This resonates with my own experience: "Although most people look forward to vacations and days off, most successful people I know dread them."—working more hours was a socially acceptable route to not dealing with my own sh*t.
This hits me in the feels when I realized shortly after getting married that I realized what a workaholic is and that I am one.
Just like an alcoholic uses booze to avoid the problems they face in the rest of life I use work to avoid problems in real life. I don't do it because I am so hard working, or because I really love what I do, its because when I sit down and can stare at code for a couple hours I don't have to worry about the other things going on in life, my brain gets filled with this little world which I know I can control by issuing magic spells that behave appropriately.
It means I'm not thinking about my sister's descent into alcoholism, I don't have to worry about my bipolar sister in law, I don't have to face the guilt I feel about not spending enough time with my kid.
I'm trying to combat that, I'm trying to not use work as an excuse to avoid situations that cause social anxiety, I'm trying not to shirk my household responsibilities by volunteering for extra work that is urgent. But the problem is that I've built up an expectation of several years of what people can expect from me, now I am trying to balance and I can't because I've got to the point where I have so much responsibility it requires that output, it's hard, and I am trying to keep things in balance, but by God it gets so hard sometimes....
The problem you mention at the end is not exactly a problem, you were working more for the same salary (a self inflicted salary reduction). That might help you rationalize it, calculate how much you earn per actual hour worked and try to get that number higher by not working for free. At the end of it, you are paying for that output with your time which is limited.
I've noticed that in the last 10 years or so I've started treating "my own Sh*t" as "another job".
So my holidays are now, just another form of work. I literally cant remember the last time I've had a "holiday" where I just unwound and was decadently lazy for the whole time.
I work, I go home and work. I book time off under the guise of holidays but really I work on other work.
I kid and say "this is the way" but really I suspect it might not be healthy.
I work for making D the best programming language in the world. I've always been doing things like that since my first job. I've always liked the challenge, especially when people tell me I can't do that.
I selected a college specifically to prepare for the kind of things I wanted to do as a career, and selected classes in the service of that. I once told my dad that I was never bored for a moment in college.
That's cool, thanks for sharing. I vibed with your point about being stimulated and [not checking out]. I'm relatively new to programming (5 years, self-taught) but I find the endless amount of information to learn quite appetizing and inspiring. I think I'll stick around with this stuff for a while.
Maybe I'll take a look at D now :)
Do you have any resources you'd suggest to someone (who, btw, doesn't have a systems programming background -- but is curious to learn!)
One word I am surprised the author did not use in this article is patience. Successful people are used to being in a hurry. It takes practice to have patience with yourself, and patience with others.
Another problem that I struggle with, and I'm sure "successful" people do as well, is chronic pain. Sometimes it's just bad luck, or an old injury; or maybe you have sacrificed your health to get more work done (in the short term). Many long-term problems are invisible; you never know who is struggling on the inside.
As a person with a 10+ year chronic injury, thanks for saying this. It was nice even just to read it on the internet from a total stranger and know that somebody is aware that people are dealing with things like this.
I don't claim to be super-successful, but these are things I've thought about quite a bit. Some people are good at being happy. Even when their situation is objectively lousy, they still find humor and love and fulfillment and so on. Other people just aren't good at being happy. Can't relax. Can't take a compliment. Can't enjoy when things are going well, without worrying about when it will end.
The thing a lot of these have in common is being in the moment vs. looking forward. Absolutely nothing wrong with looking forward, it's how we all progress and ensure future good times, but you also have to be able to turn it off (which is another item on OP's list). Learning how to shut up those internal voices for a while can be hard, but it's worth the effort.
Most 'wealthy & successful' people I have known screwed people and never learned how to not do that and ended up paranoid about everyone since they don't know who they screwed.
In my opinion, I would maybe rephrase this as exploitation. "Business success" (define as you see fit), accompanies exploitation. "Screwing" people, could fall under exploitation, but feels more malicious, whereas exploitation can take many forms and is commonly accepted. It can be exploiting a rules loop hole, exploiting worker pay, exploiting current wealth status, exploiting someone's social connections, etc.
Exploitation is not necessarily bad, as most companies to be profitable, need to exploit something. Companies want profit so they are exploiting the price they charge, or exploiting the workers they pay, or a combination of many little exploits.
