Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Who else is working on nothing?

704 pointsg4zj277 comments

Everyone seems so busy building or learning the next big thing, but is anyone else working on absolutely nothing lately? If not, why not?

Optional reading:

I've always been a curious person, interested in learning new skills and finding fun and useful ways to apply them. I don't know much, but what I do know are things I've set out to learn purely out of interest. Any success in my career has been mostly luck, and being somewhat articulate in a few key areas of IT.

But not only has my professional life become monotonous and unchallenging, my drive for novelty and improvement in my personal life has also diminished greatly. In other words, I seem to have lost that curiosity. That drive to learn and apply new things.

I'm not sure why this is, but my initial suspicion is that the lack of fulfillment I've experienced in the last ~5 years or so has left me feeling like continuing down the same path is a bit of a waste of time at this point. It all just feels as though it amounts to virtually nothing.

To be completely honest, I am working on something, but that something is myself. Working through personal issues has all but completely taken priority over any external endeavors and consumed what little energy I have, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but a healthier balance would probably be ideal.

Anyone else from HN in a similar place?

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Wow, I just wanted to say thanks a lot for posting this. I'm in a very similar boat. I was always very focused and goal-oriented in my younger days - a bit of a workaholic but generally enjoyed working hard. A number of changes since the pandemic have left me feeling very similar to you:

1. Like tons of other people, I re-evaluated my relationship with work during the pandemic. To be honest, it wasn't easy. I think a ton of people (especially Americans) tie up their self-worth with their jobs, and during the pandemic I just felt more disconnected from my job.

2. I think a lot of folks have underestimated the psychological changes that happen from being way more isolated these days. I don't mean "shut-in" isolated, I just mean that working remote most days means the number of people I interact with in person has gone way, way down. I'm all for remote work but I won't deny that I greatly miss a lot of the energy from just being around other people.

3. Finally, I've just become really disillusioned with tech over the course of my career, which makes me very sad. I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right...

Anyway, don't have any advice or anything, just wanted to say I appreciated your post in a "misery loves company" sort-of-way, so thank you.

I can relate a lot to this. Thanks for sharing

Feels like you read my mind. I'm disconnected from career and generally feel disappointed with direction of technology. It's quite difficult finding meaning in life surrounded by careerist.

> I started my career during the dot com boom, and there was so much optimism about the beneficial societal changes that tech and the Internet would bring. I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days...

Wow that's so true... we totally didn't see the social media dystopia we're living in today coming. We imagined a world where everyone has all the world knowledge available at their fingertips would be wonderful. How wrong were we.

In the early 90s the internet was great. The problems started with companies and their inherent greed.

No, it was the people. Early internet users demographics was a result of extreme selection. Companies did exist back then.

Companies existed of course, but they provided the building blocks of the internet and were not directly concerned with the processing of our data.

This is true. The big turning point was the release of the iPhone, a device that allowed people who didn't know what a computer was to access the internet.

I'd also call out Eternal September in 1993, when AOL made it easy for anyone with a computer to connect online. This permanently changed the composition of the internet, and paved the way for the social networks that would later come to dominance after the iPhone was released.

Why iphone? We had internet on mobile phones before that point.

But I agree with idea that internet became dumber with more people in.

> Why iphone? We had internet on mobile phones before that point.

Certainly not in any way that mattered, and I say this as someone who spent the middle part of my career specifically on mobile.

I mean, sure, there was stuff like WAP, and some other niche phones that could (very, very clunkily) display full HTML. But the launch of the iPhone is what first brought the mobile Internet to the masses (and pretty much all smartphones after the iPhone aped the basic design), and most importantly, was the beginning of the change where websites started even giving a shit about mobile clients ("Mobile first" design and all that).

I think mostly just the iPhone exploded it, and also made a lot of things much more low effort. Like take for example people constantly posting photos of themselves and food and what have you on social media - pre iPhone high quality photos required a separate camera and a computer in order to upload onto social media. Post iPhone you could do it all from one device.

Barriers to entry that revolve around level of interest are ok.

On average, yes it's easy to get stuck in a rut with low quality content, toxic social media, attention-stealing recommendations, etc. but with just a reasonable amount of effort it can be avoided in favor of the good stuff. Just like a traveler can get stuck at tourist traps or with just a few more moments of planning find a local treasure; and how if you're at a buffet you could get locked into the mac & cheese or go find the hibachi station in the back. It would be nice if getting lost wasn't a thing, but it's not terribly onerous to navigate the scenic route.

But we are surrounded by people not doing that, and not even through any fault of their own for the most part. They are wired into an endless machine that trades dopamine hits for their money. Children are wired in before they even have a chance to resist.

The Extremely Online crowd’s influence is waning.

Twitter is widely mocked as a cesspool of conversation. Facebook is seen as antiquated. Instagram and TikTok are the current darlings but they seem to have less of an iron grip than the OG social networks.

The future is probably not another winner-take-all network. We’ve tried enough of those. The future is probably smaller networks where users self-select into them based on affiliations, much like web forums.

You mean Discord (interest, hobbies) and family chat channels on various platforms?

Weird, I've seen social media and "online communities" move into the publicly accepted sphere more and more. 10 years ago you'd be looked at funny by certain people if you said you had a social media or reddit account, and nowadays it's just sorta expected

This is just a side note, but my Instagram feed has become basically entirely irrelevant. It's just reel after reel from people promoting themselves or some product. The network feels increasingly like a rapid-paced HSN/home shopping network or similar.

Do I look at it daily? Yes, I do. But I'd say that 95% of the content I see on it is junk, very few of my peers are posting their lives on there.

As for blue-line Facebook, it's so slow it's borderline unusable. I'm not sure what happened (ReactJS maybe?), but the performance is a fraction of what it was ten years ago.

> The future is probably smaller networks where users self-select into them based on affiliations, much like web forums.

Yeah it's like everyone got drunk on connection and is slowly rediscovering peace in disconnecting. I'd wager you're right about this.

Yep. My IG feed is very quiet after I muted all the self-promoters and overly-prolific posters. Plus, I only follow people I know IRL, so I hit the "you're caught up" marker within 20s or so easily. The result is it is very rare to load up IG and find something of interest. I can still stay connected, but it doesn't grab me. I feel like the reel section just doesn't work for me, either.

> very few of my peers are posting their lives on there

Yes, this is not a great sign for IG. It is still relevant in that people click the icon everyday, but it seems to be slipping.

I used to feel like I wanted to "Save Them From Themselves" but I no longer care. As long as I and my family are not zombies, I could care less that the rest of these people we're surrounded by are lobotomizing themselves. As long as they aren't in my way they can do what they want. They'll be voluntarily stepping into their own Matrix Pods in 20 years and I won't be.

I used to feel the way that you do, but in a social democracy "I don't care what those idiot zombies do" has it's limits, because everyone gets an equal vote.

Also, you say that "As long as I and my family are not zombies", but every single one of my friends and family with kids age 10 and up are genuinely pretty terrified about the potential impact of social media on their kids: "I feel so lucky I didn't have to deal with this when I was growing up" is a common refrain I hear. And yes, all these parents try to teach their kids about the pitfalls of social media, but they know they can't just can it, so it's a huge, largely negative influence that they feel limited power to fight against.

> How wrong were we

Nowhere! Social media brought out the true character of people; most (many?) of us are negative species, mix that along with bad people.

Ehh this type of thinking is reductive.

The primary issues are a combination of nature vs nurture. The age of argument, the solution has always been some combination of both.

But when you look at our western society over the past 60 years or so, you see that -fundamentally- the nurture part of the equation is being heavily influenced by capitalistic forces. For example, news used to be once a day, then 3 times a day, now 24/7/365. There isn't more news now than 100 years ago, so how do you feel all that time and how do you keep someone engaged? (If you have been paying attention, you know the answer is selling fear, sex, violence, and other negative emotions are traits of the human species.)

But really, the easiest way to counter this toxic mindset was said best by mister Rodgers: just look for the helpers. Look for the guys running into the fray when everyone else runs away... Those people are just as human as you or me... They are the true character of the human species. For we are a communal species that depends on one another, we always have, we aren't a bad species... We are just letting our man made systems bring out the worst.

>Look for the guys running into the fray when everyone else runs away... Those people are just as human as you or me... They are the true character of the human species.

If we have to look to find them, are they really the "true" character? I'm sure if we look hard enough we could find a polite polar bear, but is that a "true" polar bear?

main characters =/= dominant characters =/= true characters

> There isn't more news now than 100 years ago, so how do you feel all that time and how do you keep someone engaged?

So, I agree with your point, and I also agree that there isn't enough news to fill 24/7 coverage... but there is definitely more news, or at least more news that may be of interest to any given audience, than 100 years ago because we live in a more globally connected society where issues in another country can absolutely have direct impact on us because manufacturing/materials sourcing became something that now happens on a more global scale.

I think what we have really underestimated is the amount of people who would get hooked on instant gratification more than this available knowledge (which, turns out, I am also guilty of).

Then came for-profits that agressively monetised every single bad habit one might imagine online and got us where we are today. Knowledge is still at the fingertips, but so many of us are now short-attention-span information-holics and instant gratification addicts.

We imagined brave new world, but became an equivalent of chain smokers trying to break out of their habit in a world where everyone else also smokes.

I strongly relate, and think a big part it for me is that most people range from apathetic to hostile to most projects that try to wrest any power from tech companies, despite complaining about the way they've been immiserated by them in the next breath. It's hard enough trying to pry even little bits of freedom or individuality from the grasp of all these moneyed interests without every effort to do something like it getting a bunch of random hate

Thank you both - I'm feeling the same, and I had tied up so much of my personality and life with software development, I feel pretty lost now. I've had a side project to work on for as long as I can remember, now I'm just not interested in building at all. And honestly, I don't know where to go from here.

Are you in a high cost of living situation that’s hard to get out of? Do you have kids?

If NOT, I would start by thinking if there’s ways you could drastically cut down your cost off living, like moving somewhere cheaper or even looking at Southeast Asia etc if that’s your jam

That would give you more options on the financial side of things in case you wanted to start over or have a go at something with a long ramp up time

One question I’ve set out to answer is: what would I do if I were fired tomorrow?

Understood that not everyone is in the position to switch to lower paying careers, start over, etc - but if you have some leash, what WOULD you do if you were fired tomorrow?

(And I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc)

Curious to hear your thoughts and anyone else who cares to share

I’ve been thinking about this too. And it’s also usually used as a counter-argument to people wanting to get out of their jobs.

However, here’s what I realized: most people work in “regular” 9-5 jobs. That includes “tech people”, who like to think of themselves as artists, but are not. And it takes like 2 decades to get trained to do a regular job if you take into account k-12 (which trains you to be a 9-5 worker and discourages anything else), uni, and the first few years of professional experience.

So is it that surprising that once you get disillusioned with being a 9-5 worker it would take you at the very least few years to figure out how to not be one?

What I’m trying to say is it should be expected to not know what you want to do. Because even getting to the point where you could do what 90% of the population does take a tremendous amount of effort. So once you want to do something else, it will take a while to figure out too. And you can totally fail along the way as well.

The ideal answer is: "If I got fired tomorrow, I would be doing mostly the same work as before, but maybe less meetings and admin duties."

Careers that fit this answer: artists, writers, musicians, mathematicians, scientists (those who lean more towards theory).

As an freelance artist for 9 years I can say that you have different type of challenges.

Founding usefulness in your work means everyday questions about balance between stable income and making actually new, innovative, non-trending things. Free market have unlimited possibilities, but making art for money is not my motivation to do art.

Poor artists are real and I slowly understand why. If your passion is creativity, priorities are different, which makes hard to pay your bills, but in same time let you go deeper of meaning. Well... It's difficult to describe it actually.

This is such a powerful question (another version of it, what would you do if you wouldn't have to worry about money). Sometime ago I tried to answer it and realised that I don't know. It sparked anxiety, meaning I've been doing something for such a long time 15+ years now without knowing what really my end goal is and why I am doing that.

Whatever its called, zombie or auto/robo mode, the unintentional living, its freaking scary because in most cases if you remove the work identity from a person, there will be a sad shallow shell of a person left.

On a bright side, its never too late. I started actually putting the money to use to create experiences (hiking in Taiwan, diving in Thailand, paragliding in Turkey). Starting to write and build products (finally learning to code for the sake of building something simple and useful instead of setting up kubernetes).

That kind of existence gave me energy, although I do have melancholic nostalgia about former days of building startups and working in a team to get to an exit. It all seem like a war story I will be telling people in my 50s, how I moved countries without knowing anyone, joined a company that got to $50m ARR, grew to 100 people and became profitable ever since.

The work identity we have is a interesting phenomenon, despite feeling happy in life, I do miss ambitious goals and working in a small team of friends and interesting people to reach the highs of professional achievement.

I suppose in the end everything is about the balance.

Thanks for sharing. What are you doing for income now? Are you retired?

>I don’t mean short term like take a vacation then find another tech job - mean longer term like what kind of job will you be looking for next, or business to start, etc

I mean, the job I'd be looking for is another tech job?

I do have stuff I want to do in 5,10 years. Maybe even vague ideas of 20 years out. But I lack the funds and the expertise to pull it off. I'm sure many dream of being their own businessman or simply traveling and experiencing the earth without worries of rent. But even for tech workers that is a lifestyle that can't be maintained without some corporate kowtowing (or having a silver spoon).

