391–400 of 452 posts
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`I burnt out once after a few years of very intense, very committed work. I wasn't better off at the end of it and nobody says "thank you", not sincerely anyway. And after you leave, the waters close around you and it will be like you were never there.` Wow that imagery is powerfully sad. Corporate culture and its structural constraints makes monsters of all of us.
> Wow that imagery is powerfully sad I didn't mean it to be ;) I'm an optimist at heart, honestly, and I'm not sitting here feeling I've wasted my life or anything. But there are some things I wouldn't do again if I had my time again, and working hard for unappreciative, self-centred people is one of them.
That's a bit of a luxury, you don't always have that choice but on the whole I agree with the idea. I'd re-phrase it to don't work for assholes if you can avoid it. I'm fortunate enough now that this is a rare occurrence but even now every now and then a deal goes by that is financially too sweet to let go and I still take them. Last year this happened once, the previous 3 years not at all. So unless you're totally secure in your finances keep that door open a crack.
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> Please do ask yourself that question often, and if the answer is 'no' or 'maybe' then simply don't and save yourself a lot of grief and regret in the long run. Actually, don't "simply don't" because that's not a useful way to go about improving things. Learn how your brain works and what you can do to actively change the way it currently operates. You wouldn't expect a trainer at the gym to simply tell you "get str…
Since you seem to have put some thought into this: how do you change how your brain operates? I feel like my brain could use a restructuring.
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beggars can't be choosers. (Some of us would gladly take any of the above options)
And by buying the lines of bullshit that make you feel this way you are causing the very problem, and it hurts not only you but also your peers.
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> when I was 20 or so Ok. "20 or so" describes me. And things aren't going so well. Out of uni, and life feels pretty empty. Family has fallen apart, friends are friends of convenience, work is very intense - perhaps too much - and everything is going into keeping going. The brave face, making sure I eat, making sure I run, cycle, climb. The dreams I had even six months ago, feeling ever more impossible. The lure of…
>>But the truth is I do not know how else to spend my time. I am going to make a bold claim here. I hear this very often among people in the west. I here the same among people in India(I'm from India) who come from families who are rich, well supplied with resources. Perhaps its the saturation that a person reaches a point after a person reaches and experiences a sufficient degree of sufficiency. >>I have a feeling t…
So the right response is to change your viewpoint to one where the problems you are confronted with match your abilities to solve them, in order to get better at this so that you can solve larger problems later on (and it helps that while you're doing this you also make contact with other people who will in turn become your real-life network).
This can take a while, but that's fine. Living in India or the West would not change much in this respect but for someone that grew up in the West to go to India would likely change their perspective on life and values tremendously, just like the reverse would happen if someone from India moved to the West for a while. They'd come back a different person, and would mature a large amount in a relatively short time.
If you can't see past the link to the other essays here please try to isolate this one for a bit, especially if you're young and you don't have kids yet. This essay is rich in realizations that come with age, and in some sense I would have potentially gotten a lot of mileage out of it when I was 20 or so (but then I would probably have lacked the background to fully comprehend it), and even more when I was a young fi…
I have two kids, I have had two melanomas so far. I understand what it means when people say life is to short. But is life is too short to use your wealth and power to help solve the problem you acknowledge there is? That sounds like a weird idea. Most of PGs essays aren't controversial they are more informative. Why is life too short for that? If anything PG is a thinker and a good one at it. He doesn't get everythi…
Ouch.
> I understand what it means when people say life is to short.
I'll bet, that's the kind of thing that will make this a background feeling almost continuously.
> But is life is too short to use your wealth and power to help solve the problem you acknowledge there is?
Well, PG is - in his own way - doing just that. He made quite a few people quite wealthy and he wasn't exactly obliged to do so. After all the first exit he had was one where he could have comfortably lived for the rest of his years without spending a single micro-second on the problems of others.
> That sounds like a weird idea.
It is, and I don't think that idea is actually present in this essay or any of the others. Horses for courses, PG is good at what he does and uses his wealth in the way he thinks best matches his skillset. Contrasted with say Zuckerbergs fairly hollow 'letter to my daughter' I frankly much prefer the PG variety, though of course I already had quite a different opinion about those two individuals before either of them wrote a line.
> Most of PGs essays aren't controversial they are more informative. Why is life too short for that?
He's not saying he won't write more essays. He's saying that he's going to be more in fire-and-forget mode, engaging the audience on his terms rather than feeling that he has to respond to each and every person out there with an axe to grind and an internet connection. I'd say more power to him.
So given that I won't go into the second part of your comment because I think you derailed somewhere right at the beginning making the rest not really relevant.
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> Please do ask yourself that question often, and if the answer is 'no' or 'maybe' then simply don't and save yourself a lot of grief and regret in the long run. Actually, don't "simply don't" because that's not a useful way to go about improving things. Learn how your brain works and what you can do to actively change the way it currently operates. You wouldn't expect a trainer at the gym to simply tell you "get str…
Since you seem to have put some thought into this: how do you change how your brain operates? I feel like my brain could use a restructuring.
Anecdote: Thursday night I was going to the bathroom and dropped my phone in the toilet. Doneso - no amount of rice was saving that thing. Replacement can't get here til Monday. After that understandably frustrating experience my girlfriend made a point to call out that I pretty much didn't flinch over it all. Kinda laughed it off. For context, the learned behaviors I've owned since childhood typically goad me into punching a wall over such incidents.
It's a bit difficult to explain, but putting actual practices into play to alter the way you think/react/act feels to me like "unburdening" yourself. There was a great line in the book 10% Happier (great, easy read, no self-improvement BS) about the author wanting to call it "The Voice In My Head Is An Asshole" that kind of gets to the heart of it all, for me. We don't control ourselves! That's not how every day living is set up. If we could, then we'd never be sad or angry or stressed. It would be that simple; just tell yourself to be happy and you'd be happy. Such a simple concept but not something easily internalized.
And for a completely different perspective, we have Kurt Vonnegut: [Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] “Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a…
The best computer software is the kind that reminds people to dance and shows them some steps. Vonnegut, like so many people, imagines computers can only suck the life out of things. I suppose we deserve that reputation, since so many of us write software that does.
That part really struck me. I've long thought that the most incessant effect of the student loan phenomenon is that debt indentures you to working a conventional job in a country at a similar level of economic development as the one where you have the debt. You can't just "drop out" and go live somewhere cheap in southeast Asia where it doesn't take much income to live, because your debt payments are not adjusted for standard of living imbalances.
This is probably obvious to everyone, but I think it's worth noting that it is something holding a lot of people back from doing a lot of what is suggested in the article.