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Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

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Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#71

Post by alecbz »

ronenlh wrote: post #62

I don’t remember the source of the study, but commutes are one of the most important factors in happiness at work. Optimize for short pleasant commutes on bike or train, as opposed to bus or car.

I've never chased down the source but I'm pretty sure this is bullshit, or at least wildly misunderstood.

I believe that:

* especially long, unpleasant commutes can be a significant source of unhappiness

* shorter commutes are _consistently_, across different people, a source of happiness (whereas any other thing might bring a lot of happiness to some people but not so much to others)

But I think it's absurd to think that for any given person, a short commute is high on their list of things to make them happy or fulfilled (especially if they're not already actively unhappy with their commute).

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#72

Post by SMAAART »

How about a different perspective? Forget happiness. Period.

Think in terms of satisfaction, satisfaction for a job (as in a project) well done, and then continue on to another project; all the while enjoying the work, the process of doing and making and shipping, including the failures, and not the outcomes/results?

And forget a life-work balance, but integrating both.

“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both. ”

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#73

Post by alecbz »

thanatos519 wrote: post #30
sinenomine wrote: post #2

I have given advice just for this case here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25509941 So far it is working out pretty well for me. To be quite honest, you don't have to have passion for your job to perform well enough in accord with your salary and incentives. I'd say even more, overworking oneself is a "grave sin" against your future. One's time and intelligence are better spent optimizing one's family size (in…

That's pretty good advice except for the part about kids. This planet is screwed and it's not kind to introduce any new humans to the horrors we face.

"Please Don't Give Up On Having Kids Because Of Climate Change" https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on...

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#74

Post by wpietri »

samhw wrote: post #14
wpietri wrote: post #9

Happiness depends on a lot on what you truly want, as opposed to what you want to want, so I'd encourage you to get familiar with where those diverge. E.g., a lot of people want to want to get rich, but as you've discovered, more money doesn't actually leave them more fulfilled. If you're finding that hard to discover, a good therapist can help a lot, as talking with a lot of people lets them see patterns an individu…

> talking with a lot of people lets them see patterns an individual can't This is a really nice distillation of the value of talking to a therapist. I really appreciate this comment.

For sure. And I should add it may take people a few tries to find the right therapist. Because it's not just seeing the patterns, it's also being able to explain them to the individual in question.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#75

Post by mattgreenrocks »

bitlax wrote: post #59
thanatos519 wrote: post #35

Use your career/job to support your life, then get a life. Become an artist, author, clown, or build some awesome technical system because you want it to exist. GPL it. Don't ask for anything, especially not happiness, from your "career". I put it in quotes because it's conceptually bankrupt. https://www.roystonguest.com/blog/why-happiness-is-not-a-des...

And for those who are able, getting married and having children will tend to bring even more fulfillment than becoming a clown.

My twenty-year-old self wasn't ready to hear this, but it's absolutely true.

Fulfillment follows from meaning, and meaning flows from responsibilities we bear.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#76

Post by Strom »

lucb1e wrote: post #54
k__ wrote: post #7

I simply don't work much anymore. Below 10h a week on average. I haven't set an alarm for years anymore and sleep 9h a night That made me quite happy.

That sounds like the advice is basically to be rich and go into semi-retirement. Not sure how generally applicable that is.

You need to think more outside the box. Think more cut costs than be rich. Costs can be cut radically, you can just move to the middle of nowhere and work remotely. Of course everyone's situation is different in regards to where their friends & family are located etc, but the point is that there are a lot more options beyond just being rich.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#77

Post by [deleted] »

sabman83 wrote: post #68

Is there something that you enjoy or love doing? And is there a career to be made out of that even if it means taking. Pay cut? I quit programming because I didn’t enjoy it any more. I switched to a career in film /tv development and I am much happier. I make 1/4 the salary I used to make but I am not complaining.

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#78

Post by mattgreenrocks »

alecbz wrote: post #66
thanatos519 wrote: post #35

Use your career/job to support your life, then get a life. Become an artist, author, clown, or build some awesome technical system because you want it to exist. GPL it. Don't ask for anything, especially not happiness, from your "career". I put it in quotes because it's conceptually bankrupt. https://www.roystonguest.com/blog/why-happiness-is-not-a-des...

What if working with others and having an impact is what brings me the most fulfillment?

I'll flip the question it's head: how do you know that is worth putting all your resources into?

Going all-in on one area of your life is not a good bet.

I know because I've tried.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#79

Post by aliceryhl »

thanatos519 wrote: post #30
sinenomine wrote: post #2

I have given advice just for this case here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25509941 So far it is working out pretty well for me. To be quite honest, you don't have to have passion for your job to perform well enough in accord with your salary and incentives. I'd say even more, overworking oneself is a "grave sin" against your future. One's time and intelligence are better spent optimizing one's family size (in…

That's pretty good advice except for the part about kids. This planet is screwed and it's not kind to introduce any new humans to the horrors we face.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/please-dont-give-up-on...

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#80

Post by the_only_law »

yboris wrote: post #39
yboris wrote: post #36

Optimize it by learning about happiness via Positive Psychology , a direction of inquiry about what makes people happy (above baseline). One gem from the field: If Money Doesn't Make You Happy Then You Probably Aren't Spending It Right [0]. Great books from the field: Stumbling on Happiness by Daniel Gilbert [1] and The How of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky [2] [0] https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/danielgilbert/file…

As for career-specific advice, keep Self-determination theory in mind. The three foundational components are CAR: - Competence (work on something that demands skill and attention from you) - Autonomy (be able to determine what you'll be working on next) - Relatedness (feel like your work is contributing to a greater whole - helping others) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-determination_theory

Those all sound pretty difficult to fine with 1 being the easiest and 2 being the hard.
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