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Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

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251–260 of 339 posts

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#251
post #111

For me, the special part is truly viewing any job as just that: a job. I no longer assess my worth as a person as a function of job title, salary, or anything else. I take contracting work primarily and expect absolutely nothing more than a paycheck. Work is a transaction and I deliver what I can and am not a jerk. Almost every disposable penny goes toward physical fitness. My spouse happens to be cut from the same c…

What have been the best investments you’ve made?

0. Taking up yoga in 1995

1. Personal trainer and sport-specific coach (recurring)

2. Professional bike fit and really good cycling shoes (infrequent)

    (a) Periodic lactate threshold and/or FTP testing (few times per year)

    (b) TrainingPeaks/Trainerroad/Zwift/Strava subscriptions (recurring)
3. Wahoo KICKR smart trainer (non-recurring)

    (a) Rollers for a very challenging workout (non-recurring)
4. Concept2 rowing machine (non-recurring)

5. Assorted kettle bells and dumbbells (non-recurring)

6. Fitted really good running shoes (infrequent for me)

7. Garmin running and cycling computers (infrequently upgraded)

8. Fitbit Charge 4 activity tracker

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might be able to make your point in a less antagonistic way..

Agreed. My bad. Coming up without a formal degree, a title felt important for me to get a foot in the door where I could then prove I can code. I got defensive.

That’s fair. I’m speaking as someone who has been in industry for 17 years now. Of course I can say things like that.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#253
post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good for you, and keep it up - just finding a workout group or running buddies is a great investment for encouraging you to stick with it. Plus the ROI - low blood pressure, heart health, and so on - is almost infinite given the low cost of entry.

What is your view on joint damage?

My view, on top of what my sibling comment said, is that even if joint damage was a risk ( and it shouldn't be because I'm doing strength training with weights under a certified coach to prevent stress from going to where it shouldn't be), I'd rather take that risk than be sedentary, fat, and at home all the time like I was before I started running. I found a community on top of an activity I like. I found that I have goals beyond just my career goals. I got into coooking and baking because nutrition is important for an athletic lifestyle.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#254
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a twenty three year old. I'm curious to know more. why take on responsibility through having children? Why not pickup any other type of responsibilty? like, community service, tutoring/helping kids from less fortunate places or in the worst case even Picking up more responsibility from work? Is it more of a genetic thing where it makes the pain of responsibility more pleasurable? I'm even more curious to know if y…

I have two young children. I'm objectively less happy than I used to be, mostly because I lost the freedom to do whatever I wanted and the time to do whatever I wanted, on top of gaining all of these new stressful responsibilities, and I've always liked to travel, be productive and create things. That said, when I look back at how I was using that freedom and time, it wasn't very efficient, but even if I optimized my…

Thanks for an amazing explanation that I feel can both reach someone who is not a parent through how it modifes the local maximum, but also verbalizes the feelings and "justification" for being a parent so well.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#255
It really sounds like you don't know what would fulfill you, especially outside the context of a job. For me, that was a sign that I hadn't experienced or done enough different things to know what was missing from my life.

After my first startup job flamed out after going through several different roles and having similar feelings about feeling unfulfilled, I left, spent some of my savings _not_ working, and tried out tasks (some for myself, some for others; some paid, some not) in other fields that I thought I'd enjoy. When I hit on one, I pursued it as a career, at least briefly.

The end result wasn't me landing on my dream job, though over time I did apply and even get an offer for a couple, neither of which fully worked out either. What I learned was that a job in the definition of having a time when you come in and a time when you leave, a boss, a salary, benefits, none of that was fulfilling as a structure for my life.

Unfortunately, from where I'm born and live, and circumstances and consequences of my life, it's more difficult and expensive for me to live in a place where it's feasible ot escape that structure and survive. I make up for it by, unfortunately, working more — but by doing things I enjoy, for others, outside of that structure. I do those things on weekends or by taking PTO or even unpaid leaves to do it while retaining work that I don't love, but at least makes sure I can continue doing what I do if I get sick or need to support someone else.

I don't want to get into what that special fulfilling work is to me, because one thing I've learned about career advice is that each person's dream of labor is at some level nobody else's dream. And I want to emphasize that this is what worked FOR ME; some people ARE fulfilled by the structure, but not their tasks in it; some people aren't fulfilled by labor at all, and won't feel genuine fulfillment until they are no longer required to work. Even in my case, some people are fulfilled by freelance work where the structure is designed by you, others by entrepreneurship where your structure has to constantly adapt, others even by gig work some people consider to be too menial to justify any structure.

So for a "path more equilibrated and focused on happiness I should follow", to me at least, it's something that each person has to discover, and that it takes resources and privileges not everyone can afford. If you can, it also requires time and a willingness to be without a compass, a manager, or even any specific direction while you experience new things, meet new people, and learn about new opportunities and forms of creativity until you come across something that ignites that fulfillment in you.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#256
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> pay the immense costs required I’m not trying in any way to change your mind but I want to say that this is only an opinion. If you are ready to have kids, those costs are pretty easy to support. As you said, you are biologically programmed to support them (the costs). I would die without a fear if my son’s life depended on it, and still I’m far from suicidal. It’s just that, your brain naturally accepts the costs.…

Right, the thing is before you have children you can weigh the costs/rewards dispassionately, but after you have a child the calculus changes because now this person exists who is now the most important thing in the world to you. As soon as that person exists your life is no longer yours, it is in service of that child (assuming everything goes according to plan, of course it doesn't always work out that way), so of…

Just wanted to share appreciation for how well-put your perspective on reasons to have children is - sorry to add, but especially as a non-parent (since, as you say, it's hard to take into account what happens after the "flips" happen), as well as reasonable and respectable your current stance for not having children is. If more people could see both sides that well, there would be more happy children and less unhappy parents.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. Belonging to a community and helping it grow is important for happiness. Community building (and empowering users) is the main point of copyleft. Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

I've dealt with enough GPL crusaders. They're the most unhappiest bunch. I love the philosophy of FreeBSD. Old school Berkeley liberatarianism. > Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders. Or... you could be less resentful (and therefore happy) and think about helping the 'small guy' make it out and compete with large companies. I sometimes forget that we'r…

Sorry for the offtopicness but could you please email hn@ycombinator.com? I want to send you a repost invite.

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thanks. Belonging to a community and helping it grow is important for happiness. Community building (and empowering users) is the main point of copyleft. Permissive licenses are equivalent to unpaid labor in the eyes of SaaS companies and other freeloaders.

GPL is part of why SaaS happened. It doesn’t prevent commercial use and it doesn’t require distributing source code if the user never gets an executable. SaaS is the textbook way to work around the GPL.

And thus, GPL has evolved to match?

Re: Ask HN: How to optimize your career for happiness?

#260
post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because the evolutionarily programmed rewards from parenting will typically outweigh the rewards from general altruism. Your child becomes the most important thing in the world by default, which can flip all sorts of joy and fulfillment triggers in your brain that are difficult to flip in that way via other means. Having children is your genetic purpose, so much of our biology is driven to that end, thus it would fig…

> pay the immense costs required I’m not trying in any way to change your mind but I want to say that this is only an opinion. If you are ready to have kids, those costs are pretty easy to support. As you said, you are biologically programmed to support them (the costs). I would die without a fear if my son’s life depended on it, and still I’m far from suicidal. It’s just that, your brain naturally accepts the costs.…

>It’s just that, your brain naturally accepts the costs.

There's a big percentage of parents that have some form of post-partum depression (a quick search offers something between 10% to 20%)

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