I saw this idea some time ago also in HN [0,1], it has also stuck in my brain pretty hard.
The way Paul words it is like this:
> Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. (...). If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. (...)
(...)
> When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience.
> If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
This reflection in general has transformed not only how I look at time, but also how I look at work. I ask myself, is _my work_ bullshit? Is this _task_ bullshit? Is my way of spending _time_ bullshit?
Most work stuff can be considered bullshit, but it pays the bills.
For those 8 hours - 8 hours I'd spend anyway - I play the game in the way it needs to be played to paid handsomely.
Sure I guess I could go and do my own start up and be my own boss, but life is too short for that. Swallow the corporate pill, play the game, and come out at 5pm with loads more money you'd make unless you were one of the 0.0000001% who are unicorn founders and walk away with xx millions.
If you're self assessing work to be mostly bullshit, you need to change your job. Soul sucking corporate job vs. great solo startup is a false dichotomy (on both sides).
I feel confident in guessing that you don't have a family.
Working a regular 9-5 that pays me well is so much better than the stress and time sink of starting my own company. It's stable, it's easy, and it gives me plenty of time and money to spend with my family.
Not everyone searches for meaning in their work. I enjoy my day job, but my satisfaction in life comes from what I do off the clock.
My family is my legacy and my respect. IDGAF what my peers think of me - why does that matter? I get a raise based on performance each year, and that's enough for me.
I feel the same way, but to play devil's advocate - the vast majority of startups do fail, and leave you with no meaningful legacy.
You could grow as a person, you could be very passionate and driven, etc. - but you could also end up quite depressed when things die down (speaking from experience sadly).
I still think startups are awesome, but if you view work as a transaction, having a good corporate job can be a better transaction for many folks, especially if work is only a part of your life, not the defining feature. Time with your children when they are young is often the easiest to explain, but same goes for time with parents/grandparents, time to work on passion projects, etc.
Well that is worth examining. What does Fabrice think of his own legacy, and how much does it matter to him compared to other aspects of life? We can't really answer that question without his own input. How would the fabric of our lives change if we had a legacy similar to that of Fabrice?
The reason I'm asking these things is that we often hear the words legacy and respect in specific contexts similar to this one, but there isn't much follow up as to what this respect and legacy entails for the individual or exactly why it is so important compared to other aspects. This is a crucial part for our life plan because we consider people like Fabrice in retrospect after they have already succeeded, in a fun twist on the anthropic principle, but we don't consider the alternative Fabrices who have failed in other universes and risked everything for legacy. And we rarely consider the past Fabrices in our own universe from previous generations whom we have already forgotten despite their success.
No, of course not. He is a programming powerhouse. His projects are monumental. It's astonishing what this one person can get done.
At a former employer, I was part of a team of a couple dozen engineers and digital designers who were working on an LTE remote radiohead and base station product. Around the time we were releasing this product, Fabrice released this [0].
Fabrice is a tremendous talent, in our world he would be analogous to a Kobe Bryant or a Wayne Gretzky, so I find it flatly obnoxious that this is the bar that's being raised in this thread.
It doesn't matter how hard I eschew the bullshit in my life and everything else "standing in my way" to try to build a legacy. I am not like Fabrice. It's unlikely anyone in this comment thread is like Fabrice. There are so very few people who are on his level, you could probably count them all on 2 hands. It's absurd to think that this is what everyone eeds to strive for in life.
Probably his most influential projects have been ffmpeg and QEMU. Lots of people use software incorporating or derived from those, often without even realising. I think most developers would be proud of a legacy containing starting just one project like either of those. He's also got a great body of interesting other projects and hacks, including a linux capable VM running in the browser, a digital tv broadcaster using a single pin of vga, a popular embeddable javascript engine, a C compiler that could compile and boot the linux kernel in less than 15 seconds - allowing effectively 'boot from source', an award winning neural network based text compressor and many more - to say nothing of temporarily holding the record for most digits of PI calculated (using a formula he invented, and on a home PC).
