Buddhist monk fits this article; most people like the GP (unless I read their message wrong) want the happiness (as they saw on youtube; never talked to any of course) but without the cost so they might assume that to become a Buddhist monk type of happy you just 'throw away all modern crap' and meditate and then you achieve it. Only to find out that that does nothing long term although it might alleviate short term stress.
Anecdotal: the richest self made people I know work the hardest, the poorest don't work at all or as little as possible, by choice (state pays). People who inherited wealth are the unhappiest and the people who do well but not enough to be rich (I guess some type of middle class) whine about it all and want to be rich to vacation the rest of their life (but will probably never get there as they never run, just chug along and keep whining).
Not anecdotal: By nature of the structural relations of our society, the richest people are exploiting the labor of the poorest people, which leaves little reason for the poor people to coopperate.
Objectively not wrong, but self-evidently relative. Of course, if you somehow believe an entire society of exploiters is coherent, then maybe it seems rational to think hard work can infinitely “pay off.” But if you account for the need of exploiters to have somebody to exploit, then the idea doesn’t seem so sound.
What is the fix if employers ('the rich') are to employ and not exploit? For cases in the news like Amazon drivers etc it is clear but many people just want jobs and do not feel exploited even though their boss is making a killing?
Please. Meet more people or just read a newspaper or book. The rich love to whine about dissatisfaction, but it is in the smallest tier of unhappiness. The stress of dealing with (or putting off) healthcare you need but can't afford, being evicted or having your utilities turned off, watching those around you slowly die to a drug epidemic, living every day in fear of being arrested by the police that target your neighborhood or your race.....there are actual hardships in life, and the boredom of being out of ideas on how to spend your money is not one of them.
I do not live in the US, it seems rather different over there. But I was actually talking about people who inherited millions and because of lack of life goals etc they ended up dead (suicides), addicts, in jail etc. I do not know if you can judge their tier of unhappiness or if it is a contest: they squandered the life of ease they were given but they are genuinely unhappy: if you want to put a comparison scale on that, that is fine. I said anecdotal and I didn't exactly grow up in a cocoon so no need for the reading advice: I do understand that I live in the first world and so do the people that I know: life can be much worse, I know.
There's a lack of empathy and imagination in this comment, not to mention no appreciation for irony. Is it so hard to imagine that someone's mental environment can turn paradise into hell? Or for that matter, hell into paradise?
Imagine being born into a rich family, and knowing from day one that nothing you do really matters. Any screwups you have will be fixed immediately by daddy's money. And anything you accomplish, it'll be like "Well yeah of course they were able to do that because of their privilege." Nothing is yours, you aren't even the one responsible for your successes or failures. Life is meaningless and it's because, as the article is trying to say, there's no adversity to give it meaning.
"Adversity gives life meaning" is a lie pushed by people who want to encourage those in adverse circumstances to know their place. If you want to feel like "nothing you do really matters", all you have to do is take a minimum wage job at any store or restaurant where management will constantly remind you that you're a replaceable cog, that if they could pay you less they would except that it would be illegal (so they'll settle for illegally garnishing wages and asking you to come in early or stay late off the clock), and where you'll realize that there's no way to keep doing this and make rent and healthcare - much less to get ahead.
Where do you live though? The social security makes my anecdotal poor friends have an enjoyable life while not feeling like a cog because they do not choose to work like that. It does not buy you sports cars but the social security net pays for everything so they only need money 'to live', with or without a family. This seems not at all what you are talking about; so maybe anecdotal, not US should have been more complete?
The suckiness of being poor is a viewpoint already represented on the thread. Yeah sure, but also: my point. Repetition of yours would seem to indicate you would like only one of the two to be true, but they're both true, or as close as it comes for either of us, who I'm willing to wager have experienced neither.
Nothing actually gives life meaning by the way, that's just a shorthand I used.
The rich people I know are the ones who were lucky to be born I a place/social class where opportunities were available to them, and maybe they worked hard.
The first is a prerequisite. Hard work might be needed, but not always, specially if you are born in to a rich family.
I agree with that, but in my circles, and ffs I add anecdotal again (I am not a science journal), the ones who inherited are dead (3 of them drank themselves literally to death out of boredom in my small town), addicts or in jail. So I guess it can land well, but I would think rich parents/social class and then hard work would be better.