Imagine a company could pay its workers more, but they don't. I believe this is an exploitation of the workers. People don't see it as "bad" in minor cases, and this practice is commonly accepted. Consider how much Apple is making and how much it is paying its workers, versus a locally owned restaurant.
Imagine a company could charge less for a product and still survive. This again, is a minor exploitation, and commonly accepted.
When the exploitation gets large enough, workers sometimes revolt.
That concept of exploitation makes zero sense on a microeconomic or macroeconomic level. If there is any money available to expand that is charging more money than they need to survive. A company could always pay their workers more unless it brought them to precarity - even the actual workers wouldn't want that and they are the direct beneficaries of said excess! That would be like your drug dealer staging an intervention.
I don't understand your argument. I don't think a business would succeed if it was pushed to precarity, so this is not dealing with exploitation. Exploitation needs to present in many aspects to create business success, it supports the definition of profit. The money made exceeds what it took to make the product or service. To profit is to exploit.
I'm not trying to cast the act of exploitation in business in a judgmental way, but rather to show it exists, because it is universally accepted. It's the other side of the same coin. Yes, it's a weird interpretation of Marxian economics. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploitation_of_labour
A slight wrinkle I have found is contractors that discover how profitable you are, can often "feel" screwed over after the deal is struck and the project is on motion despite their position being profitable and exactly what they bargained for.
Screwing people is inevitable. The only consolidation you can really take is knowing that the people you screwed at some point probably screwed someone else, and you're just continuing a cycle of karmic justice.
Could it also be that being screwed is a matter of perspective? I imagine in a non-insignificant number of the she-screwed-me-on-the-way-to-the-top cases that the alleged screwee is sour because he or she missed an opportunity or simply was not the better candidate for the promotion?
I'm not being a contrarian, but I think it's interesting how our biases and perspectives shape the way we understand things and situations. I've noticed people (myself included, no don't) trying to spin a situation to make them look or feel like a victim instead of admitting they were simply not as good as the alleged screwer. Not sure if I'm even stating this correctly, but maybe someone can help me elaborate.
It could be Asian thing (I'm Asian), but there's a saying, "Money can't buy happiness, but it sure hell better crying inside my BMW than crying outside by the street."
"Money can't buy happiness, but you can distract yourself with consuming luxury goods" doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
These types of quotes tire me (and ones like it, "have you ever seen anyone sad on a Jet ski?"). They ignore the very real human condition of yearning for meaning from existence. Pretending like this can be solved with symbols of status and consumption is misguided.
I think you're taking the example too far. Money can't guarantee happiness, but it's much easier to be happy when you don't have to constantly worry about how you're going to pay your next bill or if you'll lose your home if you get sick.
I think this saying illustrates the point better: “money is like toilet paper, you don’t want to run out but after a point more wont make a difference”
Studies show that, up to a point, money actually can buy happiness. But more money doesn't automatically equate to more happiness.
People who are middle class are more happy than people who are dirt poor. Rich people aren't necessarily any happier than middle class people, but both are, in the aggregate, happier than poor people struggling to survive.
My grand father, born and raised in Western Europe, never left the continent, fought in WWII, etc., used to say that money can't buy happiness but it sure helps in getting it.
What are your thoughts on the (in my experience more common) phrase: "I would rather cry in a BMW than laugh on a bicycle"? When I really consider this phrase it brings tears to my eyes.
I'm biased, I prefer (nice) bicycles than (nice) cars. Not because it's healthier, but because I don't like to be stuck in traffic. -- Again, living in overpopulated Asian country.
Reminds me of the short story "The Adopted Son" by Guy de Maupassant.
> Then the boy said, roughly: "I'd rather not have been born than be what I am. When I saw the other, my heart stood still. I said to myself: 'See what I should have been now!'" He got up: "See here, I feel that I would do better not to stay here, because I would throw it up to you from morning till night, and I would make your life miserable. I'll never forgive you for that!"
I guess it depends on the society you live in. In our ultra materialistic and capitalistic societies, most likely. But look at the proverbial amazon tribe or even nuns. I’d say most of them seem happy and yet they are poor as dirt by our standards.