"If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes,"
I've seen people work in tech working on more efficient renewable energy, improving crop harvesting, improving safety on the road... All while having a happy team of well-organized people.
Not every job is bullshit and not every way of working is bullshit IMO.
Fair enough. But just like every job has bullshit, every part of life has some level of bullshit. I don't think in terms of "eliminating" bullshit, but rather minimizing it.
You won't find a job that's 100% free of it. But everyone intuitively knows which ones are in the 90 to 99% range. Emergency responders, garbage collectors, transporters, powerplant employees, nurses... basically any job that's actually essential and not just something that grows another person's fortune. Once these people stop working, you notice.
So would you sign up for these jobs? Probably not, because they often require a lot of work or not much money (very region dependent) or something hard to deal with. In comparison, you can be paid insane amounts to code skinner boxes or ad optimisation in a well-lit office.
One man's bullshit is another woman's compelling, rewarding effort. I imagine Musk deals with plenty of bullshit in order to keep his organizations focused on the compelling goals he feels are essential. Ramping the model 3 or getting the original falcon into orbit for the first time come to mind.
Musk is a good example because he does many non-bullshit, but also his fair share of bullshit things.
Even if we drop the semi-religious way people speak of him, or even view him in the most uncharitable light, he has a ton of awe-inducing projects going on. At the same time, he seems to spend a lot of time getting embroiled in the most inane nonsense, to say nothing of his social media activity.
Some people are lucky enough to do work that is meaningful and rewarding to them, that gives them a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose in between all those other things.
The idea that time is finite and we are all going to die is as old as humanity. In 1-2 generations most of us will be completely forgotten. I glad someone already posted something to Stoicism and Seneca.
Surely someone has commentated that “life is short” in one form or another before waitbutwhy, right?
IMO it’s good for these sentiments to be rephrased and restated repeatedly. The reason is that these things have to hit you at the right time and in the right way to make the impact that they’re “supposed to.” The first 999 times someone says life is short, you shrug it off and walk straight into another day in zombie-mode (nothing wrong with that!). But the 1000th time someone says it, and you happen to have just gotten off the phone with your mother telling you she has some illness… that’s the time you need to hear it. So you pack up and move across the country.
Twitter has become full of vacuous "gurus" like Sahil. I know he does it so he can build his brand and sell his book, but why do people "like and follow" him?
He's not a genius, a guru, a visionary, or an icon, he's just a dude. People find his content relatable and enjoyable, it's not really much more complicated than that.
Given the number of upvotes I think you may have been a bit quick to pull the trigger. It seems enough people appreciated this that it probably shouldn't be flagged.
The people who spend a lot of time pointing out the signal to noise ratio aren't going to be reading material similar ot that of Henry James either, because they'll interpret it as mostly noise and see the plot as the most important part.
It would be hard to explain but there's somewhat of an ironic tendency among techies to dismiss certain types of knowledge (such as the show-don't-tell aspect of good literature) on account of pursuing rationality and optimization.
You should check out the comments on any New Yorker link posted on HN. “The author seemed to use a lot of words and took a long time to get to her point in a very roundabout way. This could’ve been 90% shorter.”
It’s the literary equivalent of Twitter-is-a-weekend-project.
Good writing in a good format doesn't make you feel like that though.
You could also say someone rambling on about something, repeating themselves, using lots of uh, like filler words and stuff and that sort of thing and just generally not really..not really getting to the point is 'called a conversation'; sure, doesn't mean it couldn't be done better.
> Everything we do is in anticipation of the future. When that future comes, we simply reset to the next one.
> “I can’t wait until I’m 18 so I can [X].”
> “I can’t wait until I’m 25 so I can [Y]."
> “I can’t wait until I’m 45 so I can [Z]."
Really? Do "we"? I don't. Maybe Sahil does, but he also realised his parents were mortal and our lives are finite in his 30s (?). I find this trend on social media and in blogs where people make a personal discovery and frame it as if it applies to everyone really condescending. I don't even mean to sound so cynical, but somehow it just rubs me the wrong way.
