Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#1

Post by examplary_cable » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 2:23 PM UTC

What's you life work?

What is it that you're working on, be it an area, company, game, language, subject, cause etc. That you expect to work until the end of your life?

Starting with me it's a little bit hard. I have so many interests that picking a single one out of all of them is hard. But I plan on working on companies, causes, philosophies, books, areas etc.

Some of the areas I'm interested in are: Intelligence, IQ, Collective Intelligence, Knowledge Management, Writing, Sleep, Comics, AI, Game Design, Meta Cognition, Zettelkasten, Linguistics, Design, Coordination etc.

My current project is: https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook. It's a mixture of Roam Research, Obsidian, Emacs, VSCode(in the future), Figma etc.

I plan on making an online mode for people to share and collaborate with other people being as easy as sharing a link. I don't plan on making this my "Life's Work" because I believe other opportunities will arise as I go in life.

Examples: - Minecraft(Notch) - RimWorld(Tynan Sylvester) - C++(Bjarne Stroustrup) - Java(James Gosling) - Linux Kernel(Linus Torvalds) - SpaxeX, Tesla(Elon Musk) - Growth Mindset(Carol Dweck)

So ... here it is, what's something you're so dedicated to that you're willing to call it "your life's work"?

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#2

Post by 082349872349872 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 2:43 PM UTC

I "do only what only I can do", which in practice mostly means grand-scheme-unimportant things for the animals (with people as a subset) in my life.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#3

Post by jstx1 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 2:52 PM UTC

Don't have one and don't expect to. Seems like an absurd expectation to have of oneself.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#4

Post by jameal » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 2:56 PM UTC

I'm not sure what form it will take exactly, but I would say my life's work is to live as fully into my values as I can.

I used to just want to have a nice job with autonomy and to be able to work from home, until I got it and I realized that it wasn't as fulfilling as I thought it would be. I had security but I was disconnected.

There is so much disconnection in the world. We become disconnected from ourselves, from others and from reality. I think that it causes a lot of trouble for people personally and for society at large.

I used to be a complete introvert and would become overwhelmed easily. Now I truly enjoy meeting new people and being put in new situations. I want to help other people with their personal development because I see it as the greatest lever for creating a more connected humanity. I love development but this is what I'm truly passionate about.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#5

Post by f0e4c2f7 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 3:29 PM UTC

I enjoy learning things and helping people. Most of what I do fits into one of those two categories.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#6

Post by throwaway22032 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 3:40 PM UTC

Chilling out, maxin, relaxing all cool.

More seriously, learning.

We have enough of everything. Almost all of the technological breakthroughs I can think of have eventually been used to excess and ended up crippling us in some way, I'm quite content with just being.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#7

Post by qdot76367 » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 3:47 PM UTC

I suspect https://buttplug.io is gonna keep me busy. I’ve already been working in the intimate haptics field for ~18 years and it’s remained interesting the whole time, so no plans on stopping.

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#8

Post by Decabytes » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 3:53 PM UTC

I've been trying to find my "life's work" for years. I've tried writing, painting, drawing, programming, linocuts, woodworking etc. I really want to find that thing but nothing has been fulfilling enough so far

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#9

Post by ileitch » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 3:54 PM UTC

While I’m unsure I’ll be using Swift for the rest of my life, I’ll continue to work on my little tool to detect unused code for as long as I can. It’s my most popular open-source contribution, and it brings me joy knowing others find it useful.

https://github.com/peripheryapp/periphery

Re: Ask HN: What's You Life's Work?

#10

Post by sassyonsunday » Wed, Dec 14, 2022, 4:00 PM UTC

My family. I never thought I would be able to have a family when I was growing up but now I have a husband and we have a baby so I'll spend my life making sure our family is happy and healthy as best I can.