There are a few ways people take such a message - yes, life is precious, be conscious of what we invest our time in. This part makes sense.
Yet, it is worth asking, what makes for a meaning life? What makes the 4000 weeks worth it?
For some, they chase wealth, power, career success, get one's name recognized, etc - these are milestones to be achieved. Things to accomplish.
Others will say, such accomplishments are not the purpose, let us accumulate as many meaningful experiences as possible. So do things like travel the world, and so on.
But it is worth reflecting, a few years from now, what really is the difference between a dream you had a few days ago, compared with an experience from, say 10 years ago? The difference is very little. Our memories are fuzzy, and to chase experiences will also likely leave us feeling unfulfilled.
Human relationships are also similarly shallow, even if we seek social connection, the odds of it being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of it lasting when we need it, is low.
So what's my point? The point is, whatever pursuits we undertake with the belief out there that something that I accomplish, accumulate or experience will bring me happiness and fulfillment is a futile endeavor.
Instead, if we can function from a state of feeling content as we live each day, whatever the circumstances, then what we do during the lifespan given to us matters little. However long or short, the inner contentment makes it meaningful.
Sorry for the long response, but wanted to share how I look upon this topic.
> So what's my point? The point is, whatever pursuits we undertake with the belief out there that something that I accomplish, accumulate or experience will bring me happiness and fulfillment is a futile endeavor.
I recently came across a term for this. Telic vs. atelic activities [0]. Telic activities are things with some terminal state, e.g. a typical goal-oriented project, or something like the act of getting married.
Atelic activities are those activities where the continuous process is the goal. Certain types of learning, being a good parent, and so on.
The important thing to realize is that in most cases it's not the activity itself that defines whether it's atelic or telic, it's how we approach it. You can make "traveling the world" a very goal-oriented activity with a checklist that you must get through, or you can approach it as a continous lifelong project where the enjoyment is in figuring it out as you go.
I believe this distinction is also important for work. Making something telic, e.g. with an agile process, comes with the danger of taking the day-to-day enjoyment out of an activity such as programming that you would normally enjoy. Of course there must be some amount of planning, but I think we've pushed too far into the goal-oriented direction that makes people miserable.
> I recently came across a term for this. Telic vs. atelic activities [0]. Telic activities are things with some terminal state, e.g. a typical goal-oriented project, or something like the act of getting married.
> Atelic activities are those activities where the continuous process is the goal. Certain types of learning, being a good parent, and so on.
Reading the article, I understand this differently. Telic activities are indeed activities that have a terminal goal. However, the idea of a continuous process being the goal seems orthogonal to the telic/atelic distinction. You can have an activity that is both enjoyable and has a final goal: one can play a video-game both because they want to beat it and because they enjoy playing it. An activity being telic doesn't mean it's not enjoyable by itself. You can also have atelic activities that don't have any goals.
There's no reason, a priori, that making an activity telic should take away from the day-to-day enjoyment. Having a final goal shouldn't stop people from enjoying the journey. It does change the game (from an open-ended sandbox to a more linear game), but it doesn't make it unenjoyable per se. What really takes out the enjoyment of the process is not the introduction of the goal, but rather an excessive optimization toward a goal at the expense of the process.
I agree that nothing makes any of your categories better than the others: achievement, fun experiences, relationships. But if I look back on my life so far, something that does seem worth optimizing for is intensity/high quality.
I've had experiences that I enjoyed every minute of (for example because they were new, or doing things that I love). Periods of hard work that stand out in my memory because of how much I learnt, accomplished, felt the 'flow' state. And time spent with people I'm close to that deepened those relationships and gave me a huge sense of connection.
For me, being conscious of what I invest my time in is less about the category of experience, and more about generating opportunities for high quality experiences, making sure I don't pass them up, and being present in the moment during them. I'm not great at this, but it's what I try for.
Yes, I agree. It is not so much about what we do or experience during our given lifespan, but what instead matters is the state of body-mind we are in, while doing or experiencing.
I don't think I agree that relationships are shallow. Sure some are but not all of them. And even the ones that aren't deep can be extremely meaningful. For example, being a good teacher and influencing your students in their lives (teaching them something, inspiring them, etc...). Those seem meaning full to me, unless you're a nihilist.
I think a life full of connection is generally better than one with no connection. I'll even go so far is if anyone response to this saying they're better off with no connection they're lying because the fact that they wrote a response at all suggests they're trying to connect. I'm not saying HN = connection but writing to people in forums is reaching for connection.
I also don't agree contentment is the end of it. I know of every few people who claim being content is best who would give up their partner or be just as happy without them.
