Slashdot Mirror
What Should I Do With My Life?
Bamafan77 writes "FastCompany's website has an interesting article about what it means to be successful that I think builds nicely upon a recent Slashdot discussion. That Slashdot thread was about a study that wanted to find out if there is a link between college rejection and success. This new article asks a more basic question that many people struggle with: what does it mean to be successful and how do I achieve it? This article is an excerpt from a new book by Po Bronson which details the personal lives of several people, many of whom are very talented and superficially successful, who switched gears to try to find that 'thing' they are impassioned about. One interesting excerpt that might particularly hit home to the Slashdot community is Bronson's tidbit about a Rockwell manager who left his job because, though it was mentally challenging, lacked a deeper level of gratification. What is this man doing now? He's a cop in East LA."
I'd to be solvent when I'm old, and I think I'm not alone in that.
It's Christmas everyday with BitTorrent.
...may be a bad thing. But, when you make your work and your play the same thing, then everyday is a joy. (First Reply tee hee)
"Dream to be happy. That is the best dream."
Congratulations!
You are phenyl tetrachloride!
The media-fed society has a pernicious way of linking material success with success in general, no matter what price was paid for the material success. As individuals get free of social pressures to look good (defined as, nice car, clothes, and house -- not defined as "smiles a lot, and is at peace") they can really become themselves, not a shell wrapped around nothing.
Well, I was selling death sticks and making a handsome profit until some Jedi told me to go home and rethink my life...
So, maybe I'll become something less profitable, like a sysadmin...
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
..is world peace, having a comfortable house, a job you love, a modest paycheque and a loving family.
Oh yeah, blowjobs... plenty of blowjobs.
Trolling is a art,
I worked 2 years as a network admin for a law firm. Payed great, but the job just burned me out. It wasn't worth it. Sure after I left the place I found myself in some financial difficulty, but it was better than hating was I was doing.
I think my current CS professor said it best:
To me - Success can't be measured by numbers or scores, or anything tangible. It comes down to your heart and head. That is what really matters.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
He figures: "At long last, they will respect mae authoraetai!"
"To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and endure the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty, to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson
I think I would like convert one of my "garage" projects into a business. Success is not, IMHO, a function of wealth, but a funciton of independence (which may or may not be wealth dependent depending on who you ask).
:), that is just icing on the cake.
The important thing to realize that most people judge success as a function of job satisfaction which I think is tough, if not impossible to achieve. Remember, the only thing you can control is yourself, and well a job, that is hard to control. That is why you are paid to do it.
I will never be a CEO, COO, and good help me if I make it to middle management. I am trencher, and will always enjoy being in the muck, but I would like to have a bit of voice when it comes to the decisions (which is probably related to job satisfaction). I guess, success as I define it, can be best described by how I spend my free time. The part I can control. A couple of toys and a paycheck that keeps me happy, healthy and wise
...guess what, I am going to enjoy it. We only have one chance [unless people can prove otherwise], and therefore I am going to adlib it. I am going to work hard enough to pay for the things I would like to do, but not spend my life working. I am not going to regret things I havent done. I honestly live my life on a day-by-day, week-by-week basis enjoying the things I do and look forward to things that I will hopefully be doing tomorrow or next week. I dont want money and to be hugely rich [granted it is nice - but I am not going to dedicate my life to obtaining it only to die with it all in the bank]. What am I going to do? Well, I want to learn about model helicopters, I want to race my radio controlled car. I want to go back to Australia and spend more time there. I want to write a perl compatible regular expression library even though PCRE already exists so I can learn how Non-deterministic finite automaton work on the implementation side of things. Doing things like this are far more important [in my eyes] than the pursuit of being rich and famous [which is what most people class as being successfull].
I am enjoying my life at the minute learning through my Ph.D. and hacking on my opensource projects. All I can say, is that I consider success not in monetry terms but in what I have learned for myself and the happiness that comes from it. Some people would say that I am being silly with all this and I should join the Real World. This is my Real World.
I suppose my final word is this, do what you want because it makes you happy, not because you feel you have to. Ultimatly the only person that can judge whether you have been successfull is yourself.
chris at darkrock dot co dot uk
http colon slash slash www dot darkrock dot co dot uk
I know that there are a lot of flippant comments so far, but I'd just like to say that in my mid-thirties, I chucked everything and came to Thailand with US$1000 and two suitcases. I have successfully built a future here, and ther are many side benefits for me, as well (see my sig). Just the ability to read manuals in English, understand them without assistance, and explain them to Thais makes me profitable.
I make, in US$, somewhere from 500 - 1800, depending on how hard I work, but that amount is more than enough to support me and build a nest-egg for the future.
Did I mention the girls?
Put identity in the browser.
Mr. Blume: What's the secret, Max?
Max Fischer: The secret?
Mr. Blume: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer: The secret, I don't know... I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then... do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore.
In other words, a writer and a magazine who made themselves by proclaiming that the only worthwhile use of your life is starting a dot-com, going public and keeping your stock price elevated until the lockup period ends and you can bail out are now embracing "money won't make you happy".
Truth is, the excerpt was interesting and occasionally thought-provoking, and the book might well be worth reading. But the smarminess level here really rubs me the wrong way.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Now there's a philosopher-king!
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Exactly. Start your own pr0n company. Star in the films. Have a free website. You'll make lots of people happy.
Joe
http://www.joegrossberg.com
I've been working in tech since I dropped out of college about 8 years ago with terrible grades. Computers were something I'd been raised around and had a knack for, and I could make a decent amount of money from them. That was enough for a while. Not anymore, tho.
For several years, it's bothered me that I don't really do anything to help anyone. Well, I do help them make money faster, but that's about it. I can't stand watching all the suffering in the world and thinking like I'm wasting my time building manufacturing systems so that some company can make widgets more efficiently. Instead, I've gone back to college. One semester down with a 3.7 so far, and I've got about 6 or 7 more to go til I've got my neuroscience degree, then on to med school, hopefully.