I’ve been fired recently from a full stack position and I started working on a farm. I’m not in US and I’m not rich enough to afford to stay home.

I feel that in a few months I would like to look around and see opportunities to switch my career to some tradie job like plumbing, which in many countries are paid almost as software engineers. At least it could give me a meaning and probably a bit less uncertainty than software engineer for the future

Even in the US you can quickly get to sw eng level after a few years in the trades, which are booming right now

And bonus, it’s a direct step from there to starting your own business in that trade then making way more

Of course you could start a software agency too but the competition is way more cutthroat

I resonate with this -- I've noticed a pattern of big tech companies using their power (and prowess) to regulate in the tech space more, limit what users can do, advertise more, force dark patterns on their customers, and make puzzling decisions that rob the excitement they used to bring to the table of the past.

They still make great new / updated products in a few areas, but it also seems like they take just as much as they give, these days. Whether it's changes to pricing models (Amazon Prime Video ad-free extra charges), or Google's notorious penchant for killing their own products (or features), or Microsoft's continuous push to get Edge in front of Windows users at almost any cost.

Or Apple only offering their high-end MacBooks with Touch Bars, rather than physical function keys before they finally fixed everything with the M1 series almost 4 years later -- 4 years of Touch Bar hell, or else suffer using a low-end laptop that isn't capable of the demanding workflows your job requires along with the fact that you're a power user who needs real function keys and (gasp!) a physical escape key to work efficiently on the go, like me.

These companies really seem to be resting on their laurels and toying with customers now, to see how annoying they can be. And what's worse is, we've grown to rely on their products because they happen to build our operating systems and hardware in many cases. Bigger changes to these can have devastating effects and these companies don't seem to understand the responsibility they have to move towards creating a positive, exciting experience for customers while leaving alone the things that work really well. All rather than sowing doubt with a lot of side decisions that make people unhappy ultimately.

Death by a thousand cuts, it really starts to erode confidence in any of them, no matter what they release that should be exciting.

My outlook is: if you work in big tech today, whatever you're working on, in its final culmination, is just a means to clutter the internet with ads.

>I don't feel like all tech is "evil" these days, but I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech. Obviously that's not realistic, but it highlights my feeling that I'm not looking forward to any new tech from these companies, because more tech is going to invariably lead to more isolation, more "doom scrolling", more assaults on our attention. I feel like most big tech companies have just become the equivalent of drug dealers, just trying to hijack our brain's evolutionary attention mechanisms to addict us. "Attention is all you need" is right...

"Attention is all you need" among above paragraph really hits hard and it's true. I think I feel the same way like all big tech companies should just be stopped from bringing new tech. Indeed, I have just started hating tech now a days. We are just getting more apart and away from everyone day by day with new emerging technology.

It is really pathetic to know that tech is influencing new generation totally in negative direction to what we supposed where they should be leading to. I think even the Parents now a days should parent their child more like it used to in olden days rather than showing them children's rhyme on phone or tablet.

I have stopped surfing social media, they try to isolate me from the truth and what's actually happening and rather feed content which is biased according to my activities and what I like. This really frightens me.

I do feel that the world would be better off if all the big tech companies (Google, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft) just completely stopped building any new tech.

I'd restrict that to social media. That and "competitive" journalism are turning society to trash IMHO.

I am far younger than you, but ditto on all counts. The pandemic crushed everything that I studied and worked for. And it taught me as someone in my early 20s that even though I spent my entire life with my nose to the grindstone, everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments, and friends and coworkers and family members could also suddenly turn on each other like rabid dogs.

Honestly, at least be grateful that you had some good years of excitement, it seems. I was young during the 2008 crash, but it affected my family. And now I have no motivation for anything. My peers are similar. Why build something only to have it crushed? A lot of us are just living in the moment. We also saw people with lifelong careers and families of their own have their lives destroyed by various governments in the USA and abroad.

> everything could be instantly stripped away by world governments

Your comment suggests that the driver of your (and your peers) anhedonia is some lingering threat of some future lockdown by governments? Is that what you're saying? And, is that actually the case or is it just the easiest cause to put your finger on?

I understand that period was really rough for so many reasons. But a lot of the angst I see among friends/family/coworkers today isn't from the lockdowns per se, but it's more from having to slow down and consider some heavy, almost-existential questions surrounding their relationships, life, fulfillment, social supports, and purpose. And, at least for me, struggling with how many of the things I thought I knew about myself turned out to not really be true. Lockdowns may have forced me to see and acknowledge these issues, but they were always there.

It's not angst, it's real.

Though I'm young, my work is international. I was separated from my girlfriend, apartment, coworkers, and entire livelihood in a different nation, at a position one could say I spent much of my life up to that point studying and working toward. My colleagues were separated from their families and children. Some lost their homes because they were let go from their jobs as a result. Some older friends of mine divorced because of this. Some lost their businesses that they spent their lives building. One of them committed suicide. This was a guy in his late 50s with two children and a wife, who had been forcibly separated from each other on opposite sides of the world for over a year.

Short of wars, there has never been such a brutal and absolute upheaval of population movements for civilian populations.

There are a lot of people my age who went through this type of experience, and that is one reason why I think the original poster sees more people with less joie de vivre. I am also saying it is lucky for people who just had lockdowns at home or had their lives confined to one locale or even country, or who at least had some years of "living" their lives before this happened. What I mean by that is people who at least had their 20s and maybe even 30s to build a career, life, and family, on top of their years of studying and schooling. But for those of us just getting our careers started, and for people who had international careers and lives split between countries, there were several years of nightmares along with the knowledge now that, at any moment, all this could instantly happen again.

Sure, anyone could get hit by a bus tomorrow. But it was people and governments turning on one another like wolves that was a sharp mask-off moment, especially for those of us in our formative years. That is a different type of crushing, and utterly stultifying, effect. Because it is not a random accident, but rather a cold and calculating opposition by others. All I know is that I spent my life sacrificing short-term rewards as I worked toward long-term payoffs, and as soon as I started to see results, everything went up in flames. Everything. If motivation is squelched for major life projects and milestones, I think it is clear how motivation is also squelched for personal projects or side projects. If you're older, and if your life wasn't split or shattered across the globe, be thankful is all I can say.

But for me and others in my age bracket and positions, there was this natural, sharp turn toward instant gratification, which I wholly support and understand. This is of course anecdotal, and I am not implying that it is a universal sentiment, but just offering an example to answer the original question/statement of people "working on nothing". It is because we have nothing to "work toward".

This pairs pretty well with my experience. (I'm a little older, late 20s/early 30s)

I grew up in a upper-middle class income family, I was first entering high school when my parents were hit hard by the housing crisis in 2008. (Facebook also just started dominating during this time) Eventually the economy "recovered" just long enough for everyone to start telling us that we should sacrifice our 20s while we had the energy so we can enjoy our 30s. (buy a house, have a steady career, start traveling, ect)

Yeah, that advice really turn out to reflect what actually happened.

Travel? - Can't because of quarantine. Quarantine ended, to bad your relationship ended during quarantine, so you don't have anyone to travel with. Lucky enough to have been working remotely? To bad housing prices soared. Decided to invest? Hope you weren't one of the millions screwed over by any of those several historic finical fraud cases that seem to occur multiple times every year. Parents getting to old to work and lost their retirement in 2008? Uhhh... hope they/you win the lottery?

Anyway, all this is really just a long way of agreeing with OP.

Appreciate it, friend. I really do feel as though older generations than us do not understand or care about our situation at all. For example, look at how the first reply to me was gaslighting and seeking to minimize our situation. They do not even attempt to understand or care, because they already "got theirs". Yet they feel as though they need to chime in anyway, telling us that it's all in our head, or that we should bootstrap ourselves harder.

Yea, how can we do that when people become frozen within borders, deported, banned, restricted. We're supposed to take up arms and hijack a plane? Swim? Only to get arrested upon arrival? These older people are fucking high off their own golden years' supply.

And people who are confined to their own narrow, national locality, of nearly any age, especially do not understand.

Cheers.

I found in my mid thirties that my perspective on what was important and desirable shifted significantly. Which led me to become disengaged from my desire to build side projects and learn new programming languages. It was a time were ecclesiastes from the Bible resonated a lot. After a while I just found out that I wasn’t interested in nothing but I had to rediscover what was important to me and what I valued spending my time on.

While my current lifestyle doesn’t lineup well with the tech grind and won’t get me attention online I’m much happier living a lifestyle that serves me and family rather than some external validation. Hope that helps and good luck on your journey.

Bingo. This happened to me also. What I valued changed. In my 20s and early 30s I was really serving myself. Even work was about my own curiosity and desire to work hard. Eventually as "me" time was stripped away I had to re-evaluate and understand what I was living for. We live in a world of abundance, excess and desire. The desire to create is not the same as being driven by a real need. And the cycle of consumerism only made our lives worse as we watched others who we aspired to be like or escape our lives for short periods through endless content binging. Our real needs are much simpler. We don't need a lot to live a good life. If anything we have to become more disciplined in learning how to need less.

One of the massive things which caused a shift was knowing a decent sized group of people that became incredibly financially successful as the result of acquisitions and what this actually did to their personal lives. It really wasn't the all happy fun situation that it is so often portrayed as being.

Then there is the whole have kids<->not have kids axis, and where people fall on that will dramatically influence their priorities with work as well, with the former tending to see it as a way to finance raising their kids and the latter tending to attempt to replace kids with something else in their lives, which can often be work.

I just want to spend time on my hobbies. I'm in IT because it is the closest a job can be to my hobbies.

Can you say more about your first point? I find that really interesting and much often isn't written about those scenarios.

In our younger years, we are primarily driven by economic necessity and social validation. Sure, programming genuinely interests me from my teenage years, but if it wasn't for attaining some level of financial independence, there's no way I could have spent most of my 20s in front of a screen, solving someone else's problems. I could have been doing it as a leisurely recreational hobby instead.

Now I'm in my late 30s, with a 5-year-old child and a well-furnished 2-bedroom flat that was paid for in cash. I don't feel like having to prove anything to anyone. I've not fallen prey to any kind of excessive material consumption. My best idea of spending quality time is assisting my son with playing with Lego, and then taking a walk in the park with a classic philosophical book from Plato or Hegel or Hume.

Do you worry that you won’t be able to keep up with the industry and get obsoleted and forced out of work or a certain comp level before you want?

I am in my late 30s and used to worry about this, but I’ve been in the corporate world long enough to know that I can learn whatever I need to learn to secure a decent, paying dev job.

I’ve also realized, far more important than knowing the latest framework or tool, is the ability to work well with people. This is the skill I’ve been working on most, and in my opinion is far more valuable.

I worry about that more than I’d like to admit. However I have far peace and fulfillment than I’ve ever had so the trade off is good. I think Scott Galloway said nothing is ever as bad or as good as you think it will be.

When I was 20 I worked at Costco while going through college and one of my coworkers was previously a software engineer at sun microsystem. He ended leaving the industry because his skills were up to date enough but he was happy in life and had paid for most everything he needed already. It would be unpleasant to go through but make wise financial decisions and ride it out as long you can. Also I maximize my 8 hours a day and do my best to learn on the job.

> It was a time were ecclesiastes from the Bible resonated a lot.

As an open minded agnostic who has not read the Bible or the Tanakh I am curious, what about the Ecclesiastes in particular resonated with you?

Not OP, but it’s very unique compared to the other books. It reads more like a philosophy-type book.

Not the commenter but it's just a interesting premise. It's an old King who's experienced every earthly pleasure in existence (food, wine, servants, women, etc.) who is looking back on his life and writing a letter to his son. He is basically despairing that all of these things were in vain and that they don't mean anything now that he is old, etc. It doesn't really have a clean payoff or moral either, the premise is basically "life sucks, pleasure is fleeting, and then you die".

Marcus Aurelius' "Meditations" came to mind from your description, very interesting.

"To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance; a time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing; a time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away; a time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak; a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace."

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 KJV

I’m a Christian if that makes a difference. The book spoke to me about the idea of believing we will find meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in things if we just try hard enough. If I have the right idea and execute on it I will final be happy, if I reach a certain level in my company I will I’ll finally feel that feeling of the ultimate win, if I have enough friends, or leisure or whatever. None of its going to bring that sense of peace and fullness we are seeking. It must be found outside of our striving. As a Christian I find that feeling in God and being present with family.

If you find yourself thinking “this is all for nothing”, you’d be correct. You can’t take any of this crap with you when you pass. You do what makes you happy. What makes you happy? Searching for external validation of a pat on the back for a job well done is not what makes one happy. Take a moment, pause, just be, focus on your happiness and what that means to you. Stop comparing yourself to others. Stop trying to find fulfillment through praise or purpose and instead search inwards and ask yourself “What do I like, dislike, enjoy, and am I doing those things?”. If you are just going through the motions but haven’t searched within then I suggest you take a time out and get to know you again. Remember you. Rediscover you. Or start a new path. Life isn’t a straight line.

One addition IMO: If anyone in your life tries to push you to seek their validation and do what they think you should (which is mostly just validating themselves), ignore and avoid them, or at least try to knock them down a peg.

