I spend eight hours+ a day supporting my addiction to food and shelter. Why would I spend my free time working toward “greatness” instead of doing hobbies I enjoy and spending time with friends and family?
Any other time I have I’m spending working out and training for runs - neither of which I will ever be great at.
Which is ok! You don’t need to be ambitious, but it also means you shouldn’t take this essay so personally.
How would you define it?
The article says “very” ambitious. So there’s no contradiction here
"Don't let "work" mean something other people tell you to do. If you do manage to do great work one day, it will probably be on a project of your own. It may be within some bigger project, but you'll be driving your part of it."
as for time with family and friends, I'd say you can't have it all. It's a personal decision on whether you want to achieve "greatness" and what you are willing to sacrifice for it
No reason why. PG isn't writing to you. If you've got hobbies that make you happy, relationships you love, and runs that keep you healthy, I'm sure PG would tell you not to change anything.
For example
> 99% of people will have neutral to negative impact on the world 10 yrs post mortem
What does it even mean to have a negative impact on the "world"? Do you mean a negative impact on humanity? Also, where does the 99% number come from.
> None of us are the target audience is this article
Do you think humanity would be worse off with more people working hard to create and discover things to improve their own lives and the lives of others?
Anyway, your comment is filled with cliche cynicism. Cynicism is a cheap way to appear smart. I think people learned it from TV when they watched tv shows like House or Sherlock.
You're totally welcome for the sage advice. Have a nice day.
haha.
Plus family happens now for many of us, and not later. Kids need their parents, not their money. Its a grave mistake that hurts badly your closest ones for life to prioritize excellence in 1 direction over everything else, especially them.
I'll always have endless amount of respect of people raising their kids properly themselves into mature, happy adults who know what they want in life and go for it, even if it means they just worked to live. I don't have even a cubic picometer of respect for folks who end up doing the opposite, regardless of what they achieved professionally. This world needs new generation of balanced adults much much more than some search optimized by 0.1% or some marginally improved social graph monetization.
Of course not everybody wants, needs or can create a family, that's fine but another topic, then I agree with you more.
I then tried to stay on the treadmill and I spent about a year working toward a promotion by increasing my “scope” and “impact”.
I then realized by 2022 at 48 years old, why? I make more than “enough” especially seeing I work remotely.
I then told my manager I was just interested in “improving in my current role” and my wife and I decided to do something completely different:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36306966
I’ve never been happier not trying to be “great” and being “content”
One reason is that I can seek feedback from coworkers and polish the POC. I also can take advantage of infrastructure that may be cost prohibitive to test something at scale based on real world usage.
The other reason is that for my next job, it’s much more impressive to say I spearheaded work for a company than a hobbyist side project.
Yes I know one advantage of your own side project is that you can show your code. But most of the time the hiring manager isn’t going to take time to look at your work anyway.
I have personally been fortunate enough to have unfettered Admin access to an AWS account on someone else’s dime between two jobs for the past five years where I could experiment and learn on the job.
I truly and deeply find my chosen projects interesting and stimulating in a way other things aren't.
I don't view work as a bad thing, with the caveat that it has to be productive and interesting work that goes towards something I think is impactful where the definition of impactful is personal.
I'm not saying your way is incorrect or bad or anything, just providing the perspective of someone who spends a lot of time working and how I feel about it.
you don't have to. But then don't wonder why you never achieve greatness. Of course, life isn't about greatness.
> Kafka never married. According to Brod, Kafka was "tortured" by sexual desire … his life was full of "incessant womanising" and that he was filled with a fear of "sexual failure".[64] Kafka visited brothels for most of his adult life[65][66][67] and was interested in pornography.[63] In addition, he had close relationships with several women during his lifetime. On 13 August 1912, Kafka met Felice Bauer, a relative of Brod's, who worked in Berlin as a representative of a dictaphone company. A week after the meeting at Brod's home, Kafka wrote in his diary: