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Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

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Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#111

Post by toddm »

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job.

I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else.

I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk.

Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same cloth, which is a big plus.

We don't live extravagantly unless you count the money for fitness, but we consider that to be an investment and not a frivolous expense.

Satisfaction in life for me comes from every angle EXCEPT my job, and that's my secret.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#112

Post by pronlover723 »

larrymyers wrote: post #85
thanatos519 wrote: post #35

Use your career/job to support your life, then get a life. Become an artist, author, clown, or build some awesome technical system because you want it to exist. GPL it. Don't ask for anything, especially not happiness, from your "career". I put it in quotes because it's conceptually bankrupt. https://www.roystonguest.com/blog/why-happiness-is-not-a-des...

Good podcast on the idea that it's scam that people are expecting happiness from their job: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/19/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...

So Ezra Klein hates his job and tries to do as little of it as possible? It suspect it's not practicing what he's preaching

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#114

Post by [deleted] »

Vedor wrote: post #101
curiousllama wrote: post #13

Lots of good advice here. One additional thing to consider: why is your mind on stress from work? How’s your marriage? How are your parents doing? Your kids? Who are some of your best friends? How often are you physically active? Do you often go for walks, or play tennis, or garden? How well are you sleeping? Do you love your mattress? Any habits you’ve struggled to kick lately? Conversely, any hobbies you’ve really…

For me, almost everything starts at my work. Not sure what's wrong with me, maybe I'm too engaged, maybe I feel too responsible for my job... But my actual well-being is almost 100% related to the work. I'm stressed almost all the time. Won't go into the details, just the management sucks big way. Long story short, after work (including weekends) I'm so tired that I need a lot of totally lazy time. I strive for activ…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#115

Post by pronlover723 »

goodpoint wrote: post #105
systemvoltage wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> GPL it. MIT/Apache/BSD it, IMO.

No thanks. Belonging to a community and helping it grow is important for happiness. Community building (and empowering users) is the main point of copyleft. Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

Worrying about

> Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

Is a way to unhappiness. I MIT/BSD stuff and no worry about who uses it and how much money they make. The attitude above is like given to poor people at the sour kitchen and then getting angry if they make it out of poverty, become successful, and don't follow in your foot steps. What they do after I've given them the soup is irrelevant.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#116

Post by lawlorino »

Vedor wrote: post #101
curiousllama wrote: post #13

Lots of good advice here. One additional thing to consider: why is your mind on stress from work? How’s your marriage? How are your parents doing? Your kids? Who are some of your best friends? How often are you physically active? Do you often go for walks, or play tennis, or garden? How well are you sleeping? Do you love your mattress? Any habits you’ve struggled to kick lately? Conversely, any hobbies you’ve really…

For me, almost everything starts at my work. Not sure what's wrong with me, maybe I'm too engaged, maybe I feel too responsible for my job... But my actual well-being is almost 100% related to the work. I'm stressed almost all the time. Won't go into the details, just the management sucks big way. Long story short, after work (including weekends) I'm so tired that I need a lot of totally lazy time. I strive for activ…

How have you found things since going back after the 3 weeks? I identify with what you're saying quite strongly, I'm still debugging the fundamental issues and how to fix them. For my situation I suspect a strong component is personality-related and that I probably need some prolonged period of time away from work to reset my body and brain and be free from high stress situations for a while. From browsing past threads of others' experiences with burnout and stress on HN I keep seeing 3 months mentioned as the magic number, but I'm worried this is too big of an ask from my current employer.

Although I suppose that raises the point that part of solving these issues is learning to put my wellbeing above my employer's problems.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#117

Post by BlueTie »

I'm not particularly happy but I do know that pursing happiness as a goal is a bad idea. It's worth trying to set a different goal (health, career, family, whatever) and pursue that. Once you feel like you're making progress toward something meaningful happiness usually shows up as an ancillary benefit.

Check out number 39: https://gist.github.com/hcgatewood/dfcd27127cd977762ea038a75...

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#118

Post by CodeGlitch »

suriyaG wrote: post #86
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My twenty-year-old self wasn't ready to hear this, but it's absolutely true. Fulfillment follows from meaning, and meaning flows from responsibilities we bear.

As a twenty three year old. I'm curious to know more. why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work? Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable? I'm even more curious to know if y…

> why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work?

The other day I was flicking through my notepad in my home office and found hand written notes from my 6 year old daughter saying how much she loved me. Yes kids are a massive responsibility, but the payback you get if you do it right is immeasurable.

I'm not sure you'd get quite the same from the things you listed, perhaps a little...?

Anyway what is suggest is you enjoy your 20s, but make sure you are in a position to have kids by your early 30s... Otherwise it may be too late for your other half (women's clocks do tick rather fast). If you wait until she is 40 then you are really risking it.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#119

Post by argentinian »

sys_64738 wrote: post #63

Once you are earning so much money ten another $10k here or there makes no difference. When you hit 30+ you start to see that you're mortal and time is more important than chasing the $$$. I value my time more than doing any overtime in any job. So I don't. No overtime for me. Sack me if you want. I don't care. Time off is incredibly important as you get older.

Certainly you can't buy time and it's a limited resource.

I like the concept of 'time-millionaires', once I read about the idea in an article shared here on HN. The idea is that nowadays many people think about wealth in monetary units, but that it would be healthier to consider that wealth is more about the time you have available to do what's valuable for you.

So somebody who makes a lot of money but hates his/her job is a 'time-pauper'. Of course, if you like to work 50 hs a week you would not be a time-pauper, because you enjoy it.

I find the idea of individual net-worth as quite insane. It places value mainly on things instead of placing it in subjective well-being. In the USA it seems that there is more time-poverty than in Europe, where people have much longer vacations.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#120

Post by optimalonpaper »

Changing the perspective helped a lot, as others have said: treating job as just a job.

1. Remove stress - as I'm working with data, I tried to automate as much as I could, so I really don't have situations when you need to build a report very fast (reduces stress really well) 2. Have a back up plan - I found a part-time research assistant position which I actually enjoy and if I lose my main job, I'm not in the rush to find the next one (so I'm not worrying as I used to)

Then after 6pm you just do whatever that keeps you going, e.g. every day I try to see my girlfriend / friends, go to movies, cafes

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