They did: that was worse imho: rich young bored guys with millions in a city. It sped up the process. None of them died in the town we grew up in but they were all buried there. Note that these were high-school class mates.
> It is all around us.
> People no longer willing to work.
What? What planet is this? What I have seen is people rearranging their lives by changing their careers, which is hard. Being aware of the gaps in your life and then changing to fill them is extremely hard. Giving up money and prestige to spend time with kids who are not always grateful, at least at first, can be extremely difficult. The big trend I am seeing is people starting their own businesses instead of letting themselves be satisfied with being a corporate tool.
Going a step further, whatever metric this person is using that leads to such grand trivialization is likely to make them insufferable and impossible to reach. Have some feedback about what might make their latest offering more desirable? Sorry, too busy working hard to listen to your weakness based complaints.
Especially in the tech world my experience is that what really wins is being lazy and then extending that to allow others to be lazy. Always be alert for sharp edges can and should be sanded down to leave room for other stuff whether that is beach time, family time, or development time for the next big thing.
There is a trend of the wealthy putting in longer hours than ever and working longer than ever even when they have more than enough money to live comfortably.
I think this article is disingenuous, because not all things are difficult for all people. Some people really do work a few hours per week and still live a comfortable lifestyle, whether because they had a lot of help getting a comfy job (wealthy parents, lots of tutoring, nepotism, etc.) or maybe won the genetic lottery, while disadvantaged people may see it as not only difficult but maybe impossible to attain the same without any of that help. I think it comes down to inequality, not laziness.
I don't know what the solution is; inequality shows no signs of abating, disadvanted people find it difficult to get assistance, and there is a culture driven by articles like these that support the notion that "if you grind hard enough you'll succeed." Personally, I think we should be more sympathetic/empathetic to the plight of these people
I think you are missing the point the article is trying to make (at least how I understood it).
The point is not that it is impossible to only work a few hours a week, it is indeed possible. The point is that if you do, you will not be happy, as you need difficulties, challenges and the feeling of progressing toward some goals to feel happy.
Yet, most people's objective is to indeed avoid difficulties. It seems today's holy grail is a high paying job, that requires little actual work.
The author is arguing that we should instead not try to find a way outside of difficulties, but to carve a path through them.
re-quoting from the article:
> "[...] Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.”-Albert Ellis
Ah, but if you have a high-paying job for little work, then you get to choose your difficulties - a new challenging hobby, sport, class, etc. Some people may seek wealth in order to avoid challenges, in which case yes the advice might apply to them - find difficult things you also enjoy. All that said, I still feel like the article targeted individuals who don't get to choose their challenges, and therefore may be more likely to avoid them.
What do you mean by genetic lottery. It seems as if people with 'good genes' also work the hardest. Maybe this is because they get the most mileage from their effort, hence such positive feedback is a good incentive to keep working.
I have OK genes (No chronic health conditions or learning disabilities) but far from winning the lottery. Let’s say I had perfect genes, naturally athletic, better mental acuity, and wealthy parents, maybe I would be worse off in life. The fact that I had to overcome challenges and take risks helped me become the person I am.
I just think it's that much easier to be well off with these conditions; less likely to be worse off; and easier to get back on your feet if you mess up. I think a lot of studies show this; here's a whole article on it [1].
Wealth removes the day to day stress, and that goes a long way. But it doesn't bring happiness itself.
Same with work. Idleness is fun for a short while, then awful. We all know too much work is awful.
Feeling like you have a purpose is the most important thing. I think the formula for happiness is something like: avoid poverty but recognize there are rapidly diminishing returns on wealth, don't be idle but work on something purposeful, if you cannot find purpose in work find it elsewhere.
To each his own. I spent 1.5 years without job (I had enough reserves). It was awesome. I could play games, I could code some random stuff just for fun, I could read books for hours, I could jump in the car and spend few weeks in some village, enjoying fresh air and woods. It's not sustainable for me, so I got back to day work, but I absolutely loved this feeling when I have zero obligations, zero stress, I could do anything (or not doing anything) without any repercussions.
But I completely agree, that having money to be able to live few years without additional income is absolutely important for living stress-less life.
