You were sold a fantasy setting expectations beyond all probability.
Welcome to reality, now it's time to learn to enjoy your life and please try not to leave a trail of destruction and waste in the process.
Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
271–280 of 360 posts
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is one of those puzzling comments that I can't tell if tongue-in-cheek or actually serious. I like it! Life's too serious and people need some chaotic ambiguity to spice it up. > Don't work hard. Try to reduce your productivity. Sounds good. Most people aren't as productive as they think they are, imho. I'd rather not buy into their facade and just be as productive as I need to be when I need to be! > Don't work…
> Seek to abolish the existing world order. Seems like abolishing world orders takes a lot of work. At least more than ten hours per week.
You just have to abolish smarter, not harder.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#273This is a hard question and I don't think any advice written here can help you more than just by pure chance. What you are describing can have a lot of different reasons and needs a lot of different reactions.
My usual approach for friends and family, who are in a situation like that, is to talk to them and trying to push them towards different possible directions. While doing this I get a feeling what they feel comfortable with and are interested in. Often people need those kind of pushes themselves. Our intuition works great, when we walk in a directions and tells us if that is something we're actually interested in. Once we have all opportunities at once, it often is just too much for it and our intuition doesn't give any feedback if we're actually interested in achieving that goal or not.
If you re interested I can take some time to talk with you on skype. I think 1 or 2 hours could be quite interesting for both of us. I would also appreciate the challenge, as I usually do this with people I know for quite a bit already. :)
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#274I changed from 8-5 to being a freelancer and it's a pity that I didn't do it before. I'm very lucky to be a programmer so I have to luxury to safely take a bet like that given the current demand for (experienced) programmers, but I think you need to take a risk. Start a business, chase a new career path. Some people like the security of a job, some people need something else to feel challenged.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Employment contracts aside... Let's just ask ourselves, is having a job optional? The majority of people need to work if they want to survive, that's true. So "jobs" aren't voluntary. But "a job" is. You don't have to pick plants out in a field if you don't want to. If you don't like your position, or boss, or pay, you can quit and look for work elsewhere. Or even have multiple jobs! A slave doesn't get to say "Thi…
Slaves don't get to pick where they sleep, either. Thing is, neither do most people. SELECT TOP 1 job,residence FROM jobs JOIN residences WHERE jobs.pay > residences.rent ORDER BY jobs.pay DESC, residences.rent ASC it's common to add some qualifications like... AND jobs.category NOT IN ('murder','prostitution') AND residences.crime_factor ...etc. But that doesn't change the fact that LOTS of people believe in their h…
In those terms, we are enslaved by the existence of personal property. Or maybe by the existence of society, in general. Society's requirements force you into a certain set of paths.
> Why exactly is it so hard to survive without a job, in 2016?
Why should it not be, for a sufficiently broad definition of "job"?
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#276I've been feeling this way since middle school. I didn't really have any bad subjects in school, so I figured I could do whatever interested me professionally, but nothing really strongly appealed to me other than a paycheck large enough to eat out whenever I wanted. I discovered programming was pretty fun, now I'm a software engineer, and I'm just saving money for..... something . I don't know what. I've been trying…
You could come join us at 18F or USDS. :)
Just read your "24 Things I Did At 24". Very inspirational!
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#277PROJECTS ! You should embark on side projects. They will teach you so much more than school ever will, and they will reward you in a way that nothing else really can. If your projects can make money too, then that's icing on the cake. You will be free. I'm 25 years old with no degree, taught myself to code for the past 2 years and got turned down for thousands of developer jobs. I ended up working in a factory doing…
Dude, your answer is awesome. I've been thinking a lot about starting side projects, but I never started one. It's awful to surrender to your own stagnation...
btw, how did you find Pokemon influencers?
I hope you'll find the perfect dev job!
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#278This doesn't work for everyone, but my approach this is to ask: what is the intersection of my unique strengths and the most important problems to address in the world? In answering this, you quickly discover you need a philosophy, an idea of what future you'd like to see for humanity, and you need to leverage experiences you've had. A few things I can recommend for starting this journey:
- Spend some time familiarizing yourself with your historical context, the political and economic systems you operate within, and ethics generally
- Do a broad survey of every single project you can find within your interest areas. If you're into non-profits, check out the http://foundationcenter.org/ library/database. If you're into startups, spend hours on Crunchbase / Angelist researching startups. Ask around. Google a lot. Make lists!
- Consider thinking through a cause prioritization framework. I have some mostly related to the Effective Altruism community collected here: https://www.are.na/morgan-sutherland/cause-prioritization. Bret Victor put together an amazing article re: climate change: http://worrydream.com/ClimateChange/. You can probably find other meta-level analyses. When you start to narrow in, you search for various industry reports, check out bls.gov, etc. and start getting used to looking for gaps and opportunities at that kind of meta-level. Note: this information is hard to find and being familiar with it is one of the main strategic advantages that good leaders have!
- Spend a good long time, multiple engagements of an hour or so, writing down what you think your unique strengths and skills are? Ask yourself: what do I do when I'm procrastinating? What do I find myself doing a lot but that feels very easy to me? Also ask people you know: "what am I good at?"
- Don't underestimate serendipity. Reconnect with people from your past. Go to meetups and networking events (but don't waste your time – scan the list before and introduce yourself to the people that matter i.e. the organizers). Explore online communities. Ask your friends if they know people that they think you should know and get the intro.
Ultimately: take a structured approach to solving this problem. Eventually you'll uncover and opportunity that you can't turn down. But don't forget the research you've done because soon enough you'll be back at square one! Welcome to the future!
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#279You aren't wrong. Most of us are stuck in conformist, drab and conservative societies, where we're forced to participate in the market economy. This is soul-crushing, and bad for nearly everyone, but especially those in poor countries. I recommend: 1. Don't work hard. Try to reduce your productivity. 2. Don't work long hours. Reduce your working week to the minimum necessary. Most university graduates earn enough to…
7. Cut social media out of your life. I've never been happier and more clear-headed than I've been since I stopped using pretty much all social media (except Snapchat with close family). By the way, we need more people working on #6.
Hacker news comments don't count.
Re: Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Having an office job, eg. signing a work contract where you have to schow up every morning is not participating in the market economy but voluntary slavery. Don´t be a slave! I live in Europe where self employement is not common but the most happiest friends of mine are all somehow self employed.
Signing a voluntary contract is the antithesis of slavery. It may be boring and soul-sucking labour that you do not enjoy, but it is no more slavery than signing a contract with a customer is. Your time and effort are your own, and the reward is rightfully yours.
He's taking a much broader view. You aren't forced into that job, but how are you going to survive if you don't do some form of work that's accepted by society as such?
If people own essentially all the livable land on the planet, then there isn't really a way to retreat from society to live on your own terms. The owner of the land will eventually stop you from using it. So in a sense, you're being forced to participate in a human society to some degree, and forced to provide benefit back to that society. Consequences for not doing so usually end up to be having some form of violence or another done to you.