Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#1

Post by lumannnn » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 12:56 PM UTC

I'm curious what you consider your "mission" in life & work?

I recently read "So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love" by Cal Newport [1].

The book is divided in different "rules". Rule #4 states that having a "mission" is important to having a meaningful and happy life, which, I understand and can agree with. Chapter 12 uses Padris Sabeti, a "Professor @harvard @broadinstitute using computational genomics to understand & impact infectious disease." [2], as an example. The chapter tells her story and concludes with her having a clear mission "to use new technology to fight old diseases".

I try from time to time to take a few steps back and review my own career and the path it's taking. Having my own mission statement seems to fit into this review process quite nicely. Currently, my most accurate mission would be something the lines "(using new technology) to help people build what they themselves can't build".

I find this an interesting topic and simply wanted to know if any of you was willing to share their own "mission" :)

Thanks in advance for your precious time! =)

- [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you

- [2] https://twitter.com/pardissabeti

// edit: formatting

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#2

Post by usgroup » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 1:06 PM UTC

“Junior M.A.F.I.A” lyrics spring to mind every time someone asks, and I chuckle to myself.

But seriously ... if I had to have one, it’d be to get over myself eventually and abandon cleverness in favour of wisdom worth a damn in the biggest of pictures.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#3

Post by AznHisoka » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 1:25 PM UTC

My mission is to play, laugh, dance and not take life so seriously.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#4

Post by anon1094 » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:35 PM UTC

My mission to help spread the message that geography is not destiny.

I was lucky enough to be born during the internet age in the 90s. Because the internet already existed I was able to teach myself skills and find work that allowed me to be anywhere as long as I had an internet connection.

With the internet, you can choose who to serve and you can do it from anywhere.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#5

Post by xstartup » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:43 PM UTC

My mission is to make all the people I come in close contact with "Rich".

I see money as a way to reward people who you like and use it against people who you dislike.

This is what I work for today.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#6

Post by arsalanb » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:44 PM UTC

My mission is to breakdown barriers and level the playing field by allowing people to leverage the huge amount of knowledge we have available today to understand the world and subsequently tinker with abstraction. I want to help people make the jump from "rookie" to somebody who understands abstraction and can look past it, as smoothly as possible.

You'd be surprised what we can do as a species if everybody could understand this huge corpus of information we already have.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#7

Post by brunosutic » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:51 PM UTC

I read "So Good They Can't Ignore You" last year and was having the same question: "what is my mission in life and how to get/realize/understand that?"

My conclusion was: I don't know and don't have a specific mission. The closest I have to a mission is a set of positive (may probably not conscious) principles in life that I'm sticking to. Examples:

- always be improving - learn, learn, learn - work hard - presented with negative or ambiguous choices, choose the best available one (don't screw up everything because of frustration)

I'd also be curious to hear opinions on these:

- Is it "necessary" to have a specific higher mission? Can't I just stick to the set of positive principles? - Do I have to actively be looking for a mission? Or I wait and let it happen?

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#8

Post by coconut_crab » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:52 PM UTC

My day job is to write tools for the sales people who will try to persuade their clients into buying ads on Facebook, I just can't see how that helps improve the society or humanity as a whole. Ideally, I should be using my skills and knowledge to help the people in need, but that just won't pay as good as writing CRUD apps, and I have a whole family to feed.

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#9

Post by kreetx » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

xstartup wrote: post #5

My mission is to make all the people I come in close contact with "Rich". I see money as a way to reward people who you like and use it against people who you dislike. This is what I work for today.

Hope your moral compass is close to being perfect :)

Re: Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life?

#10

Post by SirLJ » Sat, Mar 24, 2018, 2:53 PM UTC

My mission is to enjoy every aspect of my life, from work to family and friends....