371–380 of 1001 posts
I feel like a big part missing from this essay is “Why should you work hard?” It seems to assume that working hard is a good thing. Are these essays implicitly aimed at startup founders? Because for the average engineer working hard doesn’t have much of a benefit. Optimizing for interviews is much more important than hard work.
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…
Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…
I'd love to, but... All my friends are like this too. Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day. I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.
The guy who wrote about a hapless nobleman and his butler is a better writer than Aldous Huxley, George Orwell, Arthur C. Clarke, George MacDonald Fraser, or John Le Carre?
There is something fascinating about this article, and it's not the tips about how to properly work hard, which aren't new or particularly insightful (otherwise reasonable and well summarized). It's the fact that throughout the article, hard work is an implied imperative in life, the main thing to do (otherwise it brings a "feeling of disgust"), without questioning if that's healthy, right, or so absolute. Maybe inst…
IMHO the real "why" of this article is attracting the right people for Y Combinator.
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…
I understand what you mean by health problems, because I too have health problems that limit my ability to work and play the way I dreamed of. But Paul Graham never recommends mindlessly working on things that don't interest you for the sake of some imagined tomorrow. He even recommends not to do it: "...if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely…
> One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard
This is such a narrow definition of "great things" that it is useless. Great things in PG's eyes maybe, but I hope no one's life goal is to impress him.
> "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."
That quote makes me sick to my stomach.
> The one precisely dateable landmark I have is when I stopped watching TV, at age 13. It frustrates me when people brag about this like it's a universally good thing. Imagine 100 years ago someone bragging that they stopped wasting time reading books. It's especially frustrating to see PG do it given that he's an artist (or at least used to be), basically putting down another art form. TV has good and bad things. TV…
I can't remember the last time I watched a TV show through a cable provider. But I can tell you the last time I watched a YouTube series.
I'm betting PG only sees one of those as "TV".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now , because we're trading that off for a potentially…
Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day. Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know). The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending t…
The vagueness of "work" in this article is (IMO) a feature, and not a bug. Raising your children can be great work, to your own point. You can't half-ass raising your kids, as you well know, and it sounds like you get the most purpose and fulfillment from doing that. What PG appears to be arguing is that, whether you're doing a "great" job of it depends on: 1) how hard you work on raising your kids, 2) your natural ability, and 3) effort — and I trust that you satisfy all 3 of those preconditions, as a dad.
> The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful
First of all, to call it an "unknown future prize" is a bit of a mischaracterization. If someone were to argue that one ought to spill their lives into their career with no well-defined end goal, then I'd agree that it's silly and wasteful. But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification. Keep in mind that in the experiment, the child knows that there's a second marshmallow coming if they wait. Adults need to know what their second marshmallow is before delaying the first one.
Second of all, I don't think it's fair to make such a sweeping generalization for how other people ought to live their lives. The neat thing about PG's post is that it's sufficiently abstract that it can apply to anyone, regardless of what they consider "great work".
One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation, I never traveled outside the UI, I took days off reluctantly with a vague feeling that I was letting someone down. "Later", I told myself. When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostel…
You can be unhireable in your 40s in tech. What do you do to face age discrimination later?