
Ask HN: What is your “mission” in work and life? - lumannnn
I&#x27;m curious what you consider your &quot;mission&quot; in life &amp; work?<p>I recently read &quot;So Good They Can&#x27;t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love&quot; by Cal Newport [1].<p>The book is divided in different &quot;rules&quot;. Rule #4 states that having a &quot;mission&quot; is important to having a meaningful and happy life, which, I understand and can agree with.
Chapter 12 uses Padris Sabeti, a &quot;Professor @harvard @broadinstitute using computational genomics to understand &amp; impact infectious disease.&quot; [2], as an example. The chapter tells her story and concludes with her having a clear mission &quot;to use new technology to fight old diseases&quot;.<p>I try from time to time to take a few steps back and review my own career and the path it&#x27;s taking. Having my own mission statement seems to fit into this review process quite nicely.
Currently, my most accurate mission would be something the lines &quot;(using new technology) to help people build what they themselves can&#x27;t build&quot;.<p>I find this an interesting topic and simply wanted to know if any of you was willing to share their own &quot;mission&quot; :)<p>Thanks in advance for your precious time! =)<p>- [1] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.goodreads.com&#x2F;book&#x2F;show&#x2F;13525945-so-good-they-can-t-ignore-you<p>- [2] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;twitter.com&#x2F;pardissabeti<p>&#x2F;&#x2F; edit: formatting
======
brunosutic
I read "So Good They Can't Ignore You" last year and was having the same
question: "what is my mission in life and how to get/realize/understand that?"

My conclusion was: I don't know and don't have a specific mission. The closest
I have to a mission is a set of positive (may probably not conscious)
principles in life that I'm sticking to. Examples:

\- always be improving \- learn, learn, learn \- work hard \- presented with
negative or ambiguous choices, choose the best available one (don't screw up
everything because of frustration)

I'd also be curious to hear opinions on these:

\- Is it "necessary" to have a specific higher mission? Can't I just stick to
the set of positive principles? \- Do I have to actively be looking for a
mission? Or I wait and let it happen?

~~~
lumannnn
I really like your principles! :)

IMHO, a mission helps focusing on things which really matter to get where you
want to be in a couple of weeks, months, years,... And by that, I do not mean
that one gets there faster by having a mission, but rather gets there at all.

Yes, things happen if you wait. But in my experience, not the things you want.
Or, if things you want happen just by waiting, it was by coincidence, mostly?
I think living by a set of positive principles is really important! I like to
complement my principles with a mission, while still staying humble and open
minded (i.e. having a clear focus but not blocking new and different insights,
thoughts, ideas..). I hope that makes sense.

Any chance you also read "Principles" by Ray Dalio?

------
nsouth
Become enlightened, and if it's as good as they say, spend the rest of my life
teaching others how to get there too. I know for me, it's what I'm here for.
Nothing else is as important to me. I can't wait to teach, but it must be from
the perspective of my own personal, direct experience. There are already
enough charlatans in the world, I don't intend to become one myself.

I don't think there's enough awareness the state can be achieved through
specific practice. People like Osho, J Krishnamurti, Eckharte Tolle... they
all seemed to have it just spontaneously happen and then try to retrofit
techniques they think will probably work. Their approaches seem biased towards
people who can already do what they're talking about ("just be aware"),
instead of being more systematic processes that circumvent the mind.

The people who inspire me the most are the householders, living in the world
who still managed to attain this greatest of prizes. They're the people who
inspire me, and something I aspire to be. I think it's a valuable backstory
that makes the teaching more approachable and easier to relate to if it's
clear you don't need to give up this world to attain true happiness.

Having this mission puts the corporate world and paid work really into
perspective as something that supports my life, but doesn't define it. That
helps me keep it at a slight distance and allows me to take more risks - which
incidentally have paid off.

~~~
wwwater
> I can't wait to teach

It seems that you don't actually want to become enlightened as much as you
just simply want to be helpful to other people and teach them a valuable
skill.

I personally think that enlightenment and teaching others about it are quite
different things that maybe don't have in common as much as one thinks they
have.