> I don't think I agree that relationships are shallow.
I agree. The older I get, the more important they become. And I say this as a person who is generally comfortable alone.
Of course not every connection is deep, but that doesn't make them any less meaningful.
You're spot on about teaching/influencing others, and you don't have to be an actual teacher. Just giving advice and/or helping others when asked (and sometimes when not) is a bigger deal than I think many realize.
I am not saying nothing matters. I'm pointing out that "what matters" is not found "out there" in achievements or experiences. What matters is the state of our being. We seek out things, people, experiences and so on because they make us feel fulfilled.
So, if I am acting from a state of fulfillment or contentment, what I choose to do with my life might be quite different from what I would do if I felt unfilled and lonely.
One way to counteract fading memory of events is to sit down and write a few thousand word diary entry when something great happens. Describe the whole experience from start to finish in as much detail as possible. File it away with the time it happened and an appropriate title. I've done this for great experiences in my life. I go back and read them on a regular basis.
I did this for a few years and I’ve never read my diary since. I’m not sure I ever will, let alone anyone else. Thinking some more about it, it’s pretty clear I mostly did it for comments (livejournal.com).
You do a good thing. My dad passed away suddenly 3 years ago and I exported the 1000 emails he sent me over the years. I read them in random order with Vim. If only I had more.
It’s funny, now that you mentioned it I remembered I did keep a journal like that - in high school, long time ago. It was a very private, well hidden, handwritten journal where I mostly wrote down my dreams, and tried to analyze them. I also described my interactions with friends, girls, parents, my insecurities, plans, etc. Several hundred pages over a couple of years. Even though this journal is valuable to me, perhaps as an archive, I’ve never felt even a slightest desire to open it.
I agree. And also easier to be truthful. I write down events with no intention of ever going back (not that I won't), and the act of writing is helpful. In many ways I re-experience the event and get more out of it - good and bad.
What is the goal? Reminds me of intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. If the goal is personal development, that should be intrinsic and not need outsider validation.
The type of shit I write in a journal is not the type of stuff I want people to read. It is internally processing and organizing thoughts and private matters. It is shower thoughts all the way through processing relationships and emotions. My family, for instance, doesn't need to know half-thought out things that would offend them. Maybe later those journal entries would help me with a difficult conversation with them or serve as a jumping point for a "real" article or post. Most are just private.
There are three levels of visibility in livejoirnal: public, private, and friends-only. Many of my online journal entries are set to private, those are, as you said, for internal processing and private matters. I have the least interest to read those thoughts today. I’m more likely to reread friends-only posts which generated discussion with people who I’ve never met in real life, but who nevertheless became my good online friends. But in any case, if I were to open my journal today it would be to write new entries, not to read old ones.
Hedonism, if it's logically consistent and takes a long-term view, is basically Epicureanism, which is far from what comes to mind when we hear the term hedonism.
Everyone needs to find the level at which they are content with asking no more follow up questions.
Happiness and fulfillment are both choices.
Otjerwise where does it end? You start worrying about the purpose of your legacy since what does it matter anyway the sun will explode, swallow the earth whole, and eventually the whole universe will go through heat death.
Yeah. Absurdism is pretty rad. Embrace the abyss, and you will never have to gaze directly at it again. Life is inherently meaningless. That means it has any meaning you want it to. Comparing it to the alternatives of what I'm told life is supposed to be all about and mean, I have to say I like making it up as I go along far better. I'll never know everything, and that means I'll always have something to live for. That makes me feel at peace.
Life can't be meaningless if it can also have whatever meaning you give it, unless you give it the degenerate meaning of 'nothing', though.
Hence my issue with this: If you need to use (1) "life is meaningless" as a stepping stone to (2) "therefore, life has whatever meaning you give it", you've already agreed to that constraint by default. I'm sure it helps a lot of people get from (1) to (2), but better still is to realize (2) is in a sense _deeper_ than (1) and you can just throw out (1) once you have (2) locked down enough in your psyche.
You misread my statement. Life has no inherent meaning. It is inherently meaningless. Therefore you make your own meaning to give it one. Simple as that. You can, of course, let someone else make a meaning for you, and choose that instead, but it's not something integral to life itself. Just your life.
That's not the same as life having no meaning, just not an inherent one. A fireplace is not inherently burning, but if you stack a bunch of logs in there and light it, it will burn all the same. The meaning of life is just the same. The physical reality of it is at it is, but what you do with it is up to you. You can follow the path laid out before you, like lighting the fireplace, but nothing's stopping you from grabbing a knife and running off to the woods to run with the wolves if that's what you'd rather do. Nothing but yourself, anyway.