This is a step in the right direction but it is still wrong. Yes, whatever praise or accolades you earn from work will be things you can never take with you when you pass. But the same also goes for whatever enjoyment you get from hobbies, interests or activities. You've just swapped one temporary source of happiness for another. Even if the latter is more meaningful, it is still temporary.

It is easy to suggest focusing on one's happiness but it is more useful and (more difficult) to figure out how to tackle unhappiness instead. The goal is equanimity not happiness (i.e happiness in the conventional hedonic sense). Focus on the cessation of your personal suffering.

> when you pass

Nihilism is not the belief that there is no God and life is ultimately meaningless.

Nihilism is recognizing that there is no God and life is ultimately meaningless, while continuing to sacrifice at a grinding job you hate, continuing to submit to the phony morality of those higher than you in the social hierarchy, conforming to social rituals and customs you privately think are bullshit, continuing to follow the rules of external authorities as if that might pay off in the afterlife.

Nihilism is understanding the truth, but pretending the universe is different than it really is, so you can evade personal responsibility for creating your own meaning.

Nihilism is behaving as if there is a God who gives life meaning, even when you don't actually believe that, instead of assuming responsibility for making your own meaning during the brief time you're alive.

I'm not a nihilist so I don't know whether those characterizations are accurate. It seems you are making some conflations with absurdism and pascal's wager.

Nihilism to me is about accepting the idea that there is no self but without actually having directly experienced that truth. And according to buddhism for instance, there is a way to experience a selfless existence which gives rise to true equanimity.

Without direct experience, nihilism is just another form of faith.

Correct, the one truth is Buddha and its many derivatives. We are one and we are none. That our existence itself is but a thread of wool in a spool of yarn in a fabric of life on a bed of chaos.

“Many people are alive but don’t touch the miracle of being alive” - Thich Nhat Hanh

> Nihilism is behaving as if there is a God who gives life meaning, even when you don't actually believe that, instead of assuming responsibility for making your own meaning during the brief time you're alive.

TIL I am a nihilist.

That sounds more like absurdism > the belief that human beings exist in a purposeless, chaotic universe.

Would be interesting to hear a convincing argument against that.

I think the fact that many people end up finding true, fulfilling purpose; and that miracles and seemingly unimaginable, orchestrated coincidences happen regularly, to our surprise, is well enough of an argument probably.

I found this video to be quite significant to me on the "nihilism" front : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jv79l1b-eoI

Thanks for the video. This is so encouraging.

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I really like that whole channel, there's a lot of great stuff there.

I don't understand why having the opportunity as an individual and species of defying entropy and all the consequences this would bring should be meaningless...

“This is a step in the right direction but it is still wrong”

You are wrong in suggesting I’m wrong. There isn’t any wrong. If you believe what you say, you would understand that and strip “wrong” from your vocabulary. There is only a way. There are many ways. The one I described was mine. The universe does not recognize your black and white thinking.

I mean this doesn’t really mean anything. There is a right view and a wrong view, and of course you can make incremental steps towards right views.

Don’t get so attached to your own opinions, that’s a form of clinging.

> Don’t get so attached to your own opinions, that’s a form of clinging.

Ironically, this is precisely what you're doing.

lol this comment is ironic on many levels, thanks

“There is a right view and a wrong view” there you go again. No, there is your own right way and wrong way. Those ways are not the same as mine per se. Stop trying to conform my world view to yours. I would highly recommend you read “The Heart of the Buddha’s Teachings” by Thich Nhat Hanh.

The terms right view and wrong view are from buddhism. There is a right view as taught by the Buddha found in his teachings. Clinging to right view is better than clinging to wrong view, even if it’s still clinging.

But following your own logic, why the resistance to my comments if my statements are neither right or wrong and is just as valid as yours? I’m not intentionally doing the things you’re accusing me of doing.

At the end of the day, may you understand the causes of your own suffering and find peace.

>The terms right view and wrong view are from buddhism

so again, from one individual or group of individuals' subjective views of right and wrong.

>why the resistance to my comments if my statements are neither right or wrong and is just as valid as yours?

Because you are accusing others of being wrong? If I said your right view is wrong, how would that make you feel? Golden Rule.

I am not the OP, but I disagree here. Happiness that we find in our social life, our friendships, family and relationships is not the same or swap-able with our career. This is something I learned the hard way, being drunk on startup cool-aid in the early life till it wore me down.

Friendships or other things I mentioned: not that everything is smooth, but there is a sense of comfort, pleasure, joy that just does not go away with more time invested. Because I am not looking for returns. Just being around is bliss.

Bumming out of a beach is very underrated. Going to a movie date is underrated. This is where my happiness lies. Then on top I write code now again, not to gain startup throne but because I like learning and typing out my thoughts in code.

The point of disagreement here is probably with regards to our definitions of happiness. What you define as happiness, I see as just forms of temporary satisfaction or pleasure.

In my opinion, I think happiness isn’t the goal since it’s temporary. Instead we should aim for equanimity which arises from the complete cessation of stress and doubt and is much harder to obtain but is longer lasting.

It might be important to take a step back. If you are a practicing Buddhist and read OPs comment, you may be right. Most are not, and they can't be shoved into the deep end of this philosophy.

Having said that, taking small steps is important. I feel OPs point is valid, in the sense that happiness comes from within, not external validation.

I would highly encourage* you to read Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse. I used to look at happiness and love also from a high pedestal point of view. As if I am more intellectual and these are mere temporary illusions. This book changed my point of view. Also, I live in the land of people living in love and harmony with Buddism being a strong presence all around (Nepal, Sikkim, etc.).

I embraced life, love, bonding, friendships, heartbreaks and have never looked back.

A good read. If I had to sum it up, it would be: don't let the search for knowledge/happiness/wisdom get in the way of being able to experience it in the moment.

"It took me a long time and am not finished learning this yet, oh Govinda: that there is nothing to be learned! There is indeed no such thing, so I believe, as what we refer to as ‘learning’. There is, oh my friend, just one knowledge, this is everywhere, this is Atman, this is within me and within you and within every creature. And so I’m starting to believe that this knowledge has no worser enemy than the desire to know it, than learning.”

Pass?

I think you mean “die”.

I am frequently reminded of George Carlin's bit about "soft language" and how it obscures facts of life that we're uncomfortable about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY

His criticism of soft language about aging and death starts around the 5 minute mark

Dying is a fact now, but will it still be 50/100/1000 years from now on with current exponential technological advancements? Sooner or later it will be solved. Dying sucks on all accounts and there’s nothing positive to say about it, so it makes sense to lighten up that language. I definitely don’t want to be reminded all the time of my mortality, which is especially frustrating as it’s a problem that will be solved one day.

Verging away from the topic, but while it might be possible to imitate someone's consciousness after they've died, perhaps extremely convincingly, something tells me we'll each still find out the hard way, individually, that we've always been mortal.

Physically, immortality is impossible due to the second law of thermodynamics. Everything dies, including solar systems, galaxies, and black holes. A biological body can potentially live orders of magnitude longer than we do now, but even then people will die of accidents and natural disasters. I don't see any reason not to speak plainly about it.

The day we solve death is the day we doom ourselves.

Deathphobia is a real thing that pervades many cultures during the last century, largely driven by disposable income and technology, individualism, rejection of respect for ancestors, and marketing. It leads to a “wretched anxiety” that can for some people become an inescapable pathology. One could argue it is not death itself but the path to death and how we as a society acknowlege it that is problematic. If it is causing depression perhaps consider getting help.

The problem isn't work per se, it's our attitudes toward work and the projects that we choose to work on.

"Do what makes you happy" is a cliche that we all accept, but if you think about it, it's actually a very self-centered and egoistic way of deciding what to do. If we used different heuristics, like do what's best for your family/community/world, it might lead to very different answers than doing what makes you happy. It might even involve quite a bit more of what we call "work". Not work for the purposes of financial gain or social status, but work that improves the world for current and future generations.

That said, it's clear that our culture doesn't optimize for rewarding the kinds of work that actually make the world better. That's something we should try to correct for, rather than abandoning work as a value altogether.

It’s just semantics. Helping others makes me happy.

That might be true in your case. What makes someone else happy might be to engage in rent-seeking behavior to profit as much personally off of other people as possible. Even if maximizing personal happiness works as an ethical norm for some people, that doesn't mean that it's the best advice to give universally.

You also can’t take your happiness with you when you pass. Not disagreeing with your advice, but with the reasoning.

Why would you care what happens after you pass?

Exactly my point.

This is such an interesting thread and I feel I should share my story since it's on the other end of the spectrum.

I had a poor relationship with work about a decade ago. I struggled with very bad health, both physical and mental. I went through a slow journey of recovery that made me unplug from work a lot. I traveled quite a bit, cheap backpacking. I invested in friendships, good food, and very simple life.

In the last couple years I have moved to a village in eastern Himalayas. I gained my anchor: nature. I started a co-living hostel here. I started working in software again but I have no expectations of a traditional career. My passion came back slowly. I have been able to invest in learning new languages, create passion projects, do daily physical chores of running a nomad space.

I have even started learning drums. I have kept investing in people, learning how to build bonds. I also feed animals around me daily. Now I have come around to finally focus on software work full-time again. I'm building a product, but without big financial expectations. I realise this isn't standard, but: software product is about impact to me, not about becoming rich. And I'm deeply content with this.

I have been inspired a lot by Pieter Levels, the founder of nomadlist and have even connected on how I wanted to build things like him. For me, I feel I'm here now since building is not about making tons of money to me. I haven't had as much fun writing code daily as in the last couple years. And I'm 40 years old. Hope it helps.

I'm sorry, as I'm typing on mobile, my reply isn't the most structured.

I want to add an important thing: since I unplugged from the money expectations in the last few years, I have been able to simply do nothing whenever I wanted to. Like literally just sit and stare. Or maybe play DotA 2. Hours of games...

I have a privilege, I don't have much financial liability so I can unplug easily. But this is what allowed me to heal.

Bingo, exactly per my thoughts here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38986460

Thank you for your response. I think I have been in a similar situation through a lot of ups and downs. And finally I am accepting simplicity. I am 26, software engineer. Typical 9 to 5 tech job. I would like to get to a stage where I am financially independent so that I can a. Read more books b. Build things that I care about.

Would love to connect with you to know more insights on how to reach there.

I'm not sure how this will resonate here, but this past year my interests in side projects sharply declined. For reference I am early 30s, married no kids. Up until now I used to work on 2-3 large side projects a year, diving deep into them obsessed with sleepless nights working.

Now with LLMs it just feels kind of like whats the point? Either my work will be consumed by an LLM to train and get tossed aside or i should just wait 5 years and whatever i will have worked on will probably just be a prompt away. Even if that doesn't become true, nobody really cares about traditional software building anyways. Everything is just LLMs. All interesting things about AI that I really liked building with ML or RL now just seem completely obsolete. Any mention of AI is just overwhelmed by "oh so your just connecting to ChatGPT and boom no problem, right?" with the majority of the population completely blind to the fact that there are many types of ML and other things besides an LLM.

Its just hard to get motivated by anything. Unless you are working on a LLM right now nobody really cares what you are doing in software. Just seems futile.

I think also my own personal expectations get in the way of doing side projects. Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0. So I end up in this state of wanting to work on something but then getting cynical, realizing there's little to no money to be made and just demotivate myself.

Anyways that is a long rant and this past year instead of building software i started to learn an instrument. it has been great. with software there is this notion of something being "optimal" but with music there is no optimal. Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work. The music is always above you.

> Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work.

Is this true, sad if true

> Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0.

What else are you gonna do with your life, this is it. Fire up VSCode.

Why is it sad to pursue something that will never reach perfection? Why is it sad to go on a path literally thousands of people have gone on and have done better than you? Release yourself from these things and you will be much happier.

Music taught me you don't need to be perfect or the best. Music is about connecting with other people. Its much better than computers for that. Its a very "meatspace" realm and while the virtual space has made music more accessible, it will always be firmly fully experienced in the in-person physical world that requires another human being.

> What else are you gonna do with your life, this is it

Well i mean there are tons of things out in life that you can do besides sit in front of the computer producing code that very few people will see.

> with software there is this notion of something being "optimal" but with music there is no optimal. Even the highest level artists are not satisfied with their work. The music is always above you.

The same holds for software developers, or at least (IMO) the good ones: they always want to refine their code, or at least know where it could be further refined. The best of those just know when to stop refining and move on.

Musicians also strive for the optimal performance: they continually practice to get better. Most are smart enough to know they will never be perfect, just as a good engineer knows there is no perfect code (Knuth notwithstanding). But that doesn't stop them from trying.

> Its hard to work hundreds of hours on something knowing the end monetary value is going to be $0

Thats kind of a crux of an issue. Why not find something you'd work on regardless whether it will be worth $0 or $100?

I feel the same way. I follow the LLM/AI advancements very closely, and I find that motivating. However, the whole discussion seems to turn around long term replacement of all labor and absorption of business value into some big tech providing the AI infrastructure.

I usually had two types of motivation, technical motivation to learn skills that would eventually be useful in my career and hacker motivation to build something with the implicit expectation of eventually making it a sustainable business. But now I am not certain there is a point in learning a new skill or building a side hustle if eventually an LLM will be better than me or my business for pennies.