The same with how he just assumes everyone was lucky enough to have parents who love and care about them (and each other).
Sahil tends to write these clickbaity Twitter threads. I find that I vehemently dislike this style of writing. I'd much rather read the source of the ideas[0] than someone's unoriginal take on them.
So I am an immigrant, close to 20 years away from my family, I had a similar interaction with my father who passed away from covid a few years back. He was someone who I spoke with on science and politics daily for at-least an hour and remained sharp as ever till his death.
“Should I come back to spend more time with you and the family ?”
“Why would you ? Live for the future, contribute, do something new, teach some young kids some politics”
I think that do what’s important to you is excellent advice, it’s not remotely the same for everyone’s family though.
Thanks for that. I look at the situation from a different angle - having a young son I put so much daily effort for him to end up in a life that he's happy with, whatever that may turn out to be. I'd hate for him to be ever held back his parents.
Im not saying that this move was not the right choice for him, but it's definitely not a general advice.
The real thing isn't how much you'll see them. It's how much you'll need to take care of them in the final years and what you'll have to sacrifice.
Sounds like the author is well off and can afford to change jobs, move, etc. If their parents lived in a more rural area, it would be a much tougher decision since there's not much work there. Sure, there's remote, but we're not all great at that (and except for the top companies and specific industries, it's only a matter of time before wages are massively pushed down to compete internationally). Some of us might not be capable of landing another job anyways.
I don't think that not seeing his parents very often should be universally considered bad.
As an adult, you're making your own decisions and building your own family.
Your spouse might not really like spending that much time with your parents.
And you might not really like her or his parents.
From my experience, staying close to the same people who raised you will keep you in that comfortable but limited childhood state for longer than necessary.
> Your spouse might not really like spending that much time with your parents. And you might not really like her or his parents.
Heck, you might not even like your parents. There are a ton of selfish people in the world and many have children. I know my fair share of individuals who were (or are) held back in their own life, happiness, and mental stability because of their emotionally manipulative parents.
More than once I’ve seen someone in this situation being temporarily forced away (due to studies or a job) and flourish in all areas of life, only to regress when they return close to home. It’s harrowing.
Parents aren’t universally good, yet our society is constantly trying to sell us on the idea of “family above all”. Screw that. You didn’t pick your family. You’re under no obligation to suffer your whole life if they’re shitty. Pick good friends instead.
Your parents can also be the most wonderful, easy-going, caring people the word but it still gets really old, really fast living with them or spending several days a week with them over the years. It also seems super illogical you would constrain yourself to one geographical place in the world based on what your parents thought was a good place to live, not based on what you actually want. That sounds stifling to me.
Distance also makes family relationships more meaningful, not less. My parents, grandparents, and siblings all live in different states or countries thousands of miles away. We still plan vacations and meetups and holidays each year, we talk on the phone, online, etc, so the idea I’ll only see them X times before they die don’t add up.
> As an adult, you're making your own decisions and building your own family.
Yeah, this is 100% true. You can, and should, sever ties with abusive individuals where you have the power to do so.
You have the power to choose your family, but some people think it’s an unbreakable life bond and will try to guilt you for all eternity for disagreeing.
Yeah, I mean, or it really just kind of makes those of us that simply cannot move closer feel that much worse about it. I miss mostly everything about being at the place where I am from, but moving there would move us even further from my spouses' parents. A move to the halfway point would mean we have to uproot what we've build at our current location for the past decade or so. Life is often about hard compromises.
When I moved from Canada to the Bay area I thought, and everyone said, that they (friends, family) would come visit. Spoiler: I got 2 visits in 8 years, both by my mom.
This despite me going back to see varying people roughly twice per year.
I've sadly learned that many of those relationships are a one way street of convenience. They're happy to see me when I come, to walk down memory lane. But they'll never put in the effort to come see me. Sadly this realization has been the demise of many of those relationships that I was carrying.