It's not so much that I've stopped asking questions, as it is that I am no longer unsafe about what I know. I question my reality every day, but not having all the answers no longer scares me. I know what I know, I know what I don't know, and I know what I think but can't prove. I find out new things every day, and that makes me happy.
I stop asking questions once I am satisfied I understand something, not before. Sometimes I'll leave a question for later, to give my brain some time to digest it, but besides that, I'm always working through something or other. Just gotta ask the right questions is all.
Im having a water-shed moment where I have, picked apart my life's most dissatisfying areas. I was stuck on productivity and outcomes, even for others (parents and partner), but now I can do as you suggest I think. The intrusive thought that yet another dissatisfying aspect of life will arrise may just be a toxic thought that I can manage, or the only next thing to productively address.
I agree - that is why I find such general instructions, such as "Answer all Emails immediately", as often emphasized by other "self-optimisation/productivity" articles, so irritating: Emails, as everything else, initially move to the (really long) 'open task list' - as mentioned in the article here. Depending on their importance, they may move to the 'closed-task' list, which is limited in length and sorted by priority. That means two things: a) emails will be answered in descending priority, meaning that some may be answered faster than other and b) some emails have such a low priority to me that I may fail to answer them at all - which is Ok. I have limited time available, so the outcome is if an email isn't important enough there is a chance it won't get answered, and I won't regret it.
> But it is worth reflecting, a few years from now, what really is the difference between a dream you had a few days ago, compared with an experience from, say 10 years ago? The difference is very little
Depends on the dream and the experience. I can recall many dreams and many experiences in breathtaking clarity as if they were actual photos. Compared to photos, these also carry sentiment, meaning and they have impact.
> Human relationships are also similarly shallow, even if we seek social connection, the odds of it being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of it lasting when we need it, is low
the chances of it happening are definitely low though.
almost everyone has some kind of long term connection with other people because we meet so many people in our modern lives.
but chances of "them being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of them lasting when we need it" are extremely low.
Many people don't even have a good relationship with their families or with their parents or with their kids.
It is also closely linked to aging.
The older we get, the fewer friends we have. According to a recent study by experts from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Oxford in England, our social network shrinks after we reach our mid-20s.
I’m impressed by the beauty of this site and sophistication of the UI. However I _hate_ this type of messaging that does nothing for you except make your mental health worse. I don’t want to think about how many weeks of life I have left! Inducing existential dread is NOT what any of us need to start living our lives more fully (which I assume is the intent of this site). You wanna zone out on YouTube? Go for it. That’s just as valid as staying up all night to watch a sunrise. As with all things, moderation.
> Inducing existential dread is NOT what any of us need to start living our lives more fully
I’ve found, as I watch friends and family age, that learning to confront and work with this dread is essential to living life fully. Especially as decline and decay start to dominate aspects of your life more and more.
The people that I know that are uncomfortable talking about these topics progressively live in a world of fear and doubt as they age. The others, become increasingly resilient.
Arguably the single act that defines maturity is facing this dread and learning to accept and exist with it.
Until then you are living a half life, only dealing with the part of existence you find comfortable, but so much of who we are as individuals is defined by this other aspect of being.
So how do you accept it? I know a handful of 75+ year old family members who I am close to and they don’t think about it at all. The ones who act like they are still young and don’t dwell on death seem the happiest. It runs counter to the argument that death is something you need to meditate on and acknowledge every day.
Maybe there is something to just living in denial until your quality of life has degraded and your friends are gone and death seems a welcome release.
Acting young does not exclude thinking about death. Being able to focus on other things most of the time also doesn't exclude thinking about death. I find it difficult to believe your family members do not think about death, even if you try your hardest to avoid it, people die around you and you are forced to face reality.
Accepting death will happen is a prerequisite. So many are afraid of this event, but it is just another event. What can you do about death? Nothing. So it's pointless to worry about the impending event of death. For some control freaks, this sends them into an internal spiral, and to them I say maybe reassess whatever trauma caused them to seek control over the uncontrollable. For others, this is freeing. It happens when it happens so all I can do is act on the now.
This is where I think most elderly people are at, and why they feel liberated. They aren't concerned about a legacy or preventing death or reputation, they care about the here and now. Loving who they love, working on what they enjoy, saying what's on their mind, and letting go of the rest.
Some people mistake this liberation to be a complete disregard for planning or the future. But on the contrary, if an elderly person sees high value in a higher education for their grandchildren for instance, they might seek to make contributions. They are acting in the now for their own benefit, understanding whatever happens when they are gone is uncontrollable anyway.