Maybe this whole feeling is part of the AI replacement hype, and totally false. And maybe it is just common to feel this way when technological revolutions happen, and it's just temporary and we should push through. Regardless, we probably should keep monitoring the space.

Maybe it's time to genuinely focus on doing anything that intrinsically makes you feel good without any external expectations. An LLM might be better than you at everything, but you would still enjoy your mediocre implementation, just because you did it. Maybe this is what it really means to be an artisan.

> An LLM might be better than you at everything, but you would still enjoy your mediocre implementation, just because you did it. Maybe this is what it really means to be an artisan.

So true. One way to defeat determinism is to enjoy the process.

Why you so concerned with how the public perceives "AI"? They've always been bad at it and we both know that LLMs are not the only part of "AI" that matters. They aren't really concerned with really understanding what's going on, so why entertain their fleeting thoughts?

>Unless you are working on a LLM right now nobody really cares what you are doing in software. Just seems futile.

Well it was the same for web dev 20 years ago. Then data science/big data 10 years ago. Then Crypto/NFTs 5 years ago (ugh). If that clout is a big motivator then you gotta keep following trends. Nothing is stylish forever.

But glad you have some hobbies to enjoy.

The value proposition, honestly, has fallen off a cliff.

If "they" can dangle things you really want (money, better lifestyle, interesting work) in front of you, then there is reason to get excited.

Right now? Oh hell no.

Entire tech industry is in the mode of getting rid of people, lowering standards, lowering pay checks, the work is boring and tedious.

It is reasonable to simply not have any motivation to work on or do anything if there is legitimately no "line of site" to improving your situation.

Or working on terms which you can resonate with.

The idea of going into an office shudder to work for people like WebMD on ... creating search engine spam content in the age of AI? oh hell no.

There have been times in my career where I was intrinsically ultra motivated and willing to overlook a lot of the toxic overhead that comes with corporate jobs.

Now?

I am really not enthusiastic or excited at all. The stuff that is showing up is all a step down, less pay, less interesting work, boring companies. I can't even get myself interested.

I know that when something that excites me comes along I can get motivated again, but after exhausting myself the last few years chasing carrots dangling on sticks I just dont want to do it anymore.

I dont know what it will take for corporate // work to motivate me again. I am not seeing it out there.

Sooner or later, "That" opportunity always shows up and I can renegage. Lately, no.

Learn to live on a ~50-75% of your salary is what I’ve been telling people. The good times for American engineers are gone

I don't know, I think it's a wave. Market will bounce back. But yeah, always try to live humbly and keep a hefty savings buffer. This won't be the last bump.

Maybe in 20 years if/when AI assisted coding gets good. But even then I question if it will take every domain out. Webdev, hell yes. Distributed, maybe (but doubtful). Embedded/HFT/anything performance critical? Doubtful. And they sure aren't going to completely automate out anything mission/safety critical.

Funny that you mentioned WebMD - they just released this cringe video to let people return to the office: https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kxqnx/dont-mess-with-us-web...

When I first saw this I thought it was a skit from The Onion. I fear we have reached some dystopian state of post-irony.

I like working on (relatively) nothing. I quit working a few months ago and now I don't want to go back. I've spent these months reading books about everything, working out, playing with hobbies and relaxing. The experience has reinforced for me that I don't want kids, I don't need any "lasting" legacy or any greater career success, and I want to work only enough that I can avoid it as much as I can. I want to learn everything, but I don't want to be compelled to employ that knowledge for "success".

Glad for you that you found this clarity

If by "everyone" you mean "people I see on the internet", you're only seeing them because they desperately want / need you to see them, and your perception of their accomplishments is their currency.

If you mean people you encounter in real life (and they aren't inner-circle), they likely are just saying something, ANYTHING, to either just make conversation or give themselves confirmation that they exist and that they're valid. We're human, after all.

Just try to take it all with a grain of salt. There's no "correct path" in life. You get to define what success and happiness means for you, and you'll also never find a shortage of people who will tell you you're wrong lol -- but the most-free people in the world are those who unapologetically just "are".

Be your authentic self, dude -- do nothing, do something, who gives a shit!

Life can't pass you by if you spend it truly enjoying whatever it is that gets you off (even if that's "nothing")

I am currently doing nothing.

I've spent several years recently writing various bits of open source software outside work, and trying to get a new search algorithm published in some journal. After several rejections, I stuck it on arXiv, but I think I'm done with it.

I'm not particularly bothered by my lack of drive right now. Sometimes it's good to just enjoy life and kick back. I'm sure something else will come along that I get into eventually.

I am in the same boat. Had so many tries and like many others, all of them failed. I had some hard time during COVID as well, so I decided to rethink my path.

I was living in a racist place where I was discriminated, I tried my best to keep the boat afloat, but eventually burned myself and the boat.

Now I took a step back, moved to a new place, started learning a new language cause it is fun. I am basically living a simple life and working on recovering myself and (hopefully) getting ready for when the next opportunity comes in.

What I think is a bit different is that many people has lost hope completely, I still have some hope that life will give you another chance, I just need to be ready.

There's a lot of negative vibes in programming these days. When I think of a programming community I think of fun, learning, engagement, projects, /programming/. These days it feels like it's just for money or power. These negative feelings make it all less fun.

So I've been doing music instead. I'm not good at it at all, but learning it ticks pretty much all the boxes that programming does. It's scientific in some ways, creative in others, and overall kind of fun to just build things.

TBH modern music also bears a lot of negative vibes.

The industry is not the music.

Musical improvisation is one of the few forms of art a creator can enjoy as much as an audience.

Exactly my thoughts. I've shifted to music as well. I'm not interested in programming anymore, music has taken the place programming had and for a living I do tech support.

I switched to cooking - gives me the same feeling music does to you. Not so great for the waist though

I recently realized everything else I'd ever worked on amounted to nothing, because I had never figured out how to be someone. (I was something to someone growing up, but someone who still doesn't know other people are also someones.)

So I'm working on becoming someone. That's a combination of figuring out what things are just given in my life--that I am or I like or I want unprompted, naturally--and what things I choose, where I'll actually make an assessment from my values and apply my will and effort to making a change.

Hopefully once I do this, I'll be able to be someone who works on something, instead of living the remainder of my life afraid of the responsibility, and continuing to be no one working on nothing.

Be someone to people you care about and are close to. Don't worry about trying to be a person that has a wikipedia page.

Oh yeah. Couldn't care less about that.

I mean it several levels back from that, being a subject in my own story rather than merely an object in anyone else's, being someone who has an identity and makes decisions and engages other people as a person in my own right.

I wasn't anybody even to myself, which is why I couldn't ever do anything. I could be used by people to do their things, but I wasn't an agent even in my own life.

This resonates a lot with me, and I think you expressed what has been running through my mind lately.

Sometimes, I feel like I lack agency; lile I'm not a primary character in my own life's story. It's so easy to sit back, follow the flow, and let the will of others dictate what I work with and spend my time on.

Working on changing that. But now I'm at an impasse, as it's difficult to know which of my interests and hobbies are coming from within me, and not just something I do to--for lack of a better way to express it-- please or impress others.

Current working theory is 'work less, play more', spend time with others, and being as attentive and receptive that I can.

Thank you for your words: they helped me

Thanks for saying so. It feels like a lonely road a lot of the time.

I'm taking some time away from work to try to pay attention to this. The urge to enter a cloister and stay forever has started cropping up, which may mean I'm taking it too far, but at least tells me I might finally be getting out of my fixed ways of thinking.

Peace to your journey.

I think I am in a similar boat this year. I hope that we both enjoy the process, which leads to a fulfilling destination.

I'm working on things. Just, things I subconsciously devalue because they're not new/hard/valuable enough. So when people ask me what I work on I often answer 'nothing much' back even though those same people would find what I'm actually doing to be as hard as most jobs - which is not that much but enough. Enough is what I should answer, and maybe you too.

Everything will work itself out, these years will turn out to have a hidden purpose, or you'll eventually die and it won't matter either way. If we avoid any major moral failures till the end then we're ahead of the curve, friend. We did our part.

I love your sentiment. I've been fighting off the intrusive "when people ask me" thoughts to eliminate the absurd hypothetical shame/embarrassment. I think it's improved my life.

This is also the curse of expertise. To most people in tech, uploading a weather dataset for one zip code and making a site that spits out predictions for the weather the next day is trivial.

It would not be an impressive project to people in industry and it would not impress most hiring managers. To quote you, it would be “nothing much”. For most people who aren’t in tech, this project sounds pretty cool and is very much something.

Easy to get lost in the sauce when you spend all day soaking in it.

I would think it is impressive, but I wouldn't find it impressive enough if it doesn't beat the established methods of forecasting. I don't start anything because I doubt it would meet my standards of being not pointless and superfluous.

Yes. I quit my job in September, haven't really produced anything since despite having a lot of free time on my hands. I find the software space to be very uninspiring at the moment; everything that's going on is LLMs and crappy LLM wrapper startups. In all my years of HN surfing addiction, the last 6 months have been the most boring, but maybe that's just me.

This AI contortion is just mega-boring with lots of money being thrown as everybody thinks they need to do something - anything.

Oh, look, this blockchain technology will be a major transformer for so many industries, finance will NEVER be the same, there are 100 of startups revolutionizing everything on blockchain NOW. ... ah, nevermind, its VR and metaverse that are changing everything! join us in our hustles to build new meta experience that would change shopping and social interaction forever!! ... ah, nevermind, do you want a stupid chatbot in your application that doesnt require one?

in 2 years there will be another "next big thing", just ignore that noise and do whatever you want to do.

LLMs are just what is in the news

Why do you think that represents the software industry as a whole?

I just want to say that if you get a chance, go to the underbelly of the tech world like the hacking / piracy / emulator forums and scenes.

Tech has been made into this sanitized version of what tech was when we were growing up (over 30 folks) and I think it needs to be discovered because so much of our current experience with tech has been this pale, tasteless, flat designed pasty.

But the joy a lot of us felt with tech because we could tinker and hack things to our heart's content still exists. It just requires a bit more effort to find it these days. And those communities I mentioned up above are the easiest entry points to that whole world.

But the commercialized tech world of the Leetcodes and the Faangs, ya that will make the brightest eyed techie jaded in 10 yrs.

> so much of our current experience with tech has been this pale, tasteless, flat designed pasty

So true. Just look at what became of Apple Computers, from the “bicycle for the mind” to lifestyle products for the consumption of social media.

Sometime in my late 40s I got really tired of learning the "next great thing" only to realize that some young developers had reinvented the wheel. Again.

Since then, I have learned new things, but not because they were "relevant" or "important", bit just because they were fun.

Python is a crappy language, and always has been. It's just a happy accident that the ML folks glommed in to it. Most frameworks suck, seriously, they are awful, victims of their own success.

Learn a clean, new language. Use it to solve AdventOfCode, just for fun. Get back to the fun in programming :-)

> Since then, I have learned new things, but not because they were "relevant" or "important", bit just because they were fun.

How do you maintain a career? I stopped caring about relevant and important and my career suffered for it. I stopped caring about fun because it was either a waste of time or inaccessible.

find balance, it's not all or nothing.

This is what I hate about this industry at this point in my life. Just this morning I was fantasizing about being a dentist instead and just be able to work for as long as I like, not worry about ageism, and otherwise live my life, without needing to constantly “keep up”

I think this is kind of a fantasy. My impression of dentistry and the medical field in general are that there are constantly new procedures coming out to learn, new techniques to implement, and new tools to train on. Maybe ageism is less of a thing since a lot of dentists are self employed but if the dentist down the block is cheaper/better/less painful you're going to see less revenue.

Similarly you could find a job maintaining ATM software in 90s style Java but your earning potential will probably be impacted.

The grass is greener where you water it.

>Python is a crappy language, and always has been. It's just a happy accident that the ML folks glommed in to it.

Is it? I can't imagine making any large scale code with it, but the purposes of being a nifty and intuitively designed scripting front-end seems to work. A lot of the research industry still uses Matlab, so I shouldn't be too surprised Python popped up right behind it.

Kind of?

I became a dad last summer and we also bought a house. My 9-5 takes a lot out of me, there is always something to work on at our house, building furniture, chopping wood, groceries, and the baby needs constant attention. Luckily, I'm relatively happy at my job, not too many meetings, I'm free to work whenever I can, and I like the company, my team, the technology, and the service we provide our customers.

However, I wish I could spend more time tinkering on software and tech stuff I care about.

I'm not in the "nothing matters" group, I know that nobody will care about my open source packages when I die, that's not why I'm doing it. I do it because I find software development and technology interesting, and I genuinely enjoy coding in my (though now very limited) free time.

On the other hand, I try not to consume too much content, as it would make me feel unproductive, but in reality, I just need to do different things at this point in my life. With my current schedule, I had to recognize and accept that I can't read 1 book a week, I ain't doing 10 leetcode questions a day, I won't be a FAANG YouTuber, I probably will never build a startup. I can, however, read twenty minutes before going to sleep, and spend 2-3 hours a week learning something new and exciting, while enjoying my time with my family.

> I am working on something, but that something is myself.

Great way to spend your time. It takes a lot of time and energy so it's not really surprising that there is little bandwidth left to spend on other things. I totally recognize that.

Sometimes boring and steady is good if you need that energy to work on other things, but if you think the "boring" is part of the problem, it might be time to change things up.