The difficulty of replacing the depth of relationships you have is a cost that few immigrants realize until "too late"[1], and making new ones is quite difficult because many people who remain in their place/culture will be reasonably satisfied by the quantity/quality of their relationships and thusly not really that open to starting new ones. This is one that that (at one time) made the bay area pretty special, maybe true of Austin now, it's _full_ of people from someonewhere else who are in the same situation -- looking to replace lost relationships and unable to break into calcified cliques.
[1] yeah yeah pedantic HN it's not to late unless your both dead, sure. But it's also awkward af to sit in a room with a friend you havent seen in 10 years and be like "oh what's your wife's name?" (and he gives you a smile "we've been married for 6 years, how can you not know <Jane>'s name?" or similar idea with their kids. You'll come to find their world has moved on and changed, and what you had is just a nice memory.
The thought of my parents moving closer to me just invoked a very mild panic reaction in me, which is a good indication of why I've chosen not to be near them.
Even though my mom and I talk almost daily, I like having my parents a comfortable distance away. For mine, 6~10 hours is ideal. Too far to make a car trip frequently, not far enough to justify a plane flight.
I drive to visit them often enough to keep them away from where I live.
So far, only 4 visits in 9 years. Still too many, but manageable. :)
My wife and I have 4 married children and two very new grandchildren by our 2 daughters. Every second weekend we try to catch up with one of the families - 3 are in one city 90 minutes drive away and other family is 2 hours away. We are cognisant that we are probably able to be more flexible (that said my widowed MIL is ill and needs some extra attention at the moment). My own parents aren't the easiest to deal with so while I do keep in contact it can be quite stressful. My sisters are 1000+ KMs away. The reality of family life isn't trivial.
Exactly. My parents aggressively saved for retirement and are quite comfortable where they live even factoring potential future inflation, but there's nowhere within a couple hours of Seattle/SanFran they could afford to live.
I think you miss the point. Trite as it may be, it's not about owing your parents anything, it's about having little time left to spend with them, which is awful if you love them. If you don't want to see them this tweet is not for you.
You missed _their_ point. If seeing you is so important why arent they on the hook for at least 1/2 of the visits (more so if they're rich and retired, ie it costs them relatively nothing).
Yes the author should do what he wants to do that maximizes his life utility (ie, go see them instead of doing lesser things). But also there's something about a relationship where the other person refuses to come to you, can't make the effort to travel, buy the plane tickets, or whatever their excuse is.
Though I most always travel to see my mother, one way she helps mitigates is she frequently buys my plane tickets. She won't fly, but if I'll make the time, she'll bear the cost-- so there's definitely can be negotiation... but if someone will only see you on their convenience, and your expense, I'd rethink the value of that relationship
It's a bit more complicated when you don't have a great relationship with your parents. I live across the country as well, and I'm content with the fact that I may only see my parents a few more times. I don't hate them, but being close to them and spending time with them is a net negative on my mental health.
Paul Graham talks about this in one of his essays, Life is Short. This part really drove it home for me.
“Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. You only get 52 weekends with your 2 year old. If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.”
To be entirely honest, when I read quotes like this, it always makes me think that they must be made by people who don't spend much time with their own kids overall. Weekend with your 2 years old is kind of the same as workday with your two years old, unless of course you just dont spend time with your 2 years old except on weekends.
,,If the average life expectancy is ~80 years, my parents are in their mid-60s, and I see them one time per year, the math—however depressing—says I will see them 15 more times before they are gone.''
The math (and life) is even more cruel: there's more than 50% chance that at least one of his parents will die before 80. I'm right now on a vacation with my mom, but it's not the same as when both my parents were alive (a year ago).
This is quite possibly the oldest insight in the world. Dressed up as something new and clever in order to promote his twitter account. Oh God how I hate social media.
Perhaps it's not that old because there seems to be something very 20th-century and American about it: the idea of trying to get maximum return out of your time/money because time is money and money is time.
I'm not a philosopher and haven't analysed this very carefully, but the "lesson" implied by the story strikes me as not just trite but also wrong.