Now my goal is to earn enough money to be free from work obligations for the rest of my life. That's how life should be. And it's a pity that one should spend half of his life just to get to that point. And for most people that's not even possible.
You mentioned all the not idle things in replying to a comment warning against idleness. I didn’t hear “I sat on the couch and ate ice cream for days and it was great”.
For me, the key to enjoying extended slack time is planning and putting in some effort. So basically not remaining idle for long.
Doing hard things improves you, but ultimately your personality is largely defined by the time you stop being a child. Industriousness is very much a personality dimension and it is very hard to change. Industriousness is a measure of how satisfied you are doing nothing. Highly industrious personalities are the most prevalent factor with success across the lifespan (in Western economies) and also seem less likely to develop in Western Democracies where life outlook is stable, nutrition is good and creativity encouraged. but the cause is currently a few avenues of speculation. Personality dimensions are mostly impossible to change meaningfully, but it seems psychadelics and traumatic brain injury seem to be the only two things capable of doing so on a permanent basis, but both have a high chance of causing negative/catastrophic consequences.
I should add that industriousness is loosely conversely correlated with IQ (which is strongly correlated with Openness, effectively a measure of creativity). In this sense - people with good IQ, but off the charts Industriousness occupy all the top spots in the most demanding businesses. IQ is slightly more important than industriousness in academic success, but industriousness in a high amount is a close second, with other traits not coming close to being utterly critical.
Lifetime happiness is a poor goal, but it seems that over a wide variety of of sources that a stable and successful family brings far greater meaning and fulfilment than any career can offer, which should be a priority.
I’m not surprised that this was written by a self-described serial entrepreneur. It has all the hallmarks of a “capitalism isn’t all that bad, it turned out great for me!” type of view.
From a philosophical standpoint I do agree with the author that difficult, deep work is spiritually enriching. But most bullshit jobs that people work for their 9-5 are not that.
I think people are not sick of work in general, but rather are sick of that bullshit work. Working for subsistence, in a way that is obviously exploitative, to enrich corporate elites who actively seek to keep conditions worse for the working class. The grift is much more out in the open now than it used to be.
The conditions of the working class in America are not ordained by God, but rather maintained by the people who are heavily invested in keeping the system the way it is. We could have much more leisure time, like most other industrialized countries. We could have socialized healthcare, like most other industrialized countries. But we don’t, and when people get fed up with it, we got a slew of blog posts like this explaining that those grievances are all bullshit and they should just shut up and enjoy their work.
I'm not a fan of the criticism of people's disposition towards corporate work in this piece (ie. Not wanting to work for a company).
You know what form of ease I have given up? The one where I am trapped in a cage, working on someone else's vision, just for a regular paycheck. I choose to work as hard as I can. To suffer brutally. To not know if I will have money coming to me. I grow my own food. I make my own clothes. I 3D print all my tools, and assemble them from PCB level parts up (Hoping to be able to print basic circuit boards with conductive filament soon).
I consciously made the choice of radical freedom. I am going to be a Nietzsche Ubermensch, and I want to elevate everyone in my field in accordance with good faith and genuine love. We now have to tools to be genuine and part of society at the same time, we just have to get a critical number of people to choose this way of life and educate.
Every time I hear someone say "life is hard, just push through it, embrace the difficulty", I hope they understand there are different levels of hard.
It's absolutely true that if you want to accomplish almost anything you need to endure some levels of suffering. There are a lot of people who just need to hear "quit complaining, quit trying to make it easier, and actually try". There are a lot of people who fail to achieve their goals because they don't try, they're too lazy and they're too nervous to push themselves.
But if you just try to push yourself as hard as you can for the sake of it, you'll waste your effort and burn out. Success requires effort but it's only means to an end: e.g. the success from releasing a product isn't the crunch time you put into it, it's the actual product. Hard work alone won't get you far, you also have to work smart. This is why IMO "embrace the pain" sends the wrong message, "accept the pain" might be better.
Furthermore, everyone has a limit and you have to understand yours. Too much suffering won't make you stronger, it will actually break you. A cruel realization is that there are poor people and laborers who've went through more suffering than you can imagine, and they don't have anything to show for it.
I think Sartre nailed it. Its about radical acceptance of every single decision one has made. No one can take away my choices. Even if I was unfairly imprisoned for life, if my soul couldn't be extinguished I would consider it a worthwhile life.