Do you need to pray to the god of death every day? No, but it's helpful to frame your perspective knowing death is going to happen. Especially when doing so helps fuel better decisions. Why worry about your social perception by joining a painting class? Why not go for a nice hike today? Our problems see minute when we acknowledge death is around the corner.
If you let the bad emotions and feelings do their business, instead of constantly trying to escape from them, you wouldn't be feeling this way.
You, and many others in this modern world, remind of Dostoyevskian characters: neurotic, overly-emotional, busy buzzing around, the cause of all their own problems. No one can sit still in silence, alone with themselves -- they're always running away. There's always some emotion taking hold of them, and can't simply let it run its course. No, "something must be done!"
It reminds me of the Russian "martial art" система: the more you "hold on," the more pain you will feel, and less effective your moves will be. Somehow, people have never learned to let go, and become completely relaxed. They're constantly holding onto something, and being thrashed around by life.
Perhaps you people need to try ayahuasca? Or maybe meditation? Maybe drink less coffee? Maybe stop forcing yourself to do all of this stuff you really don't want to do? Take a break? Become mindful of your body, mind, and soul?
I have 2,000 weeks left. My life will not be lived "fully" to the standards of some over-socialized urbanite. That is fine. I have things I want to do. I don't care about anyone's opinion on them. Knowing I have lived half of my life already doesn't stir any emotions in me. There is no existential dread.
There is no "start" to living a life. You're living one already. If there are things that stir emotions in you, let them. Never exploring your feelings, leading to the emotional depth of a middle schooler, is one way to not live a "full" life -- not some inanity about "spending" your time "better" (to reduce life to some abstraction is only for the soulless).
I seriously wish people on HN and more broadly would stop suggesting drugs and tripping out so often as a solution to any depression or existential dread.
I get it's one of several suggestions you made, but it's the most dangerous suggestion of all of them. People end up seriously harmed by this stuff, it's not to be taken lightly.
Ugh. Yeah I was annoyed at that one. For one, I've been sober for about 10 years. Taking some mind altering substances would probably result in me waking up in a hotel room in TJ 2 weeks later. :)
It’s adorable that you made an account to scold some random person for how their inner life works, as if you could glean that from a one-paragraph comment.
But as we all know: those who scold random people are the great teachers-by-example.
You've made a fresh HN account and made a lot of broad character assessments about me from a single comment. I am happy with where I am in life and what I've done with it. I just had a critique about the website having unintentional side effects. I've read 4k weeks and actually like that book. Perhaps instead of lecturing strangers on the internet with your enlightened views, you take a second to meditate and access some humility? Kind of annoying when someone suggests that isn't it?
It has crossed my mind to take such a loan, spend it on waygu and Château Lafite and that euthanasia place (Dignitas?) in Switzerland. Cheat the bank and the pain of dying. But then again, I am curious to see how things turn out, and that I won't know until my computation is complete.
Tbh I don’t think you understood the goal of this post. The idea, to me, is to remind the reader of how precious life is, and to be mindful of how you’re spending it. Whether you think about it or try to ignore it, time is ticking by at the same speed. I’m only 25 but I’ve wasted way too much time on Reddit, YouTube, and even HN, in my opinion.
> As with all things, moderation.
Sure, but in my anecdotal experience the vast majority of people are spending more time on YouTube than what their own values would permit. And also anecdotally, people who experience more existential dread seem to be those who realize they aren’t living their life quite the way they’d like to.
I’m 45. Wife. Kid. The works. Painfully aware of how precious life is. 20 years ago when I was your age (which btw feels like only a few years ago…) this type of content resonated a lot more with me. I assume it was because the concept of aging was still pretty abstract. Now I’m in the shit so to speak.
My point is that I’ve seen a million of these. Hell I’ve read 4K weeks! You’ll get no argument from me that spending your time wisely is important but try to keep in mind that making the most of Every Second Of The Day is a sure way to make yourself miserable. I should know. I’ve done it. So, the intent of this page might be to inspire, but for a lot of folks it will trigger unnecessary existential panic.
I guess just try to remember the very wise advice from LOTR: “not all who wander are lost.”
> spending your time wisely is important but try to keep in mind that making the most of Every Second Of The Day is a sure way to make yourself miserable.
That was the whole point of the book though? Stop trying to make the most of every second and do what you think is important.