A lot of these seem tied to narcissism in some way. Not that it’s a bad thing but there are a lot of secondary effects of prioritizing ones “success” over all other things like relationships, friendships, mental health, etc.
"Narcissism" is an unnecessarily pejorative way to put it. Narcissism is about having an inflated view of one's own merit, importance, or appearance. In popular parlance it also refers to an unquenchable need for external validation of these qualities. However, most of the issues mentioned in the OP are often associated with self-doubt and/or internal motivation - i.e. the very opposite of narcissism. Frankly, using such a negative term seems a bit like sour grapes.
Narcissism isn’t necessarily characterized by strength even though we imagine the quintessential narcissist people to be “strong” and “driven”. That may be true in their professional lives but not personal.
Narcissists are driven by external validation and appearance, yes. So much so that they forget the people most important to their lives are humans too, not tools or ornaments of achievement. When these relationships sour, there’s a lot of self-doubt, not about the achievements, but if the trade offs are really worth it in the end.
Nobody's defending narcissism. My objection was to reflexively associating these problems with narcissism, and by answering only in the context of narcissism you're still equating the two. So let me even more blunt: that theory is so weak that it's almost self-refuting. Let's try to apply it to the OP and see just how badly it goes.
The first item on the list is inability to celebrate. How does that suggest narcissism? Can it not be explained at least as well by feelings that the subject of celebration is undeserved, transitory, and subject to reversal?
The second item on the list is inability to rest. How does that suggest narcissism? Can it not be explained at least as well by feelings that one is an impostor, unable to keep up without making extra effort?
And so on. Every connection you claim points to narcissism actually points even more strongly somewhere else. Narcissism causes problems, to be sure, but it's far from the only thing that can cause these problems. Claiming that these issues are all about narcissism is tantamount to claiming that conventionally-measured success itself is all about narcissism. As I said, it comes across as a big load of sour grapes.
Really many on the list seems far more neuroticism or compulsion than narcissism in either the clincial or colloquial sense. "Good habits" to an excess.
If you aren't happy, you aren't successful. Far too many (like the author of this article) equate economic wealth with "success". How can someone who is miserable be described as a "success" no matter how many baubles they collect or how many accolades they receive from their fellow bauble collectors?
To me being successful means being content and leading a happy and rich life. Economic well-being often helps facilitate contentment and happiness through the security it allows, but it is, at best, a piece of the pie. Unfortunately all too many (especially Americans) have been conditioned to believe that life is a game of Monopoly and the goal is to accrue as much material wealth as possible. This leads to the oft-referred to, "mid-life crisis" when people start coming to terms with their mortality and realize they've wasted the best decades of their life pushing pencils and sitting in traffic. Perhaps if we start changing the way we view "success" we can help some poor souls avoid this awful day of reckoning in the future.
- A successful life often feels like day-to-day failure. Failure to reach ambitious goals, but 90% of the goal is often good enough.
- Dedicating one’s life to work is often a form of suicide. « SINCE my life is void and I won’t do anything tonight, why not study this book, apply for an MBA or build a company. At least that will be some challenge. It’s not like I’m losing family time, and it will help me focus on one thing. »
I’ll leave people to decide whether this is good or bad, but if most people’s lives were fulfilling, we wouldn’t see that much technological progress.
I’m not denying a good share of people are into tech or work by passion, I’m just talking about those who work as a mean to avoid depression.
> if most people’s lives were fulfilling, we wouldn’t see that much technological progress
Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological progress?
I love technology, especially when it helps people lead better lives. But if we are just developing it without real purpose and mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves to do it, then it seems self-defeating.
> Which then makes you wonder: do we really need that much technological progress?
Spoken like someone who takes all of the technological progress of the last centuries for granted. And I don't intend that as a personal attack. Many, many people think like you do, because they can't even begin to imagine a life without the fruits of progress. As for myself, I'm eternally thankful for that progress, for without it, I wouldn't be alive today (appendicitis), neither would my wife (also appendicitis), and probably neither would my two children (historically, most children died within a few years after birth). I'm also extremely thankful for not having to fear death from starvation (thanks to agricultural progress) or from bacterial infections (thanks to antibiotics).
> But if we are just developing it without real purpose [...]