I believe that while there is some inner truth in the article, that you could push harder and go farther than you could ever believe, there must be a big warning sign too.
If you push yourself hard, then you should also rest hard. You can burn yourself, you can destroy your immune system with stress and die from cancer in your 30s.
I know because I have worked the hardest a person can and gotten nowhere while watching other people succeed with little effort and have learn a lot from those guys.
Then I became much more successful doing much less effort.
I have seen people literarily kill themselves through work and getting miserable. Don't do that.
You must enjoy your wealth while you create it. Enjoy your journey, enjoy the process and things become easier.
Learn basic physics, learn productivity. The more output with the smaller effort, the bigger the efficiency. Master efficiency. Learn Pareto' principle. Learn habit formation so things become automatic and easy. Learn psychology so you understand people.
Learn your limits, pick the battles you could win and win big. Do NOT do work that brings you little while requiring significant effort.
If you work too much in the wrong things you will be miserable anyway.
I made a few million in crypto a few years ago. My wife is submissive and intelligent. Life is very easy and I have no difficulties. I have absolutely no need for external validation. It is like paradise and totally worth achieving.
59 comments
[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 1019 ms ] threadYeah, those Buddhist monks who don't try to achieve anything and yet are happiest creatures on Earth are indeed drones.
The better example here is the guy living off of UBI smoking weed and playing video games all day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthieu_Ricard you will never be as happy as this guy
Please. Meet more people or just read a newspaper or book. The rich love to whine about dissatisfaction, but it is in the smallest tier of unhappiness. The stress of dealing with (or putting off) healthcare you need but can't afford, being evicted or having your utilities turned off, watching those around you slowly die to a drug epidemic, living every day in fear of being arrested by the police that target your neighborhood or your race.....there are actual hardships in life, and the boredom of being out of ideas on how to spend your money is not one of them.
Imagine being born into a rich family, and knowing from day one that nothing you do really matters. Any screwups you have will be fixed immediately by daddy's money. And anything you accomplish, it'll be like "Well yeah of course they were able to do that because of their privilege." Nothing is yours, you aren't even the one responsible for your successes or failures. Life is meaningless and it's because, as the article is trying to say, there's no adversity to give it meaning.
Nothing actually gives life meaning by the way, that's just a shorthand I used.
People ultimately accept their situation and work within their circumstances to make things better
The first is a prerequisite. Hard work might be needed, but not always, specially if you are born in to a rich family.
What? What planet is this? What I have seen is people rearranging their lives by changing their careers, which is hard. Being aware of the gaps in your life and then changing to fill them is extremely hard. Giving up money and prestige to spend time with kids who are not always grateful, at least at first, can be extremely difficult. The big trend I am seeing is people starting their own businesses instead of letting themselves be satisfied with being a corporate tool.
Going a step further, whatever metric this person is using that leads to such grand trivialization is likely to make them insufferable and impossible to reach. Have some feedback about what might make their latest offering more desirable? Sorry, too busy working hard to listen to your weakness based complaints.
Especially in the tech world my experience is that what really wins is being lazy and then extending that to allow others to be lazy. Always be alert for sharp edges can and should be sanded down to leave room for other stuff whether that is beach time, family time, or development time for the next big thing.
I don't know what the solution is; inequality shows no signs of abating, disadvanted people find it difficult to get assistance, and there is a culture driven by articles like these that support the notion that "if you grind hard enough you'll succeed." Personally, I think we should be more sympathetic/empathetic to the plight of these people
The point is not that it is impossible to only work a few hours a week, it is indeed possible. The point is that if you do, you will not be happy, as you need difficulties, challenges and the feeling of progressing toward some goals to feel happy.
Yet, most people's objective is to indeed avoid difficulties. It seems today's holy grail is a high paying job, that requires little actual work.
The author is arguing that we should instead not try to find a way outside of difficulties, but to carve a path through them.
re-quoting from the article:
> "[...] Happiness is experienced largely in striving towards a goal, not in having attained things, because our nature is always to want to go on to the next endeavor.”-Albert Ellis
Sure, that happens sometimes, but not all the time or even most of the time. It seems our anecdotal experience doesn’t agree.
