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Most lives are lived by default

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Re: Most lives are lived by default

#101

Post by zainny »

jacquesc wrote: post #100
tylermenezes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremes at either end are bad. Somehow the majority of HN hasn't figured this out.

That doesn't seem correct either. Extremes at either end are where entrepreneurs tend to live. Most people have to be willing to be poor, lose everything, and fail miserably in order to have a chance to be rich and live the life they want. This life obviously doesn't appeal to everyone, and many entrepreneurs manage to keep a balanced life. But at some point they'll get outmaneuvered by the ones who move faster and j…

This is just a personal observation that probably isn't universally true, but what I've noticed is that people who live on the extremes tend to be extremely unhappy - particularly entrepreneurs (yes, even the successful ones). "Get rich and live the life you want" is a myth. Being rich doesn't make you happy. And that ruthless process of eliminating the unnecessary, laser focus, dogged pursuit of one goal, changes you as a person and often not for the better.

In PG's essay "How to Make Wealth" he wrote "you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four." [1] But the reality I've observed (and experienced myself) is that this period of working intensely for four years changes you deeply. Rather than working for four years intensely, you'll either burn out entirely in that time span or spend the entirety of your life working intensely - you become a workaholic, hanging out for the next start-up, next opportunity, etc. and constantly feeling like shit because you never made the big break. Or perhaps you did make the break, so instead you'll feel like shit because it wasn't big enough. Or maybe you did make it big in the past but _right now_ you're not so you feel like a one trick wonder, etc.

I'm confident that a random sampling of HN regulars will show most are depressed, even if they've been successful.

[1] http://paulgraham.com/wealth.html

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#103

Post by chadzawistowski »

jacquesc wrote: post #100
tylermenezes wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extremes at either end are bad. Somehow the majority of HN hasn't figured this out.

That doesn't seem correct either. Extremes at either end are where entrepreneurs tend to live. Most people have to be willing to be poor, lose everything, and fail miserably in order to have a chance to be rich and live the life they want. This life obviously doesn't appeal to everyone, and many entrepreneurs manage to keep a balanced life. But at some point they'll get outmaneuvered by the ones who move faster and j…

>> Extremes at either end are bad.

> That doesn't seem correct either.

A rule that's always appealed to me is "Everything in moderation, including this rule."

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#104

Post by cloudkj »

This article was surprisingly well written. I think the point that most resonated with me was the framing of the search for better (happier) conditions in each of the "major areas" as an optimization problem.

The probability that one's current conditions are anywhere near optimal is low. Likewise, the probability that you can improve your overall conditions by making a change in one of the areas is high, since it's not a completely random change but one that you control.

A sort of real life analog of gradient descent (ascent) or hill climbing, if you will.

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#105

Post by jes »

theorique wrote: post #24
ef4 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree completely that happiness comes from within. And yet there is a duality that has always struck me as important, though hard to explain: it's easiest to be happy when you're striving toward a goal you believe in. But you need to keep your sense of self, your ego, non-attached to the outcome of the striving. That is, you need to invest yourself 100% into doing things that are important to you, but remain detach…

Agreed. The idea is to act as if the outcome of what you were working on was the most important thing in the world to you, but to place no value on the actual outcome itself.

So, I should work to be a great spouse (say), but not care whether I actually achieve that outcome?

Why not work to achieve things of value precisely because they are of value to you?

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#107

Post by qrybam »

tylermenezes wrote: post #87
nostromo wrote: post #72

A friend once told me, "You should try going with the flow once in a while." She was absolutely right. Yes, many people could improve their situation by not sleepwalking through life. But similarly, we (people on HN and other ambitious folks) can learn to be more content with what life has given us. To reconcile ourselves with randomness. To take some time away from competition and drive and optimization. Perhaps I'm…

Extremes at either end are bad. Somehow the majority of HN hasn't figured this out.

The moment you have a definite image of what _your_ world needs to be like before you're happy, you've already set yourself up for disappointment. You're right (based on my definition of right!) it's a balance - you need to have some goals in place that you can work toward, but also be fine and content with other things. I might want to eventually be financially "free", but that doesn't stop me enjoying simple things a long the way.

edit- re: extremes, for clarification, a balance of extremes :)

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#108

Post by afterburner »

paganel wrote: post #92
alaskamiller wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm about your age and I did the same thing in my early 20's. I chose the Marine Corps instead of college as my way out. After, I still didn't have enough so I chose adventures, sold everything, kept nothing to continually indulge in my wanderlust instead of sitting in a cube. But... And I say this with as much love as I can muster to a stranger that I see as a kindred spirit. But... What did you find at the end? Was…

Thanks for your post, it literally gave me goosebumps. > Ordered society will succumb to chaos and nothing will be done. There will be no roads for you to travel, no places for you to tour, no joy for you to find. I'm a guy in his early 30s, recently separated, living in a rented studio, with only a laptop, a few books and a plasma TV (for watching sports from time to time). That's it, but I don't care, as long as I…

Whatever works for you. Other people do intrinsically like to travel, seeing new things, or travel for other reasons (challenge, status, whatever).

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#109

Post by napoleond »

rohern wrote: post #42

A friend of mine with a dark and cynical wit, with whom I was enjoying a good dinner at a large and crowded restaurant, looked around him and declared: "So this is what people do? They just exist." That is the end of the conversation on happiness and most people for me. Despite being brilliant and greatly successful in their chosen fields, not a person I was friends with in school is now in a job that they take joy i…

I think you're right, to a point. I do know creative intellectuals who have found a simple life that pleases them, but as an outsider it always seems to come at the cost of avoiding certain questions and abandoning certain goals. I don't judge them for it; in fact I envy them on occasion, but it's not for me. Nevertheless, it occurs to me that a truly intelligent person who is honestly optimising for "contentedness" (purposely choosing to avoid the more connotative "happiness" here) should learn to satisfy themselves with simple pleasures. People who don't do that are either not truly intelligent, not truly honest, or don't truly seek to live a contented life (and I'm one of them).

Re: Most lives are lived by default

#110

Post by michaelfeathers »

acabal wrote: post #2

I don't like these kinds of posts, because they suggest that happiness is something just within our grasp, if only we did the exact right thing to grasp it. In this case, it's suggesting happiness comes in part from questing to find major change X in your life that will change everything. But I think that's actually the cause of a lot of unhappiness. It's a perpetual "grass is always greener" situation. Say you go on…

That is a very Buddhist perspective. The thing that is interesting to note is that the historical buddha seemed to have lived a life of excess before he figured that out. One could argue that many people have to in order to appreciate that point of view.
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