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Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

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Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#31
post #20

Don't give up. Just pivot on your way to attain it. There is no single path. But diversify to mitigate risks of failure. One goal might lead to another more comprehensive one.

Agreed here. Lots of things are outside our control over reasonably large time spans- macroeconomics, rapid tech & ecosystem disruptions, changes in your own personal life, etc. - but if there’s some underlying deeper “dream” that is flexible in how it can manifest concretely, then it can potentially be robust to these changes and what look to be initial setbacks. Perhaps the same (or similar) thing can be achieved in a different form.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#32
post #20

Don't give up. Just pivot on your way to attain it. There is no single path. But diversify to mitigate risks of failure. One goal might lead to another more comprehensive one.

Did you read the article? That’s the punchline of the article. How to loosen your grip on a dream to be able to pivot.

It’s about dreams calcifying where you become so focused on achieving “the thing” that you become unable to pivot.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you control all of hiring, you have the power to shape the entire company in your image, is what I mean.

When did I say I wanted to control all of hiring?

Oh man, here we go down pedantic path. It's so important to be right. I'll explain my logic since you asked, then we can happily part ways if you'd like.

> and enough control that meeting-spawners won’t get hired.

Ok, you want enough control to say that any meeting-inclined person cannot join the company. This means that every person who would join the company has to appear, to you personally, to be a non-meeting-inclined person, and that if you find them too-meeting-inclined, you can veto the hire no matter how many other people want to hire them. The logical conclusion is either that you personally review every hire, or that you adjust the hiring process to include an infallible "whithinboredom approves of this hire" check, which must be conducted by every interview cycle.

So, yeah, you now control the entire hiring (and presumably firing) decision process.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#34

This line is so cringe to me: "On the other hand, consider a founder with a more complex sense of self, including identities such as: “founder,” “husband,” “guitar enthusiast,” “soccer player,” “friend,” and “father.” My dream is to move to a different country that people who think like this are far away geographically.

I just saw a Twitter bio that said "2x father 2x Ironman finisher". Thank god for the blue check blocker extension.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#35

I’d rather die with the knowing that I did everything to achieve my dreams.. rather than the regret of knowing I never took the leap.

No disagreeing. It's worth reading up on what people regret when they reach end of life. It's hard to predict future fulfillment, and I bet that living a well-rounded socially-minded life would go further than "grind for the dream"

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#38

I took time out to work on a personal project that sounds a lot like this article, a lot of what's said here resonated with me really strongly. It's funny how the spark of an idea and excitement can fade once the reality sets in and doesn't match what was in your head. Endlessly plugging away at it, trying force the outcome you want through sheer will can be quite exhausting and defeating. One surprising take away fo…

I agree with working with someone. Don’t think I could do this day in and day out without a cofounder I strongly resonate with. All the smaller projects in which I was flying solo is where burnout/lost of motivation would set in so fast.

On the other side of things I prefer going solo to having someone that I don't resonate with. I've worked with people that just don't work together well with me and that causes burnout signicantly faster.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#39

This line is so cringe to me: "On the other hand, consider a founder with a more complex sense of self, including identities such as: “founder,” “husband,” “guitar enthusiast,” “soccer player,” “friend,” and “father.” My dream is to move to a different country that people who think like this are far away geographically.

I just saw a Twitter bio that said "2x father 2x Ironman finisher". Thank god for the blue check blocker extension.

> "2x father 2x Ironman finisher"

Humanity can be really hilarious. Perhaps aliens don't contact us because they prefer just watching us on their TVs, as a highly entertaining reality TV show.

Re: Why You Should Give Up on Your Dreams

#40

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4ZnfCmTJMY To me dreams are like religion - the longer it is since you gave up on them the crazier it seems that you ever believed. A dream is just some story you've made up, with you as a protagonist, and pursuing a dream means trying to bend reality to match that story, and then being pissed off because you can't

It depends on how realistic your dream is. My dream is to own a wine bar and travel the world. Unless I have something else going on, it is unlikely I would have the money and time to travel the world while owning a wine bar. I haven’t given up my dream, but getting that “something else” is working towards it.

i don't think this is unrealistic, but your world travels are probably going to be instantiated as work trips complete with schedules, delays, dead-ends, deadlines, massive costs you don't want to incur, dealing with flakey vendors, and expense reports/accounting. not to mention the health impacts of stressful travel.

owning a small business is the ultimate "be careful what you wish for" situation.

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