I have OK genes (No chronic health conditions or learning disabilities) but far from winning the lottery. Let’s say I had perfect genes, naturally athletic, better mental acuity, and wealthy parents, maybe I would be worse off in life. The fact that I had to overcome challenges and take risks helped me become the person I am.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/beautiful-people-make-more-m...
Wealth removes the day to day stress, and that goes a long way. But it doesn't bring happiness itself.
Same with work. Idleness is fun for a short while, then awful. We all know too much work is awful.
Feeling like you have a purpose is the most important thing. I think the formula for happiness is something like: avoid poverty but recognize there are rapidly diminishing returns on wealth, don't be idle but work on something purposeful, if you cannot find purpose in work find it elsewhere.
Oh and take care of your body!
But I completely agree, that having money to be able to live few years without additional income is absolutely important for living stress-less life.
Now my goal is to earn enough money to be free from work obligations for the rest of my life. That's how life should be. And it's a pity that one should spend half of his life just to get to that point. And for most people that's not even possible.
For me, the key to enjoying extended slack time is planning and putting in some effort. So basically not remaining idle for long.
Did you mean how unsatisfied you are doing nothing? Because industrious seems to mean "hard-working, diligent, devoted to success".
From a philosophical standpoint I do agree with the author that difficult, deep work is spiritually enriching. But most bullshit jobs that people work for their 9-5 are not that.
I think people are not sick of work in general, but rather are sick of that bullshit work. Working for subsistence, in a way that is obviously exploitative, to enrich corporate elites who actively seek to keep conditions worse for the working class. The grift is much more out in the open now than it used to be.
The conditions of the working class in America are not ordained by God, but rather maintained by the people who are heavily invested in keeping the system the way it is. We could have much more leisure time, like most other industrialized countries. We could have socialized healthcare, like most other industrialized countries. But we don’t, and when people get fed up with it, we got a slew of blog posts like this explaining that those grievances are all bullshit and they should just shut up and enjoy their work.
Yep, let’s blame others for our woes
You know what form of ease I have given up? The one where I am trapped in a cage, working on someone else's vision, just for a regular paycheck. I choose to work as hard as I can. To suffer brutally. To not know if I will have money coming to me. I grow my own food. I make my own clothes. I 3D print all my tools, and assemble them from PCB level parts up (Hoping to be able to print basic circuit boards with conductive filament soon).
I consciously made the choice of radical freedom. I am going to be a Nietzsche Ubermensch, and I want to elevate everyone in my field in accordance with good faith and genuine love. We now have to tools to be genuine and part of society at the same time, we just have to get a critical number of people to choose this way of life and educate.
It's absolutely true that if you want to accomplish almost anything you need to endure some levels of suffering. There are a lot of people who just need to hear "quit complaining, quit trying to make it easier, and actually try". There are a lot of people who fail to achieve their goals because they don't try, they're too lazy and they're too nervous to push themselves.
But if you just try to push yourself as hard as you can for the sake of it, you'll waste your effort and burn out. Success requires effort but it's only means to an end: e.g. the success from releasing a product isn't the crunch time you put into it, it's the actual product. Hard work alone won't get you far, you also have to work smart. This is why IMO "embrace the pain" sends the wrong message, "accept the pain" might be better.
Furthermore, everyone has a limit and you have to understand yours. Too much suffering won't make you stronger, it will actually break you. A cruel realization is that there are poor people and laborers who've went through more suffering than you can imagine, and they don't have anything to show for it.
If you push yourself hard, then you should also rest hard. You can burn yourself, you can destroy your immune system with stress and die from cancer in your 30s.
I know because I have worked the hardest a person can and gotten nowhere while watching other people succeed with little effort and have learn a lot from those guys.
Then I became much more successful doing much less effort.
I have seen people literarily kill themselves through work and getting miserable. Don't do that.
You must enjoy your wealth while you create it. Enjoy your journey, enjoy the process and things become easier.
Learn basic physics, learn productivity. The more output with the smaller effort, the bigger the efficiency. Master efficiency. Learn Pareto' principle. Learn habit formation so things become automatic and easy. Learn psychology so you understand people.
Learn your limits, pick the battles you could win and win big. Do NOT do work that brings you little while requiring significant effort.
If you work too much in the wrong things you will be miserable anyway.