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Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

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Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#151

Post by conceit »

50CNT wrote: post #25
conceit wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

apparently, for some, many even, this puts them under some stress and pressure, socially and organisatoric.

In which case you need to delineate your channels of access more clearly. Move your main communication to something more asynchronous (email, text, wechat/whatsapp, slack), set a time where things will be checked, and perhaps offer an emergency line over real-time messaging (phone calls fit the bill best). Most things are not time critical, and a sizable portion of the things that are, are not mission critical.

the emergency line is the stressor I ment.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#152

Post by tajen »

heleph wrote: post #107
tajen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize I'm in this situation, but I have no idea what one could do to make a life meaningful, outside of good work or raising great kids, hopefully with a loving partner. I have already tried many things: Living in 3 other countries for 4 years in total (but I was missing family and friends support), being self-employed (I do B2B software like P.McKenzie), learning to dance (3 times, but I feel crap at it), musi…

I have an anecdote about my experience not working for a long period of time. Sounds like I'm in quite a different place in my life to you but I hope you don't mind me sharing and maybe there might be some part of it that is useful. :) I just spent a year on maternity leave when my second child was born in May last year and headed back to the office in April this year. I'm a software developer for a medium sized team…

Err... but I'm a man. Although you'll find counter-examples, spending time with local mum friends won't do it as a man, I already can't count how many sexist jokes I get from girls every time I cook. Also, you describe a lifestyle where you don't have to bring money back home: No wonder you like it. Should I suppose you had a boyfriend working?

So, no, sorry, I can't make a baby and get 4 months of holidays, and my girlfriend is not going to pay for my lifestyle.

It's quite a mistake to show off to a man about things they can't have, especially things that are invoiced to men (such as the lady's free meal).

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#153

Post by Retra »

clentaminator wrote: post #81
Retra wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of unsolved problems in the world, and computers are a great place to explore their potential solutions. I don't really understand this "same ideas come around again and again", because maybe that means you're not properly keeping up with the state of the art. Maybe you should broaden your horizons?

A lot of the "unsolved problems in the world" are either problems that more technology won't solve, or aren't things that can be solved easily by current technology. They are social and human problems, which essentially boil down to "how" we live. I think that poster's point about the same ideas coming round again and again was that in some areas of technology "keeping up with the state of the art" is just a case of…

I didn't say technology would solve those problems. I said technology can be used to explore potential solutions.

I understand the point; you've restated it exactly as I understand it. That's why I brought up unsolved problems. The state of the art here is very often new and novel approaches that have not been explored in enough depth.

Take color theory, for example. I want a function that maps points outside visible Lab to the nearest visible point in Lab. Sure, that's a solved problem, but if you don't already know how to solve it, you've got something to learn. More importantly, can it be done quickly? Can it be generalized to other color spaces? What is the best data structure for encoding only visible points in Lab? Then there's a problem of generating maximally orthogonal gradient curves covering an image.

There are purely technical problems. Can you solve them analytically? Will it help you to learn Topology or Tensor calculus? You won't know until you try. And there are new results in any of these fields coming out every day. Pick up a textbook and think about how to write software that will be capable of solving all the problems in that book. Does it already exist? Is it optimal? Easy to use?

Everything looks the same when you're saying "I'm just applying some abstraction to a problem and encoding it into a machine using several layers of translation." But that shouldn't make you cynical, as that leaves plenty of room for innovation and learning. But if you're thinking "this new framework/language is just doing more of the same," then maybe stop focussing on frameworks and languages and instead focus on the problems they should be solving rather than the ones they actually do. And even there, you should have no problem seeing syntactic and efficiency hiccups that might be ameliorated through an intense exploratory creative design session.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#154

Post by gerbilly »

heartsucker wrote: post #130
gerbilly wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm willing to bet there are people over 65 doing all those things much better than you are currently able to. Of course this is true, but my chances of being fit enough to engage in those activities at 65 go down with the passage of time, and from many factors outside of my control (accidents, major illnesses, something else...) But there's a more subtle point. By the time I'm 65 I may not want to surf or mountain…

Then decide right now that you want to be fit enough 30 years from now to mountain bike . What does that take? Probably the ability to pedal a bike with a heart rate of 150 for 3 hours. What does that take? You going out and riding a bike for 3 hours per day 2-3 times per week, every week until then. There ya go. Not saying don't take the time to enjoy life now, but don't sell your future self short. Especially on fi…

Sure and I am doing that, but 'stuff' can happen.[1]

[1] And already has, at least to me.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#155

Post by Camillo »

DominikR wrote: post #73
tajen wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recognize I'm in this situation, but I have no idea what one could do to make a life meaningful, outside of good work or raising great kids, hopefully with a loving partner. I have already tried many things: Living in 3 other countries for 4 years in total (but I was missing family and friends support), being self-employed (I do B2B software like P.McKenzie), learning to dance (3 times, but I feel crap at it), musi…

> Only having a girlfriend once fulfilled me (until she dumped me like "you don't have leadership with your life") but you didn't count "partner" among things that fulfill your free time, did you? Please don't try to find this there. It makes you dependant on a person which isn't healthy for both of you and you are not going to find this idealised love in a relationship. The main reasons that I see for men slowly los…

If you don't have a decent social network by the time you've left university (or if you lose it, e.g. by moving), it's hard to build one.