I understand that some of y'all are stuck in jobs you don't like because of circumstances beyond your control. And I'm sure that a bunch of you are doing things in programming and engineering that will one day improve the quality of life for those around ou. For the rest of you that aren't, take a long hard look in the mirror and see if you're happy helping someone else make money and playing with toys. I think, or at least I hope, that some of you might be a bit uncomfortable with that idea. At the end of your life, do you want your big accomplishment to be "I got my company ISO 9001 certified" or even "I raised my kid to work as a drone in the tech sector?"
"This is your world. These are your people. You can live for yourself today, or help build tomorrow for everyone."
Russel Crowe was great in it. But that wasn't a jedi, that was al pachino.
--Jimmy has fancy plans; and pants to match.
I dream of big machines.
I dream of big machines multi-processor server beasts.
I fall asleep to the soothing whirr of RAID arrays grinding in the background.
Endless lines of monotous code fill my head as I down one too many Jolts with the coffee cup still on my desk.
I hold onto the mouse like a lifeline because it is.
This is what I always wanted. This is what I got.
I am not afraid.
ACK
But maybe if I found out that Einstein's brain weighed as much as mine, I'd be able to do anything I wanted to, like write a new hit single and top the charts!
pb Reply or e-mail; don't vaguely moderate.
My grandmother used to ask me if I loved my work and if it was fun. I'd always say I liked it, but it wasn't what I'd call "fun." Eventually I started saying "Work that's fun, that's a hobby. Work you wouldn't do if you weren't paid for it, that's a job."
Anyway, I guess my advice would be to not automatically assume that what you do for eight hours a day or whatever is necessarily who you are. I know PhDs that cheerfully drive cabs for a living: they never confused the job with their life. So find something that can fund what you really find worthwhile.May be you are right. But thats such a minimalistic attitude. It might give sense of completeness for a while but not in the long run. Then how and when do you say that you are successful. I'd say successful is a very relative term. Why? Becoz as human beings we measure our success based on something. Say your neighbour or your brother or the guy who got a nobel prize.
To be successful, I'd say just the opposite - 'never settle'. If you accept life as it comes, in due process, you will be eliminated as you violate the basic principle of evolution. You have to innovate and improve every second of your life. Now thats easier said than done. But I'd say this style of life would be much satisfying than sitting on a lazy-boy, gulping down beer and cheering for some football team.
"The minute you begin to do what you want to do, it's really a different kind of life" -- Buckminster Fuller
Really. the dotcom bust was the best thing that happened in my life. I did contract work at home in my boxers for a few months, then taught English in Venezela for a half-year, and am now in Jamaica with the Peace Corps as an IT Advisor.
Just live a good life! Happiness is a way of living, not a goal.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
The question of what one wants to do is important. I asked it over seven years ago - and am now in a satisfying IT career.
I love where I work. I love what I do. I love my company and my boss is perhaps the best I've ever had.
But I know I'm fortunate.
"The Sage treasures Unity and measures all things by it" - Lao Tzu
The ratio of importance of the three is a personal decision. Many people want to follow the arts, be it singing, painting, writing, or whatever. They love it. They might even find that they're good at it. It's that whole "make a living at it" thing that's the deal breaker for lots of people. There's a whole different group who might love it, but just plain stink at it. On the other hand, there are many people in the world who look *only* at the third one and say "Well, I only need to be as good at it as the next guy, and who cares if I love it, because I love the money I make."
One way to win this game is to work on your own definition of the first thing. For instance, many geeks out there say "I love video games, therefore my dream job is to hack video games." Well, hey, more power to you if you find your dream job, but you're setting your sights pretty narrow. Personally I define my own "passion" more like this -- "I love existing at the place where people and technology meet." It doesn't matter if you don't really know what I mean, or want to debate it with me -- I know what I mean. And, with that definition working for me, I can be happy coding for the web, or teaching night school, or writing a text book on technology X, or convincing a client to buy a new technology product...and so on.
I was going to write something in a different post about having to overcome the hurdle of "giving it all up in order to find happiness", but I think that's been done to death. At this point in my life I'm in my mid 30's, a nice house, and a wife who has the luxury of being able to stay at home with our 6month old daughter. With that life comes a variety of responsibilities, both fiscal as well as time (i can't just say "Going to the office to hack for 12 hours, honey! Take care of the baby!"). Do I love the job I have right now? Not as much as I used to. Will I give everything up to go start my own company and risk everything in order to do something I really do love? Nope. I'll just keep meditating on what it is that I really want out of my career and be on the lookout for the close matches.
www.HearMySoulSpeak.com
Remember: To succeed in football or life, you have to obliterate everything in your path, in a blind rage.
Random is the New Order.
This is all IMHO of course, and I'm sure somebody can add to this list
At 18, I had my life planned. At 42, hardly any of my plans had panned out! I was going nowhere, slowly. I dumped all my plans and just started looking to have fun at work and at home. Now, at 50, I own Fairfax,VA...no, just kidding...I now am making very good money and really enjoy my work. (I really am 50, though.) Everything hasn't always been fun, but having the "fun" goal seems to be working. I think people enjoy working and being around people who are having fun. I try to avoid things that can come back and bite me later on. That usually involves TOO much fun so I guess moderation is a good idea, too. So, enjoy, smartly. :})||
Pick an enjoyable job you like.
There is nothing worse then the dread of going into a place you hate every day.
The second part is to live the non work life you want. Pursue things that interest you and are fun. Life isn't all work.
I can see some of your irony or wit or whatever, but have you ever considered what it takes to start a company?
I did, I have my own company, I'm my own CEO, my own middle management, my own footman. I have had to make to decision to fire about 10 diferent persons in my life (I'm 22 right now) and it wasn't easy, or fun. It felt bad, but it was necesary. I work all day consulting on networking and general computer maintance, and I code at night. I have some big clients (at least for the country I live in) including a K12 School that has the largest IT infrastructure in the country (400+ computers). Am I making a shitload of money?? Absolutly not. But I'm making a bit less as I would if I had been employed in an avarege job. However, I know that I can continue to climb as I become more experienced, and I know that one of my projects can give me a big break, but if not, I can continue to survive. Is it hard?? Yes, probably harder than a normal job, but I think it would be worth it in the long run.