That "if"-condition is doing a lot of work in your sentence. Kind of like saying "if technological progress wouldn't be bringing all the immense benefits it is bringing, it wouldn't be so great".
You bring up some excellent points, and you are right that I most likely take most technology for granted.
I would say the issues that you bring up don't have a clear "right answer", and it's all about perspective.
Me and my siblings were all born thanks to c-sections. Without that, none of us would have been born and my mom would have died trying to give birth. Are we better off having been born? Can't say. Is the world a better place because we were born? For who?
It all depends on goals and perspectives. If the goal is to be happy then, are current people happier than people that lived for example five thousand years ago? Have most technological advances been made in the service of happiness? It doesn't seem like it.
So what's the actual benefit of "all the immense benefits" of technology? Being alive? Living longer? Is it better to be alive and live longer just because we can? The answers to those questions depend on your individual situation and perspective on life.
If you're not sure whether there's a point in being alive, then why do you think there's a point in not "mentally/emotionally enslaving ourselves", as you wrote in your original post? If you have no terminal values [1], there is no point in anything, and everything is meaningless.
I suspect that you do value being alive [2], and your father does value his wife not having died in childbirth. But you take being alive for granted, because actually facing death (yours or that of your children) is a rare occurence, and the probability that you or your loved ones die before the age of 60 is very low. Again, mostly thanks to technological progress.
[1] I.e., a value that is not in service of another value – similar to an axiom in mathematics.
[2] If you really don't value being alive, you might suffer from depression. In this case, please seek professional help.
You are making way too many assumptions about me and life in general. It's ok for people to have different points of views.
About not being able to say if I'm better off having been born, I don't know/remember what it was like before being born or being dead, it might be amazing, I don't know, so I can't compare. Doesn't mean I want to be dead right now. I also never said there's no point in being alive.
Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful? Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it? What if someone disagrees?
> Why does life need any "terminal values" at all to be meaningful?
Life doesn't have or need terminal values, people have terminal values. Without terminal values, you cannpt have any values at all, and without values [1] nothing can be meaningful.
> Do you think there needs to be an absolute truth to it?
No, terminal values depend on the individual, and don't even have to be constant over time.
[1] "Values" in the sense of "goals" or "things important to you", not in the sense of "moral values".
I've also come to think this in recent times. Take the modern web for example: created largely for the sake of ensnaring and exploiting those who use it, and constantly reinvented with additional complexity to the benefit of the resumes of those who develop it.
But it isn't just the web. Even a modern TV is full of additional bullshit complexity that makes life worse.
Yes we do, or people must die. Imagine how much energy we’d consume if people heated by outdoor fires, which was the highest tech 10-20kyears ago. Also agricultural advances are needed to feed us all.
> - A successful life often feels like day-to-day failure.
So do unsuccessful lives. And moderately successful lives. This is just a characteristic of most lives, unless measures are taken to overcome the tendency to experience life this way.
But not working on your passion will lead to depression. I think it's about finding fulfillment in the process, in working on your passion. Technological progress comes from that.
I sincerely doubt technological "progress" is driven by filling needs in peoples lives. Rather, it creates the appearance of needs the technology can then fill. The "killer app" of a smartphone is still gps + mobile calling.... shit hasn't changed since the 80s.
> - Dedicating one’s life to work is often a form of suicide. « SINCE my life is void and I won’t do anything tonight, why not study this book, apply for an MBA or build a company. At least that will be some challenge. It’s not like I’m losing family time, and it will help me focus on one thing. »
I always thought that but could never quite put words on it. Thanks that’s a nice way of phrasing it.
> That it’s ok to let go of the image of the lonesome warrior, shouldering the world’s problems on their own.
This is the one thing that I've struggled with as an engineering leader. Much of this article is spot on, but the hardest thing for myself is simply asking for help. Part of it because I have learned how to learn anything, and I can just spend time doing what I need. However, there is only so much time in the day.
For some reason, I've always felt that asking for help was related to weakness, and it took a long time to realize that leadership is not knowing everything, but knowing how to teach people to play the game and ask good/dumb questions.
