jdimov9

This might have been the cover story, but is VERY far from the actual reason the "EU project" exists.

As with all similar noble initiatives, the EU has much less to do with fairness and much more with power concentration (as is becoming exceedingly obvious).

I personally don't differentiate between week-days and weekends. I often work on weekends (and probably just as often take weekdays completely off).

But generally, when I speak about vacation time in the context above, I mean it as in large continuous chunks of time during which you only unwind and regenerate (and ideally travel to some interesting place off the beaten track).

Try everything you can to get away from your day job and to some kind of working arrangement that gives you more free time.

With that said, while you are still at your day job, definitely count everything you do there as accomplishment. You can't hate your way out of a job (but you can sometimes love your way out of it).

My circumstances are not TOO different from most other people on here (if anything, my lifestyle is probably more demanding than that of most). I certainly don't have any unusual wealth that allows me to dangle my feet most of the time, or anything like that.

I do software development and IT consulting and am gradually moving away from freelancing (where I do most of the work myself) towards just orchestrating things and streaming work through my company to other freelancers.

If you need even more context - I also have a family with 3 young children and the income that I generate is about 100% of our total family income.

Can't do this with an office job (even if you did get 4 months vacation).

The list is mostly mine (I didn't get it from anywhere), although I have, of course, been influenced by people who are more successful than me.

The most relevant influence is perhaps Dan Sullivan from Strategic Coach. The bit where you pick the top 2 tasks and drop everything else I picked up from a Warren Buffet book a few years ago.

I fully agree with you - a lot of this is not practical for the vast majority of the population. I'm obviously no Warren Buffet, so I also don't have the luxury of doing this all the time. All I'm saying is that when I DO stick to this plan as much as possible, the results are amazing.

It takes a lot of courage to NOT do things that you think you MUST do but HATE doing. Once you blast through this fear, though, you will literally see miracles happen.

Here's what works for achieving extreme levels of hyper-creativity and hyper-productivity for me. Will it work for you? Yes. Will you do it? No, you will find endless excuses to call the below "impossible". Still, for anyone who dares, here it is:

1. Get as much sleep as you can. Consistently. Yes, it's counter-intuitive. Yes, you'll have fewer waking hours. But those few hours will be many times more productive and joyful.

2. Drink more water and eat fresh food. Eat less than you normally do.

3. Get plenty of fresh air and sunlight.

4. Get a good amount of physical activity throughout the day (exercise, walks, whatever works for you)

5. Get plenty of vacation time during the year. Do not do ANY work during your vacation time - focus on enjoying yourself. (Ideally, 1/3 of the year should be spent on vacation time)

6. Make a list of the 20 most important things you want to accomplish (near-term). Sort the list so that at the top you have the things that you feel most passionate about. Keep the top 2 items and scratch everything else (I don't mean de-prioritize - I mean scratch it / drop it / burn it / forget it / it ain't happening.)

7. Focus all of your time and attention on doing those things that are most exciting TO YOU personally. Whether those things have any utility to anyone other than you is irrelevant. You come first.

8. If there is anything else that still absolutely needs to be done - find a way to delegate it to someone who's good at that stuff.

9. You will be unstoppable.

Oh, I fully agree with that - in fact, in certain other European countries it is more like 0.10%, but that's not the point.

The point is - I don't understand all the whining going on here.

If I make £500K a year, and I gave it up for £20K a year, would that really make any of you better off? REALLY?

So, everyone here is bothered that people like to eat well and take family vacations (is this really your definition of "luxury" lifestyle? You guys sound like coal mine workers.)

But you're all perfectly fine with the government taking close to half of that income in taxes.

Were you all raised in a communist regime?

Can you clarify your "central European" remark? It comes off a bit offensive...

And while you're at it, can you explain how exactly you imagine making ordinary communication more expensive?

Last but not least, where in the world did you get the idea that the NSA is well-intentioned?

Or, just use the right tool for the job, to begin with - Phoenix http://www.phoenixframework.org/

Ok, so you're not stupid, you're actually a very thoughtful guy. You just really irritate me by throwing all these labels at me.

First of all, I have never read Ayn Rand and am not familiar with her work (perhaps I should, you're not the first person to throw me into that bucket).

Second, I don't subscribe to any mainstream religion, so don't call my arguments religious. Every position that I hold has come from my experience. I am a very pragmatic person and consciously choose what to believe based solely on the utility that each belief provides to me. In that sense I am selfish and narcissistic, yes - I don't take these as offences.