Don't underestimate the position of a CEO, if you haven't had a chance to walk in thier shoes. Some are like the ones you describe, but they are few and far apart.
please excuse my apathy
Happiness?
Yeah, I was happy with my self, my position in life, my wages, my job, and the relationship I was in.
Twas the scariest 5 minutes of my life.
To quote something I agree with about life and humans in general:
"Did you know that the first Matrix was designed to be a perfect human world? Where none suffered, where everyone would be happy. It was a disaster. No one would accept the program. Entire crops were lost. Some believed we lacked the programming language to describe your perfect world. But I believe that, as a species, human beings define their reality through suffering and misery."
If it makes you happy or gives you satisfaction in some way, it is probably wrong, or dangerous, or illegal...Or it soon will be.You keep going until you die..."Me".
I have a satisfying, challenging, and fulfilling job. But that's not what I turn to when I'm asked what my life is worth.
Instead I talk about my wife. I talk about my relationship with my parents and my brother and my in-laws. I talk about my friends, my music, my writing, and the software I write on the side. I talk about the organizations to which I donate my time and labor.
Equating sucess with professional achievement and money blinds us to the very thing that makes life worthwhile: other people. Our whole experience of life revolves around the quality of our relationships. That's not to say work isn't important--it is an important tool to having everything else in your life work. But I refuse to have it be ALL I do, or even the main barometer of my "success".
That's exactly what I thought upon reading the headline. I fully expected to see a gaggle of posts of the "Translation: I haven't bothered doing the goddamn research myself and now am begging for help on /." variety.
I have seen tons of smart-ass comments here about the article but I think it applies, especially here. Like most of my coworkers, I did IT because I wanted to make a buck. Fortunatly I am pretty good at it, but it still makes my eyeballs want to fall out. I come back after vacation and say to myself 'WTF, I can't believe that I sit here all day' One thing the author failed to mention is that jobs that are remotly interesting pay substantailly less, the reality of it is that I would not have a house or a car for my family if I didn't do this kind of work.
I abandonded a career in chemistry (which I loved) because I simply could not survive on a chemist's salary.
love is just extroverted narcissism
I always tell people I want to be a philanthropist when I grow up. Doesn't matter how I get there. :-) Or maybe Hugh Hefner's protoge'.
"There are two kinds of tired, there's good tired, and there's bad tired. Ironically enough, bad tired is a day when maybe you won, but you won other people's battles, you lived other people's days, other people's agendas, and there is very little YOU in there. And when you hit the hay at night you toss and turn you don't settle easy. Good tired can be a day that you lost, but you don't have to tell yourself, because you fought your battles, you lived your life, your agenda, you chased your dreams, and when you hit the hay at night, you settle in easy, and you sleep the sleep of the just and you can say, take me away."
I sleep well.
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
if it wasn't for everybody else that works there!
....has always been my motto. However, after the dotcom debacle, I now find myself clinging to a good paying job (as a senior software engineer), which I hate and dread to go to on a daily basis. My boss is a patronizing, belittling, overbearing __unfavorable_definition_of_your_choice_ who loves to torment my entire group on a daily basis.
;-)
Now, my other guiding principle I was always following was: When I was a little boy, and someone would have shown me a video of my life today, what would I have said?
I must be honest here: although I love software development and my pursuit of excellence as an engineer, I must concede that the little boy I once was would probably have been apalled at his future life (especially during 2001/2002) - and we are not talking about a childhood urge of wanting to be an astronaut here.
I grew up as a very simple kid in Austria until I was 11 and sometimes I linger back to those days. Compared to the morass I am living in (Los Angeles), it remember life as being a lot simpler (although I also remember my father having a hard time finding a job
I will turn 37 in a week and I realize that, as a middle-aged software developer, my choices for a career change are limited. However, I have been working on a mechanical invention of mine for the last two years during weekends. This taught me a lot, and although I realize that the chance of realizing this invention is infinitesmal, it has given me the energy to make it through the last few years. I would jump at the chance to pursue it on a full time basis, even if it ment a major cut in my salary. Maybe I am able to find an investor, and maybe it's just a pipe dream. But I firmly believe in following my dreams and satisfying my imagination, otherwise I can only look ahead of a life behind a monitor working for people I hate and doing things I don't care about.
Just my two cents, I don't have the perfect answer either, but I am sure that a lot of us have sold our souls to this industry, and maybe it's time to fight back and reclaim some of it - recession or no recession.
What should you do with your life?
.
Go barefoot.
Get tipsy with friends.
Have lazy Sunday morning sex.
Enjoy your coffee.
Endulge yourself every once in awhile.
Realize you don't have to be rich.
Read Barbara Holland's Endangered Pleasures
Enjoy it. That's what you should do with your life.
I'm considering going back to a local school (Portland State) to pick up an MS in EE focusing on neural nets. I'm also thinking strongly about starting my own company, since there's no bloody AI work here in Portland. (Giving up my friends, my girlfriend, and my support network to relocate is less than optimal.)
My friends think I'm nuts whenever I talk about starting my own company, but the fact of the matter is that if you can't find the job you want, you have to create it yourself. I still want to get my MS first so that I can learn more about the guts of pattern recognition before I stake out on my own.
OK, so the reason for this post: how nuts am I, really, to pursue this track? I leave it to the Slashdot crowd to comment. God help me. :)
Finding God in a Dog
Obviously, you don't live in the U.S., or you'd have a better appreciation for the original poster's humor. Being CEO of a large company here isn't about hard work and ethics, it's about bleeding the company dry, running it into the ground, taking your ill-gotten money and building a $15 million mansion in Florida, then declaring bankruptcy since they can't take your house under Florida law.
"When you say souls don't develop because people become distracted,... [rumble] ...has anyone noticed that building there before?"
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
You might have trouble finding a vocation that "fits your true character," even if you ever find such a thing as a "true character." Try to spend most of your short life doing what appeals to you (preferably getting paid for it), sharing that time with someone who has the uncanny ability to make seconds seem like eternity.
This is easier said than done, of course. In more concrete terms, find someone to love, love the hell out of them, and make enough to neither live on the street nor sacrifice your "spirit" in the process.
