Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

hbr.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

221–230 of 277 posts

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#221

Post by alisonatwork »

csallen wrote: post #215
alisonatwork wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how i see travel bloggers too. Constantly updating the world about your whereabouts, framing every experience as something to be shared, it sounds exhausting to me - just like work! I don't begrudge them, though. If this person ever needs to go back to work "in the real world", they've kept a brand going that proves they have a work ethic. And if they don't, then presumably at least they've found a way to ear…

Why not make it your goal to find a goal? Due to hedonic adaptation, the journey of working toward something is usually more rewarding than reaching any particular destination, especially if you're getting lots of feedback along the way. Also, I've spoken with literally thousands of entrepreneurs, and most don't have what I'd describe as "killer instinct." Many of them gained a purpose through their business, rather…

This is great career advice, but by the end of your comment it felt like it went in a circle that leads back to the status quo. If humans really need to work to find fulfilment, then why bother trying to find fulfilment outside of work?

I don't hate my job. It's okay. I'm pretty good at it. The pay is fine. If this is as good as it gets - the joy of seeing someone you're mentoring "get it", the pleasure of getting a complex refactoring done, the accomplishment of shipping a cool feature - then i'm already there.

What i find sad is that it's not viable to spend time on idle things that i enjoy more than that workplace success. For me, my happiest times have been when i was doing nothing productive at all. Watching shows. Reading books. Dancing till dawn. Learning a new language. Cooking something nice. Talking to strangers. Wandering around aimlessly. Playing a computer game. Sitting on a bus to anywhere. Getting drunk apropos of nothing. Those are things i love to do because there is no pressure involved. What makes them satisfying is precisely that they are journeys without a destination. If there's a goal, if there's purpose, then it's exactly like work, so what's the point?

I am not sure that given enough money and freedom everyone would stagnate. That may be true of some, but not of others. Having discussed this with retirees it seems like it is a very individual thing. Some people don't do well with retirement - they get antsy and want to keep occupied, so they join social groups and take part in community events. Others gladly enjoy the chance to live an idle lifestyle. It's unfortunate that those who prefer the latter lifestyle have to work 45 years for it, and (depending on circumstance) may even never get the opportunity to enjoy that time.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#222

Post by friendlybus »

sjg007 wrote: post #189
friendlybus wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Absurd nihilism is not a get out of jail free card for existentialism. It's a structure to answer the existential question in the same way Nietzsche's answers are a structure or any of the other philosophers. It has a fundamental axiom at the bottom and a logic that blossoms out of it. Saying there is 'no meaning' is to answer the question with avoiding the question to begin with. Writer's block / drawer's block happ…

The absurd is the tension between the search for meaning and the inability to find any. It doesn’t mean there is no meaning as a nihilist would argue. Nor does it imply destruction. Camus’s absurd is more akin to Gödel incompleteness than nihilism.

The article repeatedly leans on nihilism as it's counterpoint to order and meaning. Time is infinite therefore we are meaningless is nilihism. You can fill in time with what means something to you, it need not be empty.

>The thirst for more sounds comically absurd when you zoom out and see that nothing matters, so it’s about going deep into the zoomed-in life you already lead. Your health, your loved ones, your work, your interests, your desire to help others, your values, your existence.

>What could be more meaningful than that?

This quote from the article sums it up, to have a meaningful life you must accept that there isn't any meaning in some points of the world. That worldview leaves a massive gaping black hole of meaning in time and space around you. That black hole where there is no meaning is nihilistic. It clears out the greater story above you that could actually be an expression of what you find meaningful as a human, with which you could fill the universe and replaces it with a pre-determined story, absurdism that includes nothing.

Godel's incompleteness can be used for any argument. Mathematical and computational logic is not the basis of all philosophy, nor is anything we know or the field would be dead. Defining your axioms is part of the game. Defining a world view that includes meaning in all places is a far more sympathetic perspective than to rob the reader's worldview of it's potential to apply in most places, by defining that the vast majority of external existence is non-meaning. Asking the reader to read more is a more healthy perspective.

Arguing that absurdism gives a valuable middle ground between meaning and non-meaning is something I'd heartily disagree with. The reader is more than capable of finding their own middle ground and becoming their own person in the process.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#223

Post by taurath »

idclip wrote: post #113
nugget wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorance may be bliss, but only if you can remain ignorant until the absolute end. I see evidence of a paradox whereby the most powerful analytical minds are able to most effectively construct defensive counter arguments to their own inherent existential needs, allowing them to defer these needs until a criticality is reached and existential crisis manifests as a state of limbic terror which is impossible to ignore.…

After nearly 500 hours of meditating in relative isolation, i promise you, the collector collects. Something inside us, wild and free, wants to be happy, and we stand in its way.

> the collector collects

Can you expand on this?

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#224

Post by grecy »

lilcorey10 wrote: post #132
0kl wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is your takeaway? What did you mine from really thinking about the meaning and direction you want to take with your life? *clarification: I mean it earnestly, as I have not done anything that you have.

‘I don't want to be at work making someone else rich. I want to spend those remaining 30 years enjoying myself and bringing happiness to those in my life’ How do you expect to live out those 30 years without working consistently? Do you have means of enough passive income ?

