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."

Comments

*p00f*

[Anonymous Coward]

Congratulations!

You are phenyl tetrachloride!

Re:*p00f*

[tomhudson]

Dry cleaning fluid is carbon tetrachloride. Not just any old phenyl group will help Lady McBeth get that damn ole spot out. (reference to that old joke - What did lady McBeth say to her dog? Out, out, damn Spot!

materialism and success

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

I know where the money is

[Spencerian]

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...

Re:I know where the money is

[slothdog]

I'm guessing the sysadmin job will be more hazardous to your health in the long run....

Do something you like

[rblancarte]

I love all these articles that tell you how to be successful in life/work/love/etc. What it all comes down to is doing something you love. Everyone seems to think that success is measured by the number of zeros before the decimal on your pay check. It is all about enjoying what you do.

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:

One of the critical things to being happy is being able to make a living doing something that you love to do, that expresses you to yourself and to others, and that perhaps they don't even have to pay you to do. 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 and that I would still try to teach others how to do the same.

One of the things you're trying to figure out in college is what is that thing that you'll love to do, day in, day out. It's hard to do, but try to put aside any preconceived notions you have about a career: the money, the image, the chicks/hunks (whatever floats your boat), etc. Try to ground yourself by thinking out what the activity will be on a daily basis, and whether that activity is something you'll love and feel fulfilled by. Maybe it's being a computer scientist, maybe it's not. If working for the Red Cross, writing a novel, or being a money manager is the way to express yourself, do that.

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

Re:Do something you like

[schlach]

Ben Hunnicut at the University of Iowa has had the lifelong question

sorry for the teaser... preview/submit error :)

Ben Hunnicut is author of Work Without End and is a history prof at UofI. Had the opportunity to chat with him a bit. He has devoted a serious part of his life to wondering about the worth of leisure time in American society. Work Without End is a look at the "shorter-hours" movement in this country from the late nineteenth century up to 1940 or so. We kind of take the 8-hour/5-day work week for granted these days, but it wasn't always so. The shorter-hours movement, both from within labor and without, got the work day from 12-hour to 10-hour, and finally 8-hour, and then got the week shortened to 5-day. The Kellogs factory workers even went down to 6-hour.

And then after WWII, the movement just kinda stopped. No one is questioning the 40-hour work-week, no one is calling for more leisure. Why?

What is leisure time good for? Improving oneself, contemplating the larger questions of Life, Love, and Happiness (insert God if you wish), studying the democratic process in order to be a better citizen, kernel hacking... when you get right down to it, I don't want to do anything that someone has to pay me to get me to do.

Ben points to a lot of utopians, socialists, Progressives, and authors that always figured that increasing industrialization would eventually mean that machines did most of the labor, and humans would be left with pure Leisure. Of course we are in a very good position to rule on what utter bullshit that turned out to be. As long as corporations own the machines, the People do not, hence the profit on the labor of the machines goes to the owners. Instead we find ourselves forced now to keep up with the pace of the Machine.

Don't get me wrong, wouldn't trade it for The Way We Was, but I would fix it. We should always be using Technology to study and answer the really big questions that are fundamentally human. Like communication, love, politics, work, play, war, and so forth. Questions that people have always had to answer, but haven't always had the tech that we do with which to answer them.

For what it's worth, I consider that to be my life's Work. Applying modern technology to answering the fundamental human questions. My dream is to be able to make the quality of life on this planet tied to the progress of technology, so that increasing technological progress brings a corresponding increase in the quality of life. I think this is slightly different than the way it has been for awhile, in that increasing technological progress has brought better ways with which to kill each other, while our political and cultural systems are largely stagnant and always looking backward to the glory days behind us...

Ok I'm monopolizing the discussion, someone take over. ; )

Re:Do something you like

[Daniel Dvorkin]

We kind of take the 8-hour/5-day work week for granted these days

Not any more we don't. The gains won by the labor movement are slowly but surely being eaten away by suits who have somehow convinced people that a) unions are bad and b) working yourself sick is the only way to "make it." The phrases "9 to 5" and "lunch hour" seem almost quaint to the current generation -- at this point your options are either not to have a job at all, or to work 8 to 5 since your lunch hour is considered your own time ... except maybe you shouldn't really take an hour ... and don't leave at 5, since you're on a deadline and if you don't stay until 6, or 7, or 8 ... and come in over the weekend ... you may find yourself at the top of the next list of layoffs ... and the CEO of your company will give himself a million-dollar raise if he gets rid of you and a few hundred of your buddies.

The modern corporate ethic is simple: hire as few people as possible, work them as hard as possible, burn them out, and go on to the next batch. It's essentially a medieval approach to labor -- as long as the nobility is taken care of (and they're taken care of very well indeed) well, peasants are cheap, and there always more of them, right? It's really time and past time for a new labor movement in this country, but unfortunately the anti-union meme is so well implanted in most of the middle class that it's going to be awhile before executive abuses get so bad that people break down and realize that they need to get together with their coworkers for protection. (And to be fair, the extant unions haven't helped their own cause any with corruption and the formation of their own internal executive class.) A situation where half the work force can't get a job and the other half is working double time is not conducive to national prosperity, but that's where we're headed.