Let's get drunk and delete production data!
I enjoyed the companionship and humor of other software developers and now enjoy the companionship and humor of oil patch workers. The work can be dirty, long, hard and physical. Cracking the "greenie" label and being accepted by the rough and tumble crowd is satisfying. Its not for everyone, I don't know where I'll go next but I am not afraid to try. And besides I hear some great new jokes and sayings like "...that lease is so far fucking north they have to truck in sunshine!"
One can read the "Northwest Passage" and be amazed at early artic explorers. The drive they had is nothing new, its been around for centuries. We are doing that today in different ways as this articles points out. They explored new lands which is essentially what we are doing today only the landscapes have changed.
True story. Try instead the sort of CEO who arrives into a company he doesn't care about, who's products are incomprehensible to him, who got the CEO position because his college buddy is a VC. This CEO then proceeds to stab the company founder in the back, and (as far as we can tell) deliberately run the company into the ground, finally declaring the entirity of development redundant and dismissing them from the company as such, keeping jobs only for the other college buddies he brought into the company at 5 times the highest developers salary. Company still (just about) exists and will continue to do so until the cash reserve is dried up from paying the parasites salaries. Living on my savings now, looking for work. CEO who was in the company less than 1 year, and his cronies are living off the company capital that the fired developers and backstabbed previous management built up for the previous 8 years in order to extend our market area into the states.
kartune85 : Incapable of reason, observation or learning. A kind of dim, drab, flightless parrot.
-- of how good readers post good comments, but great readers steal great comments.
Congrats with the karma!
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
"[Gallup's] hundreds of studies proved time after time that talent makes a huge impact on profitable growth across every major type of occupation and industry...Superior performers...follow their instincts and thereby identify and develop their specialties. [Given the current modi operandi of education and corporate training] almost always they do this on their own."
Other key research findings are:
- Creativity is a better predictor of achievement than intelligence (source: Torrance)
- Creativity takes shape at the intersection of creativity skills, domain knowledge and intrinsic motivation (source: Amabile)
So, while the article's research is anecdotal, the core thesis is 100% correct:At University I wanted to be a computer programmer, drive a Jaguar and play Roland keyboards. All very material. I've achieved all that. There never really was an emotional side to the plan. But...
There's a lot more to life than work. I can speak from recent experience here, as I'm about to become a husband and also have a baby daughter. Work is just how I support the remainder of my life - trust me, nothing in work can compare to the satisfaction to be gained from raising your own kid, or from finding the right person. Nothing. Current culture glamourises the working world because it has to - it needs you to make money in order to sell you things. Try to look beyond that a little bit.
Well, if you could shave a word off that post, it would be equal to 42 words... take out that "good" before book ;-)
Tim.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
I figure I'll live the fast life of a CS grad, working 80 hour weeks for an outrageously high salary, until at 25 I'm declared an old geezer and pink-slipped in favor of some new graduate who's up on the latest development fads. Then I'll go get an education degree, during which I might actually meet women, and then become a teacher, hopefully to be slightly responsible for a generation of kids who can actually make their computers do what they want, instead of having to pay someone else to make their computer do less and less. Oh, and unlike the rest of the teachers, I'll have my college loans paid off.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
A) Make Money
B) Have Fun
C) Stay within the law
Choose only 2
No matter how much fun work can be, there is a reason it is still called Work and not Recess!
if he were happy.
He thought about it for a few mintues and then said, " I don't know. I've been so busy doing what I want that I've never even considered the question."
Now *that* is success.
And don't let anybody tell you otherwise.
What amazes me is how long it takes some people to figure that out, like the author of this article, for instance.
KFG
It's called Resume, by Dorothy Parker
(I used to think it was Sylvia Plath, too)
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
I'm sure someone else can come up with another more efficient routine, but here's my first stab at it:
for (i=1;in-1;i++)
{
printf("%d: %s\n", i, print_step(i));
}
printf("%d: ???\n", n-1);
printf("%d: Profit!\n", n);
First get yourself one copy each of three books: The Wild Shore, The Gold Coast, and Pacific Edge, all by Kim Stanley Robinson. Then read them each through once. Take your time...
Now, after reading those books, rethink all your values, and change all your goals.
That's my suggestion. Granted it might not work for you, but it's doing wonders for me.
mm ya.. now.. if it only was actually funny..
Y'know, I appreciate all the innocent and simple definitions of success, but many of them gloss over a financial fly in the ointment: it's horribly difficult to have fun when you are flat broke, or (more commonly) completely in debt with no way to pay it off.
Some of us are lucky: we have jobs about which we are passionate, spouses we love unconditionally, houses tucked in at the base of mountains in locations where the quality of life is excellent (hunting, fishing, camping, in a city of 8500 people). But the truth is, my life would suck if I had to perform actual physical labor.
Yes, I could make more money working somewhere else, as a DBA or a programmer or a systems engineer or a middle manager of other geeks. I am not underpaid, though I haven't purchased a new motherboard in 3 years. But if geekdom didn't pay so well, I would not be nearly as happy as I am now.
So it isn't the money, entirely, and it isn't that I love my work, entirely. It's that I receive a decent paycheck for something I enjoy, and I've found the people I want to live among, and work with.
But if it weren't for the pay, I'd probably be doing something that paid more but I still love, like finish carpentry.
I think that's the key: a person can be "successful" at whatever they decide to pursue, as long as their goals are modest, their abilities competent, and their capacity for happiness unbounded.
But it's hard to be happy when you get payed $6/hr to peddle inferior products to disrespectful customers for a boss who sees you as a replacable commodity.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
The trouble with being smart is that you're intellectually malleable enough to be taught to do some really stupid things. Normal people (and below) just nod their head and more or less do what they were going to do. High IQ types are taught to focus on their careers, be politically correct, only have one child if they get married at all, and assorted other things that would confuse the hell out of Darwin, and all too often we listen to it.
And you're really screwed if you fit the profile for Asperger's Syndrome.
The point of life is more life.
I wish I actually followed that philosophy.