Perhaps I'm just too cynical or the examples chosen (parents, Christmas) are particularly off-putting for me.
My wife, our kids, and I live abroad from our families. Kids and grandparents get to see each other once a year or so.
Yet, we do not plan to move back closer to our families.
The reason is simple: our relation to our parents is fulfilling as it is and our parents educated us in such a way that we build our own family for ourselves, because the one thing that was granted to us (quoting my own parents) was their unconditional support and love.
Distance sure prevents a lot of small yet meaningful interactions and it sometimes hurts, but the support that we received helped us settle where we wanted and become who we wanted, independently from any geographical or otherwise constraints.
We're infinitely grateful to our parents for that.
Time is fleeting. I made this android wallpaper so I would be reminded of that fact. Every time I look at my phone I think "am I doing what I really want to be doing? am I making the best use of my limited time?"
Perhaps a bit morbid, but very realistic. Death comes for us all, even if you ignore it. By consciously forcing yourself to confront it you can reduce the chance that you'll wind up with a ton of regrets when you're old.
I got this wakeup-call somewhat indirectly. I was looking at what books I want to read in the coming year (a constant struggle :-)) and I realized that at my current rate of ~80 books per year, and perhaps 30-40 years left to live, I'll probably only get to read another 2500-3000 or so books. Provided I'll even be able to absorb books at my current rate.
Then I started thinking about how many times I will experience other things that matter in my life.
I didn't do the math on it, but I used to finish a book just because I started it and felt compelled to do so. Now, if I'm not enjoying the book after the first 25% of it, I move on to something else.
It depends on what kind of book we're talking about.
A lot of the fiction I read is just for entertainment then and there. Not retaining it isn't a big loss. In fact, it is probably just good for me to forget.
I read between 10 and 20 books per year that are worth retaining. The number of nonfiction books I read depends a lot on how much spare capacity I have for reading and absorbing them. They usually tend to take longer to read in total, and I often re-read chapters, make marginal notes, or take notes in notebooks. I don't often read my notes. I mainly take notes because note-taking itself helps me process and remember what I read. (In general I take a lot of notes and have notebooks going back a few decades).
One thing that helps is actually exercising while listening to the audio book version. If I can listen to an audio book while hiking or bicycling, and I vary the route, I can often remember where I was when I heard something and thinking about a particular hike helps me remember what came next etc. The harder the physical exertion, the better I retain what I heard. (For instance, 8 years ago I was listening to the audio book version of an introduction to immunology and the chapter I remember the most of was the one I listened to while carrying my broken bicycle down a steep hill)
Retention also depends a bit on how the book is written. Some authors write books that have low information density, which makes my mind wander. However, the real challenge isn't retaining the contents, but who wrote it and in which book. I remember ideas, arguments, and often quite a lot of detail - but I forget names and book titles. This is really inconvenient when recommending books I've read because I first have to figure out who wrote it or what the book's title was. (For work-related books I can usually check my notebooks).
Any tips that have been effective in that rumination? For people who want to get a lot out of the books they read, as you do, I'm always curious about the strategies they've come up with.
As I pointed out in a different comment I have three strategies:
- note-taking including writing down my own ideas
- use audio books and trying to associate what I'm listening to with where I am (for me, exertion increases retention :-))
- re-reading or re-listening to books/chapters
I suppose if I could find people to discuss what I'm reading with, that would be even better. But I'd drive most people mad.
This: “Ok, so you’re going to see them 15 more times before they die.”
I'm living far away from my parents. And I see them once a year (except the last 3 years because of COVID). I came myself to this math, the first time I was to them, and we had a pretty heavy discussion. I understood, I was going to see them 10 to 20 times, 20 days each time, which boils down to about... 1 year?
It really makes you take those 20 days very differently!
> If the average life expectancy is ~80 years, my parents are in their mid-60s, and I see them one time per year, the math—however depressing—says I will see them 15 more times before they are gone.
