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Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

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Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#421

Post by musicale »

PragmaticPulp wrote: post #307
suction wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, having already made enough money to always be able to just say "you know what, I'm out" whenever you feel like it is necessary to be happy in any situation and interested in everything. Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. I've sort of dabbled in that situation: I made and lost a fortune…

> Anyone who's not "secure for life" and has to keep the salaries coming in will have to deal with bad people, bad decisions, bad culture, etc. and become unhappy. This is the myth that keeps people trapped in bad jobs, but it’s not true. Yes, most of us have to continue working. But no, that doesn’t mean your job must be miserable and you must be surrounded by miserable people. Look around. Try something different.…

> You can have good pay and good working conditions, but you have to work to find it and keep it

The existential unhappiness of work is from depending on it for your livelihood.

As PP described, he was perfectly happy with his job until he became dependent on it and no longer had the ability to walk away at any time without caring about the financial consequences.

Among other things, as you indicate, as soon as you become dependent on your job financially, you take on an additional, and unhappiness-inducing, maintenance burden of constantly working to keep your job and then working to find a replacement job when your job changes or vanishes due to business conditions or the economy.

(And, of course, the work becomes something that you have to do, which creates reactance, etc..)

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#422

Post by n4kana »

0F wrote: post #214

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that. When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological. I’ve been suffering super hard with depression r…

Yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#423

Post by aranelsurion »

newaccount74 wrote: post #401
adwn wrote: post #247

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The "social security net" we have in Europe isn't perfect, though. You're comparing the imperfect reality of an actual situation (unemployment benefits) against the utopian fantasy of an imagined best case scenario (UBI) – of course the imagined scenario will come out on top. The real result of a UBI will almost certainly look less rosy than the picture you paint, just like every other plan once it gets implemented…

> would likely be wrong, because people would instead be jealous because you're "freeloading" by not working and therefore not paying taxes There's a precedent why I think that people will approve of "universal" income: We have "Familienbeihilfe" in Austria. It's a payment of roughly 200€ per child that parents get. Everyone gets it, regardless of income, so noone is jealous. It's the best way of distributing financi…

What about the childless, and those who never want children?

They pay for everyone else's children through their taxes. Money they could use elsewhere for their own needs or pleasure.

-- To be clear, I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. I don't have population charts of Austria on my desk and I'm too lazy to Google it right now, I'd assume it tracks a similar trend to the rest of the Europe and it's slowing down. In that case it might be for the common good and might come back as a positive to the individual at some point in their life.

I'm just saying it's not easy to come up with a scheme that is/feels fair to everyone involved, especially if there's no justification for it. One could find justifications for child support maybe, but can you justify freeloading just as easily?

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#424

Post by philosopher1234 »

0F wrote: post #222
arius wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression, like your sports analogy, is not only rooted in genetics but also in the environment. While you can act on your environment, you can't act on genetics for now. Focusing on what is in one's reach is the only thing one can do. Being certain that the cause is out of our control (while true for parts of it) is in itself something fueling depression.

No no no. Nobody is fully aware of the situation but choosing to focus on what they can control. Most of the people in the first world who suffer from depression don’t even realize they have depression. Depression and mindset and sadness are are muddled together in our lexicon — the thing I’m pointing out is that most people don’t even know the truth. For me, knowing that it’s not my actions causing me to feel this w…

But it is, in part, your actions. The evidence does not support claiming depression is purely biological. That, however, doesn't mean blame is helpful or appropriate.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#425

Post by [deleted] »

civilized wrote: post #224
arius wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depression, like your sports analogy, is not only rooted in genetics but also in the environment. While you can act on your environment, you can't act on genetics for now. Focusing on what is in one's reach is the only thing one can do. Being certain that the cause is out of our control (while true for parts of it) is in itself something fueling depression.