TYLER
I see in fight club the strongest and
smartest men who have ever lived --
an entire generation pumping gas and
waiting tables; or they're slaves
with white collars.
Advertisements have them chasing cars
and clothes, working jobs they hate
so they can buy shit they don't need.
We are the middle children of
history, with no purpose or place.
We have no great war, or great
depression. The great war is a
spiritual war. The great depression
is our lives. We were raised by
television to believe that we'd be
millionaires and movie gods and rock
stars -- but we won't. And we're
learning that fact. And we're very,
very pissed-off.
There are three aspects to every task.
1) How much do you like doing this task?
2) How good are you at this task compared to others.
3) What do you receive in exchange for doing this task?
There are lots of minor rule definitions I have added to this, (like rule 2 is in comparison to everyone else, e.g.: being an ok brain surgen is better than being great at sweeping floors)
As soon as I discovered this it seemed obvious which of the tasks I undertake should get more time. For example I play much less computer games and watch much less mindless t.v. I also volunteer more, I coach H.S. sports and recently signed up as a volunteer fireman.
Come up with your own method of scoring each point. Please let me know if you want to suggest another. btw: how long the task takes and how much it costs you are take care of in 3. Thus I no longer ski as much. Its just too expensive and too far from where I live.
Mark
If we look at our life, very simply, in a straightforward way, we see that it is marked with frustration and pain. This is because we attempt to secure our relationship with the "world out there", by solidifying our experiences in some concrete way. For example, we might have dinner with someone we admire very much, everything goes just right, and when we get home later we begin to fantasise about all the things we can do with our new-found friend, places we can go etc. We are going through the process of trying to cement our relationship. Perhaps, the next time we see our friend, she/he has a headache and is curt with us; we feel snubbed, hurt, all our plans go out the window. The problem is that the "world out there" is constantly changing, everything is impermanent and it is impossible to make a permanent relationship with anything, at all.
-- from buddhanet.net
If you accept life as it comes, in due process, you will be eliminated as you violate the basic principle of evolution.
hmmmm what you propose sounds like Nirvana to me. If only more of us could just take life as it comes.
What if it is just turtles all the way down?
The older I get (I'm 35), the more I realize that the only really important things in my life are the people in it. I'm lucky, though. I like my job and I'm paid well and treated well, but my job doesn't define my life. The people in my life are the most important thing in my life. My family and friends matter the most to me, but my employees, cow-orkers and the people I regularly buy things from also matter to me.
As someone wiser than me once pointed out, the question you should be asking yourself is: What do you want people to say about you when you're gone?
I used to agree before my wife left me. Which she did in part because I wasn't bringing in enough money and she didn't have the Career she wanted. Wives (and by default, children) are only good for 4-8 years. Nowadays jobs are too, but no workplace blackmailed me for alimony
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signature_bloc
"We've discredited the notion that the Internet would change everything..."
no, it is changing everything! you're just not going to make a billion almighty bucks. we are living in one of the most interesting time periods ever, and we don't know what we want. the book "flow" has some very interesting discussions about what makes us happy. reasonable challenge, playful, sometimes repetitive = engaged. how can one be creative when one is under extreme pressure? and, last but not least, helping others can be rewarding. surprise!
I have a theory that if you can do what you dreamed of doing when you were 14 or 15, you'll have a fulfilling career. By then your personality had pretty well gelled, but other ... um ... distractions hadn't yet comepletely clouded your vision. You may take some detours along the way, and that's okay. Just be careful not to take on too many financial obligations too soon. You'll end up chasing money instead of your dream, and you may never get back on track.
....this article is so long I have no doubt that 99% of the people posting in this thread did not.
Please read the entire article.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
Plath, I think, would have been unlikely to write a humorous poem about suicide.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
So more important than the advice to ditch your life for a new one, I would suggest finding ways to deal with bad situations to make them better.
I think it all comes down to defining ones values. Conflict comes from either not knowing ones values or doing things that go against ones values. The answer, I think, is to strongly define ones values and stick with them, despite the consequences. Don't quit banking because you're asked to do immoral things, don't do those things and work to change it. Don't quit IT because your tired of being a Microsoft slave in the certification rut, liberate yourself by learning a new skill (like Linux) or solving problems in new ways. You don't need to farm fish or join a monastery to find satisfaction and happiness, that's just one way. Work from within to simply hold onto your values and the job will transform. If you don't know your values or need to redefine, well, that's your next step.
Yes, it's simplistic advice, but it accepts the fact of suffering in life and that sometimes bailing is not always an option. I think we bail on too many things in this culture: jobs, relationships, school, marriages, religion, etc. Life is difficult for most people, especially when there's uncertainty and doubt. Get your head straight, define your values, follow them, and let the chips fall where they may. Change attitude, not latitude, to paraphrase a popular beer commercial.
Do what makes you happy.
can you imagine what our economy would be like if all of our professionals dropped their careers to follow their dreams? we'd be a nation of ballerinas and astronauts.
Work isn't supposed to be fun, that's why it's called work.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
Nothing.
I would sit on my ass and do nothing.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Thanks for listening, and thanks for the suggestion. The primary reason that I go through Live365 for my broadcasting is that they take care of licensing and bandwidth fees. I pay a flat $5/month fee to them and my station is totally legal. Pretty good deal, really.
I gave up college to become a fast-paced, overpaid computer weenie. Now I spend my life chasing around other people's problems and buried in lame paperwork. The only good thing I have really done for myself was not to by an expensive house like all the other techies, because I haven't totally tied myself in. Being a techie sucks, because no matter what you do, people only notice you when you piss them off. You can never take serious pride in your work, because if someone else doesn't break it every day, you will have to update the OS/Software/whatever too often to to step back and look at what you have done. The money doesn't matter, because you can't enjoy it when you have to worry about a to-do list that you have no hope of catching up to. Mentors are rare at best, because companies never want to spend money training anyone, so all the experts are executives or academics. You will never have a decent social life, because all the time around computers sticks you into a different world mentally.
Stay out of tech. It is not worth the stress, the denegration, or the way it will take over your life. Do not worry about money, because the things you own WILL end up owning you. Do something fun, take pictures, and write about it. Enjoy life, because you only get one.
