Hacker News Reader

Comment by PeterGriffin | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure it's bad to feel guilty about this. I'm more interested how people who don't feel guilty see life. I mean surely at some point having aimless fun starts looking a bit like wasted time in someone's life, no?

We live to give our tiny contribution to humanity, and we do it by creating something through work. That also brings joy, and we do it to help each other (deviations notwithstanding). But it's a meaningful joy.

If I'd work 16 hours a week all my life, I'd have some serious regrets on my death bed.

View on HN

From what I heard, most people feel regret at their deathbed for working too much, not the other way around. While you seem to have noble motives, I think many jobs out there don't provide much value and don't advance society as a whole. Think about large parts of the entire financial industry. Yes, the financial industry is important for a stable economy and a high standard of living, but there's a substantial amount of jobs that don't do much but redistribute wealth between individuals. It's really silly.

The biggest question is: What do you want from life? And one way to find out is if you answer the question:"Would you be doing the same if money wasn't an issue?". I think contributing to society through work is hard to define and overrated. Do you think all these silly apps make a difference on the grand scheme of things? Probably not. Does society really need smartphones? It all depends on you and your own values. If you do things that bring you joy, you might be doing more for a healthy society than if you create value through some job that you wouldn't do if money wasn't an issue.

Edit: I started to read this blog recently, which tries to answer what makes a life a good life. Maybe, you'll find some inspiration in there: http://earlyretirementextreme.com/

tl;dr: I don't want to work 16 hours a week and then sit on my hands for the other 30. I want to work 16 hours a week and devote the rest of my time doing things that enrich myself and my community in a tangible way.

I've worked for Google, Salesforce, and an early stage startup. In none of these companies did I feel like I was making a meaningful contribution to humanity. Either the product was of unclear societal value (Enterprise CRM), the work was so far removed from the value that the link to benefit was tenuous at best (second tier technical support for AdWords), or the ultimate results were no value generated (early stage startup where we scrapped everything after 20 months of development).

I've also taken gaps between jobs to focus on my own goals. In my free time I have volunteered with local food related organizations (serving meals in a soup kitchen, tending a community garden, etc), developed an iOS app used by 3,000+ artists, and bolstered my relationships with my wife and family. I've also taught myself several programming languages, enriched my world view through extensive travel and reading, and improved my personal well being through exercise.

In my opinion the contributions I've made through these "non-work" experiences and projects dwarf anything I've done working 50 hours/week for a salary.

It's possible that there's a job out there that would pay a decent salary and give me a similar sense of having made a contribution, but I haven't found it yet. I recently co-founded an ed-tech startup with this goal in mind, but time will tell if I'm able to move any needles.

> We live to give our tiny contribution to humanity, and we do it by creating something through work.

A lot of people consider their contribution to humanity to be their family or the activity in their (local or online) community. For them, paid work is just a means to an end.

Isn't that a slippery slope? Even if you worked a "proper" 40-hour week you could always ask yourself why don't you devote 41 (or 42, 43, and so on) hours per week for work. One could argue that your productivity plummets as you work more hours, but in absolute terms you're still getting more work done.

Also, consider this: instead of having two people work 20 hours a week we're having one person working 40. Shouldn't that person feel guilty about taking the opportunity to contribute and being valued from somebody else?

As for creating contribution through work - are we talking about salaried work? What about volunteer work then? If by work we mean anything that adds value whether we get paid for it or not, it's not always so obvious. The lines between enjoyable hobby and work are blurry at times and an author who writes for fun could end up creating a piece which inspires millions.

In the quest for maximizing collective productivity of the humanity we could start introducing teenagers into workforce as soon as possible and scrap the retirement age. Maybe we could even leave out one or two public holidays and add couple of work hours on Saturdays. Some would complain, sure, but overall we would become more productive.

Personally, I don't think that's the way to go. 40-hour work week is a relic of the 19th century and time is a poor indicator of productive contribution.

Well, it's a U shaped slope, because at some point you become less productive, not more productive as you add time.

So it's about finding one's balance. If someone's balance is 16 hours a week, so be it. I just find it a bit unlikely though.

> I mean surely at some point having aimless fun starts looking a bit like wasted time in someone's life, no?

Why would you think that everything outside of work is dominated by aimless fun? Why not have it dominated by politics, volunteer work, education, etc etc?

Sure, if there are only two possible things to do: work or watch tv, then yeah, you should probably work more than you watch tv. But taking an active part in your community takes time and effort, not to get too corny, but spreading love and happiness takes effort. Very few of us can do that while/through (just) work.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com