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Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

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Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#101

Post by TeMPOraL »

ahmedk92 wrote: post #49
marvin wrote: post #27

I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society. For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of yo…

+1 I notice a hive-mind of looking-down on "ordinary work" even if it's not really challenging, and is actually isn't less purposeful than open source projects that get to the HN front-page. 'Coolness' is an unmeasured and a dangerous motivation.

It's not a hivemind, it's people expressing their frustrations. In this industry, it's easy to feel safe in terms of income, so naturally people seek fulfilling needs from higher up the Maslow's pyramid.

And a typical programming job is not really doing anything useful for the society except maybe extremely indirectly. At best, it's not actually harmful.

Personally, I've been through plenty of webdev jobs, and almost always, it was building a copy of something that already exists and is better, so that our company (or our customers) could compete in the same space. If I ever met a potential user of such service and my bosses weren't looking, I'd actually direct them to the original competitors. It would be dishonest to do otherwise. It's jobs like these that can make one feel they don't contribute anything useful to society (making your boss richer by building a copycat product in a global market is hardly useful for people other than your boss).

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#102

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

algesten wrote: post #90
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy wants advice on "how", not some words to make him feel better about not doing stuff, so let's give him that. > for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this. I want to point out that this is one of the reasons why people never start things. Let me share my experience as someone who has started, AND burned out, multiple times…

> I guarantee you you WILL NOT burn out if your thing goes well. I strongly disagree with this. I'm a compulsive person, I used to say yes to everything, I enjoy everything. I don't think I ever spent effort towards something that wasn't rewarding in some way or other. However. Stress is stress and it can be negative or positive. Stress makes you perform better, adrenaline pumping, your senses sharpen. It can all be…

Well, it's great that you found out your boundaries! Most people never do things that push their comfort zone and never find that out, and live their lives wondering what it would have been like.

Sounds like you have a medical condition for dealing with stress, but most people don't have that kind of condition, so obviously if you have that kind of condition you should watch out for yourself, health is everything.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#103

Post by cocktailpeanuts »

ThrowawayP wrote: post #99
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy wants advice on "how", not some words to make him feel better about not doing stuff, so let's give him that. > for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this. I want to point out that this is one of the reasons why people never start things. Let me share my experience as someone who has started, AND burned out, multiple times…

> Another mistake people make is thinking that burning out is like dying, and you can't recover. Speak for yourself, buddy. I'm still trying to overcome medical issues from my last bout with burnout, including sleep disturbances and stress-related gastritis, and so far the medical profession hasn't had much luck in dealing with any of them. Burnout and the stress that goes along with it can absolutely do lasting dama…

Just curious. How long has it been?

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#104

Post by bitwize »

ahmedk92 wrote: post #49
marvin wrote: post #27

I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society. For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of yo…

+1 I notice a hive-mind of looking-down on "ordinary work" even if it's not really challenging, and is actually isn't less purposeful than open source projects that get to the HN front-page. 'Coolness' is an unmeasured and a dangerous motivation.

It's a form of virtue-signalling, much like making sure all of Hackernews knows you eat strictly paleo and only have as many possessions as can fit in a single rucksack.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#105

Post by TeMPOraL »

Bakary wrote: post #86
marvin wrote: post #27

I'm going to say something that might be wildly unpopular among ambitious people: If you have a full-time job, you are by far not a passive consumer. You presumably contribute >40 hours every week of creatively demanding, high-quality labor to society. For most people, the premise of this question is wrong. Procrastination, when you don't obviously have a lot of available time and effort, is a symptom that most of yo…

On what basis can we make the assumption that full-time jobs do in fact contribute to society? In this current world it's not an easy question to answer.

My approach is: many, but not all do; use your own judgement. If you can land a job that you believe is doing a service for the society, all the better for you. If you can't, it's fair to seek alternatives.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#106

Post by taway_1212 »

spaceisballer wrote: post #80

So there is another possibility, it can be that you are more excited by the idea of creating videos than doing it. Perhaps there is some other venture you are both interested in and motivated to do.

I read /r/gamedev semi-frequently, and this seems to be by far the most common issue there. People just want to have created a game, but the actual process of creation (long and tedious slog, with little chance of payoff) is too much for them.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#109

Post by Fricken »

If want to deliver value to society, just stop. It's a bloated overweight out of control monster. It's already way too much, don't feed it. Don't contribute to it, it's not the sort of thing we want to encourage. We don't live in times of scarcity anymore, we live in times of too much of everything. If you feel otherwise, it's because you're a dumb ape who only understands not enough, because that's all your evolutionary history has taught you.

Re: Ask HN: How do I switch from being a passive consumer to an active producer?

#110

Post by Xcelerate »

UnpossibleJim wrote: post #85
cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The guy wants advice on "how", not some words to make him feel better about not doing stuff, so let's give him that. > for most people this is an exercise that will in the long run lead to burnout. Your mind is already subconsciously telling you this. I want to point out that this is one of the reasons why people never start things. Let me share my experience as someone who has started, AND burned out, multiple times…

I will counter with one (older person's, I guess) observation of a bunch of my friends who are now in their early to mid fourties and late thirties. The one's who focus on making a career and accomplishments, be they for social value or greater equality for all or the justice in society being more balanced, etc. etc...... anyway, they end up at my age, when naturally, the larger group starts to drift apart a bit, loo…

> But when their friends start dying, they'll see them all start saying the same sorts of things, and none of them are, "I wish I'd spent more time working."

I hear this a lot. But I'm not sure if this is always true. I chose an education path that required a much greater amount of work than other paths I could have taken. I would spend weekends working on homework and projects when others were out having fun. But as I start my career, it seems to have paid off (so far). I have a better work/life balance than many of my friends due to sacrificing some free time earlier in life.

Now I wonder: if I work hard in my 20s, can I retire a decade earlier that I otherwise might have? Or (more likely) can I save up enough that I can start spending my time working on projects that are entirely self-driven? Saving and working hard early in life can also result in a lot more time to spend with family later on. In other words, there is a tradeoff between voluntarily working harder earlier in life and effectively being forced to work hard later in life. Sure, you could be struck by a meteorite today, and you would never reap the reward from all of the work that you put in, but the much more likely scenario is that if you don't put in enough work in the front end, you will end up working 9-5 at 70 years old. So I can see many possible situations arising later in life where I think "I wish I spent more time working".

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