Actually, to get things truly to the SEI level 5, would be to create a harmonious working atmosphere where the business process accurately reflected the way which the work is actually done. If I could have a hand in bringing that to the people, I would feel like a hero.
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
My wife and I both had the same epiphany. I was making plenty of money, but when I got laid off, we both realized what my ever-increasing income had really gotten us: a lot of debt. We had fallen into the same stupid pit so many other people fall into.
;)
...
Instead of hunting for a job that paid just as much, I took one that paid half as much -- teaching high school. You may expect me to say that I found it really rewarding or something in spite of the pay. Well... no. I don't like teaching. But, we ditched the high-priced suburbian house and the two car payments for a much simpler lifestyle, and now I'm back into programming, but not for the same money I was raking in before. We're both going back to school and playing it by ear for now, but we'll end up doing something "meaningful" and not worrying about much more than food and rent. And my broadband connection. I'm not going back to dial-up, even if I have to lay the fiber connection myself.
I'm very lucky that my wife and I both came to the same conclusions. I'm sorry yours didn't, but I'm glad to hear you found someone who does now. (I'm also glad I'm not a dateless wonder... My wife is taller than me, brown hair, chocolate eyes, long legs, and a size 6... those hip-hugger jeans look reeeeeally nice on her *g*.)
>> On second thought, I'm starting to think this whole 'growing up" business is vastly overrated
I certainly don't plan on growing up. Older? Sure. Wiser? Most certainly. More experienced? Without a doubt. But "grown up"? Never.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
Maybe I'm the only parent in all of Slashdot?
After my daughter was born, I realized that nothing that my career could provide me was going to be more satisfying or more important that what I could do for her, specifically, and for others, generally. I found a city 1000 miles away that was a better place to raise her and found a new job there, one that has a 40 hour work week 80-90% of the time. I have the time to spend with my daughter that I wanted, and my wife, and that makes me happier.
And . . . I'm just getting settled into the new city, new job, new home here (it's been under six months), but now I'm asking the question in a serious way -- What should I do with my life? And the answers I keep getting back involved how I spend all those hours other than the 40 in the office, not just with my family, but with my community, with people who have less than me, with a system of politics in the U.S. that I think is fundamentally broken in all the obvious ways and others not so obvious, with the world. I could try to find a job in that, but I really don't think there is one that pays me to do the things I want to do to make a difference, and I won't accept the logic of this article, which seems would make those possibilities outside of a career invisible.
My new job is fine. I get to use my IT skills, it pays enough, I like the people I work with well enough. Sometimes I like it more, and sometimes I like it less. It isn't a wild rollercoaster with 80 hour weeks and crazy deadlines (which I loved and hated), like my last job. But I never dread coming to the office, not even on my worst day of work. It's good enough for me, and it gives me the change to not let my career define me, and not let my career shape the possibilities for what will make me happy and satisfied. And this article missed that, completely.
Travel, live in other countries, get to appreciate other people's point of view, strengths, learn from their weaknesses. For me personally there is no better thing than learning about other people. Your house can burn down, your money can be taken away (you might do something stupid like investing into Enron with it), but your memories and your experience will always stay. And when I say experience I don't mean job related experience but experience in life.
Just my $.02
I'd like a job where I can sleep in as late as I want. Then I can wake up and eat butter and milkshakes for a few hours. Then I go back to bed for as long as I want. Then I wake up and I get to have sex with Victoria Secret models until I grow bored. Then I play golf or go bowling.
Occasionally I read, but then back to the sleeping.
And I would be paid money so big that rap songs would be written about me from an envious vein.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
"So I'm expecting my first child."
(Applause and cheers from crowd.)
"It's not that big a deal -- all I did was fuck my wife."
Method of processing duck feet
Once I make my millions, I'm going to retire to a life of charity work.
My current plan is to start up "Handjobs for the Homeless." I will hire busty blondes to work in plush living quarters where homeless men can come in and get handjobs for free. And some booze if they want it. Then back into the harsh world that bred them once they are done.
You might ask what I will do for the homeless women.
And the answer is... I don't know. Them bitches is ugly.
There are some odd things afoot now, in the Villa Straylight.
I've been doing that forever, from doing a startup and exhibiting at my first COMDEX in 1985, through most of a decade working on the Alta Ski Patrol, doing emergency medicine, avalanche control and rescue dog training, to what I'm doing now, trying to bring my vision of exercising in God's most beautiful places while right in your living room, and doing it in such way that it will have an effect on what is becoming the epidemic of our time: obesity. See more about it at http://www.exerscape.com
And hopefully making enough money to be warm, fed, and comfortable in my old age, and show my children the world in the future.
The one continuing theme has been following my passions, from computers through the outdoors, from bike racing through digital media, from playing with explosives to create avalanches to my current obsession, the Palestinian conflict and its ongoing effect on the world's view of the US. When a you are consistently on the losing end of UN resolutions 160-4, something is wrong with your position, but the Bushies just don't seem to get it....
Anyway, follow your passions, follow the path of your curiosity, and go through the doors that naturally open when you do so. The tough times seem easier, the good times seem sublimley happy, inner satisfaction is assured, and you will almost assuredly see enough financial success to survive, if not prosper.
Just my 2 cents : )
All the comments I've read are making me think of a song by a French singer, Francis Cabrel, called "Photos de Voyages". I'll translate a bit of it, to the best of my ability:
Like a child of the islands,
wearing nothing on his skin.
He quietly watches the tourst boats cross.
You get off the boat and walk up to him,
money in your pocket, and take his picture.
At the end of your trip, sitting
in your living room, you see his
face again staring up at you from
the bottom of a shoe box.
You have your money.
He has the sun.
He has all his time.
You have your camera.
You take back your pictures, your travel photos. You think you're as happy as he is.
You have your business lunches
and your nights spent at work.
He's sitting outside, hair down
to his waist, repairing a net
to catch fish at the coral reef.
In the middle of your city,
you're all bundled up.
Sometimes the temperature drops
to 15 degrees below 0.
Sitting in his little cabin in
the hot sun, he's drinking
coconut milk.
