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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?

#61

Post by lucb1e »

carapace wrote: post #21

The open secret to fulfillment and happiness is to help other people.

This is basically as far as I got as well. Instead of sitting in an office telling people how not to do their job (I'm a security consultant), I feel like I might have more fulfillment doing basically any human-facing job. Perhaps cashier is stretching the idea a bit too far, but anything where someone gets something personally useful to them.

Now the problem is how to do that.

I've done some IT support but this basically comes down to reinstalling Windows a bunch of times (e.g. after ransomware) or telling people they should, after ten years, really be upgrading to a new computer (for which they don't have money) rather than trying to get me to fix it up. Wasn't that fulfilling and the pay is pretty mediocre even for student standards.

I'm good at two foreign languages, perhaps I could teach people that?

Or rather do volunteering part-time? Question would be what to do, but not getting paid would probably make it easier to broaden the scope beyond specific competencies.

How to go about the actual execution without a huge pay cut is where I think advice would be most helpful.

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

#63

Post by sys_64738 »

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.

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

#64

Post by lucb1e »

sarp wrote: post #10
eloff wrote: post #3

I've optimized for different things at different parts of my career. I've made FAANG level salaries working 7 days a week as a consultant. It was horrible. I'm currently making a little less than you but working 20 hour weeks. It's amazing, and I spend the rest of my time usually working on side projects I hope to monetize one day. Since September I've just been traveling with my wife. I'm very happy doing that. So m…

any tips on how to find part time work?

Ask your boss if you can work less?

I vaguely remember hearing that it's actually illegal for your boss to deny this without some good reason, but I suppose it might not be that hard to come up with some excuse either.

Sometimes jobs have a minimum number of hours per week posted, but most of the time it's simply part of the benefits negotiation. Paid days off per year, public transport pass, salary amount, how many hours per week, IP of any open source projects I work on, it's just part of what I talk about when negotiating my contract. And it doesn't have to be at the beginning of your employment.

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

#65

Post by sys_64738 »

fxtentacle wrote: post #20

I have found that for me, the biggest boost to happiness is the ability to say no to things I don't want to do. I truly enjoy working in tech, but not on every project. At first I was worried that I wouldn't find enough new projects, but now looking back, I never had much downtime after I started being much more selective. It's just that instead of SQL / Excel stuff, I now work on real time audio video processing, AI…

Being able to delegate stuff to others is also a boon. Keep the interesting stuff for yourself then delegate if you can. Love doing that.

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

#66

Post by alecbz »

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...

What if working with others and having an impact is what brings me the most fulfillment?

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

#67

Post by lucb1e »

sinenomine wrote: post #57
lucb1e wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, that sounds like a nightmare for me personally. If going to an artificial place to get tired every day works for you, that's great, but this is not generally good advice. If it's purely about physical fitness (I'm really not quite sure what your goal with this method is, perhaps you could edit to clarify), going into nature to cycle or jog is much better due to the nature-happiness correlation (e.g. https://jour…

I wouldn't deny benefits of exercise, due to too much research pointing out to it being really beneficial. For example, this one is one of the latest: https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2021/12/plasma-transfusi... My take on this is, one has to find an exercise form that is (un)pleasant enough to engage in long-term. For me it's biking and mostly bodyweight exercise in my improvised home gym. It's really worth it ev…

> I wouldn't deny benefits of exercise

Sorry if it came across like that, this is not what I meant. It's just about going to the gym specifically, and daily to boot, not about being fit in general.

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

#68

Post by sabman83 »

Is there something that you enjoy or love doing? And is there a career to be made out of that even if it means taking. Pay cut? I quit programming because I didn’t enjoy it any more. I switched to a career in film /tv development and I am much happier. I make 1/4 the salary I used to make but I am not complaining.

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

#69

Post by lucb1e »

rapfaria wrote: post #58
lucb1e wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Heh, that sounds like a nightmare for me personally. If going to an artificial place to get tired every day works for you, that's great, but this is not generally good advice. If it's purely about physical fitness (I'm really not quite sure what your goal with this method is, perhaps you could edit to clarify), going into nature to cycle or jog is much better due to the nature-happiness correlation (e.g. https://jour…

> If going to an artificial place to get tired every day works for you So, the office? If it doesn't work for you, fine, but the gym is a great place to go. Stop discouraging people because you don't like it or having a single goal (physical fitness) is bad.

I don't pay for going to the office, so I don't think that comparison really works.

> having a single goal (physical fitness) is bad

What part of my comment gave you that notion? I should edit this because it's absolutely not what I meant (a sibling comment also commented as if I said getting fit has no benefits).

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

#70

Post by chriseidhof »

I'm very happy with my career. We run a small website teaching advanced iOS development (objc.io). We write books and make videos. I run it with my co-founder and that's basically it. We have some really good people we work with, but 80% of the time it's just the two of us, and we're pretty aligned in what we want.

When my daughter was born (almost 4 years ago) I switched to not working a lot. Maybe 5-6 hours a day. I spend almost every afternoon with the family (after my daughter wakes up from her nap). In the early mornings I do my workouts. The combination of this makes me really happy.

We make more than enough money (we live a modest lifestyle), even though I could probably make a lot more in a real job. But having the freedom -- both in doing what we want work-wise, as well as having a lot of family time -- is pretty amazing. I have no regrets so far.

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