If you have the means/access, therapy might be helpful to figure out where these feelings come from and what to do with them.

> Everyone seems so busy building or learning the next big thing

I think this is also not per se a realistic view of what's going on. There are plenty of people who do their job and that's it, but you won't see them post about it.

Things are only a problem if you find them problematic. If you are happy doing nothing that's great, if not then you might need to take some action.

I've had times where I did absolutely nothing, now I am building a company haha, things change, lots is possible.

I do not want to write about the topic, although it is a deep field. There is something else that makes me write this comment:

There is nobody out there being an expert in his/her field without having also personal interrest. Yet - you say while you had this kind of drive which is key to be one of the best, all you got is luck. I dont think so. You describe the last 5 years as being without any success or fulfillment. This is absolutly impossible over such a long time. Nowadays, you say it is of no fun to you anymore to have this "hobby".

Well, you know which kind of people sound like this? Since i am not an expert, don't get me wrong - but to me it is textbook like depression. Please think about checking it with a pro.. best case is i am wrong.

Working on yourself / mental health is not working on nothing - it’s probably the most important, hardest and rewarding work you can do apart from recreational work. Recreational work is all the work that is required for everything to function but that doesn’t produce anything- think of cooking, cleaning, childcare, elderly care etc. - you know all the work that traditionally is/was “women’s work”

I have come to value “productive work” much less than recreational. We have enough stuff already to last a dozen lifetimes.

Just think that the brightest minds of our generation are working on making people click more ads. And then be thankful that you are not in the same boat and OK with not being productive at all.

This period of doing nothing is termed the "neutral zone" by Ritvik Carvalho (^1).

> "We need not feel defensive about this apparently unproductive time-out at turning points in our lives, for the neutral zone is meant to be a moratorium from the conventional activity of our everyday existence. In the apparently aimless activity of our time alone, we are doing important inner business.", Transitions by William Bridges.

Your post resonated with me deeply. I quit my job in April 2023 to spend 2 years doing nothing "productive". Although I was doing well at work, I lost the hustle. The flame of curiosity seemed to have gone out. I wondered what happened to my past self who was constantly preoccupied with different interests and hobbies.

I thought that traveling would give me some fulfillment. Yet, traveling for the past 7 months left me unfulfilled. I realized the real journey was inward: rediscovering my passions and interests. It's difficult to do that while carrying baggage from your current job.

Here's some further reading below if you're interested. Don't hesitate to reach out, I'm curious to learn what you've done to rediscover your interests and curiosities, and I'm more than happy to share my learnings.

1) https://ritvikcarvalho.substack.com/p/career-transitions-and...

2) The Pathless Path by Paul Millerd

3) https://arc.net/l/quote/qmbdiccg

I have a six month old and have dealt with two people dying in the past three years including handling their estates. I’m lucky I have time to learn anything at work.

Hope you are doing okay, stay strong.

I used to have one or more side projects going on all the time.

With work and family, I currently don't really have the energy to make consistent progress, so instead I do very small things, mostly not software.

Like, baking a sourdough bread usually spans two days, with not too much work on each of these days. Will it be The Next Big Thing? Well, only at our next meal :-)

That's the scope of projects I can manage these days.

And that's totally fine, the world cannot sustain the same number of Big Things as there are people, so I'm fine with most of us never having one, including me.

Cooking and baking have replaced a lot of the hobby time I spent on software side projects over the last few years.

The best part about it is that you can share it with almost anyone and they’re going to appreciate it, which is hardly true of most software.

I often feel stagnant and like I should be "doing something". I've come to realize that the best way so far, for me, to add more fulfilling content in my life, is to meditate on what I actually want out of my life. What makes me excited? What gives me a reason to wake up in the morning? I started journaling this year, and it has forced me to record my thoughts and think about the answers to these question. Once I understand the goals that I have and what kind of life/environment I want for myself, I come up with action steps to lead my life in that direction. Whether it be taking a class, attending a type of social gathering every week, committing myself to sharpening a new skill, I follow it like a quest guide in a video game.

If you're feeling like you're stagnating, here are some ideas to help get you jump started that I've done over the years.

There are a lot of things you can learn that are inherently *fun*. Maybe try learning something that sounds fun and interesting to you! Some examples for myself include things like Ham Radio, how and why radio signals bounce off the atmosphere. Or cooking, figure out how to make the best salsa you've ever had by getting a molcajete and fire roasting some tomatillos and peppers. Or go learn Unreal Engine, and the endless wonders and rabbit holes therein. Or make your own toy programming language, or teach people about programming, or make it a goal to make the best apple pie, or chili, (or insert your favorite food here) that you've ever had. Learn how to make the best margaritas the world has ever seen. Or take up making homemade ice cream. Get into 3d modelling or animation or texturing. Take up dog training, and do agility or dog dancing. Take up camping, hiking, backpacking, cross country skiing, mountain biking. Learn about wilderness survival, or backcountry emergency medicine. Getting certifications can be a fun way to force yourself to learn things you wouldn't otherwise, and my ham radio license and emergency medicine first responder certifications were really fun to get. Learning to draw can be super fun, and easier than you might think (get the book "Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain"). Fitness, take up some form of exercise that sounds fun to you; in my case I did powerlifting. Take the Fastai course and learn to make ML models from scratch. Learn to fly the A10 Warthog in DCS-- they say that if you can do that, you can do anything in simulation gaming. I'd go further than that and say that learning all the content in the FastAI course was easier than attaining a level of mastery with the A10.

People skills: One of the most impactful things I've ever done is take the Masterclass in Negotiation. That and reading the book Nonviolent Communication changed how I think about and deal with people forever. The book on body language, What Every Body is Thinking is very fun and will help make you never be bored in a meeting again. The Like Switch is also pretty great. Together I consider these a pretty fabulous two semester course in dealing with people.

Getting started is always the hardest part. Once you get some momentum on something it gets easier. A lot of these things can be combined, like you can listen to tutorials about how to fly the A10 while you're out walking.

Without any sarcasm, Thank you for providing a handful of ideas to make learning great again.

Specifically very little can be more fulfilling than an ability to save another human.

I’ll look into emergency medicine certificate

depending on where you are, at least a CPR class and Stop The Bleed. :)

I have fewer personal software projects going on than I used to (in fact, almost none), and these days I think I spend a lot of the time on unimportant busywork, under the excuse that "organising myself will free me up in the future, when something interesting comes around".

However I also recently quit social media (by this I don't count IRC, HN and the Fediverse as these are mostly text-based - okay to browse in my books), quit soft drinks, quit YouTube (almost, new videos come in through my subscriptions about once a day) and started reading (albeit very slowly) after a multi-year lapse. So it's not all bad.

Let me guess, you’re about under 30 and/or without kids, right?

You’re just burnt out. It happens. You’ll be able to recognize it when you go through it a couple times lol

It’s not a big deal but you need to get sleep and exercise and get out of house and away from devices at least once a day for ~3 months.

And then reassess. But you shouldn’t make any decision if you’re depressed and burnt out.

Do what feels right for you, and make sure you're doing that in a way that ethical for those around you and the rest of the world. It sounds like our paths getting there were a bit different, but I also took a significant break from my professional life and disengaged with expectations that were not my own and used that time to deliberately work on my mental health and relationships. Thankfully, I was in a situation where I had the resources to do so (which includes the support of my partner). I quit a nice tech job and spent a year studying a ton of subjects that I loved or thought I'd love, and explored radical shifts in my career. I'm not done yet, but I managed to find the parts of my old work I still enjoy, the parts I don't, and the beginnings of an understanding of how to trade my time for money in a way that I'm comfortable with. I've been easing back into things, and am even finding joy in the things in things that had previously been surefire triggers for emotional spirals (including hackernews!). Anyway, I'm still not settled, and never will be, but I'm content with that for now.

My idea is to work on small toy things I can finish in uhh 30 minutes, a day, a week, 30 years etc Ponder the big problems in life, read up what was done to progress the progress sufficiently to be able to participate in attempting to solve the puzzle. Look where others didn't look. Eventually you find a problem that fits your ability. This could be a small problem that takes 5 years to complete or a big problem that takes 1 day once you know how to do it.

Sometimes you just have to try stuff. Without going into details my 2 most stupid ideas turned out to be completely hilarious and unlike anything one could imagine in advance.

Enjoy the process not the results.

I'm building things that I find fun and interesting, not necessarily for profit. Of course, I have a revenue generator that I'm also keeping up. But mostly just fun these days. Currently that fun thing is building software synths from scratch, just starting from audio callback.

After reading your title, I wanted to comment the same as you last paragraph: that I'm working on getting my shit together. I liked to worked on tech, and I didn't like to take care of other things, so if you look around in my life's garden, it's all overgrowth, mold, rot, and walls so that this all doesn't get to me. Adding more tech, or working on yet another something else won't help this situation, but it would need a lot of energy from me, so I don't do it.

What I did in my work so that it supports me on the journey is that I moved from software engineer to lower management. Lots of new types of problems, and lots of new ways to me to connect to people and tech.

Often, I came to think, new is not the answer. Rather it's something that I distracted myself with.

Extra energy also doesn't come by introducing more energy to the system. I also use the max already. The effort is better spent in conserving it, and building a system where it recharges faster.

I’ve always liked Viktor Frankl’s take on this:

There is no meaning. But humans need meaning. Create your own! Absolutely anything will do as long as you find it meaningful. Just pick a goal/meaning and go for it. It’s okay to change what you find meaningful as you go through life.

I was in a similar introspective state of my life when someone recommended "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor E. Frankl. To anyone reading the comment wanting more, I'd recommend the book. The audiobook is only 4h 45m.

This is also in some way where Camus ended up.

I've faced a beginning of life pretty loaded in trauma, and a young adult life where self-inflicting some more was a comforting behaviour in the face of the absurdity of life. When contemplating suicide up close, in some of the aftermath I saw Camus' thesis as a pretty decent way to figure out some sort of "philosophy of continuing to exist".

https://bigthink.com/personal-growth/the-meaning-of-life-alb...

This is why I freaking love the movie Blade Runner 2049. It resonated with me tremendously besides being a great movie. Give it a shot if you have not!

I have a lot of stuff I want to work on but completely lack the motivation/mental health/physical health to get into a consistent routine that lends itself to me getting these projects done

I'm in my mid 30s and my preference would be to sit on a porch at a cabin in the woods and wittling a spoon next to a fire with a cup of tea. But I need to keep my skills sharp to stay employed so here I am, sitting in guilt over the lack of productivity in my life and living out a tremendously mediocre career making one fourth of what I'd make if I ever applied myself

I can relate to some aspects. After more than 10 years in IT (Also mid 30s), I sometimes I have the feeling I've seen it all. Another framework, another paradigm.. getting more of those "Oh wait that new thing you seemed to have invented is 99% similar to this old tech from years ago but its now made hipster".

I find myself scanning through news headlines, trying to up my dopamine while doomscrolling YT, but ultimately.. sometimes after I do.. I feel both TMI and empty at the same time. The world seems to have gone crazy with a constant tug-of-war on every single subject known to man. It's extremely tireing, and it makes you want to escape ( to a cabin) indeed.

I thankfully never read news and I didn’t even know about the recent Israeli occupation until like a week after the attacks started. My life is much better for it, you should try it

Surprisingly I’m actually working on projects more. I’m turning 30 this year and my world view has only been affirmed more and more everyday.

Life is a ladder you keep climbing up on. There’s water beneath and it gets higher and higher. I suppose most people are fatalistic in this climb.

I’ve met a few successful business owners and their life isn’t any more secure than mine. We’re all on the ladder unless we have power. Money isn’t power; power is power.

Anyway. I’ve been trying to build a small company with my friend. Just something that will give us some breathing room from climbing.

I sympathize with a lot of you on here though. Technology hasn’t been all that we hoped. In fact- quite the opposite.

Most self aware tech people are tired of the society they helped build and would prefer to live away from it.

You can spend unlimited time working on yourself. I see no unhealthy unbalance in that as long as you have no inner need or outer pressure to produce (or you are able to control both).

Personally I find it tricky, though. Am I doing nothing for this long because I am just getting lazy (-> need resolve) or depressed (-> need real help)? It does not seem to be your case, so just take your time. Take your time.

Im going to antarctica next week because I want to, it's the 7th out of 7 continents :)

I don't really need another reason

Slowly been wandering through latin america until I ended up here

Doesn't mean I don't look for opportunities, in fact I still hack at projects, apply for stuff like YC

But there's no rush even if they don't succeed, I have some savings

> I am working on something, but that something is myself.

I'd say you're working on the right things. Our fellow humans would like to hide behind the idea that any of this matters, but at the end of the day, it doesn't. What does matter to you is yourself and the relationships of people close to you.

I’m not in the same place, but I do find it still surprising at age 40 you can flail around randomly in a city and discover entirely new areas of life that fully captivate your interest. The other day someone invited me to join a math club and now it’s my favorite part of my week. I hadn’t thought about math since I was 15. but that’s example one of dozens. not that anyone’s asking, but I think if anyone isn’t feeling satisfied they can easily try very random things and find some satisfaction and that’s what I would recommend

I am somewhat working on my own workflow. I have a lot of problems with the mental workload of external task and the sheer amount of things that are left to do. For example, having to remind myself to reschedule tasks because I didn't have the time as initially planned is very hard for me.

