Hedonist GTD | Hacker News Reader

Hedonist GTD

journal.rinich.com

22 pointschibea22 comments

"Arrange your life around what you like. That’s it! You’re done. You’ll be happy forever."

Who would have thought that heroin addicts had the secret of life?

Not everything is pleasurable - sometimes you just have to suck it up and take out the f*cking trash. :P

One of the reasons I wish to amass currency is so that I can wirehead myself if the world still sucks when I reach retirement age (and the surgery is available).

Wireheading's great and all, but really what you're talking about is an IV drip of heroin. Why wait? It's cheap, it's available, and the world sucks now!

In all seriousness, I have a certain grudging respect for the directness of the addict's solution to the Happiness Problem. My indoctrination was thorough enough as a child that I've no interest in it for myself, though.

If I thought that by taking heroin I wouldn't be missing out on anything else in life, I'd have no problem with it. Problem is, I think life is pretty awesome.

I feel bad for people who think that life sucks. It takes a certain willingness to hunt down the flaw in everything, to ignore all the incredible pieces.

it's usually self inflicted.

it bugs me when parents inflict worldviews on their children without grasping the gravity of the fact that could very well be holding it for life. I don't want to be a parent because I take parenting extremely seriously.

I like taking out the trash because it makes my place less smelly. Like, there's a logic to doing some of those things beyond just "somebody told me." But in other situations you find yourself doing things maybe you don't have to do.

Taking out the trash is not intrinsically pleasurable, like playing Call of Duty, or masturbating. Or masturbating while playing Call of Duty. You take out the trash, study instead of playing games, or save your money for the longer-term effects, which is precisely my point. Saving money sucks in the short term, which by "Hedonistic GTD" would disqualify it for almost everyone.

The article is pretty much contentless fluff, and would be made 100x better if it was just replaced with the quote "do what you love and the money will follow." Still debatable, but at least it has brevity going for it.

Understandably I disagree. Specifically: I'd like you to point out where I say delayed gratification is a bad thing. If you want a house, you save money until you can buy a house. Otherwise you're not getting what you want. But if you have a house, and you have comfortable money, and still you find you're working long hours for the sake of making money and nothing else, then there's a problem because you're not really doing the things you'd like to be doing.

But it's not about money. It's specifically not about money. It's about being happy with your life. And it's less about doing what you love than it is about not doing what you hate. There's an important distinction.

However, I do know people who have reduced their lives to maximize alcohol, pot, and/or video games, and minimize everything else. It wouldn't be fulfilling to me, but it seems to work for them.

Even if they still have a job.

I remember someone on Reddit/IAmA who hated working for others so much that they figured out how to live on 2,000 dollars a year, and worked 1-2 months a year as a laborer. It happens.

I often find getting organized and clean to be intrinsically pleasurable, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. The larger problem is the rigid work/play dichotomy that many people feel obligated to stick to.

The problem is the huge difference between what I want to do right now and where I want my present actions to lead my future. For example, I'm not going to amass wealth by playing marathon sessions of Modern Warfare 2 in my sweatpants, but damned if I don't want to do that instead of sitting down to work on my projects almost every day.

But WHY do you want to amass wealth ? If the answer is "to be happy", it's very much the wrong answer, per TFA. If it's "to play MW2", even more obviously so. The same about "to be respected", "to have status", or similar. So ?

PS : I'm an European, US guys seem to have pretty much a stereotype about us all as being "godless communists" who need complicated reasons to work. Well, kind of.

For me, it's a simple matter of freedom. While I can be free in mind and spirit while living in poverty, I'm not free to do what I want, because virtually everything I want to do requires two major things: time and money. I want to see the world, I want to build things, etc. All of that requires time and money. With lots of money amassed (rather than making a good income), you get the freedom of time to do what you will, rather than being forced to earn more money. Does that make more sense?

the elephant in the room: increased mating opportunities.

If somebody dumped a million dollars in a pile in your bedroom, would that fact alone make you more desirable to women?

Of course not. What would make you theoretically more desirable: You might stop caring so much about individual women once you're well off. You might have more free time to socialize. You might dress nicer. You might cook more or get yourself a nicer place.

That's what makes you more desirable. That's all achievable without the money. You don't need to be rich, you just think you do.

not sure what planet you're from, but it sounds really nice. can I come?

What about what I said do you disagree with?

"of course not"

or maybe your experience with women has simply been much better than mine. I live in a very wealthy area, thus there are a lot of women looking for "good marriage material" around here.

I want to live comfortably without having to work all the time, and my version of living comfortably involves a lot of the finer things in life.

As far as European vs. American (or in my case, Canadian) goes, one of the major differences that I'm aware of is the amount of vacation time that the average working stiff gets. I get 3 weeks per year plus stat holidays. My understanding is that most Europeans get a lot more than that. If you want a lot of time off of work while still maintaining a good standard of living you need to be a 'high-value' employee here in North America.

Ask yourself what it is about Modern Warfare 2 that you like so much. Is it the violence? The community? The adrenaline? The nostalgia you've built up for the maps you play on? (These might be way out of line. I've never played MW2.)

A lot of those things you can find elsewhere, and if you don't like the work you're doing there's a good chance you can find something that lets you do what you want and still get paid.

This isn't you I'm talking to necessarily, 'cos I've got no clue what you like and what you do, but I've got in mind a friend of mine who moans about how he envies the people working for CollegeHumor and what a dream job they've got. I'm constantly telling him, "No, you'd hate it. Filming is a pain in the ass and having to be hilarious every day is probably exhausting." So-called "dream jobs" very frequently require a certain incredible effort along with their nicer aspects. If they didn't, more people would have them.

It requires very little thought or effort. It completely distracts the part of my brain that I believe is responsible for worry, stress, anxiety, etc. and it's endlessly entertaining. I like it precisely because it isn't a job. I can start when I want, I can stop when I want, and I don't have to think much while I'm doing it.

I'm a web programmer and I really do love my job, but the ultimate laziness and distraction of video games are tough to beat, even though I know that developing my career and building useful tools will give me a lot more long term satisfaction than virtual-knifing some 13 year old in Arkansas.

"Arranging your life around what you like" does not mean mindlessly overdosing on some activity. Essentially this piece is about a somewhat higher than average level of self-awareness.

The problem is, by constantly avoiding unpleasant things, one might lead a semi-happy life, but there is a downside: this way a large part of possible outcomes becomes simply unreachable. (There ARE outcomes, which can not be reached without considerable amount of unpleasantness.)

One might argue, such (hard to reach) outcomes worth more (= bring more happiness).

This is the real question here.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com