By living a simpler life and not consuming for the sake of it. Earning ~$25k a year will easily pay for the life I want to life. When I drove around Africa and to Argentina I only spent around $17k a year while on the road.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#225

Post by tempsy »

taurath wrote: post #219
tempsy wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Solo travel is an inherently selfish pursuit. You are just consuming, and not creating anything of value for society.

What a pessimistic, consumeristic and consumable view of travel. Are stories of travels not value? Are people who's lives you touched not made greater for a friendship, even if for a short time? I'm not saying theres not a way to be a total consumer and a net negative on society as a traveler, but I'd rather society be filled with thoughtful people who've met and made relationships with people of other than someone w…

I’m not particularly inspired by people who run away from their problems. I’ve met many people while traveling myself who were perpetually traveling and the vast majority were aimless and uninspired. The worst are the ones that resort to actual begging (yes, it happens) to continuously fund their travel.

It just isn’t an enlightened pursuit. If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#226

Post by nudq »

jblow wrote: post #116

Bad article, in part because of the incomplete title. It should be called "What happens when your career becomes your whole identity, when you don't like your job and think it's a waste of time". If this latter part is not true, there is much less of a problem, but for some reason current mainstream American culture wants to extrapolate all the way to "work should be compartmentalized and minimized". The problem is,…

> Einstein, Dirac, Pauli

It sure helps to be dead by now. Try James Watson for a really motivating example.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#227

Post by rocqua »

cerberusss wrote: post #213
grecy wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My takeaway is that I must make decisions and take action if I am to live the life I want, in a manner that makes me happy. Nobody else will do that for me, and if I live my life on autopilot I will be extraordinarily disappointed when I look back over my life and see that I never took life by the horns and charted my own course. It's on me, and that is equal measures exciting and (some days) terrifying. I lost my Mu…

> Money is not the path the happiness, and I don't ever want to fall into that Oof, that is a very uncomfortable statement for me to ponder upon. For the last couple of years, I have been focused on saving, saving, saving. Your comment makes me think about whether that's wise. Thanks for sharing that bit of wisdom.

Saving makes sense if the security blanket it gives, gives you peace of mind you need. Beyond that, unless you are saving for something, it might not be the best thing to focus too much on.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#228

Post by rocqua »

tomc1985 wrote: post #78
alexpetralia wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To play devil's advocate, what is to come of deliberating on existential meaning at great length? Do you think you'll find an answer, rationally speaking (that is, using the tools of reason and logic)? Notably, Godel's incompleteness theorems suggest these tools may be insufficient. More specifically, if you try to rationally "justify" what you ought to be doing, you will always be able to - legitimately! - impugn it…

In my own attempts at reasoning this stuff the only meaning that I've been able to find is that life is meaningless. Therefore the only thing to do is be comfortable with that null of an answer, and live as you see fit.

Life doesn't have external meaning. But that doesn't make it meaningless. We still have feelings and preferences. Some are short-term, some are long-term. The internal meaning of life is encoded in these preferences.

The preferences aren't stable, because we and others have influence on the meaning of life. You get some choice! Others can affect the meaning of your life. Hopefully for the better.

To say life is meaningless is wrong to me. Because we experience these profound moments of meaning on occasion. Either positive or negative. So to me, these moments of meaning are my guide. This means deep friendships, being there for people, contributing to society, trying to become a better / stronger person, and just trying to enjoy myself most of the time.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#229

Post by esotericn »

thrwaway69 wrote: post #143
esotericn wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You need to set your aspirations at a reasonable level and have goals that are relatively close (say, one order of magnitude away by some metric) to what you have now, with a plan that can get you there. Also: > If 40 out of 50 people end up in poverty in my neighborhood, then chances are I will given how similar metrics for ending in poverty is. This isn't the case at all. Most people don't prioritise wealth generat…

That was an example, not exactly my situation. If wealth generation alone was a metric, I wouldn't have that much problem but regarding the last statement, most research would disagree. Growing up in poverty fuels a mindset of poverty, I have experienced it first hand. Maybe things are different in other places so I am not gonna make a generalization about anything else. Poor countries with overflow tends to have peo…

I don't know a lot about your situation but it sounds to me like for the most part you need to 'get out' and somehow manage a visa or whatever to a first world country. That seems like a reasonable goal to me?

Different magnitude of situation, but I felt the same way about my hometown. It wasn't really about money, though it felt that way at the time - I just needed to find my people, and they weren't there.

Re: What happens when your career becomes your whole identity

#230

Post by MaxBarraclough »

tempsy wrote: post #225
taurath wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a pessimistic, consumeristic and consumable view of travel. Are stories of travels not value? Are people who's lives you touched not made greater for a friendship, even if for a short time? I'm not saying theres not a way to be a total consumer and a net negative on society as a traveler, but I'd rather society be filled with thoughtful people who've met and made relationships with people of other than someone w…

I’m not particularly inspired by people who run away from their problems. I’ve met many people while traveling myself who were perpetually traveling and the vast majority were aimless and uninspired. The worst are the ones that resort to actual begging (yes, it happens) to continuously fund their travel. It just isn’t an enlightened pursuit. If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn…

> If you want to escape life as a corporate drone or whatever running away isn’t the answer.

'Escape' and 'running away' are roughly synonymous.

What other escapes do you prefer?

Post reply on HN