestor (I come from a country where, untill my father's generation, all jobs were de facto hereditary). "What is the purpose of my existence?" was a question with answers in the local religions. I hope that, in building the future, we will use something like the fichtean dialectics (wrongly attributed to Hegel):

thesis --> antithesis --> synthesis,

and that wi will be able to take back all things positive present in our traditions and assimilate in a modern vision of the world: it is evident that, taken in isolation, both visions of the world had negative aspects that greatly surpass their benefits.

> Not that in ancient societies was any better

With the difference that modern society is 10000x wealthier, and yet people are overworked and the planet is being destroyed.

And a significant part of the jobs are outright useless or only needed because we work so much at these useless jobs.

> The reality is that deep down in your soul, this is not something that you really want to be doing with your life

You're not wrong. I only went into this line of work because I was naturally good at it. It seemed like I was just naturally destined to do this with my life.

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