============
Sorry for the crappy translation, but that's the general idea. The person with the money, going on vacation, taking the pictures is really just trying to convince themselves that they're happy with all their possessions, even though they spend most of their time working to maintain them. The guy living on an island in the warm sun, drinking milk and fishing off the reef has no money, but all the time in the world.
While I don't want to really be at either extreme, I like the message the song delivers: don't get so caught up in working for stuff that you don't have time to enjoy life.
bytesmythe
Hypocrisy is the resin that holds the plywood of society together.
-- Scott Meyer
...try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations, and, finally...
I've never understood theists who claim that their god and their religion (in most cases, Christianity) is the meaning of life and how it makes life more worth living. It seems to me that the exact opposite is true. Christianity teaches people that they are essentially horrible and that existence on Earth is something that they have to "go through" before their "real life" with God in Heaven starts. Almost makes our Earth-bound existence sounds like sort of a chore, doesn't it?
To atheists, on the other hand, what you have is what you get. You are not going to get an eternity in Heaven as part of some second existence. When you die, that's it. So it's up to you to make the most of each and every minute of each and every day, because you're not getting anything else, baby. Despite all of its problems, I tend to think that the world is still a very beautiful place, and one certainly does not need angels, devils, and Jesii to enjoy it and have meaningful experiences in it.
I have no need to worship. Worship is subjugation. Admiration? Yes - I admire many things, like Open Source yes, but admiration isn't necessarily worship. It's frustrating that a great many poeple don't understand the difference. Despite the fact that a great many religious people feel an instictive need to worship, they are lying when they claim this is a universal trait everyone shares.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
To be successful, I'd say just the opposite - 'never settle'. If you accept life as it comes, in due process, you will be eliminated as you violate the basic principle of evolution. You have to innovate and improve every second of your life. Now thats easier said than done. But I'd say this style of life would be much satisfying than sitting on a lazy-boy, gulping down beer and cheering for some football team.
Innovate and improve what?
And who says that accepting life as it comes means being utterly passive?
It's not a black/white, either/or choice. There is something to be said for recognizing that not everything is inside one's control, and simply accepting many things would alleviate much stress and unhappiness.
At the same time, you're right - life is also a struggle - you have to work at it. And we all have to work together to make the world we want, too.
I agree that we all measure our success based on something. We measure it based on our values. If your values tell you that you have to compete with your Nobel-prize-winning brother, you may be destined for disappointment. However, if your values tell you that you love genetics and want to spend your life researching that, and then you happen to win the Nobel prize, then good for you!
Half the challenge of life seems to me to be figuring out what your own success values are. We can decide for ourselves what will make us happy people. Unfortunately we must first get over the hurdle of figuring out whether or not the things that our culture says constitute success and happiness are really the right thing for us.
The first part of your post was quite correct; if you're going to spend your life chasing a proverbial carrot, then make sure you enjoy the chase, because you'll never get that carrot.
The second part of your post was pure flamebait, and boiled down to "If you find Gawd, you'll be happy; if you don't, you're screwed." I'm sorry, but I'm one of the many that have found the exact opposite to be true; finding the lack of any deity has put my life in order. For some, this doesn't work -- apparently you're one of that camp. For others, they need to find Allah, or seek the wisdom of Buddha. For some, like me, atheism is the only way to fly.
It just really gets on my tits when some evangelist just *has* to put their two cents in that "we can't find happiness and fullfillment outside of God."
In a nutshell, happiness is where you find it. It can't be given to you by a church, or sold to you in a store. It can only be found by you, and only when you're ready to find it.
--
I Hit the Karma Cap, and All I Got Was This Lousy
is cause they don't have the luxury - like most of the people he interviews - of taking the time to find out. They have to keep working at their shit job because they have to EAT or get food so their kids can EAT.
... it only makes sens to people who already have enough money to eat and live.
This discussion is so middle class
I've spent the last year doing nothing in far-off places: in short, I took a Gap year. I met people who's dreams ranged from seeing a sunrise in every country in the world, to seeing one plant grow in their yard. Why did I take a year away from my future and spend a great deal of money on the process? To try and uncover the surface of this post - what do I want to do with my life. Did I find the answer? Not especially. I found a what a whole bunch of other people want to do with their lives, but couln't come to grips with what I wanted with mine. And then it hit me, while sitting in the Auckland airport.
I want to create something beautiful. I want to bring something that I see as beauty into the world.
I haven't found what that will be - will it be a memory of a scene in a foerign land, will it be a circuit so efficient and well made that the only fittign word is beautiful - but that's what I want to do. But to generalize, isn't that what we all want to do? Pick anyone famous, and within a few minutes you can find the beauty the sought to produce. Plato? The idea of the rule of the people. Einstein? A family (but look what he cam up with to get there). Hitler? A pure aryan race - he saw that as beauty, despite the fact that most of us don't.
So there you have it. What do I want to do with my life? Make something beautiful. Now, I just have to discover what that's gonna be...
Cue The Sun...
Fortunately, I have two passions in my life: my motorcycle and my computer. Time was I worked with computers and played with my motorcycle---the idea of coming home from ten straight hours of programming only to program some more didn't exactly appeal to me. Now that the dotcoms have vanished, I have taken a job selling motorcycles, and I hack recreationally again.
'Course, my recreational motorcycling has gone away...
This is not my sandwich.
Yeah, but some of us sober fellows, who were never suckered in, have been harmed by y'all's failures. I wish very deeply that everyone had started a little wiser, and just skipped that learning experience.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
The second part of your post was pure flamebait, and boiled down to "If you find Gawd, you'll be happy; if you don't, you're screwed."
Actually, the OP never said anything about being screwed if one didn't find God. I think you're reading to much of your own prejudices into what was posted to understand the point.
I think that the OP's point was that the enjoyment of life is not necessarily tied to materialistic goals. He found fulfillment in a lifestyle espoused by scripture. The issue of finding God was mentioned only in passing.