One thing I've been thinking about recently, is the difference between "asking for help" and "being offered help". It's difficult to ask for help in a socially acceptable way: deferential, but not ingratiating; vulnerable, but not needy; bounded, but not transactional. Whereas these tensions are largely circumvented when someone sees you struggling and offers to help in some way. This leads better results also, as often when I need help, I don't even know what kind of help to ask for. But someone who has gone through something similar, can help simply by knowing what it is I might need, even if they can't provide it. It's very difficult to get that kind of help by asking for it.
"Successful people" are those that come to the ocean shore, build a sand castle (indeed, what else is this sand for?), develop depression protecting it from wind, water and sun, and even force other tourists to build the castle for them. And they die wondering why the ocean shore is such a cruel and pointless place. Their lives aren't worthless,though: at least they develop some will. The wise don't build castles, they just watch the ocean and think about the relationship between sand, water, wind and sun.
Thinking without interaction may as well be useless. Even the type of people I believe you to be speaking about wrote and shared their writings to influence others.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
LOL. :) Sometimes I wonder what happens if humans go extinct. There may be a new civilization by ants, spiders, or insect descendants. Or there could be another reptilian domination.
I think the most "successful" people are the people I would not hear about. Likely, some mid-level executives, engineers, professionals. They have enough. They don't need to "move up". They're happy. They don't need to tell people about their stories. So we never hear about them.
> Sometimes I wonder what happens if humans go extinct. There may be a new civilization by ants, spiders, or insect descendants.
Well, in that case, we didn't really go extinct. The distinguishing feature of our kind is our rational faculty, allowing for discourse with others to explain our past actions and future intentions, that grows our self-consciousness (self requires an other[1]) and births civil society. Not our genetic makeup. If some insect species develops self-consciousness and civilization, I'd argue that we ought to recognize it as of our kind. Moreso than, say, apes who are closer to "us" genetically.
[1] Hegel. Phenomenology of Spirit, 1807. "self-consciousness achieves its satisfaction only in another self-consciousness… A self-consciousness exists for a self-consciousness. Only so is it in fact self-consciousness, for only in this way does the unity of itself in its otherness becomes explicit for it."
I feel like the problem may be that we have a distorted view of "success" and what it means. Success is much more than a one-dimensional goal of earning more money. Are you really considered successful if that's all that you accomplished? Success itself encompasses many of the goals espoused in the article, such as having quality relationships and being able to take time for yourself. I think it's a perspective problem. You aren't successful just because you did well in your career. There's much more to it than that.
I think a lot of people in the US are taught from a young age to work hard and be the best you can be. Get into the best college, work hard to get the best job. Get promoted. Get promoted. Start your own firm. Work hard work hard, make money.
Often they never learn you are allowed to back off.
Absolutely. One of my favorite teachers in high school used to always say "the harder you work now, the easier it will be later." There is always a later, though.
I think the very first exercise is a great one, and a challenge for many this year (including myself). "What am I grateful for that happened in the last 365 days?" A sense of gratitude is extremely healthy and remembering to acknowledge it is hard in the face of adversity.
Great observation. Thank you. I think there is a middle way, but it's not so much about definitions as about balance. There's a time to sow (work) and a time to reap (rest and enjoy). Of course you have to sow before you can reap, but if all you do is sow then your final yield is zero. You have to alternate, maximizing the product of the two instead of either alone.
Note money is nowhere on this list.... what's the point? Every "successful" person I know simply buys their way into a happier life. What a puff piece without acknowledging this!
Why is this shit even on HN? Is everyone here a rich, narcissistic douchebag? I mean we all suspected....
I guess that the point of the article is also that "money doesn't buy you happiness", but the author only says it between the lines. He does state that success in business will also not bring you happiness if you don't take the time and care for other aspects of your life.
The view may be a bit skewed since he is a coach and will mostly deal with people who have a problem. It is still a good reminder to try to have a balanced life, regardless of where on the ladder you are :)
The author also owns enough money to buy himself a Lamborghini for his 30th birthday. It's easier to say that money is not the point when you have lots of it. Money may not buy you happiness but it sure does make a lot of things easier.
Money does buy happiness, though, from all the time I have spent observing rich people. Clearly rich people do find ways to become unhappy but it seems like a struggle compared to the rest of us. It's not hard to coach when the largest barrier in human life is stripped away from your clients (well, excepting disabilities).