It’s great you read 4000 Weeks, but as others have mentioned, I’m not sure you gathered the major takeaways. 4000 Weeks is about embracing finitude and accepting that you can’t do everything. The notion is freeing, because once you acknowledge you are finite, you can then make conscious decisions about how you want to spend your time. The intent of the book is to encourage people to choose time wisely, not “fill every day”. It very much has a quality over quantity kind of message. As an ADHD sufferer/chronic procrastinator/perfectionist type, I found it incredibly helpful and freeing to acknowledge that you will never be able to create everything to an unrealistic perfect standard, so instead focus on the things that matter the most to you.
I'm in the exact same phase of life as you. Same age, mortgage, kids, wife, etc.
Recently I've been feeling distracted at work and unable to commit anything to completion, especially since I've been WFH since you-know-when. It's been a blessing to not have a commute but at the same time demands more of my concentration. At the same time, I have a hard time saying no at work. Throughout the day I tend to flit between tasks, along with starting/stopping work altogether as my mind wanders.
I like the message this article brings. One thing I definitely don't do is think about things I've completed.
I've talked to a counselor about this. They've gotten me to think about being more graceful to myself about my concentration and my work. I don't know if I'm there yet but we'll see.
I don't know if it really matters if you are 20, 40, or 80; we can get caught up in certain traps no matter what our age is. Experience is definitely something we should be able to tap into later in life, but we can be stressed and feeling like we need to do much more than we are capable of even when we are 'old'.
I have a little startup and I keep a 'TODO' list of features to implement, bugs to fix, things to test, documentation to write, etc.. I could stress out because the list never seems to get any shorter. Every time I cross one thing off the list, I think of two more to add. Instead, I try to focus on what I can accomplish that day (or that week) and stop when I have spent a certain amount of time on it.
If I am in an ambitious mood, I might speed many hours tackling a single issue. Other times, I can go a whole week without ever opening up the IDE. That is OK! I have the luxury of not depending on the startup for financial survival. I also realize some others do not share this freedom so I don't criticize them if they feel stress and overwork on their project. I just work at my own pace and try to gain satisfaction on what I am able to accomplish.
I try to apply this technique to other areas of my life as well.
That’s a good point. Whenever I’ve felt existential dread it’s been soothing to know I can improve myself and live life in a better way. However if you’re already in what you consider to be an ideal state, you don’t have any wiggle room. And with a wife and kids on top, you have others who depend on you and also your own attachment to those people, which makes it all the more difficult to acknowledge that life is finite. All of the above which I haven’t experienced for myself.
"Ideal" is pretty far from what I would call my state :) I will however say that I wouldn't go back to any earlier point in my life given the choice. The only thing that I _truly_ miss is the 6 pack abs and being functional on 2 hours sleep.
very strange that you've read "Four Thousand Weeks" but associate it with "making the most of Every Second Of The Day" which is the precise opposite of its philosophy
Tbh I’m sick of these supposedly well-intentioned “reminders” to be better, to not “waste time”, and so on: for most people they demonstrably don’t work, as evidenced by the fact that out of one thousand people that know it applies to them, only a handful will do something about it. While the rest will verbally acknowledge it, will fret about it in their minds, and yet will do nothing about it.
If one individual fails to change, that’s their problem: if a method of change doesn’t work for the vast majority of people, then the problem is with the method.
Just my pet theory here but I don’t think that most people can just get off reddit because they have only X weeks left; can lose weight because they know they are eight kilograms overweight; can start exercising because someone told them something bad will happen to them in twenty years if they don’t; can start socializing because someone told them that in studies XYZ, people who are lonely are 90% more likely die of pancreatic cancer… it’s all completely backwards.
Because you know what makes people do anything? A purpose, goal, or meaning. By trying to “get the most out of my remaining 2800 weeks” like some little optimizing robot, you’re trying to improve “in life” (who wants to be a loser in life right) by doing the equivalent of maintaining your garden by removing all the weeds with a tweezer; already having some kind of purpose is what compels people to lose weight and to focus their time, because they might need that time to fulfill their purpose, they might need to lose weight in order to be fit enough to do what they need to do, and so on.
I also notice that having a purpose has a large impact on getting through the day. Because then everything I do, I do in support of that purpose. But when I lack a purpose? Then most things are mundane, robotic, tedious checklists. Things I do in order to avoid things like maybe possibly getting pancreatic cancer in thirty years time.
> Someone came to him [Ajahn Chaa] complaining of all the conflicting advice he gave to his students. Sometimes he would suggest one thing and then later just the opposite. Ajahn Chaa replied, “It’s like this. If I see someone walking down a road and about to fall off into a ditch on the left, I’ll shout, ‘Go right.’ Later, if the same person, or someone else, is walking on the road and about to fall into a ditch on the right, I’ll say, ‘Go left, go left.’ It’s always about staying on the path.”