All other task planners never seem to be made for wrong estimations and the iterative evaluation of underestimated complexities for whatever reason. Nobody can predict the future so why should we be able to plan tasks ahead of time correctly?

Conflicting things in real life are hard to keep track of for me, too - (e.g. having to take your dog to the doctor, buying groceries, or cleaning up the household) and all task planning tools that I have tried never reduce the mental workload for me, because there's still the maintenance part of keeping your whiteboard/calendar up to date once anything goes wrong. And it always does.

That's why I took the last couple days to start to work on my own tool, agenda: the idea for this tool is that the app recommends you what to work on while still being able to keep track of conflicting tasks, with the idea that it adapts over time to your personal missed estimations of how long a task takes.

[1] https://github.com/cookiengineer/agenda

I was working on too many projects at the same time. Including a startup, a book, a blog, and pitching for a movie.

Along the way, I got married and slowed down a bit. Then i got twins. I couldn't work on my own stuff even if I wanted to. When covid hit I published a short story that I had been working on for 7 years just to say I did something.

Now I occasionally blog, and edit a paragraph or two of my book every week. I don't feel bad about it. The most important thing I want to reflect upon when I'm old, is my family.

I'm currently working on nothing outside of work due to an illness.

I hate it. I was halfway through dissembling my project car's engine for some upgrades and was hoping to get started on a bathroom demo for a remodel, and that's all been delayed.

I'm also not really working on any tech right now, because for the most part, I've gotten my personal technology working how I like it. I have a spare PC I've been meaning to turn into a home theater device but I'm more motivated to work on the car.

Are you willing to share the class of illness? That's awful to hear...

It's a recovery from a respiratory illness that has made it difficult to do any work for more than about 45 minutes at a time.

Great question & post!

I am definitely working on nothing (outside of my normal day job, of course).

I used to work a normal day job and then in the evenings and weekends work furiously on side projects. One of those side projects became a business that while still around today, is probably getting shut down this year due to failure to generate revenue that exceeds its relatively minimal costs. In other words, the business failed.

That business failing despite 3+ years of nights and weekends, and a significant chunk of my own money, is ONE reason why I struggle to find enthusiasm for new projects.

Another reason is something similar to yours which is that I am focusing on myself more these days. Mind, body, and spirit. I am taking more time to focus on things I enjoy rather than embracing a constant feeling that I need to do MORE. I work my day job and I try to be an excellent contributor there, but I've accepted that it doesn't seem like my path in life is going to be a tech entrepreneur. I just don't have what it takes to build something truly novel and unique enough to drive revenue, nor do I have the marketing and personal skills required to take something mediocre and generate sales.

That might sound like I'm giving up, and to a degree it is, but its more like I'm accepting reality. I don't think I was meant for that life and I'm learning to be ok with it. That means dropping all the side projects and constant hustle and just embracing life. Spending more time with family, working out more, and generally just chilling for a while (it's been a couple years).

At times this manifests as a mid life crisis where I worry that my time is running out and that I haven't accomplished my goals. I'm learning how to recognize these emotions and let them pass without disturbing me too much. It's definitely a skill and one that I am by no means an expert at.

On that note it's also worth pointing out that many of these feelings are common to people in their mid 30s. It's a time where I'm learning to re-evaluate what is important to me. I've accomplished a lot of my goals, and accepted some were foolhardy. Now I find that I should just learn to live well and appreciate what I have and who I am, rather than focusing on what I don't have, and who I am not.

I believe it's freeing to try, fail, and eventually exclude life paths and gain a new focus and understanding of what's next.

I don't know anything about your project, please ignore if I'm off the mark. But is it possible you spend time building something without validating it's a solution people actually need and pay for? It's very difficult to do because you have to face feedback technology doesn't provide. On the other hand, few people focus on validation first. At least I don't, because it's quite tedious and I don't typically work on side projects with the intention to make money.

> But is it possible you spend time building something without validating it's a solution people actually need and pay for?

Absolutely.

The service I provide is also available in a free form, but lacks some of the features I offer. It definitely is the case that those features I offer are - apparently - not as valuable as I had hoped for the target demographic.

If I were to do this whole thing again, I would probably lead with finding product market fit, rather than blindly building something and hoping for the best.

I'm working on nothing. I'm making great progress, I have a whole lot of nothing !

Same! I took a break from my job. A couple of years ago. My new full-time engagement is myself, and it's one of the most challenging and exhausting and fulfilling jobs I've ever had. Sometimes I catch myself "wanting" to go back to the "less complex" version of myself, but there's no turning back now, and it only takes a few minutes to realize I wouldn't want to go back anyway. ;)

I believe that doing nothing, on purpose, especially for prolonged time (months, years), especially in solitude, is often _the_ most productive, highest leverage activity of all that an individual can be doing. The reason is that our subconscious is way more powerful than our conscious. The logical reasoning engine in our brain is really quite basic. Think a silly 8-bit console emulator running on an an actual modern piece of hardware (subconscious brain). And so relying on subconscious is somewhat like using hardware acceleration. The brain often knows better, but you cannot quite articulate what it is that needs to be done or why. And if you keep ignoring that signal, keep silencing it, keep forcing "doing the right thing" over what it's trying to tell you - that's a recipe for failure. You better listen. How? By doing nothing to the point of getting bored and looking how to "kill time". That's when your subconscious is finally heard. It keeps gently nudging you in the right direction without revealing the grander plan. Perhaps it doesn't have a plan; or perhaps it does but you're better off not knowing it. I also believe that procrastination is an acute case of the same. Your subconscious is screaming - hey human, this activity, this project, this job doesn't quite make sense. Again, you better listen. Otherwise you'll perhaps get more stuff done - but the wrong kind of stuff. Personally I'm looking back at my own timeline, and the gaps between jobs when I was up to nothing whatsoever as some of the most productive periods of my life. Not in a "I did X" way - more like, "I became more of what I want to be faster than at any other time".

These things come in seasons. Definitely good to take a beat and focus on yourself. You phrase it like it's permanent though.

I've certainly had times where I don't work on anything outside of work. Other times I have multiple side projects. I'm always doing it out of self love though whether its self care or projects! That's what's key.

I’m working on a lot of things which, when I think about it, are all related to the "smolnet/smallweb". (offpunk, mainly, but also other email/gemini/blog related stuff).

It is funny because it seems that I’m now always looking for "the next small thing" instead of the "the next big thing" ;-)

To be honest I was in a similar place last few years, professional development was pushed to the back seat somehow, nothing was interesting to me. But then I started doing stuff for me personally - got a sail skipper license, a motorbike license - traveled the world. But after a year of having fun, I have to say I’m quite happy getting back to the industry.

I think maybe it’s because I’m getting into health tech, and that feels slightly more meaningful. Also FHIR turned out to satisfy my lust for exploring complex systems quite a lot. We’ll see how it goes, but my advice to all burned out hackers is to get a sabbatical - like a year or so - code what you like, travel the world, tinker with hardware, join a ngo, stuff like that, time does heal all wounds.

Simply try to make everything you do about ultimately making the world a better place. It will give you your drive back. Stop thinking "me me me" all the time, but ask yourself "what can I do to help others?" The nuance is that, sometimes, in order to be able to take care of others you have to take care of/work on yourself first (simply keep in mind that you are doing that in order to come back stronger to be able to help others. Never loose sight of the bigger picture). That is what I believe one of, if not The, key to happiness (and therefore to finding your drive again)

Like you, I'm working on understanding myself; my drives, reactions, relationships, emotions. I'm reading more nonfiction in an effort to understand where humanity has been and where we might go. A hunter-gatherer/semi-nomadic lifestyle is appealing (it would not be easy at first, even given enough healthy land & water), and building/strengthening community, instead of silo-ing, is something we can all practice now. I've gotten to know so many of my neighbors, and I try not to exclude anyone with politics different from mine; we're all in this together, and we all have so much in common.

I'm also working on nothing for the past two years. After about 10 years into software development and side projects, keeping up to date with new tools and frameworks, and so on, I'm now feeling both overwhelmed and bored at the current incremental upgrades tech is having. Similar to smartphones, they're getting boring.

I feel that my level of knowledge allows me to easily grasp new concepts, and that exciment fades when I realize that the most juicy part will be implementing it in a big project, and not another CRUD SPA.

This pause/gap I consciously took made me realize I wanted to make my knowledge broader, and go all the way down to learning what makes software and tech exist: fundamental concepts like math, physics, calculus, probability, yada yada.

I'm also using this time to learn about cultural aspects of software, it's history amd methodologies.

Without being overwhelmed by tech, I took the decision of starting an engineering degree. And with that, I think I'm keeping the tech grinding on pause, until I learn how systems work, how tech is able to exist, with the hopes that after having a structural foundational base, I can go back to tech and move aside from CRUD SPAs, solving exciting and hard problems.

I'm really glad I found this post, this is something that keeps resonating in my mind. This is a really overwhelming industry.

And as a closing note (maybe I'm talking to myself here), never ever feel bad about doing what feels good doing.

Working on nothing is when I get my best work done. I’m sure there’s science behind it, but I very consistently return to the piano better than when I left off. And all my major code solutions come to me after a few days off.

Without turning this post into a book, I think what you are feeling is very normal, and perhaps even a healthy moment of reflection. If you consider time to be the single most precious resource, then perhaps you can figure out how you want to use it. If that's in bacchanalian and hedonistic pursuits, then great. If that's in self-discovery, great. Maybe on your path you'll find therapy or diet or exercise or hobbies or meds will bring renewal. My guess would be at some point you will find something that sparks renewed interest and you'll find the balance.

Not right now, but I was in that place during probably the final 2 years at my previous job. It's hard to say if that was primarily due to the job itself (I was there for a little over 10 years, but by year 8 or so I was becoming disillusioned with the company and felt like I wasn't doing much new or novel) or the pandemic (for reasons that should hopefully be obvious!). And I did have a few spurts of creativity/wanting-to-learn during that time, but they only lasted 4-6 weeks at a time, at best.

The job dissatisfaction translated to burnout. The pandemic stuff was I guess a different kind of burnout that I'd never experienced before, combined with mild depression over the isolation (fortunately my partner and I lived together; I can't imagine what people living alone had to go through) and inability do do most of the normal things I loved to do.

I think it's useful to really examine how you feel (possibly with the help of a therapist, but you can do a lot of this mental/emotional work on your own if that's not your thing) to try to determine if these feelings are coming from a true belief that this career/hobby path simply is no longer for you, or if it's more that there are some current conditions in your life that have temporarily made you feel this way. I've experienced various levels of burnout throughout my career and life, and I know during those periods I was very negative about continuing with what I was doing longer term. But ultimately I still love software, and still love building things with software, and I'm glad I haven't abandoned it entirely.

Taking a break -- consciously, without putting pressure on ourselves to do something, anything -- is I think the bare minimum to getting past feelings of burnout, if that is what it is. Sometimes that alone works. But sometimes you may need a new job with fresh people and challenges as well.

Regardless, I think it's important to understand and acknowledge that there is nothing wrong with you. This is an unfortunately normal thing that happens sometimes, when things aren't going well for a sustained period of time. There is a way out, either to find joy in what you're doing again, or to decide that you want to find something else to do with your life and time.

I find myself in the same hole but not because of lack of opportunities from peers or life, not because I dont have good ideas or dont know how to excecute them.

I have work mostly all my life working as a freelancer and havent been able to find a workplace that I feel really confortable. That and situations that always seem to happen in the worst possible moment, I found myself in the necesity to make my own company, what do we do? what do we make? software and hardware. anything specific? no im working towards that.

Thank you for your post, feels good to vent a little bit

I'm working on nothing. It is ok to give up the external validation of doing something, and I've found live much more livable.

"Evil comes from a man's inability to sit quietly in his own chair."

I don't think its possible to be working on 'absolutely nothing'. I think you'll find that if you really explore this idea that you can almost always go further. For example. Do you clean your house? Maintenance is something. The status quo is something and it need to be maintained to exist. I think you recognize this because you admit that you're working on yourself.

The only time I think you could truly do nothing is when you've passed.

I would say I was in a similar place - Wake up, Go to work, come home, watch youtube, sleep, repeat; I had projects I was interested in but couldn't bring myself to do them. For me, part of the answer was changing my environment, the people I was with, the culture was to chill because you're exhausted from work. Another part was, like you're doing now, working on yourself. Another, specific part of working on myself was taking inventory of the things I 'valued'. Did I truly still value those things or were they things from my youth that I am clinging to? Do I value them because I authentically value them or is it because culturally they are valued? Am I applying those cultural valued to places that matter to me. For example: "Hard work". I do value hard work, but the places I was applying that value did not provide return on the investment. So now I apply 'hard work' elsewhere.

I think it is both necessary and good to do this from time to time. Good luck on this journey.

I resonate a lot with this but I think it's against my will that I feel lost. I've started little projects like 48hr.dev to try to help me just build more and to collaborate with people in the same spot. I have friends building these incredible saas apps or stuff to help in scientific research, or just really cool side projects but I struggle to find ideas that are valuable to people. I don't lack motivation or interest I just lack the luck or either skills to find (and have faith in) solid ideas.

Yeah. Very similar story on my side.