The fact that his parents survived until their mid-60s means that they have a life expectancy better than the ~80 year average, as that average includes many people that don't make it to their mid-60s.
Posted this on the other thread but wanted to share the link here:
Tim Urban has a great post on this, helps you visualize the timing: https://waitbutwhy.com/2015/12/the-tail-end.html
Anyway, this makes me a bit sad considering I've recently moved a 15 hour drive away from my parents. Happy that they have a guest room and for remote work though.
It also makes me ponder the differences in western culture and other places. I know in some cultures family is much more integrated, e.g. the grandparents move-in instead of sending them to a home or something.
I love my city life but I do sometimes imagine living in a compound with my close family. I think it would be tolerable if everyone had their own space but was close in proximity.
I have always considered myself relatively aware of how quickly time goes by, but having a child drove the point home in a way that’s very hard to ignore.
Month-to-month (and sometimes even week-to-week) I see how quickly she grows up, and it’s a bittersweet combination of joy and melancholy.
I also moved back to be near family and am working remotely now. I don’t like where I live at all, and I enjoyed working in the office much more than from my house, but seeing my daughter every morning and being next to family is irreplaceable.
(Although to be fair, I wanted to stay in California and just travel to visit family more frequently; my spouse wanted to physically move next to them. I suppose her solution is better for the planet even if I don’t like it as much.)
There are two numbers doing the rounds lately. One is 4000 - that's the number of weeks we have in our life. More specifically for most of us it might be the number of weekends and hence might make us think about how we recreate or best spend that time which we often look forward to.
The other number is 80000 referring to the hours we have in our average working life. Again it probably seems such a small number and yet so many of those hours are filled with less than productive tasks like attending meetings that we shouldn't, and we aren't making the most of those others to make sure our career is fulfilling and productive
This is in same category as How many weekends/sunrise/sunsets/friend visits/famous place/restaurant and so on one can have before they themselves or other party die? To me all these numbers sound reasonable.
Either I took conscious decisions to reach this situation, in that case there is nothing to be surprised about. Or maybe things just happened one after other, then how can I suddenly change and take control of things and do it differently.
I cant refind the website right now, but i once encountered an interesting website that took this concept further.
It demonstrated that many of us have already spent between 95-99% of the time we will see our parents.
Eg:
* presume your parents have you at ~30
* Live at home 18years x 365 days per year = 6570 days
* You see them a week per year for the remainder of their life = 50 years * 7 days per year = 350 days
therefore at 19yrs old you have 350/(6570+350) days remaining ~= 5%
It has nothing to do with the conversation itself, it's a very common case of middle age crisis (You will note his parent are 65, he's certainly something around 40). All human arriving at this age experience the same. It's a very sane crisis, once you sink you have limited resource and limited time, you can really accomplish interesting projects.
My ex-wife just died because of cancer. It brought me very similar thoughts and hopefully a lesson. I've spent too much time in my life on virtually 'nothing'. I need to change it now. I feel big desire to live through the tiny moments which turn to be the most precious in life.
All the best to you all, good people.
Quite some time ago, I ran into a website on HN that let you easily calculate how often you are likely to see a person before they die. I couldn't find it anywhere though, on HN or the wider web. Anybody remember?
The way Paul words it is like this:
> Having kids showed me how to convert a continuous quantity, time, into discrete quantities. (...). If Christmas-as-magic lasts from say ages 3 to 10, you only get to watch your child experience it 8 times. And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. (...)
(...)
> When I ask myself what I've found life is too short for, the word that pops into my head is "bullshit." I realize that answer is somewhat tautological. It's almost the definition of bullshit that it's the stuff that life is too short for. And yet bullshit does have a distinctive character. There's something fake about it. It's the junk food of experience.
> If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes.
This reflection in general has transformed not only how I look at time, but also how I look at work. I ask myself, is _my work_ bullshit? Is this _task_ bullshit? Is my way of spending _time_ bullshit?
[0]: http://www.paulgraham.com/vb.html
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555