I don't really think it's a contradiction. I think the idea, rather, is to focus on expanding the depth of your life (abundance), knowing you have little control over the length of it (scarce).
I feel your feels here and whole-heartedly agree that the “life is short” trope is unhelpful. But the book that this site was based on is not that. In fact, I would say that the week count that the site give you is antithetical to the book’s message.
I regard 4000 Weeks as one of, if not the, most important books I’ve ever read. The message might not be important for everyone but it changed my perspective in several important ways.
I've read it. You're right that it's not an existential panic machine. I don't know that it resonated with me as much as it has with you but it's a good read.
I was mentioning the 4000 weeks idea to a friend and how I found it interesting and thought-provoking, and their reaction was quite the opposite as it was way too dark for them.
I wonder if this idea highlights some fairly clear differences in people's personalities and mental models (at least, at the time and place in their life they're evaluating it).
I deeply disliked the book not because I found it dark but instead obvious and the writer plays out the implications that we have limited time in our lives in very strange ways such as arguing against using NFC to pay for things.
If you have taken an intro philosophy class or even watched some videos on YouTube you will have already seen these ideas.
A much better use of someone’s limited time would be to just read an intro to Buddhism or existentialism. You will get the same basic concepts and much better ideas on how you can address these issues in your life.
Who said anything about existential dread? Perhaps the fact that dread is your reaction speaks more to your relationship with mortality than to the site’s approach.
Fair enough. I guess I read your statement as universalizing that feeling. That is, when you said "this type of messaging ... does nothing for you except make your mental health worse" it didn't seem like a statement about your reaction; it seemed like a criticism of the site.
It probably isn't just you, but on the other hand, if we were to agree that existential dread is a less desirable reaction than some others (and it might not be!) there doesn't seem to me to be an obvious way to develop those more desirable reactions through methods other than exposure therapy via these sorts of sites.
The thing is, it can be both stress and revelation depending on how you look at it. Part of 4000 weeks is a chapter that is called "Cosmic insignificance therapy" which goes along the lines of nothing we do really matters in a grand scheme of things.
Again, depending on how you see it - it can be both shackling but also liberating.
The both of extremes of:
- I want to put my head in the sand and ignore the reality (we are mortal)
- YOLO
are not exactly ideal. As you said yourself => balance.
If you don't feel some existential dread at some point it's because you aren't being honest with yourself, which is a prerequisite to moving past that dread. IMO reminding people that they are mortal and that they should find a way to deal with that is a public service. So many of the strange things we do are because we're afraid to confront the reality that we too, some day, will die.
I dunno. I think you are over generalizing TBH. For some it might be a public service. For others it might damage their mental health. It's highly contextual to where you are in life.
I understand the message. I get that it’s coming from a good place too. I’m just saying that stuff like this can make people feel bad about themselves unintentionally.
I'd say sometimes people may need to feel bad about themselves in order to improve. And this feeling may be triggered unintentionally, too; there's no way around it sometimes. Feeling the pain sucks though.
I don’t anything is as binary as that no. I do think that there’s a difference between being ready for a change and beating yourself up about your shortcomings.
I believe every single person must define that for themselves, and should be a definition specific for a short timeframe, it is useless to think about an "end-goal-well-spent" time because your opinion about what is well spent is gonna change of course
For example, for me right now an example of "time well spent" is playing with my elder cat. I try to reduce the time dedicated to every other thing today just to be able to get more of this
Had the opposite reaction. The advice is valuable, but I didn’t care much about the presentation. The purpose also isn’t to give you existential dread, but to pull you out of the daily productivity routine blinders so that you can see the broader bird’s eye view perspective.
I've said this in a few other comments but I'll just repeat here that I am not accusing the author of the site of trying to make people feel bad about themselves. The intent is clearly to inspire. I just think that for a certain cohort of people it will hurt more than it helps.
Not reacting to your comment, nor to any particular of the replies, but the general direction of the conversation below: I get the impression this is a lightning rod for misunderstanding, and lots of loaded assumptions around what participants in the conversation value and about the values they find disagreeable.
But a common thread I’ve seen is that being adaptable to what you need and helps you thrive is better than setting arbitrary impossible expectations. That seems totally healthy to me regardless of some finer points I might dispute in individual comments. I hope there’s a chance this discussion will reach a point with less talking past each other, because there’s an awful lot that seems to be held in common.