I slowed down a lot, both at my job and with side projects. And you know what, Earth is still spinning!

Kids are here now, working on myself, trying to figure out things, be happier. Etc.

I had a period like this, I even stopped playing some games because it just was there anymore. My wife and I took a long road trip in 2021 and it gave me time to be peaceful (national parks helped a lot with this). I started grad school in 2022, it has really helped me with perspective and forces me to engage in my interests when other things are often easier. There’s drawbacks, but overall I’m happy to have motivation. In short: try something new!

A common theme here in this modern self and business driven world.

We are human beings not human doings.

Doing nothing is the most wonderful thing.

It is a place where new ideas and innovations come from.

I have always found that space to be a place of change, either in personality or the beginning of a new developmental stage. The old self changing the old life to meet my new demands of a new life. What we seek as teenegers is not same as when we are in our 30's, 40's or 50's.

However, the anxiety is unbearable in that space, hence we are continually seeking and doing things, anything to reduce the existential anxiety of just being.

Everyone? Who is everyone, do you not mean you? Own it and all you say. Not everyone is busy building and learning for the next big thing. You are or have been and still are. Own it. "I am so busy building and learning for the next big thing."

Those things are not out there they are in here. They are yours and it is your life.

Life is monotonous and unchallenging.

looking inside and working on ones self is always the beginning

Working on personal issues can only be a priority.

Creating a healthy balance, for me, is just business speak for keeping 50% of your focus on meaningless things. A real healthy balance is committing 100% to yourself

I am working on relocating to an area that will afford me more personal and professional opportunities in the future. I have been writing software professionally for over 20 years and there is not much left there to captivate me, so I’ve refocused my professional efforts towards softer skills. I spend a lot of my day talking to people, organizing schedules, planning, networking, writing proposals. Much like you, working on myself.

I think it’s super normal to have fluctuations in your interests and curiosities. Life would be pretty boring if we did the same thing for its entirety. I also think that focusing on yourself is something that always pays off - and will likely give you more mental and emotional capacity long term. Whenever I have periods like that I find my curiosity and drive comes back naturally if I’m patient and don’t try to force it.

Django 5 recently came out, I put off upgrading my app until after the holidays. turns out pip doesnt even have 5 yet? Whatever version I upgraded to went smoothly.

The new SSH 0day also messed me up as I use paramiko which is vulnerable in this project. I did have some upgrade problems but that was a 1 time problem.

Said project is a ssh based network config management project.

I think this week I'm going to investigate adding bgp awareness into it.

My list of ideas, whether or not they are even viable is a big question I'm sure, could probably keep me busy the rest of the year.

Then I also have my honeypot network project which also builds a threatfeed. Though that has been online for almost 1600 hours, very stable.

Here's the thing, I've been where you are.

You are seeking a purpose. Perhaps even a life purpose?

You can be anything you want but there's 2 rules.

1. You want to do the thing which you find is as fun as video games or whatever.

2. You must try to be the very best. You may not become Tiger Woods or Gretsky, but you have to aim to be the best.

I'm past that stage. I built a business in the 2000's and hosed it completely because I had no idea what I was doing. Then I spent a lot of the 2010's trying to conceptualise and create something I believe in which was similarly futile on the probabilistic scale. I figured at the end of it that it's futile and embarked on a journey of self improvement which devolved in chaos and nihilism.

Now I exist in a world of laughing maniacally at this shit show while raking in the cash from pretending I give a fuck about things like microservices and AngularJS, sleeping through hours of meetings, drinking a hell of a lot of really good wine and spending my spare time travelling all over the world and hooking up with floozies in bars and doing things which my parents would frown about.

Do what makes you happy and fuck everything else. Seriously. Leave no regrets.

Anyway I'm sure the HN community will frown upon this. I know I do :)

I am dabbling with a few code related things, but not very seriously. Mainly what I'm working on is trying to figure out how to approach the next few years. As in, I'm anticipating that I'll be entering what will be the second complete year with no work, and while I'm continuing to maintain the other personal systems that keep me going, I'll need to figure out how to proceed; does it mean fully committing to a new trade, fully committing to an attempt at contracting, fully committing to a general labor job, or whatever else. I don't know what that answer is, but I've been doing effectively nothing but learning and enjoying things on my own accord since being laid off 8 months ago, and that's great, but I don't really see what the next step is yet, and instead of burning myself out grinding through my own projects regardless of my enthusiasm, I'm just taking space to try and get there. Things have truly never looked worse for prospects in my career, and it might be time to quit, or maybe not, or maybe temporarily.

For most of human history seasons have dictated what we can and can’t do. I believe there’s an emotional and physical component to seasons that we can either respect, or push back against.

Which means there’s going to be seasons that are quite productive. And seasons of grief and pain. And seasons to focus on self growth. Once I accepted this it got a bit easier to stop beating myself up about these things.

I just shut down my startup (we raised a huge seed and we weren't gonna find product market fit with the original thesis; pivoting madly would have been a poor way to justify our valuation).

I am doing standup comedy and blacksmithing until I get bored. I thought it was gonna take longer than it seems like it will. But for now I'm not writing any code or doing any customer interviews.

I'm working on being a good father, husband and friend.

I have a 3.5yo and another on the way in a couple months. Also my amazing mother-in-law just unexpectedly passed over the holidays so we are all grieving.

Life puts everything in perspective. I have realized that I really don't have anyone but my spouse to really open up to and it is hard. Deep relationships are what I need to work on.

I've been in a bit of a funk since the beginning of the pandemic. The last "good" year for me was 2019. Since then, there's been a failed startup, several mediocre work-at-home jobs, and failed relationships. I'm not sure if it's burn out or something more. I'm mostly just treading water in several areas.

Sometimes I worry that I'm not doing things because I've finally officially become "burned out."

But I also read an article this week that said "unstructured time" is part of a healthy and relaxing weekend routine.

Either way, I think it's a good idea to make sure you're exercising, getting lots of sleep, and eating healthy, energizing foods.

The pandemic did this to a lot of people. Habits are difficult to form, and are more easily broken. In my estimation, the pandemic caused many people to lose everything, or at least lose a lot of things which they spent years creating or building. Rebuilding from proverbial ground zero, or seeing the transient nature of things that may not have seemed quite so transient (be they projects, friendships, relationships, careers) before become destroyed, does quite a number on motivation.

Obviously, some people flourished during the past few years. Though, the majority of my coworkers and friends hit the permanent suspend button on side projects and other things. It is difficult to stay motivated on projects when you realize how much can be taken from you in an instant.

I don't have much to offer you, but I have some questions if you're willing to answer:

1. Do you have a live in partner and/or children?

2. Do you work remotely?

I ask because I'm seeing similar sentiments more lately from friends who work remotely and live alone. Even those with active social lives still have this sense of lack of fulfillment.

But I don't see it amongst peers with live in partners or children or who work in an office. In fact I had some friends who were working remotely alone who either got partners or returned to the office and their outlook improved.

To be clear, I'm absolutely not suggesting that you should get a live-in partner or children or go to the office just for socializing.

I'm more making a comment on a trend I've noticed with the rise of remote work, and one that we as a society will need to work on fixing together without forcing everyone back to work.

(Edit: just one semi counterexample)

I work remotely with a live in partner of 7 years and we’re both feeling a lack of fulfillment. I work remotely, they work in an office.

Sure the pandemic might have had some play here but I don’t think it’s because we’re not in an office so much as these last few years have put things like “work” into perspective.

Interesting, thank you for offering your POV, and changing mine.

I liked your office / partner comment; I think there's a lot of truth in that.

I think a lot of people are really worn out. We have endless scrolling, tons of wars in the world, people are indebted, and realistically it doesn't matter how much you work; it's all unaffordable and many are losing hope.

I think the first world needs a large structural change. Government, capitalism, the whole nine yards. I think a lot of people are seeing the bullshit from the left and right and saying to themselves "surely I'm not the only one who thinks something is wrong."

This is a tale as old as time observation, and its spot on. We’re not meant to be alone. Those who are find something else to replace human company, usually a pet, or obsessive hobby.

I know the film gets some hate, but Ouiser from Steel Magnolias is a classic example. She’s a curmudgeon, but she’s not alone. The women in that town embrace her for who she is and they do life together. Everyone needs someone.

I’m inquisitive so I keep my eye on the regular stream of hype and trends to find what’s actually good. My focus is math and computer science. Most of my mind is in the theoretical and pops up occasionally to do brief soul searching and give people advice. I don’t care about careers.

Hmm, my reading of the title was, is anyone working on something that they have a good reason to suspect will turn out to be nothing. I.e. does anyone think they are doing a bullshit job.

I am not sure how one can work on absolutely nothing unless one is happily retired/unemployed.

This is me. I've been working on my hardware design and engineering skills for 20 years, in the last I stopped trying to focus on progressing that and just focus on progressing me, my relationships (including with myself), and learning to market myself better and more genuinely. In learning about marketing I've learned a lot about human nature, and manipulation of such, and I've learned to recognize how marketing and soceity in general manipulates us in ways I was previously unaware of. Learning this alternate skillset really opened my eyes up to the broader world and has really broadened my horizons.

g4zj, you are doing the most important thing of your life. Keep doing, I'm pretty sure you are doing great! Keep healthy.

I was actually in a situation similar to you. Lost of interest in learning new stuff, every thing feeling the same as something that I already know, and obviously I was wrong, but it took sometime before I was hocked over a new subject I know little about. Lately, I'm studying Computer Related skills like soundness, proof assistant and automatic proof/solver. It will not have any impact on my IT career, but I never learned anything for my career.

I keep working on myself too.

A big part of this could just be mild burn out. I find that if I take a long vacation, sooner or later I get bored and get right back to being curious and working on building or learning something. Having said that, I have a harder time finding meaning in side projects now that I'm older.

There's a bit of nihilism in me now, kinda like the koa “If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" If I work on a side project and no one uses it, does it even matter? Learning for the sake of learning has become near meaningless to me.

Not only am I not working on anything, I'm not even reading HN anymore!

I’ve been adjusting to a new chronic illness and have found that I need to save my “health days” for work, exercise, and friends/family.

I still sometimes find myself feeling good during time off without any plans, but I have learned that I can’t really pick up projects that I know will take more than a couple days of focus to complete.

If I find myself longing for more work or bigger projects, it usually means I’ve been in a long span of feeling well, which means I should just go outside or be with people anyway. Work usually fills that void very quickly, too…

You can have a lot of output once you stop receiving input for a few days.

Are you 35-45-ish? Ask your doctor to check your hormone levels. This sounds SUPER familiar, and therapy ain't gonna patch the leak if the lugnuts aren't even holding the wheel on.

Worth noting that most doctors think very low testosterone levels are "fine" because they're "in range", which basically means you're not going to, like, die tomorrow from it. Research what healthy levels actually are where you feel good and healthy. It's significantly higher than the lowest acceptable test range.

Strange that both options you mentioned are professional services.

I've been the software engineering game for the last 8+ and this is the best lesson I've learned in the past two years, been facing lot of health issues due to my workoholic nature and ignoring my physical health. Somehow my mental health has been good due to the support systems I have in my life and I'm super grateful for that.

Having a balanced life is my biggest goal right now as other carrer related things are mostly on auto pilot mode. I have a system set for that.

I've been in the same state this summer. I burnt half of my savings bootstrapping my startup that failed, and gambled the rest 90% on crypto (longing crypto lol, it's 2x since then)... so I spent 2 months lying on the couch, rewatching my favorite movies and sleeping 12 months per day on Prozac. Ended up starting great relationships with my university classmate, it's much more meaningful now.

Creating a product and seeing people loving it brings me the most joy, from my experience.

ive been doing nothing basically over december, quit a fast paced design agency working with funded startups for 4 years, got so tired I just sat through december lol, did some travel, saw family, played sports and video games etc.

now in January I narrowed down my ideas for what to do next and main one i'm focused on right now is launching a productized agency for my services - a subscription for design services for indie makers, bootstrapped companies and early stage startups mostly

i'm actively enaging with other makers on twitter and making some connections which gives me a feeling I missed when working for the agency - I build up my own assets and value over time vs exchanging hours for cash consistently.

I'm finding also there are so many ways to provide value to other people, amount of ideas i get now to solve problems i notice and directly involve me is crazy - basically daily. Never have I been more excited and calm.

sometimes you need to abstract yourself and allow to do nothing to be at your best after - I think a lot of us working with tech can relate to that.

bento.me/mxd

If you're lacking motivation or inspiration, the best thing is to do something new everyday. That will in turn make you more motivated and inspired.

Well, this all resonates. I'm in the middle of a big life transition, and while re-evaluating how I got where I am and why I took on certain roles, I found I'm not as beholden to my trajectory as I felt.

I'm ready to bundle up everything I've spent the past twenty odd years doing and turn it into just a other stepping stone of a long and interesting journey.

I'm not working on engineering/programming related stuff right now, but I did start the year with a resolution to write some more music - been playing guitar for nearly 20 years now, but most of my playing is just looping a few chords and noodling over it. Which is fun! But I would like to actually get some songs done. Not for any particular reason, just seems fun.

I try to just sort of follow my interests in my free time instead of optimizing it or trying to find some "side hustle." Sometimes I'll be fiddling around with programming related stuff, sometimes its music, sometimes I get into a game for a while. Last summer it was (kind of out of left field for me) fishing - just bought a rod and some tackle and started going out.