Meh... you're teaching depressed people to focus on changing things to improve their environment. Maybe some of them can't and the best thing for them to do is accept it, even if it is a substantial drain on their productivity and life quality. Indeed there are some therapeutic approaches that do exactly this (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). Obsessing over an intractable problem as if it can be improved can make…

[deleted]

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#426

Post by layer8 »

baby wrote: post #323
civilized wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh... you're teaching depressed people to focus on changing things to improve their environment. Maybe some of them can't and the best thing for them to do is accept it, even if it is a substantial drain on their productivity and life quality. Indeed there are some therapeutic approaches that do exactly this (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). Obsessing over an intractable problem as if it can be improved can make…

He’s actually talking about stoicism, which is to accept what you can’t change.

Depressed people tend to underestimate what they can change, which complicates the matter.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#427

Post by layer8 »

sapientiae3 wrote: post #392
0F wrote: post #214

Reading these comments is forehead slap inducing. People think that just because something is mental that it has to do with your mindset, your parents, your this your that. When a dude can run faster than other people, it’s written off as genetics. When someone is resilient to depression, it’s anything other than genetics. Both cases are the same: it’s just biological. I’ve been suffering super hard with depression r…

I once heard someone say that depression is a spiritual problem, as in the cause lies with your relationship (or lack there of) with a higher power. I just had a thought - what if there is a biological or evolutionary quirk that believing in a higher power results in more happiness? It would certainly explain why some people who seem to have a supernatural outlook are so happy dispite what seems like terrible sufferi…

Kierkegaard would beg to differ. :)

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#428

Post by mrtranscendence »

honkycat wrote: post #400

You wouldn't know it from my grouchy hacker-news persona, but I am actually a pretty bubbly and happy person in real life. And let me tell you, it takes work! A few years ago I started going to therapy. And I found that a really positive outlet. I wasn't depressed, or angry, or anything like that. I just wanted to do more and be better. And I've now adopted the motto: "Your friends and family are not your therapist"…

> Your friends and family are not your therapist

It's hard when you live with a therapist who doesn't always turn off therapist-mode when the workday is done ...

> I am a bubbly person, but some people find that very annoying.

I'll be honest, I do find exceedingly bubbly people kind of annoying. Though not every bubbly person will be annoying; they have to really wear it on their sleeve with cheerfulness that doesn't befit the situation. Or be cheerful and brutally honest, I know a guy like that. You can't criticize someone in the same way you'd wish a five year old happy birthday, c'mon.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#429

Post by 988747 »

jklinger410 wrote: post #398
988747 wrote: post #388

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> How? Using which political, economic, and financial tools? And what will be the side effects of those policies? There's a simple answer for that: please look at communist Poland 1980-1989 - trying to counter raising prices with government intervention leads to supply crisis (since production is not economically viable anymore). Imagine all stores having nothing to sell, literally empty shelves, forcing common peop…

Oh really? So when the United States subsidizes our otherwise non competitive corn industry, it leads to economic collapse? When we control oil prices by using reserves and trading agreements, does that cause people to fight for scraps? How about when we subsidize silicon chip manufacturing? Did that collapse society? You cannot, in a serious conversation, compare Soviet Union economic policies to modern socialist id…

Subsidizing any industry is always bad for economy (because you are shifting money taken from good businesses to bad ones), it's just that the amount of subsidies given to corn industry, or even amount that can be given to chip manufacturing are nothing compared to US GDP. Try make that a general rule across the whole economy and see what happens.

"Modern socialist ideas" are basically the same ideas that were already tried in Soviet Union, just dressed in fancier words.

Re: Top Performers Have a Superpower: Happiness

#430

Post by czbond »

datavirtue wrote: post #410
xwdv wrote: post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This advice used to work years ago but user expectations have risen massively and you can no longer get away with a shitty cookie cutter MVP. You must do the big work upfront and come out very polished out of the gate, or else users will sense you don’t really have much skin in the game and not bother investing time in your niche project. This often means you must leverage the latest and greatest tech to get an edge,…

Yeah, users care about React. [Eye roll]

Example - because many developers will fret more about the technology of their site than the actual business.
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