Why not? That sort of thing isn't helpful or thought provoking for many of us. On the other hand many will find it thought provoking in extremely negative ways.
Most people do not like to think about their impending doom on this hellish planet.
> You wanna zone out on YouTube? Go for it. That’s just as valid as staying up all night to watch a sunrise.
People should spend their time how they please but I strongly feel that feeding The Algorithm directly into your brain for hours is objectively less mentally healthy than staring at a sunrise, even if the sunrise is mind numbingly boring.
And vegetables are better for you than a candy bar. You should try to have more of the former than the latter but treating yourself to some junk food here and there is a good thing.
Maybe this website would serve some purpose if we weren’t constantly being reminded of getting older, weaker, not having much time left, maybe you will get Alzheimers if you don’t do this One Weird Trick, etc. But as it stands we are reminded plenty of how short our lives are.
TFA is a little pompous and purports to give advice nobody asked for. The date selector at the beginning uses the super weird American format of month/day/year that nobody else uses. And, to the best of my knowledge, there is no "Charles Eisenstien", but a Charles Eisenstein (author of the first quote in the long, interminable scroll).
I'm not so sure life is short; but spending it reading self-help books and unsolicited advice is one sure way to waste time.
The point is not to focus on time, or calculating how much of it you have; the point is to live in the present and step out of time. Forget it. The past is only in your mind. The future does not exist. The only real thing is right now.
If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present.
--Lao Tzu
The past isn't generally depressing and there are lots of things worth to be remembered. The past is not only in my mind, it is around me all the time and it is the context I'm living in.
The future needs some planning.
We just need to live in the present, but also have to make decisions based on past&present&future.
Shuzo Matsuoka rephrased this in one of his motivational speeches, and just like that it sounds less absolute:
"'I want to feel alive!' Its easy. You cant think about the past. 'Why did I do that??' It'll just turn to anger. You also can't think about the future. 'Will it be okay?' It just turns to worry. In that case, hold on for dear life! Stake your entire life in here and now!"
Have you read the book this tribute is based on? It doesn't focus on time as much as you're implying. More that it tries to cultivate a deep understanding that we essentially are time. I'm not doing the concept justice here, but I read the book twice last year and find this tribute a good reminder of the ideas and suggestions in it.
It's worth a read, but perhaps it found me at the right time in my life.
After reading this, I used this nice online PDF generator to print out my personalized life calendar, and kept it in my home office with a pen nearby, checking off the passing weeks occasionally (every month or so).
Spending some time to check off the first ~2k weeks -- checking a little box for each week of my life thus far -- was quite an emotional thing, actually.
Paul Graham also has an essay which explores the same core idea, but imho he manages to explore more angles of the passage of time, and how we perceive it through the scarcity of different experiences we value. If you liked this one, check it out:
Man this was hard to read. My parents moved across the country a few years ago, went from seeing them every two weeks to twice a year. I'll be lucky to see them more than a couple dozen times total for the rest of our lives.
Site creator here! Thanks to all who spent some time reading and scrolling through. I’m happy to see such great discussion here, and gives me some confidence the excerpts pulled were the right ones to get the core ideas across.
Thanks for your site and message. Sorry but personally I found your article difficult to read. Your font choice and background, which seemed to me to overwhelm the text with little contrast, made it hard for me to see and parse the words. Sadly I think much of your message was lost on me. For reference I'm in my sixties and have poorish eyesight. I'm using Firefox. Best wishes.
Thank you for making this! I read the book twice last year and it made a deep impact on me and my relationship to basically everything. The book, coupled with coaching has greatly improved my life.
Your site is a great summary reminder of the key points and it brought me back into the experience of reading the book.
For folks reading this, I do recommend reading the book since the website is just a taste of the book. It's lessons may hit different not having gone through the full journey.
Thank you for making this, also one of the most impactful books I read last year. And last but not least, thank you for GraphQL and your contribution to the open source community!
This is what's frustrating with Google's Material Design. If tech-savvy users like me can't even find or know that the year is clickable, what hope do most non-technical folks or seniors have?
I noticed a fair amount of complaints about this in the thread, so am sorry for the poor experience.
In an attempt for simplicity I used a simple <input type=date> field which means it uses your OS or browser’s native date picker. As a Mac/iOS user I’m pretty familiar with those, but I’ll admit I did not test this across Windows or Android devices which apparently have not done a great job at this UI element.
Having kids saved me. You can’t procrastinate on raising kids. There are no sick days. I’ve never been more active in my life. Today I spent an hour running around avoiding lava at a playground. Before kids I’d of spent all that time and a lot more playing World of Warcraft, I believe.