If there's any antidote for "the hustle" it's fishing - sure, you can spend 1000s on gear if you want, but at the end of the day, you're going to go sit out in nature for a while and some days you just won't get a single bite. The first few times that happened, it bugged me, until I realized that sitting by the water for a couple of hours is a great use of time regardless of whether I see a single fish.

Another thing I like about fishing is it's just active enough that it keeps my mind busy - instead of sitting there worrying about the budget or whatever, I', just thinking "maybe I should try reeling a bit differently" or "maybe I should move down the bank a bit" or "maybe I'll tie on that new lure". It's like perfectly tuned to keep me pleasantly distracted while not being stressful or high-pressure in the least.

My oldest son asked for a kayak this Christmas, and I found a pretty good deal on a pair of fishing-style kayaks from a local guy who was getting rid of his. I'm very much looking forward to trying some kayak fishing this summer, there's so many good looking spots that weren't really accessible from the shore.

Speaking of kids, that's also a great way to pull myself away from the drive to constantly be doing something new and "productive". They keep me busy and while there's times I wish for a little more free time, overall they're a blast. My oldest and middle child are now old enough to game with me - we spent a lot of time over the Christmas break playing through the new Mario game, Mindustry, and even a bit of Fortnite (that's their thing, not mine, but it's something to do).

I’m in a similar boat. For me, I think it’s burnout. If I have a week+ off of work, I’ll start to get the itch to start a project, but with work the way it is, I hardly even touch my home computer anymore.

I have a lot of things I started during those weeks off that never really make it off the ground, because the interest falls to 0 the second work starts back up.

> But not only has my professional life become monotonous and unchallenging

In my 20 years as a developer, I think I can count actually fulfilling moments on one hand. Maybe I'm just really unlucky, but I suspect that professional development isn't very efficient or worthwhile. So many projects get canned, delayed, reworked, death marched, or are just, well, asinine.

Personally, my growth had stunted, especially ever since Covid hit. I was just kind of "existing" and not really doing anything. But lately I've taken on something completely new to me, and wow I'm pretty bad at it. I'm learning so much, and it's fun to see the improvement and "ohhhhhhhhh" moments. So maybe just try something totally different for a while.

I'd like to start some hobby projects, but only when i have energy and health resources to do it. Doing the bare minimum is default. Besides i doubt investing in something long-term is worth it, except very rare circumstances that don't apply to hobby/work/mundane "skills/knowledge".

Basically nothing but yoga for the last 3 months. Seems like the only thing worth doing. Every book on proper yoga/enlightenment says it's the way to lasting fulfilment. So I'm prioritising myself at the moment. I even pulled out of a £350k job to do this. Time to get the big thing on my bucket list ticked off.

What role did you have lol?

I'm doing boring stuff. Forms with 5 to 20 fields that people put data into. Nothing AI, not a startup, regulated industry, kind of slow, low stress. I can focus on delivering on quality, I close laptop at 5pm and do other stuff. I feel that it's valuable to society to have this basic stuff not in a half-broken state, I enjoy the people around -- no tech bros with inflated egos or anything.

#bogatyrlife

Hi. That'd be me. I'm struggling right now and just can't focus on anything. In middle-school I was diagnosed with ADHD and was on meds. I haven't taken meds in 20+ years but in the last couple of weeks I can feel that it's been really hitting really hard.

Been working on a project that interests me but progress is surprisingly slow (think half hour a day baby steps). Almost like I’m procrastinating except as I said I do actually want to do it

Haven’t quite placed where that internal contradiction is coming from.

Normally one procrastinates unpleasant things

I can completely relate to this, and was in a similar place not too long ago. My personal recommendation would be to check out Vipassana (dhamma.org) - it was a life-changing experience, and the first to actually address some of the mental issues I was facing.

i am in the middle of switching between job functions, and my free time is currently split between applying for jobs and doing things other than tech that i am more passionate about.

i am learning new things at work and while it would be a good idea to demonstrate it through some smaller projects using them. but i share the sentiment with op and the others in terms of personal drive to do such stuff.

i do find the "show HN" posts demotivating like some people would find other people posting about their great lives on social media.

I advise microdosing to people struggling with depressive or nihilistic mindsets. Microdosing gives me the boost I need to actually work on improving things. It's also virtually free and has no dangerous side effects.

Such a depressing post with so much resonance. Rule number 1 of freelancing or having a job with mental workload: Priority number 1 is to play the long term game and not let burn out kill passion.

I'm currently taking a break from working on anything. Just doing the bare minimum to get A's in college, and relaxing the rest of the time. Don't regret it after working so much before.

Hell yeah. Find your slack. Long live Bob and the church of the subgenious.

I'm working on myself through my work, if that counts?

I'm a staff-level SWE. I took the last year off of paid employment because I felt anxious and stressed even though everything was, objectively, fine. I had some poor health habits that I was staunchly ignoring and a project I was deeply vested in at my job was ripped out from under me. The meaning I ascribed to that project was giving my life purpose and, with that suddenly missing, and with my health in less than ideal shape, my outlook on the world became dismal.

I took the year off because I wanted to try and rediscover that curiosity you mentioned having lost. I used to LOVE programming. I loved feeling like a techno-wizard making pixels bend to my will. What happened? Why did I now feel anxious and uncomfortable staring at a screen while trying to think critically? I think I got a little too lost in the sauce of the startup world and it became clear that it would take some "me time" to rebalance.

So, from some perspectives, I've been doing nothing. No significant other, no money-making job, not travelling the world or living life to the fullest... but having a project that feels meaningful to me, whose existence is moderately under my control, and that I have sufficient time and energy to engage with -- that's giving me most of what I felt was missing. Well, that and dropping a bunch of widely understood bad habits and picking up some better ones.

I want to see myself as a more consistent and reliable person. In my 20s, I had infinite energy. In my 30s, I'm finding that's only true if I keep myself away from alcohol and drugs, exercise constantly, connect with people, and, most importantly, be mindful of my physical and emotional state. If I start slipping into a rut, and don't notice it and nip it in the butt, suddenly it can take over my whole demeanor and disrupt a lot of good things I had going. A couple of days of bad sleep, coupled with a desire to keep pushing forward, can cause me to regress into drinking a bunch of caffeine. The caffeine will mess with my anxiety and mood and I'll be more tempted by unhealthy food and marijuana. These decisions start to take their toll, the effects compound, and suddenly I'm in a destructive cycle where I see myself being less and less each day. I start to hide from myself. All these issues were present in my 20s, but they never really seemed to be a hindrance. I could just roll with the punches and remain proud of my accomplishments. Now, in my mid-thirties, I find myself frustrated (yet a little excited) to try and figure out how to keep myself running like a well-oiled machine. I want to remain proud of my consistent growth into my later years and it's going to require getting better at working with myself.

That said, I know me. I don't do well without a project that I can see myself in. It's what makes getting up in the morning worthwhile. I think it has to do with having an avoidant/dismissive emotional attachment style, or something to that effect. So, if someone were to ask me if I'm working on nothing then I guess I would always want to confidently say, "No. I am working on something, but at my own pace and with poorly-defined goals."

So, in an effort to work on myself, I've given myself a project whose goal is to help me, and others, be more consistent and present. I must admit I've taken the most circuitous route possible to achieving this effect as I'm ostensibly creating a digital ant farm which functions as a mental health companion (https://github.com/MeoMix/symbiants). The goal is to create a pet whose growth fluctuates with its owners' consistency. I want to see my ant colony thrive when I am consistent. When I am feeling good I want to see my ants take on new challenges, expand their territory, stress themselves out trying to maintain growth, build habituated pathways to foods in an attempt to scale. And then, when I invariably go through an emotional downturn, I want to see my ants yield some of their land back to the fog-of-war, hunker down and weather the storm of inconsistent check-ins and less good habits undermining my personal energy. And then, when I've sated my desire for self-destruction and re-commit to being dedicated to my goals, I want to see my ants rediscover forgotten pathways, regain their ground quickly, and act as a reminder that my emotional downturns didn't undo all my personal growth. The habits are still there, hidden in fog, waiting to be rediscovered with a little effort. I want to have this pseudo-living creature that serves as a visual proxy for how well I feel I'm doing.

If anyone feels similarly and could see themselves finding purpose through this effort - feel free to reach out. I would be happy to talk to you and help you find a home in the project. There's Discord and email in my bio. It's my first game, the scope is way too large, the code I've written is bad, and I have no strategy for monetization. You'll very likely become a worse Rust developer by associating with me :) ... but I know I want to create something that helps motivate people to continue showing up for themselves and I'm confident there are others out there who either feel similarly, or feel lost and could use help finding themselves with the right project.

I've written a lot! Sorry for the meandering thoughts and the weird upsell of a project in a thread about working on nothing... but it all seemed relevant to me while the juices were flowing. Cheers :)

Thanks for writing all that out, I'm in a similar situation I suppose and you've made me feel better. And I love the idea of your ant colony.

:) You're welcome. I'm glad you found the writing enjoyable and appreciate the kind words about my ants.

I read a book from 1960 about Quantum Mechanics. There is more content from one paragraph there than from anything from your AppleTV, your Facebook, your WhatsApp, your Telegram or anything else from your stupid overpriced trash media. Ken Thompson is right when he calls Apple an atrocity. Linux and Framasoft are not terrorist organisations but I'm not sure about any other.

I'm working on nothing. I want to do something but I have no ideas and I'm also laid off so I have the time but no mental motivation.

Here. I'm just lazy. An excuse I tell myself is ehh that probably has no monetary future so I just don't do it, but its probably just laziness.

The worst thing about laziness is how everyone is against the idea. Hey, you have 1 guy in me who sees that as justifiable and valid expression.

I feel less hopelessness, but I’m also just working on myself. Getting into a routine, cooking, working out, making tomorrow better. Work can come next.

You have to die a few times before you can really live.

Yes.

I am taking the appropriate time, now.

For everything.

Still building, but building correctly, and less often, trending-toward-never, at the expense of my health.

I hit a bit of a wall with my main project and just never really moved on. still in limbo.

Only thing Im working on is learning the lbum "Pollinator" by Cloud Rat on guitar.

That and working on calisthenics.

Im honestly at the point where seeing a computer makes me a little quesy. Im so sick of tech

It's your problem with not finding out the problem you want to solve.

> If not, why not?

Burnt out, trying to get into this. Why do you think lol

I've been working on two things:

1) method acting

2) being on the run for a $5 taco thief

I am dead serious.

I was doing constant things in my spare time until I had kids.

I mean, I still do, just not a lot of it involves learning something technical. Controlling a hoverboard motor is maybe the biggest hobby project I have, other than that its been MTB:ing, working out, and lately I got the genealogy bug. And I realized that for some reason I love that kind of work. I remember being 4 years old or so, and being fascinated with phone books! I mean really, really fascinated over all the names, and all the people they represented.

How old are you?

Not exactly, but close.

When the pandemic hit, my big outlet at the time was rock climbing, mostly indoors. That went from "3 days a week" to "zero" immediately, and when things opened back up it just never recovered for me.

I started spending more time and mental energy on software, even though that's my day job. I've been at this for nearly 19 years and I really care about doing it well. The problem is that seemingly no one else does. I've bounced from company to company (7 jobs since 2019) and they've all been nearly wall-to-wall incompetence. It's just baffling how the industry can be in such dramatically worse shape than when I started in it.

Anyway I have been working on a few things, but just for myself. If my employers don't care about doing anything right I guess that's their problem, but I have problems of my own I'd like to solve.

I wrote a SQL formatter, just for myself, because all the ones out there are terrible. I don't care one tiny little bit if it ever has any users but me. It's not "done" (never will be) but it's stable, and I get to use it now, and I enjoyed writing it over 2 years or so. It has been a purely positive presence in my life, and continues to be.

Now I'm working on a SQL IDE, because again the stuff out there sucks. It will be weird, and built just for me and the way I work. I doubt anyone else will ever use it and I don't care. It will probably take me much more than 2 years to write and that's fine. I try to spend 2 hours a week on it, sipping a coffee in my favorite cafe. That's enough.

And lately, for [reasons], I've gotten back into [politically incorrect hobby]. I gave it up in 2015 for [other reasons] and I've missed it. It has such depth to it, and it just animates my curiosity and drive for mastery. Once upon a time it was what my life-outside-of-work was dedicated to and it can be that again if I want.

I still think about work sometimes on my own time, but I try to minimize it. I let it happen when it's what my brain really wants to do. Otherwise there's just no return on investment. Software companies that will hire me just don't care to leverage my skills, no matter how badly they need them, so I'm sick of fighting for it. If they want to choose failure I'll heat up some popcorn and watch. Maybe someday I'll get a chance to really work on something good again, with good coworkers who also give a shit, but I'm not holding my breath. Until then I'm just gonna do my own thing. No leetcoding. No cloud certifications. No home k8s lab. Fuck all that shit.

Best of luck to you, I really mean that.

We're in a different age bracket, but this post resonated with me. I suppose you can check my comment history in this thread to see my side of it if you are curious, but the end result is somewhat similar, though you seem to be in a much better mental state than people such as myself and those around me.

Thanks for sharing, cheers, and [have fun at the range?].

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