You can meet people here and there by going to Meetups and whatnot, but it's hard to go beyond casual acquaintance. You can't ask the same person to hang out too often, or you start seeming desperate and they will value your time and your friendship less.

And a bunch of one-to-one connection don't work, you need to build an interconnected network. But if you already had a nice group of people to connect newcomers to, you wouldn't have the problem in the first place. If you're lucky, you'll make one acquaintance that will pull you into their own social network, but that's not easy. If it's a network of people who have all known each other for a while, you'll always be the outsider.

If you want to try to put a network together yourself, you need to organize activities where strangers (your individual acquaintances) can meet and start forming connections. But it's pretty hard to get several people together at once. If you want to go to some event, you need to find something that everyone will like. And even then, it needs to be repeatable. You need to get your friends to meet several times, so one-off events, like a festival, won't work.

The best option, in my experience, is a house party. Everyone likes that, and you can have it however many times you like... provided you have a house where you can host people. In some areas, such as S-fucking-F, this is hard and/or very expensive. And of course, you need to be the sort of person who can act as the hub of a social network. If you're introverted, you probably don't have the right skills.

If you can't be the hub yourself, your best bet is to befriend someone who can be the hub, so they'll build a social network that includes you. But if that person has been around a while, you're back to the outsider problem. They already have a network, and it doesn't include you. If you find someone who has hub-skills and is new in town, you may have struck gold. Of course, their social network will start to fall apart once they leave town.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#156

Post by whamlastxmas »

Camillo wrote: post #155
DominikR wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Only having a girlfriend once fulfilled me (until she dumped me like "you don't have leadership with your life") but you didn't count "partner" among things that fulfill your free time, did you? Please don't try to find this there. It makes you dependant on a person which isn't healthy for both of you and you are not going to find this idealised love in a relationship. The main reasons that I see for men slowly los…

If you don't have a decent social network by the time you've left university (or if you lose it, e.g. by moving), it's hard to build one. You can meet people here and there by going to Meetups and whatnot, but it's hard to go beyond casual acquaintance. You can't ask the same person to hang out too often, or you start seeming desperate and they will value your time and your friendship less. And a bunch of one-to-one…

This is so depressing for some reason.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#157

Post by tim333 »

gerbilly wrote: post #100
andyjdavis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think it's a myth that one can just chill out forever Absolutely. My wife and I spent a few years traveling full-time, mostly SE Asia. I worked remotely while my wife was busy with various projects. In particular, tropical islands are incredibly damaging to your motivation and general happiness. We arrived grossly overestimating how much we would enjoying hanging out on a tropical islands and met a great many peop…

>In particular, tropical islands are incredibly damaging to your motivation and general happiness. For me it wouldn't be if the island had a good surf break. Living on the cheap for a few years on an island like that would be awesome for me.

Bali's quite good - good surfing, quite cheap and cosmopolitan enough you get some city type culture still.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#158

Post by fuzzfactor »

WalterBright wrote: post #76

Some years back, 60 Minutes interviewed a research chemist who was over 100, tottering around in his lab. They asked him why he didn't retire, and he replied that research chemistry was fun.

If you're the kind that has breakthroughs with equipment or chemicals, sometimes it takes more than a decade of use for this to occur.

Does seem to get exponentially more fun each decade, so many more breakthroughs to be made, so little time.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#159

Post by cko »

ovt wrote: post #116
cko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like you, but I'm 30 and don't want a family or kids. And travel sounds incredibly boring. I've been investing 90% of my income the past five years. When the article or any coworker says "enjoy your hard earned money" it makes no sense to me. What does spending money have to do with happiness? And yet, more money is all I want. If you gave me a billion dollars tomorrow my first thought would be "how do I turn tha…

Do you have insight into why you want to corner the market on money?

Yes. I'm insecure about myself and I feel like having a lot of money might solve the issue. At least let me walk around confidently, comfortable in my own skin. At least, that's the hypothesis.

Re: Why Continuing to Work Is Good for a Man’s Health

#160

Post by cko »

jventura wrote: post #86
cko wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm like you, but I'm 30 and don't want a family or kids. And travel sounds incredibly boring. I've been investing 90% of my income the past five years. When the article or any coworker says "enjoy your hard earned money" it makes no sense to me. What does spending money have to do with happiness? And yet, more money is all I want. If you gave me a billion dollars tomorrow my first thought would be "how do I turn tha…

There are some studies out there (too lazy now to go search for any) that mentions that money is related to hapiness up to a point that it can get you out of poverty and make you stop thinking about it.. Then, the relation is mostly none. Seriously, what would you do with those 2 billion?

Turn it into more billions, I guess. There really is no point, but then again, a lot of things seem pointless to me.
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