I too, have asked myself often whether or not God really exists. But inevitably, I come back to the same conclusion. However, trying to explain it rationally is often more trouble than it's worth - so many people will hear the word "God" and tune out, or they will assume they know what you're saying and end up repeating the same tired, thoughtless arguments. I've come to realize that logical arguments almost never make a difference in what a person believes - what happens most often is that the person has a hunch about the truth and goes off seeking arguments to support his or her view.
Now for the flamesuit:
And I cannot even begin to discuss religious topics without someone trying to label me as this or that kind of person and dismissing the argument completely. The extent to which a person will go to avoid a thoughtful, well reasoned dialog, or even thinking, for that matter, never ceases to amaze me.
Okay, you can put me back in your "religious nutcase" box right next to the "evangelists with superiority complexes" box.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
Hmmm. Are you male?
I'm female. And one of the things I have been coming to realize of late is that I need to worry less about the people in my life, and more about having meaningful work in my life. I was raised on the "it doesn't matter what you do..." idea, and it turns out that that can be a real subtle way of dismissing women's ambitions.
After all, if what really matters is the people in your life and not the kind of work you do, it's just as good to be a nurse as a doctor, a secretary as an executive, etc. Heck, you might as well stay home and raise babies.
So, actually, I've been coming to see the reverse of your conclusion -- that is really does matter what kind of work you do.
I do wonder if the issue is that men are (still) raised to see their whole identities in their jobs, while women (still) are raised to eschew taking any identity from their jobs. That you had to learn that the people matter, and that I had to learn that the work matters.
-*- Any technology indistinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced -*-
Ask yourself what you would do if you won the lotto (that is, after you got tired of partying, which I realize might be a while). If I won, I think I would still try to write "beautiful" code
Peter Gibbons: Our high school guidance counselor used to ask us what you'd do if you had a million dollars and you didn't have to work. And invariably what you'd say was supposed to be your career. So, if you wanted to fix old cars you're supposed to be an auto mechanic.
Samir: So what did you say?
Peter Gibbons: I never had an answer. I guess that's why I'm working at Initech.
Michael Bolton: That question is bullshit to begin with. If everyone listened to her, there'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up if they had a million dollars.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You make a good point, but the two are often entangled.
You can make serious money driving a cab. Heck, that's how Philip Glass supported himself even after his first opera debuted in New York.
But what about the poor guy who lives in NYC and has to work 11 hours a day just to make ends meet? What sort of a life does he have? He has 2 weeks a year vacation, and 2/7ths of his week to enjoy. 114 days out of 365 is 31.2%.. do you really want to 'live' for 31.2% of your finest years and work for the other 68.8% of it?
You could argue that the guy could go work someplace else, somewhere where the rents are cheaper, and he could work 7 hours a day and still get along okay. Fair argument, but life is different outside of NYC.. so it totally changes his life.
Arguing that 'life' and work can be kept separate is noble, but not realistic IMHO.
mogorific carpentry experiments
You are right. But reproduction is genetically programmed into all living creatures.
If all humans stopped reproducing, eventually all humans would die out and be extinct. What would that matter? We'd be dead, we wouldn't know or care.
That type of opinion is seen as sad and defeatist, but is it really? What do we have to gain from propogating our species? After all, Buddhists say that all life is suffering. Let's stop suffering and stop producing more humans.
mogorific carpentry experiments
Seeing as I can't see anyone who has posted it already:
"What would you do if you had a million dollars?"
"I tell you what I'd do man, two chicks at the same time man"
"That's it? You had a million dollars, you'd do two chicks at the same time?"
"Damn straight I always wanted to do that man, I think that if I was a millionaire I could hook that up, cause chicks dig dudes with money"
"Not all chicks"
"Well, type of chicks, that would double up on a dude like me dude."
"Good point."
"Now what about you now? What would you do?"
"Besides two chicks at the same time?"
"Well yeah."
"Nothing"
"Nuthin huh?"
"I would relax, I would sit on my ass all day, I would do nothing."
"Well you don't need a million dollars to do nothin man... Take a look at my cousin, he's broke don't do shit"
I started out wanting to be a scientist. Then I became a programmer, which I've been doing for fifteen years.
But I got into writing I think mainly by writing email and usenet posts, and more recently web pages.
Here are a few of the things I have written:
-
Is This the America I Love?
-
Why I Write
-
Pointers, References and Values
So you see I write about all kinds of things. I've never had much luck at writing fiction or poetry though.The wonderful thing about the web is that just anyone can publish and anyone can read what you write. I get thousands of people reading my writing at my website each month. I think that's just wonderful.
One more - my New Year's Resolution is that by the end of the year I will finish writing The ZooLib Cookbook.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Success is obviously defined on a sliding scale. Years ago I was the bass player in a Celtic folk band. Growing up, I'd had dreams of being a famous musician, playing the big stages in front of huge audiences. I mean, that's what it means to be a successful rock star, right? So when I was in a Celtic folk band, I had to figure out what it meant to be a successful Celtic musician. It's not like Andy M. Stewart is going to sell out Madison Square Garden. But A) packing the small clubs regularly, and B) selling out your stock of CDs, even if you've only had a couple thousand pressed are decent enough goals, and sure enough, I found they were within reach.
This sig intentionally left justified.
You probably took a psychology course or two in college; do you remember Maslow's hierarchy of human needs? It basically puts the needs of people into 5 groups in a pyramid shape, and states that you can't begin to work on a certain type of need until you've satisfied the one below it.
:).
Self-actualization
Recognition - (for achievements)
Belongingness - family, coworkers
Security - safety, job security
Physical - food, clothing, shelter
So obviously, if you're worrying about getting food, you're not thinking so much about living in a dangerous area. Living in a dangerous area? It's hard to concentrate on raising a good family (but it can be done; there are exceptions to every rule, including the rule that there are exceptions to every rule
WMBC freeform/independent online radio.
can you imagine what our economy would be like if all of our professionals dropped their careers to follow their dreams? we'd be a nation of ballerinas and astronauts.
Nonsense. Is it unreasonable for a doctor to enjoy healing the sick?
For a chef to enjoy making delicious food for people?
I very much enjoy solving people's problems with technology. It has its downsides, but every party has its bad moments. Overall I very much enjoy my career.