As I see it, you might reach a state of mind you are very content with, and it
makes you see the world "as it is" and because of it, you don't need to teach
anybody anything, since it's already "as it is" and "as it should be". So,
maybe it's just enough to be aware of it.

~~~
nsouth
I see what you're getting at, but it's not quite how I feel.

For me teaching is predicated on having seen far enough to actually be a
useful guide. Having said that there may be things I could teach before then,
but I'd have to have experienced something major to convince me I was on the
right track and the time was right.

Also, regarding the "just enough to be aware" it probably would be enough, but
I wouldn't have been able to have reached my goal without the thousands who've
gone before, so it'd be paying back that debt. There's just some part of me
that knows it's important for me to do that.

------
vjeux
Writing code today is way too hard, my work mission is to try to make it
easier. I’m more focused on people who already know how to code than people
that don’t.

This drew me to work on React, Jest, React Native, Nuclide (Facebook IDE),
create-react-app, prettier... I feel like it’s better than a few years ago but
there’s still so much more to do.

~~~
petra
After reading (1) which is about a hospital management system built using
visual tools, with a first version done in 6 months, I really wonder if code
is the right tool when aiming at easy, even when building complex systems.

(1)[https://www.outsystems.com/blog/introducing-sapphire-
hospita...](https://www.outsystems.com/blog/introducing-sapphire-hospital-
management-system.html)

~~~
vjeux
I just took a look at this and I don't think that the real win in terms of
productivity is the fact that you are building an app with a visual
environment or code. Both of them are roughly equivalent.

What likely set them apart is the building blocks they provide. If you are a
consulting company and building apps for businesses, you are likely doing the
same thing over and over and over again for every business. Once you build an
hospital management system for three hospitals, the fourth one isn't going to
look that different. There are tens of thousands (more?) hospitals in the
world which all need such a system.

So the likely next step is to invest in good building blocks that are needed:
I want a dashboard with last week patient intake. All of this logic is put
inside of a component ready to be dragged & dropped / included in your project
and it saves you weeks rather than trying to rebuild it for the nth time.

~~~
petra
I think the article is about the first version, not about reuse. But I could
be wrong.

But in any case, code is difficult: it requires deep attention, good memory -
both short and long term(and long term memory doesn't work so well if you
don't exercise the knowledge repeatedly ),good learning capabilities, and good
abstractions capabilities.

Visual systems are fundamentally easier. So if they can scale well to the
required level of complexity and offer similar or better levels of
productivity , they may become the 'easy' route.

------
sharp11
I feel that we're alive at a unique moment in human history, when humanity
must either "figure out" how to live sustainably on a finite planet or suffer
the consequences. It's a daunting but wonderful challenge. I can't imagine
living at this time and not being part of this project.

For the past (almost) 15 years, contributing in some way to this project has
been my "mission". In that time, I've experienced the highs of having an
important purpose; and the lows of not achieving enough; and burnout.

After having worked on various projects (climate, ecological footprint, bikes,
etc.), I've come to be focused on one aspect that has particular resonance for
me: biodiversity conservation. This blends my higher (intellectually
motivated) purpose with my selfish desire to enjoy and preserve what I love
most in the world. I find this combination is the most sustainable for me
personally.

~~~
lumannnn
I can understand and agree with your point of view! Very noble mission :)

If you need any help, let me know.

~~~
sharp11
Always love to be in touch with like-minded folks. Let me know how to contact
you. My email is in my profile.

------
FlyingSideKick
My missions are as follows:

\- Work: Create profitable businesses that enable my teams to have healthy
life-work balance with 35 hour work weeks and 6 weeks vacation so that they
have time for family, adventure, positive mental health and time to perhaps
start their own businesses.

\- Life: Be a great father, husband and to travel to over 100 countries. Do
things that make the word a better place.

------
qubex
I live in a country (Italy) that has been crushed and whatever mission I
might’ve ever had or sense of accomplishment I might’ve ever earned has been
superseded by a never-ending sense of dread and struggle to not drown in a
decaying world.

I have very little time for glib self-improvement or self-coaching. I’m
starting to wonder what purpose all of this could possibly serve (”none at
all”, comes my self-reply).

~~~
sidcool
Are Italy's problems related to the hyper socialism in the country? It's
something I have heard many Americans say about Europe.

