
Favorite Problems: A Practical Framework for Discovering Your Purpose - joebalcom
https://joebalcom.blog/2020/07/11/12-favorite-problems/
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xivzgrev
I liked this article, but i don’t agree with this part: “When you do
meaningful, self-directed work, 16 hrs/7x a week feels like part-time.”

You may very well feel that way, like you want to keep working. But as he then
later says, there is no time for other things.

I would rephrase as “ When you do meaningful, self-directed work, 8 hrs/5x a
week feels worth it.”

Any work you do is going to have shit, so it’s never going to be a rainbows
and sunshine all the time. Customers abandon you, vendors fall short,
employees steal, boss fires you, etc.

But you get to generally choose the shit flavor, so if you choose shit that is
tolerable vs intolerable, and if you work on something meaningful, it just
might be worth it.

Then, close your laptop and give attention to the other meaningful things in
your life. The ride will be over before you know it.

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jariel
"When you do unfulfilling work, 8 hrs/5x a week is full-time.

When you do meaningful, self-directed work, 16 hrs/7x a week feels like part-
time."

Paraphrased: "When you're doing stuff you want to do, it's easy, when you're
doing stuff you don't want to do, it's hard"

Don't confuse 'aspiration' as being 'meaningful' and certainly not
'utilitarian' or in any way beneficial to society.

Probably the best thing you can do 'to help society' is right in front of the
nose, which is to take the skill sets you have, find a system in which you can
work, and grind. Because it's mostly all just a grind.

The system works when we play our roles well, whether it's changing diapers,
writing code, baking bread or maybe 2 out of 3.

~~~
kubanczyk
Yeah, I've heard a hypothesis that struck me: when some topic looks profoundly
interesting, it's really a signal that all the parts of you (conscious and
unconscious) are ready to become aligned with each other to truly aim at that.

Just anecdata, but it works for me.

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Jibranio
This is pretty cool! And a different take than the framework I made towards
the finding purpose.

(Shared my first version in a flowchart here on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/AskJibran/status/1277940486205067268?s=2...](https://twitter.com/AskJibran/status/1277940486205067268?s=20))

Would love to dive more into your framework Joe!

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Eyght
I think that my purpose as a human is to work for my species both by helping
others do their thing, and by giving it flavour by adding my own individual
expression to the mix.

This article seems to be a guide on how to find focus and how to direct that
focus to the most meaningful and productive activities that you can find in
your life.

~~~
TheDong
Evolution would have that be your purpose, or at least Co-operative evolution
[0] would.

At this point, humanity has partially conquered evolution. You can choose a
different purpose than reproduction or fitness of the human species (helping
others, as you put it).

There are people who see helping animals and nature as more important than
helping other humans.

There are yet more who strive primarily for their own personal wealth/power,
to the detriment of mankind and only sometimes with their own progeny in mind.

With that in mind, I think you may wish to also be more specific in your
stated purpose. "Help others do their thing" is vague and imprecise. It would
allow you equally to use your time and money to support others who's goals are
merely to get rich (say, to be an angel investor), and to help others who's
goal is likewise to help others (help others improve their lives and better
themselves, such as through working at / giving to foodbanks, helping those
doing positive work for humanity, etc).

I charitably will read your meaning not to be "help others to do their thing",
but rather to "try to have as positive as possible an impact overall,
including through helping others". If helping others is done with the intent
of having a positive impact, it looks much different. You don't become a VC
(the 3rd most evil profession) that optimizes for maximum returns, but instead
help fund interests that you genuinely believe will end up being overall
positive. You don't help others do their thing unless, as best you can tell,
their thing will also have a positive impact on others.

Did you mean something to that effect, or do you see your purpose truly as an
amoral helper who wishes to help others but neither impact good yourself
(directly nor indirectly), nor discriminate in what "others" and "things" to
help?

[0]: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-
operation_(evolution)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-
operation_\(evolution\))

~~~
Eyght
Sorry for the slow response. A few days have gone by, but your reply still
demands a response I feel.

I was vague about helping others on purpose because experience has made me
wary of claiming that I know what's good or moral. Fundamentally I would only
claim to know better than evolution in two cases: 1) Jeopardizing the
ecosystem/biosphere (because it would be suicide). 2) The need to get off this
planet before it gets eaten by the sun (because I don't think evolution
properly accounts for this). That's not to say that I claim to be amoral.
Rather, in the name of humility, I'd stop at the definition: Being productive
in a responsible way - guided by the two points above. My reason for this is
that, in my experience, the worst consequences of human behaviour stem mostly
from indifference, whatever the intention may be. And the promise of having a
positive impact often makes people as blind to terrible consequences as the
opportunism often associated with selfish behaviour. So I tend to limit how I
express myself in this regard, because I think it's more honest.

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ant6n
I think often the problem is not knowing how to implement the vision. Say you
want to start an electric car company in the mid 2000ies, how would you go
about it without having gotten rich from selling some startup first?

~~~
deepu256
You can work backwards from that, what are the problems that are in the way of
achieving the vision ?

As you break down the problems into further smaller problems you might
encounter a problem which is possible to tackle with the currently available
resources.

One of the possible outcomes here might be identifying a team within a comp /
university who is working on the same problem and then joining them. That can
be the first step in the long marathon of innovation.

