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

Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 339 posts

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

#101

Post by Vedor »

curiousllama wrote: post #13

Lots of good advice here. One additional thing to consider: why is your mind on stress from work? How’s your marriage? How are your parents doing? Your kids? Who are some of your best friends? How often are you physically active? Do you often go for walks, or play tennis, or garden? How well are you sleeping? Do you love your mattress? Any habits you’ve struggled to kick lately? Conversely, any hobbies you’ve really…

For me, almost everything starts at my work. Not sure what's wrong with me, maybe I'm too engaged, maybe I feel too responsible for my job... But my actual well-being is almost 100% related to the work.

I'm stressed almost all the time. Won't go into the details, just the management sucks big way.

Long story short, after work (including weekends) I'm so tired that I need a lot of totally lazy time. I strive for activities which are the least engaging. Even when I waste my spare time playing games, I'm looking for games that don't need much attention and are easy to play. With one hand only, if possible.

In November, I was on paid leave for 3 weeks. First I got a nasty infection, and just after that I somehow strained my back.

From the perspective, I don't believe how much stuff I got done during this time. Among others, I designed a board game about off-road driving that I had been thinking about for a long time; I was programming a lot (it's just a hobby for me, I don't work in IT); I kinda reconnected with a brother I hadn't spoken to in a long time... Had time to cook, had energy to clean flat thoroughly.

And all that being sick and having back pain. And it was enough to not worry about job things.

It feels like I could do anything if I wasn't so stressed all the time.

edit: typo

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

#102

Post by [deleted] »

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...

[deleted]

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

#103

Post by mriet »

suriyaG wrote: post #86
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a twenty three year old. I'm curious to know more. why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work? Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable? I'm even more curious to know if y…

> Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable?

To be blunt, assume that the smartest psychologists in the world still don't really understand more than 20% of human behavior or how we think.

Those are the experts, then it's a given that you and I only understand about 20% of what they understand, so 4%.

Assume that all of your reasoning above is based on incorrect assumptions, but that a lot of people become parents and a lot of parents are glad they've become parents and say that this has enriched their lives -- despite this being a grueling experience for years at a time.

There's something incredibly complex going on there and you can not simplify it to an algorithm.

It's possible that they're all hallucinating about it though.

Lastly, just because, think about how little we knew, in general, in 1700, 1800 and 1900. Why do you think that 2021 is any different?

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

#104

Post by hutzlibu »

suriyaG wrote: post #86
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a twenty three year old. I'm curious to know more. why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work? Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable? I'm even more curious to know if y…

"why take on responsibility through having children? "

I doubt there is a absolute answer. You either want it, or you don't. Or you are not sure and then it might just happen one day and then, "well, let's go with it". Despite not having perfect conditions.

I think I wanted to have kids at around your age, but was clear, to wait until I could provide a adequate perfect base. And then years later it just happened, before me being ready and the responsibility for sure was and is very intense. But mostly of a good kind.

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

#105

Post by goodpoint »

systemvoltage wrote: post #95
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...

> GPL it. MIT/Apache/BSD it, IMO.

No thanks. Belonging to a community and helping it grow is important for happiness. Community building (and empowering users) is the main point of copyleft.

Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

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

#106

Post by optymizer »

suriyaG wrote: post #86
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

As a twenty three year old. I'm curious to know more. why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work? Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable? I'm even more curious to know if y…

I have two young children. I'm objectively less happy than I used to be, mostly because I lost the freedom to do whatever I wanted and the time to do whatever I wanted, on top of gaining all of these new stressful responsibilities, and I've always liked to travel, be productive and create things.

That said, when I look back at how I was using that freedom and time, it wasn't very efficient, but even if I optimized my use of it, I would have reached a local maximum of happiness, because I think there's only so much happiness one can bring onto themselves by mastery, shipping products and having hobbies, and, in order to experience additional happiness, major external factors must influence your life.

Having children is that external factor that initially introduced a ton of responsibility and cost (monetary, health, mental and time), but, if the early data points are any indication, the maximum happiness level should exceed the previous local maximum by an order of magnitude. The instant happiness I experience right now just from interacting with them already makes the responsibility worthwhile.

With time, I expect to get back some of the previous freedom and time, and, with that, the happiness it brings me, which should be an additive operation, pushing the overall happiness to a much higher level than the previous local maximum.

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

#107

Post by throwawayboise »

the_only_law wrote: post #88
peterkelly wrote: post #56

Forget about chasing high salaries. It's just not worth it. As long as you're earning enough to comfortably support yourself and those that depend on you, that's enough. Health and happiness come first. Don't tolerate bullshit from anyone, especially yourself. Set high standards and meet them; the satisfaction of a job well done is a reward in itself. Take pride in what you do and approach your work as a vocation, no…

> This is actually an explicit requirement if you want to get a PhD, which I've found to be a valuable way of opening up fulfilling career opportunities that would otherwise not be available to me. As someone who’s considering getting a PhD, how do you know if you’re capable of completing it. I hear a lot that academia is a lot of bullshit and that you don’t have to be particularly competent to get one. But at the sa…

Ph.D. research is not novel research in the sense you may be thinking. It's generally just exploring in depth a very focused issue or question in an already well-understood field. The work isn't necessarily very intellectually demanding but does require some academic discipline in the sense of keeping good notes, documenting experiments and results, and citing supporting or contributing work.

Also whether the research is of any practical use is almost entirely irrelevant.

I would add though, that if you only have a high school education I am not sure how or where you would get into a Ph.D. program. It may be possible, but I have never heard of it.

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

#108

Post by archydeb »

alecbz wrote: post #71
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…

I think the popularity of this notion comes from the fact that it's one of the few effects upon happiness that doesn't wash out over time. People adapt to changes in circumstance remarkably quickly, adjusting their expectations to the new normal and ceasing to derive any pleasure from it (the "hedonic treadmill"). A long commute seems particularly hard to adjust to, and thus the negative utility of a long commute often outlasts the positive utility of e.g. the higher salary you attain by the commute.

Source: https://www.uzh.ch/cmsssl/suz/dam/jcr:ffffffff-866d-1ee0-000...

Edit: typo

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

#109

Post by Jarwain »

Vedor wrote: post #101
curiousllama wrote: post #13

Lots of good advice here. One additional thing to consider: why is your mind on stress from work? How’s your marriage? How are your parents doing? Your kids? Who are some of your best friends? How often are you physically active? Do you often go for walks, or play tennis, or garden? How well are you sleeping? Do you love your mattress? Any habits you’ve struggled to kick lately? Conversely, any hobbies you’ve really…

For me, almost everything starts at my work. Not sure what's wrong with me, maybe I'm too engaged, maybe I feel too responsible for my job... But my actual well-being is almost 100% related to the work. I'm stressed almost all the time. Won't go into the details, just the management sucks big way. Long story short, after work (including weekends) I'm so tired that I need a lot of totally lazy time. I strive for activ…

Maybe it's time to look into hopping jobs? Maybe something with better work/life balance?
Post reply on HN