~~~
qubex
Italy is not ”hyper-socialist”; presupposing it is merely renders conversation
about the causes difficult. Rather, the country’s growth model was for decades
based on a manufacturing economy whose competitiveness was sustained by
progressive devaluation of the currency, for as long as one was available.
Similarly, growth was funded by public debt whose affordability derived from
inflation. The houses somebody mentions: those are mainly owned by the people
themselves, as a manner of protecting their savings.

Italy’s been brought down not by socialism but by incomplete, inchoate,
puerile mismanagement rooted in a misunderstanding in what capitalism actually
is.

------
benjohnson
Cal's book is great - but for me, my gut cynical reaction was to wonder if
even a successful 'mission' wasn't a false sand-castle that disappears when I
die.

Two books make note of this: Ecclesiastes would call a mission mere striving
after wind and Becker's Denial of Death that would call mission a an
immortality project doomed to irrelevance.

As others here have noted - Ecclesiastes would agree that enjoying the
immediate pleasures of food, work, mirth while in the company of friends and
family is a gift.

But Cal is also correct, that without a mission you wander aimlessly. That's
what makes it hard - I know it doesn't matter and yet it does matter greatly
to those around me who need me to be a strong, good, and competent person.

My only bit of small advice: perhaps a mission something that gives you the
ability and desire to help other people could give you a direction that has
enough meaning to make it worthwhile.

~~~
pzone
The idea of your life's accomplishments resounding loudly after you die seems
like an overly lofty expectation. Kind of proud. What are you imagining for
yourself? Invent something miraculous? Become President? It's unrealistic.

You can still make the world around you a better place and make your life
worthwhile for the greater good. Work hard and do your job well. Be a good
friend to others, and a good partner. Have children and raise them well.
Donate to the less fortunate and improve your community. They aren't going to
erect monuments to you for that, but if you do those things, which are
certainly in your power, you will be seen as a bright light and example to
others in your circle, and you will make the world a better place.

------
arsalanb
My mission is to breakdown barriers and level the playing field by allowing
people to leverage the huge amount of knowledge we have available today to
understand the world and subsequently tinker with abstraction. I want to help
people make the jump from "rookie" to somebody who understands abstraction and
can look past it, as smoothly as possible.

You'd be surprised what we can do as a species if everybody could understand
this huge corpus of information we already have.

~~~
wvlia5
How are you planning to do it?

~~~
arsalanb
Currently working on something that will be the first step in this direction.
In case you're interested, there's a link in my HN bio.

~~~
wvlia5
I'll check it out

------
pknerd
Help kids to grasp the different concepts of science in form of story because
kids score good grades but have no idea of how things are working. Actually a
wish to revive the era when Muslims were good both in scientific and religious
knowledge. I am targeting locals hence will be writing in Urdu. Not easy work
though, specially picking a topic and then convert to a story and respective
illustration.

------
coconut_crab
My day job is to write tools for the sales people who will try to persuade
their clients into buying ads on Facebook, I just can't see how that helps
improve the society or humanity as a whole. Ideally, I should be using my
skills and knowledge to help the people in need, but that just won't pay as
good as writing CRUD apps, and I have a whole family to feed.

~~~
jsty
Providing for your family is a perfectly respectable 'mission' in life as far
as many people are concerned. Pursuing grand ambitions can take a heavy toll
on a family, and it's perfectly sane to choose a more well-travelled path if
that's what you value.

~~~
emodendroket
Yeah, I agree. Ultimately I'm working so I can enjoy the rest of my life.

------
wvlia5
First, achieving a stable financial situation. Then, the big goal:

Making the world better by: \- Stopping the mass murder of animals \- Bringing
the demise of irrational practices such as religion and astrology \- Pushing
knowledge forward by contributing to science or teaching those who will
hopefully do so, and by making the software environment tidier

~~~
CyanLite2
Not sure how ending religion would be better for the world. There are some
religious fanatics, always will be, that will use their religion to bring
about hate and violence. However there are billions of people who practice
some form of religion that are peaceful people who use their religion to
spread love and peace throughout the world. Don't try to throw the baby out
with the bath water. Religious freedom is a cornerstone of a viable democracy.

