41–50 of 65 posts
Being in my 40's and reading this, the only thing I can do is quote Tyson: "Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth." -Mike Tyson
I didn't have a plan and things have been going great so far. So it's a little different when you're not in a zero-sum adversarial situation like a boxing ring.
When I was 25 years old I made the plan to move to SF, find a technical cofounder and start a fast growth company. 5 years later I achieved that goal. My plan was nowhere near the detail of this but there were steps along the way. Things changed a lot, and not everything was done in the order I originally planned. With that said, having a clear vision of where I wanted to be and loosely how I was going to get there m…
I've always wondered about this, how do people just "decide" to start a company for the sake of itself. I've always though that companies are kinda grown organically, i.e. you have a problem you want/need to solve and it turns out to be also commercially viable. I have projects like that, i.e. have been scratching my own itch. Sadly none of them have taken off financially or otherwise despite the great effort. If I h…
However, doing so requires strong entrepreneurial insights. I don't recommend it for first-time founders, as starting a company for the sake of starting a company is often a recipe for building something nobody wants.
I can't help but feel career plans, even inherently flexible ones such as the 80000 hour plan, discourage serendipity and encourage sunk-cost thinking. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, just that for the specific HackerNews demographic it may be a bit of an anti-pattern.
Yeh, I'd also like to know whether the HN demographic really has a hard time at finding work?
My entire professional life I've never had trouble finding, often very fulfilling work with great compensation. But I always had a niggling feeling that I could be doing more. Planning helped me to realize that my true goal is to make an impact (even a small one) on millions of people, so now I'm taking the steps to make that happen.
Also, to paraphrase Eisenhower, it's often not the plans which are most beneficial but there mere act of planning. My plans usually turn to rubbish, but the process of planning helps me to center and crystalize my thinking.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my experience as one who tends towards spirituality, intuition etc over science - this type of path is jut the balance I need to keep moving towards my life's goals. I overly focus on serendipity and synchronicity to where I often don't accomplish much practical
Strange that you think spirituality and science are mutually exclusive.
I think they can still be found together but generally they're at opposite ends.
Also science was just one term I could think to describe that end of the spectrum
Etc. Etc. You get my point: based on my observations of decision making of people around me, our real difficulty is not in asking those questions, rather it's that we simply do not know what the answers might be. We have no insight. We don't know our greatest strengths (or weaknesses), we don't know what's our biggest career capital, we have no idea what the ideal career for us would look like etc.
We have little way of knowing other than trying things out and seeing how they work out. It's easy to say "ask yourself question X", but the problem for people is that they simply do not have answers to those kinds of questions.
So what can be done about this? Maybe if you get an experienced mentor who will guide you through answering those questions, that would be progress. I would love to see tools for that kind of thinking.
Imagine you think on that worksheet and... "What is a fulfilling career to you" -> "I don't know..." "What is your most valuable career capital right now?" -> "No idea, if I knew how to turn something I have/can do into capital I wouldn't be planning things on that level would I?" "What global problems do you think are most pressing" -> How the hell should I know? this is only based on what I read in the media, I hav…
And then somewhere down the life you change that phrase to "knowing what you need" and you start all over again.
I you don't need a more complicated plan than: work a lot, teach others, have fun, never stop learning. You can't plan opportunities..
Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't learn.
I'm out.
I you don't need a more complicated plan than: work a lot, teach others, have fun, never stop learning. You can't plan opportunities..
But you need to be prepared to seize opportunities that are congruent with your aspirations; in fact sometimes you need to make these opportunities happen. Planning therefore is important, but because so many things in between happen, your plan should consist of a far reaching vision so as to allow you to learn along the way, including taking paths that may end up in temporary setbacks. If you don't fail, you don't l…
Not to down play the usefulness of this, but be careful not to follow others ideas that your ultimate goal in life is X career plan. I have more of a "life plan" than a "career plan" since money and hacks/resourcefulness is pretty easy to the HN crowd relative to many other groups. Especially in the west, it takes talent to starve here. A work/life balance is what some people enjoy, while others want a work/work or l…
I was just having a discussion with someone on HN who considered $200k pre-tax to be affluent, and suggested that if you couldn't save $80k post-tax annually, you're doing it wrong. Having lived at $30k, $200k, and now more, I know that $200k isn't as lofty as it sounds. The dollars never seem long enough.
It's all about living a life worth living. Part of that is buying time by paying for services - from remodeling, to plumbing and electrical, to landscaping and tree maintenance, to cleaning.
Once you have a family and sufficient means, the projects that you used to DIY to save money become tasks that you hire out to save time. Do I want to spend the next six to eight weekends building a massive Ipe deck, saving thousands of dollars, or do I want to pay someone to build it in two weeks so that I have weekends devoted to family, friends, and hobbies? Do I want to spend several hours a week cleaning the entire house, or do I want to pay someone to clean it while I am at work?
This can also be applied to subjective enjoyment. Do I want to drive an A-to-B economy car, or do I want to drive a high performance vehicle which I subjectively enjoy driving?
I usually choose buying time and buying enjoyment.