21–30 of 173 posts
If I spend my years in momentary pleasure, I fear I will regret not tackling more ambitious projects. What could I have achieved if I was willing to suffer through activities that are not solely "activities you really enjoy?"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a software eng who has always had a lot of hobbies, it's almost alienating how so many people in the office are only into TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games... It's like, there's a whole world out there people!
Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a software eng who has always had a lot of hobbies, it's almost alienating how so many people in the office are only into TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games... It's like, there's a whole world out there people!
Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?
Graphical arts, digital and analog (which covers everything from painting with all different types of paints to mixed media, large format, small format, from the side of a building to the size of a grain of rice)
These are all mostly looks-based, but you can also make things that do things, make electronics, restore old electronics, go antiquing for vinyl players, go antiquing for anything else.
Join a choir, join a band, join a barbershop quartet, go to the Portsmouth Maritime Folk Festival and listen to sea shanties.
The list goes on.
In a way I was right. I'm 40 now and the things that seemed of extreme importance in my 20s are mostly gone now. In retrospect it's not that I wouldn't be able to do those things, but maybe I feared that I wouldn't want to.
Anyway, I feel much better about myself now. I would not trade this peace of mind for the raw energy of the 20s.
Personally speaking, the biggest specter for time anxiety is age-related cognitive decline. Unfortunately it happens much earlier than most people think. Especially with regards to both creativity and fluid intelligence. Tech entrepreneurs are disproportionately clustered at 20-34. The probability of making a major scientific discovery starts declining at 40. Poets peak in their early 40s, and novelists not much long…
None of these are indicative of cognitive decline (especially tech entrepreneurs, which as an aside it is a myth that it is dominated by the young -- https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...). As people have a family, have responsibilities, etc, the drive to excel in a broader sense declines. Impressing the community, making a name, etc, just has far less of a motivating effect.
You could say the same thing from a "career" perspective if your role is as a salaryman under someone else: the drive to spend your life for someone else's gain diminishes.
I know there are some people disproving parts of Malcolm Gladwell's theories, but sometime in the last year or two it occurred to me that one of the consequences of the 10,000 hours theory is that you actually have time to get expert-level good at three or four things in your life even if you spent part of it 'fucking around'. I've expanded that into a philosophy about 'Software eats the world": the only way that doe…
I would take it even farther than that and say that people vastly overestimate the time it takes to get good at most things. It might take 10,000 hours (or more) to be considered an expert pianist, but you could spend a tenth that much time getting good enough to impress everyone you know with a few songs at parties, and with just 50 hours of practice, you'll be better at the piano than basically everyone you know (y…
There's a ton of (replicated) psychology research that supports this thesis: the early hours of skill acquisition are very effective/efficient in terms of improvement-per-hour-invested. 20-50 hours is enough to see very substantial improvements in any skill, even if you have no prior knowledge or experience.
I wish more people focused on the early process of skill acquisition: that's what most of us will experience for most of our lives/careers.
Learning and practicing skills in many different areas is underrated: if you think of skills from an ROI perspective, spending a little time to get a lot better at a portfolio of useful things has a crazy high return.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a software eng who has always had a lot of hobbies, it's almost alienating how so many people in the office are only into TV shows, super hero movies, sci fi books, video games... It's like, there's a whole world out there people!
Serious question, what other hobbies can one have?
Just to get started: instruments/music, foreign languages, cultural events, theatre/art/design, local volunteering, civic engagement/politics, outdoor activities, cycling/sports/yoga/gym, pets, travel, investing and finance, continued education (moocs/math/history/etc), meditation, ham radio, tabletop/video/retro gaming, books/writing/blogging, gardening, woodworking, cooking. Even "programming" things totally outside your field (little overlap with your day-job) can make for a good hobby if that's your thing.
Some are more fun than others to talk about to other people but that's not the point. I find whenever I'm feeling burnt out or stressed my problem is usually that I'm focused too much on work and not getting satisfaction from the rest of life. Hobbies can make up the rest of life.
Personally speaking, the biggest specter for time anxiety is age-related cognitive decline. Unfortunately it happens much earlier than most people think. Especially with regards to both creativity and fluid intelligence. Tech entrepreneurs are disproportionately clustered at 20-34. The probability of making a major scientific discovery starts declining at 40. Poets peak in their early 40s, and novelists not much long…
Personally speaking, the biggest specter for time anxiety is age-related cognitive decline. Unfortunately it happens much earlier than most people think. Especially with regards to both creativity and fluid intelligence. Tech entrepreneurs are disproportionately clustered at 20-34. The probability of making a major scientific discovery starts declining at 40. Poets peak in their early 40s, and novelists not much long…
Do you have a source for this? The article you linked to quotes one 2014 HBR article and then walks it back, saying, "all studies in this area have found that the majority of successful start-ups have founders under age 50".
And there was also this more recent HBR article "The Average Age of a Successful Startup Founder Is 45":
https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...