~~~
jstimpfle
Parent didn't say he wants to remove that freedom. Look at it as evangelizing
of agnosticism.

~~~
el_cid
It can be interpreted either way "Bringing the demise of irrational practices
such as religion"

------
rsyring
For me: work, life, family, everything is built on these foundations (albeit
imperfectly):

Q. 1. What is the chief end of man? A. Man’s chief end is to glorify God, and
to enjoy him forever.

[http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html](http://www.reformed.org/documents/WSC.html)

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?
(Micah 6:8 ESV)

~~~
wongma
I would also add to this that if there does exist an eternal existence after
one's death [1], then it is infinitely rational to spend this comparatively
short life finding out what the nature of that eternity is and how best to
prepare for it.

[1] Which incidentally, I don't think is possible to conclusively prove nor
disprove. Like most things in life, you look at the evidence and make your
decision.

------
joaorico
Just yesterday I offered "So Good They Can't Ignore You" to someone about to
start their professional career. Mostly as a counterweight to the mainstream
advice.

I recommend watching Bret Victor's "Inventing on Principle" [0] for a very
interesting variant on the theme of "your mission in life & work".

[0] [https://vimeo.com/36579366](https://vimeo.com/36579366)

------
AznHisoka
My mission is to play, laugh, dance and not take life so seriously.

------
rushabh
My mission is to build amazing free software that is accessible and usable by
the whole world.

------
Afforess
Effective Altruism. I discovered the charity GiveDirectly some years ago from
the NPR podcast Planet Money episode that featured them. GiveDirectly is one
of many charities adopting evidence based outreach, and now I follow GiveWell
and it's recommendations as well. The central question of Effective Altruism
is given limited resources, how can we do the most good?

------
tangentkerching
1-. Leave my poor country, as i feel it keeps me from reaching superior goals.

2-. Study abroad

3-. Work for a company that makes people's lives easier

4-. Learn everything to replicate these ideas on my own country.

5-. Return to my country, help people in any way possible using what i've
learned. Make the world a bit better and reduce some suffering.

I'm 25 years old and still at step 1, but I know I will make it happen.

~~~
Cenk
Just curious, what country are you from?

------
swyx
I don't know if I can do it but I would really like to dramatically lower the
bar for people to change careers. I think a lot of people get stuck in their
careers which they pick too early and then the costs of switching are way too
high (lack of information, available learning resources, other barriers to
entry).

The job market is very skewed towards specialists which causes a lot of "must
have experience to get experience" chicken-and-egg issues. i.e. "find someone
who has done X for 5 years". I think that is fine, but there should be an
avenue to value and recruit people with diverse experiences i.e. someone who
has done X -AND- Y.

I think the key solve is to help companies take on people who want to career
switch but have applicable prior experience that you're not completely
throwing away either. I think this happens anyway so I'm completely unsure
what if anything I can do to help it.

------
miguelrochefort
Software is a mess.

There are too many programming languages, libraries, frameworks, websites,
apps, devices, etc. We're still far from what was imagined 50 years ago. We
still use text files. Most people still can't program. That's a problem.

My mission is to clean up this mess. It could take a lot of different shapes,
but the high-level pitch is to build one
application/interface/language/platform/system that will replace all of the
others.

Imagine if Google, YouTube, Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit, Amazon, Twitter,
Instagram, Netflix, LinkedIn, Twitch, eBay, WhatsApp, Snapchat, Google Maps,
Spotify, Uber, Gmail, Pinterest, Domino's Pizza, Tinder, and Craigslist were
all just one application. That's my mission.

~~~
wvlia5
That's my mission too

------
acidburnNSA
My mission is to make clean energy to help people spend time doing what they
want to do. As David Lilienthal said, energy is a replacement for the labor of
human beings.

------
jrs235
Very timely. I'm working on writing mine down this weekend. This is where my
current thoughts are going: I want to live my life in a manner the inspires
and encourages everyone I cross paths with to be the best they can be, to give
their best, to continual strive to improve .5 % everyday. I want to be a
bucket filler and to live out that attitude is more important than aptitude.

------
edmondlau
My mission is to:

“Empower engineers and technical leaders with the tools and mindsets to
perform at their highest levels, so that they create the meaningful impact
they’re capable of.”