Re:Do something you like

[Daniel Dvorkin]

In some places, at some times, it's been necessary for almost all of the population to work almost all the time to prevent famine. In most places, at most times, it hasn't. The reason the life of most of the human race was so miserable for so long was due more to "noble" parasitic warlords than to primitive agriculture; in the few places where the peasants were able to gain some measure of autonomy (e.g. England) medieval life improved dramatically and paved the way for the rise of the urban middle class. Unfortunately, the tendency to revert to a feudal setup, even when there's no good reason to do so, seems to be deep in human nature.

success c/o emerson

[paulbd]

"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

Given a choice

[UnidentifiedCoward]

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).

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 :), that is just icing on the cake.

What I am doing with my life...

[boris_the_hacker]

...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.

My real answer

[Daengbo]

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?

_Now_ they tell us...

[Otter]

The first assumption to get busted was the notion that certain jobs are inherently cool and that others are uncool. That was a big shift for me. Throughout the 1990s, my basic philosophy was this: Work=Boring, but Work+Speed+Risk=Cool. Speed and risk transformed the experience into something so stimulating, so exciting, so intense, that we began to believe that those qualities defined "good work." Now, betrayed by the reality of economic uncertainty and global instability, we're casting about for what really matters when it comes to work.

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.

I prefer Conan the Barbarian

[TopShelf]

"To crush your enemies, to see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women..."

Now there's a philosopher-king!

Re:I know what I'd like

[nigelthellama]

Solvent? When I'm old, I'd be happy to be continent!

Re:All work and no play...

[sisukapalli1]

when you make your work and your play the same thing, then everyday is a joy


The general pitfall is that instead of everyday becoming a joy, it may end up becoming a job

S

I finally figured out what to do with mine

[Bitter Cup O Joe]

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?"

Happiness from a sysadmin

[ACK!!]

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.

Re:Stop looking outward...

[rovingeyes]

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.

A mixture of insight and "duh"

[Badgerman]

A few things struck me about the article:

• Yes, the people who make a difference should be paid and compensated. However, this rarely happens - the high compensation goes to people in the right positions, not the ones with the dreams and the talent.
  
• Yes, we should make sure people find the positions they love. Try telling that to your average manager.
  
• He makes an excellent point that money really isn't everything. I've found ways to even make my hobbies pay, but doing them came first. The good news is that with my interests, I can have fun until I want to retire AND make money at it.
  
• Smarts definitely are only part of the picture. I'm a firm believer that stupidity and intelligence are not the ends of a scale, but that they can co-exist inside a person.
  
• As important as these questions are, American culture (business and otherwise) is NOT supportive of self-introspection and self-transformation. This is a barrier for many.
  

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.

Barbara Holland

[derch]

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.

physical work

[rvr]

After sitting behind a desk for fifteen years I decided to see if I could still do physical work. I am working up in northern Canada in the oil patch. The area is a sour gas field and one mistake can kill you. It is hard on an old man and hours are long but there is a satisfaction. I won't do this forever and can always go back to software development. Life is too short and varied for being a one trick pony.

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.

No mention of family?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm reading through the replies and can see very little mention of family. Most of replies are about getting the job you love etc..

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.

Re:All work and no play...

[johnstein]

but if your favorite hobby (or passion) is your job, you have just lost your favorite hobby, haven't you?

and what about the chance that turning your hobby into your job will make you not like your hobby so much?

to me, a hobby is a way for me to escape the rigors and rigidity or the workplace, though i am sure it can be argued if your job is your passion, then why would you want to escape it? i guess in the end its all a matter of personal perception.

Someone once asked GBS. . .

[kfg]

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

Poverty Sucks

[Tony]

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.

I make and sell soap ...

[Col. Panic]

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.

Not just family

[McSpew]

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?

Satisfaction

[Gareman]

It is true that you should find a profession that brings you satisfaction, but it's also true that we'll all find ourselves in careers, jobs or relationships that we don't like, either because we're on our way to someplace we want to be, circumstances have depressed a relatively good situation or simply that circumstances don't currently allow a planned change.

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.

On that line of thought...

[WotanKhan]

my favourite quotation:

"The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both." - Zen Buddhist Text

Experience your own and other cultures

[friday2k]

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

Life styles...

[bytesmythe]

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.

Re:All work and no play...

[schlach]

Then you're automatically cutting out about 10 hours of your day, the majority of your waking hours, 5 days a week (at least). You may start living in the margins, "working for the weekend", ie not taking advantage of weeknights because you have to work the next day, saving your fun for the weekend, dreading the start of the next week, etc. etc.

How much better to enjoy everything you do, to wonder to yourself how you happened to find people who would pay you to do what you want, though you would do it for free.

Beauty

[BSDevil]

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...