they said in a new yorker article...
I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
431–440 of 691 posts
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#432Earlier quoted context omitted.
While some of what you are writing is probably true, a work day (especially pre-COVID), really takes up a lot more than 8hrs. If you live in a city and want to live somewhere affordable, you're often looking at 1hr+ of commute each way. You have to get up a little early to prep for the day. Some jobs don't count a lunch break towards your 8hr day, or expect you to stay later, so you end up working more like 9hrs. If…
> If you live in a city and want to live somewhere affordable, you're often looking at 1hr+ of commute each way. Reading your comment and others beneath you, I sense many of you have a weird idea of what a city is. What you describe is true only for a minority of cities. I live in a city with above median housing prices. I live a 10 minute drive from my work. My house is not expensive - in fact, the expensive neighbo…
You might be the one with a weird idea of what a city is. I'd wager most people think of something like the top 20 metropolitan statistical areas by population when they hear the term. In the U.S, at least, those generally all have terrible traffic and subpar transit.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#433Earlier quoted context omitted.
My personal mantra at work is: One useful thing per day. If I manage to do one useful thing every day, it adds up to a lot of useful things over time. And that has proven to be enough. There's a sort of mediocre Johnny Cash song with the chorus "Even I might get to Heaven at a half a mile a day" That's basically how I try to live my life.
I call it "one thing at a time, all the time". Not because I want to take it slowly, but because I have a lot on my plate and my natural tendency is to "unflatten time", fast-forwarding in my head all the different plays and things to do. Some of these will only apply in a year, but here I am thinking about them and worrying about them now. Worse still, I sometime make decisions related to these future things and as…
Nicely put. Care to share your writing system?
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#434Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#435Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In fact, the people who are most motivated at work are often most motivated to arrange the after-work get together, or the weekend trip for the group of friends, or to invite people over for home-cooked meals so we can catch up. There seems to be a kind of phenomenon, like being in the zone but much longer (weeks at a time instead of hours), where you have an extreme drive to do everything you have to and want to d…
I know what you mean. I might feel that way a few days in a row every couple of months if I'm lucky and rarely ever more than 2 days in a row. It's a weird, full-body change for me. When I'm in that kind of zone it's like my pre-frontal cortex finally took over control from my lizard brain. Or maybe it's just hormones. I can do what I choose to do. To focus. To exercise and give 100%. Uncomfortable sensations like co…
I’ve had that exact same experience, of feeling sick preceded by a day of near manic state. It’s gotten to the point where I can predict the following day I will feel sick, so I try and start resting more that first day.
Cool! Didn’t know anyone else felt this
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#436Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you value relaxed mornings, relaxed evenings, and never feeling rushed before or after work, then there's nothing wrong with that. You're not obligated to go out with friends or allocate hours to hobbies during the weekday. That is entirely reasonable and correct, but it's also really just saying "suck it up". Having a relaxed day vs. doing hobbies on weekdays is a hell of a dichotomy. It's a shitty choice. I th…
> That is entirely reasonable and correct, but it's also really just saying "suck it up". You bet it is. And the sooner you realize that most of life is this way the better off you will be.
PragmaticPulp is making an appeal to take responsibility for your time management.
Reducing this to "suck it up" seems like a lack of listening/understanding to me.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#437I was incredibly driven about 7 years ago... I was a founder of a startup and had really lofty aspirations. I told my wife that it was very possible that we would be millionaires by the time we hit 40. Fast forward to today and that did not happen. The startup is no more, but mainly due to burnout. We made money and did well, but not well enough. I never made my millions, but did have a substantial aqui-hire opportun…
I like that. Thanks for sharing it.
I'm 58. I spent over thirty years, writing and managing software projects that other people generally didn't use well (or mishandled while developing). It was frustrating, but they paid the bills, so there wasn't anything I could do about it.
Since leaving my last job, I started to look at working, and immediately, and with extreme prejudice, slammed into the notorious ageism in tech. It was a real shock, as I had always been treated with a fair degree of respect. That is no longer the case. Respect seems to be a virtue that no one practices, anymore (I'm not talking about "worship." I'm talking about simple, basic, courtesy and respect; like I give to others).
I had saved up a fairly substantial war chest, so I just decided to give up on looking for work, and have been spending my time since then, writing a lot of open-source code[0], and learning the latest stuff in the way I want.
Best decision I ever made. Too bad. I'm pretty good at what I do, I would have worked for a lot less than most (see "war chest," above), and would have been happy to take on riskier work with startups and whatnot.
[0] https://github.com/ChrisMarshallNY (and almost every green square will take you to an open-source repo, where I am the sole author, and you can view the checkins)
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#438Earlier quoted context omitted.
For last few years, I have been telling myself to take it slow and do what you are doing now. I got a easy but a boring job. I figured this way I will save all my mental energy for my projects after work. But this is slowly burning me out. The boredom of not doing any real work for 8 hours is soul killing. I do a lot of busy red tape work but it is not intelluctly stimulating. So now I will do 180 and quit my job in…
Plan B would be to get a more challenging job for much better pay :-)
Agreed, last few years I have been working in semi-leadership position. At first, I thought I wanted to move to management but it wasn't exactly what I expected. However, my technical skills suffered. I tried to go back to a simple dev jobs but didn't get hired.
So the plan is build products but also focus on acqui-hire possibilities. If that fails, make sure my resume benefits from my projects. While I am already making pretty decent salary but if all those rumors about FAANG salaries are true, I can double my salary easily. So I can easily recover lost paychecks.
Well that's the idea, who knows how it will play out.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#439Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have a feeling this is even more damaging for Millenials, because they constantly compare themselves with the rest of the world. In a sense, even leisure has turned into competition. When I was in my teens a long time ago I did sports and learned classical guitar. If I had seen the acrobatics you see daily on Reddit or the "casual home musicians" on Youtube, I'd probably have given up all my efforts. Doing a backfl…
I read this a lot online, but strangely enough I see the opposite in practice. Young people who grew up immersed in social media are primed to recognize the difference between a rising social media star and the norm. It's the older people who associate any degree of notoriety with ultimate success who struggle to understand the difference between a super star and someone with a lot of social media followers. > If I h…
I don’t think the feeling of inadequacy from seeing those more successful is generational.
I think it’s more a reflection of the guilt you harbor at that time, e.g. if I just spent a weak procrastinating, I’ll resent successful people more than if I spent a week productive.
To your point of internet and social media increasing the spectrum of success, I definitely think music industry is a great example of that.
Re: I thought I would have accomplished a lot more today and also before I was 35
#440Earlier quoted context omitted.
The speed still matters somehow. Well, take Johnny Cash. Half a mile a day * 30k days gives 15k miles; maybe it's enough to reach heaven, but not enough to e.g. reach the Moon. So, when choosing to move steadily albeit slowly, you have to manage your expectations, and get used to get by with little. Investing your time is not unlike investing your money: least risky strategies bring most stable but least spectacular…
> while big bets bring both big gains and big losses. it's actually an asymmetric. The losses a capped - you cannot lose more than you own, and you cannot lose more than the time you put in (which is, of course, something you're going to lose by living any way). Technically, you also lose the "risk free reward" in opportunity cost - e.g., a minimum wage job. The gains, however, are unlimited. For both yourself, and f…
You can in fact lose more than you own, in some cases, if a judge deems you liable for damages that you have caused (in their opinion).