That mission started with me writing and self-publishing The Effective
Engineer three years ago. And then recently I co-founded a company Co
Leadership (coleadership.com) to focus on leadership development full-time.

------
anon1094
My mission to help spread the message that geography is not destiny.

I was lucky enough to be born during the internet age in the 90s. Because the
internet already existed I was able to teach myself skills and find work that
allowed me to be anywhere as long as I had an internet connection.

With the internet, you can choose who to serve and you can do it from
anywhere.

------
DoreenMichele
I don't really have a mission statement. Maybe I should, I don't know. But
there are a few things that strongly interest me and long have. They probably
look diverse and scattered to other people, but not to me. Yet, I don't know
how to readily sum it up in a nutshell.

Perhaps it could be summed up as a desire to inject health and stability into
the existing system by focusing on some humanocentric first principles. To me,
that stability needs to be rooted in flexibility, not rigidity. I think most
people see stability and rigidity as going together and that's part of the
problem.

The world is in a state of flux. We have 7 billion people and unprecedented
globalization and unprecedented tech. The tendency here is to run roughshod
over people. The result is scary destabilization that has even millionaires
acting as preppers because they fear the world coming apart at the seams and
see no real means to stop it.

Jobs are moving to big cities and/or being replaced with gig work. Towns and
rural areas are experiencing duress due to the lack of earning opportunities.
Big cities are experiencing duress because they aren't affordable. Housing
prices have spun crazily out of control. There is a huge lack of affordable
housing nationwide in the US.

People have become prisoners of and slaves to the system. We seem to have
forgotten that business should serve people, not the other way around.

I am interested in promulgating mostly market based solutions to some of the
social ills of our era. I think that framing business as an evil force and
charity (such as UBI) as the only hope of an antidote is part of the problem.

Business can be designed to serve basic human needs while turning a profit. It
doesn't have to be pursued on a model of making a few people filthy rich while
bleeding the masses or screwing them over. You have to make a conscious
decision to design it in a healthy, sustainable fashion. It doesn't just
happen. But it can happen.

------
gooseus
My mission is to gain knowledge in order to understand the world in a new way,
and communicate this such that I can do my part to help help Life succeed in
the very long term.

I wrote about what I believe the "Purpose of Life" is on my blog, though I
haven't publicized it very much yet:

[https://goose.us/thoughts/the-purpose-of-
life/](https://goose.us/thoughts/the-purpose-of-life/)

(TL;DR - the purpose of life is to maximize the area under the complexity
curve for our enclosing system. I use Sean Carroll's _The Big Picture_ and
some MinutePhysics/Earth videos to help make the point.)

Right now I'm learning more about complex systems while practicing writing and
speaking in order to refine the message for wider consumption. I would love to
engage with anyone on the topic who is willing.

~~~
wu-ikkyu
>the purpose of life is to maximize the area under the complexity curve for
our enclosing system.

Can you put this in laymans terms?

~~~
gooseus
That's sort of the work I've been trying to do... if you read through the
whole post I give it my current best shot and use graphs and videos that do a
good job of setting it up using laymans terms, especially the MinutePhysics
series narrated by Sean Carroll.

Basically the idea is that life is a process which maximizes complexity as
entropy increases, by its very nature... if you consider the whole universe,
there are no structures we have observed that are as complex as the structures
we observe in living organisms.

The complexity of the biosphere would dwarf the complexity of the rest of our
entire solar system... as in, the information required to describe the entire
solar system and how it proceeds from state to state, including the storms or
Jupiter and Saturn, would be trivial compared to attempts to model all the
life on our planet, including the mental states of each of the 7 billion
humans and the interconnected relationships of all the other bacteria, plant,
fungi, etc.

This maximization occurs as life seeks to continue replicating and adapts to
each other and any environment that it possibly can, even the harshest on our
planet. The most advanced organisms on the planet are those which have the
most complex nervous systems and thus the most complex behavior, including us
(again, the complexity of the human mind most likely dwarfs the complexity of
most other organisms... proven simply by being able to occupy states that
allow it to understand and communicate the complexity of other organisms).