One of the beliefs I have (and I think everyone should have, especially entrepreneurs) is that my wellbeing and my happiness is more important than anyone else's. Does that make me an asshole? May be it does. But it also makes me productive and valuable to the very society that you are so concerned about. Much more so than if I did the mistake of putting society's widely diverse needs before my own.

So do I care about my fellow human beings? Yes, very much so.

Am I going to do something that hurst my self interest in order to please anyone else? No, never. That would be irresponsible.

You talk funny :)

I didn't get where you're going with all of this, though.

You seem to have all of your values backwards.

Technological innovation CREATES value, doesn't destroy it. It necessarily disrupts the status quo and pisses people off, and that takes courage, but does not make the innovator a bad person. It makes them a very courageous person, worthy of all admiration.

On the other hand, you might call a bad person someone who expects that everyone else is obliged to feed him. One who throws "responsibilities" at those who refuse to work for him. One who morally manipulates people into doing what pleases him. I'd call this a bad person, although I personally don't believe that evil exists, so I am more likely to call that person plain stupid.

I mean, seriously. It's hard enough to come up with an innovative technological idea that people actually embrace and to turn it into a viable, sustainable, profitable business. In fact, that's SUPER hard, it's one of the hardest things there are, that's why there are so few people who successfully manage to pull it off. It's also why we reward them so seemingly disproportionately.

Through all of this, an entrepreneur is responsible for all sorts of things - industry regulations, business regulations, local regulations, customer satisfaction, employee satisfaction, investor satisfaction, life/work balance, keeping the environment clean, etc, etc, etc, in addition to the actual product or service and the long-term success of the business.

Now you want to also make me responsible for the social norms that I'm disrupting? Thanks, but no, thanks. This is NOT my responsibility. That's what governments are for. Governments are by definition socialist structures responsible for the well-being of the "working class". I am the opposite of socialist. I'm here to disrupt - don't ask me to step on my own toes.

I mean, soon you'll be asking me to compensate the bankers that my fintech startup is disrupting...

Ok, I worded this wrong. I meant it as in "Wow, that Perl script is from 2008, I'm impressed and surprised because the article gave the impression that this is a relatively new trick." Can we stop the downvoting torrent now? Good grief!

Was the downvote because you don't like my questions, or because you don't have a good answer?

Who should be reminded? Why? If you mean "we entrepreneurs" - what exactly do you expect us to do about it? Again, why?

The Perl script is from 2008

This should be required reading for all software engineering / computer science majors, but it's not. Would replace so much other useless junk that kids are taught in school these days and would actually help produce grads worth hiring (currently, there are none - globally).

I agree that most complexity in software systems comes from managing state. So here is a simple solution - stop doing it. Stop managing state.

Use the right tools for the job. Most mainstream programming languages are ridiculously inadequate for building any production software of any significant complexity without introducing more problems than you are trying to solve.

Use a mature functional programming language that works with immutable data and is designed for building complex industrial systems.

Use a language that was designed from the beginning with the understanding that your software WILL be full of bugs and errors, yet systems must always continue to run.

Use Erlang.

I came to the same conclusion around 2001 while trying to adapt Cigital's ITS4 static security scanner to Perl, but stopped short of producing a "formal proof" :)

Looking through the list, it seems to me like a good 90% of these (if not more) can be summarised as "lack of product-market fit", meaning that they blew their money on building something that nobody wants.

Anyone notice anything else standing out?

I've never been to Yemen but somehow am in love with it (and so wish I could visit).This film started my obsession: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478213/

So sad and inexcusable what is happening there right now - everyone playing for their own shallow political interests, doing enormous harm and grossly disregarding international law while pretending to help.

As others mentioned, all mainstream media reporting of the current events in Yemen is horribly biased, misleading and just ignorant. Twitter is a much better place to get a more objective feel of events as they unfold. My favourite source is @omeisy

I know what you mean, that's a chronic thing for me. I'm periodically freaking out about money to the point of shutting myself down - even more so now that I have 3 children to take care of. Even though if I have to look at it objectively my income has actually jumped up dramatically over the past 10 years. I figured it's not actually about the money, it's about what goes on in your head.

So I only have one piece of advice for you: Stop whining. Change the story you're telling yourself in your head every day all day long. Not as in "make up shit that's not true and pretend it is", no. More as in a gentle shift in focus... like, stop looking at a few problems that you think you have and shift your attention instead to the INFINITE JOY AND ABUNDANCE THAT SURROUNDS YOU ALL DAY EVERYDAY NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO.

That's the best you can do. And is the only thing that works. Despite what everyone else is telling you, struggle and hard work are soo over-rated. Life is supposed to be easy, and until you start believing that, you will always have these problems.