Ask HN: How to know what you want to do for the rest of your life.

I am in IT industry since 2015 and doing fine here. But since last 6 months I am getting the thoughts on regular basis that I dont belong here. Sometimes I am just so burnt out that I want to leave everything. I want to do something impactful but I am not sure what I like most and where I want to spend my rest of life. I am already 32.

Do you guys also face existential crisis and how can we really know where we want to spend our rest of life?

Try using your coding skills to give back to your community. Consider starting a Code For America chapter in your local area if one doesn't exist. Writing software for your city or a local non-profit may give you the satisfaction you seek to make a real difference.

> how can we really know where we want to spend our rest of life?

Yes, how can we indeed?

I mean, can we even know? It sounds almost like knowing the future. Because in a sense it is. Your life will change. It will change in ways you do not know yet. You will change it. Trying to figure out the rest of your life now sounds tempting, but it's mostly useless. Perhaps not completely, but mostly. Sometimes, you can figure out some stuff in advance, but I don't believe you can do so generally. You don't know the future.

But, on the other hand, do you need to? Because you can be impactful in various ways and many of them -most?- don't require figuring everything out now. Just try things and see how they go for you.

What I can tell you is that if you're really burnt out, then you should probably do something about that part. Should that mean "leaving everything"? Maybe. But more probably it can mean leaving some things and keeping some others. Maybe just changing employer, or maybe a different job in the same industry, or perhaps, yes, changing to a different industry. Or maybe make changes in the parts of your life outside work. I can't tell you what to do, obviously. But do consider all the options, not just the extremes of going on till you burn completely or leaving absolutely everything. I've seen that in many cases only seeing the extremes tends to block the person from making any change at all.

In any case, again, I can't tell you what to do. I'm just a stranger on the internet.

“You never really know a man until you understand things from his point of view, until you climb into his skin and walk around in it.” Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird. J.B. Lippincott & Co., 1960 Quote above is from this blog which may inspire? https://www.planetofsuccess.com/blog/developing-empathy-walk...

45 and couldn't figure that out either. I have family, work and kid so that's pretty much "everything" in modern Capitalism.

But I did figure out that there are two types of people. One figured out what they wanted to do in early life and went ahead to leave their names in history. The other didn't and perhaps never did.

There is not much one can do. If you are in the first camp you simply could not suppress the eagerness of going ahead and dive into what your destiny is, and if you are in the second then you simply could not figure out.

Just move on and figure out on the road. It's fine if you never figure that out. Most people thought they figure that out but they did not.