So, my thesis is that the purpose of life is to maximizes complexity, but not
as an absolute, since complexity creates fragility and issues with diminishing
returns on energy input. This is why I say that it the purpose is to maximize
the area under the complexity curve, rather than simply maximize absolute
complexity. See this graph -
[https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px...](https://goose.us/media/complexity_entropy_graph_filled-920px.png)

Not sure if that was a good or not, but I appreciate any feedback on the
attempt!

~~~
wu-ikkyu
I read your post, and am still trying to wrap my head around the content.

The best metaphor I could come up with, given my potentially erroneous
understanding of your thesis is thus:

The purpose of life is a dance competition, the more novel the performance the
better.

The beautiful mating dances of exotic jungle birds comes to mind:

[https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo](https://youtu.be/W7QZnwKqopo)

~~~
gooseus
It's not really a competition for complexity within life, complexity arises
naturally within life as a product of competition. Sometimes more complexity
is more fit, and other times the added fragility makes the organism less
fit... during the mass extinctions it was primarily the most complex organisms
that died.

The purpose of life as a whole is to spread this complexity to all parts of
the Universe that can support it, so as to raise the overall complexity of the
system.

Another way to think about it is that life lengthens the path that energy
needs to flow through in order to reach equilibrium (maximum entropy).

------
k1ns
Just leaving everything better than I found it.

Making life a bit easier for my family.

Making life a bit easier for my co-workers.

Making life a bit easier for my friends.

Making life a bit easier for the strangers at the grocery store.

Making an impact on the environment where I can.

Just leave the world a little better than you found it.

------
amriksohata
My work mission is purely to do a decent job so that I can make my life
mission come true. Which is to raise decent kids that are aware that this life
is not just the start and end of everything but a journey of their soul.

------
ssebastianj
Take a look to School of Life's "Finding your mission" video [0]

[0]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5-LfK2i2J4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5-LfK2i2J4)

------
dwaltrip
* Seek deep understanding. What are the most fundamental underlying mechanisms and processes that make up the world around us? Since the beginning of time, what events have transpired to bring us to the current moment?

* Learn how to distill ideas and communicate them effectively -- knowledge and wisdom must be dispersed and made understandable

* Search for the largest available levers that one can use to make a beneficial impact

* Try to live mindfully and humanely

------
xtreak29
To contribute something meaningful that I see being used by people daily. An
example will be fixing my favorite tool in the ecosystem that is used by a lot
of people and seeing my patch hit stable making life a lot easier. It makes
sense for me to contribute more and also to value the work of others that I
get to use in the first place.

------
hliyan
Would you say it's possible to use computational modeling to derive a
sociopolitical belief system that won't inevitably degenerate into inequality
and war? If it's not purely fantastical, it's something I might want to try my
hand at...

------
usgroup
“Junior M.A.F.I.A” lyrics spring to mind every time someone asks, and I
chuckle to myself.

But seriously ... if I had to have one, it’d be to get over myself eventually
and abandon cleverness in favour of wisdom worth a damn in the biggest of
pictures.

------
everdev
Right now it's to find my mission. There are so many things I care about and
want to improve in the world. But funding the intersection of those causes and
my skill set still feels elusive.

------
drake01
* Live as if you were to die tomorrow. * Learn as if you were to live forever.

\-- quote by someone famous (some say its Gandhi, but am not sure)

\--- Lather, rinse, repeat.

~~~
emodendroket
If I were actually going to die the next day I'd probably skip going to work.

------
ukulele
To have a massive positive impact on the world.

------
analognoise
To crush your enemies. See them driven before you. And to hear the
lamentations of their women.

~~~
usgroup
lol. Comment appreciated :) HN, you're a tad serious from time to time.

------
lumannnn
Thank you so much for all the valuable & interesting comments! Much
appreciated! :)

------
SirLJ
My mission is to enjoy every aspect of my life, from work to family and
friends....

~~~
aclissold
Are you succeeding?

~~~
SirLJ
Absolutely!

------
ivm
To decrease ignorance, greed, and hatred in the world (inlcluding myself).

------
mattcaldwell
My mission is to eat tacos. As many as possible.

------
skrap
Solve global warming.

------
xstartup
My mission is to make all the people I come in close contact with "Rich".

I see money as a way to reward people who you like and use it against people
who you dislike.

This is what I work for today.

~~~
kreetx
Hope your moral compass is close to being perfect :)