Having a pup and embracing her as my kid feels similar. I know it’s not the same, but I sincerely think that waking up every day putting my pup first is the best thing I’ve ever lived for. Everything else is just icing I have more reason to enjoy.
This is so wonderful to hear. I’m so many ways a puppers is like a toddler. You can’t take days off. You can’t decide to just put it off for a while or skip the walk when the weather is poor.
Don’t worry, I’m not modern society. I’m just some guy who finds joy being a good human for and with my pup, caring for her wellbeing, finding fun healthy things to do with her. I find a lot of joy in a lot of other things too, they’re just all incomparable to my relationship with my pup. If that still sounds like a sad indictment of anything, I’ve failed you somehow but I’m gonna throw in the towel and go snuggle with my pup regardless.
The thing that most makes this poster's life worth living is caring for an animal which was engineered to be pleasant to care for. And a lot of people use these animals to replace human relationships (I've seen it quite a few times, so blatantly) as they are simpler and more stable.
And the indictment is about society (in which human relationships are really hard to have for so so many reasons), not this poster, who has figured out a real cheat code to life and love (and more power to them)
Well, if I can speak for myself, my relationship with my pup has improved my relationship with several humans. And whatever she was engineered for, a simple and stable relationship has been something we’ve built over just shy of four years and still work on.
To the extent there’s any notion of replacing human relationships and to your sibling comment’s point, she didn’t replace parenting a human child for me. That would never have happened, I had already decided that and agreed with my previous partner about that before we adopted pup.
There is one way my relationship with pup has curtailed other human interactions: I don’t want to spend a lot of time with people who find being around pup a nuisance. People who want to enjoy her are very welcome. People who are cautious about unfamiliar dogs are also welcome and they almost always warm up to her immediately. People who want me to exist without consideration of my pup don’t get my time. I have the same expectations for the presence of humans in my life who are important to me and aren’t harming anyone.
> she didn’t replace parenting a human child for me. That would never have happened, I had already decided that and agreed with my previous partner about that
If I read that correctly, you decided with your partner to not ever have kids.
Do you think that decision resulted in some room you had in your life to collectively care for a little creature that returns affection?
- I independently decided I didn’t want human children well before this relationship or even meeting my former partner
- I can’t recall whether former partner told me when they arrived at the same conclusion, but it also predated our relationship.
- Most of the reason for mentioning this was that former partner adopted pup, not me. To wit: there wasn’t any potential (that I can think of) for me subconsciously substituting a pup in place of potential human parenthood.
- Our agreement on the topic was mainly meant to bolster the fact that human child rearing was never in question. There wasn’t anything of that sort to substitute, for me or for the circumstances of my life.
- Without airing more private details than I’d find comfortable, pup came with me when former partner and I amicably parted ways. Despite pup not being “mine” in the strictest sense.
To answer your question more directly: I defer to the original commenter I replied to. The thing what made me make space to care for my pup was having no alternatives. She’s my charge, she’s my responsibility to provide a good life. There aren’t days off and there aren’t excuses.
Even before OP replied stating these things, that’s what I recognized as similar in my parenting responsibilities.
The thing which seems to be bothering a few people is that I expressed feeling a similar bond to my pup that people feel with their human children.
I grew up with dogs. My family has had dogs I’ve known and loved since. Some I’ve bonded with more than others, some not so much. My relationship with my pup has developed different from that.
Being really blunt: for everything else I love about her, a part of the reason we’ve bonded so well is because I didn’t get to choose. That’s the thing that felt similar to OP’s comment about how parenting a human child changed their life. I had a new life where a whole living creature was my responsibility and mine to provide both basic and emotional needs.
Now if this is still unsatisfactory as far as why I made that connection, maybe I’ve failed you… or maybe, like another sibling commenter said, you want to project things onto what I’ve said that aren’t there. Either way, I gotta feed my pup and give her a good fun play or three. So that’s all I’ve got.
I don’t see how they replace human relationships though. I have 2 dogs. 2 kids too! But yeah dogs are nice to have around. Sometimes annoying (barking, toilet incidents, training issues and so on)
Here if this helps: not the reason I’m holding on to being alive, the most important purpose I serve in the life I’m living. I don’t experience that with human children, but I do experience it with my pup. I care for her a great deal and she’s my most important responsibility. I really think it’s weird that this is such a foreign concept or needs this much explanation to anyone.
I found it sad too, because, and I say this as a dog lover who's had a great many of them (and a shitload other pets too), the line was "waking up every day putting my pup first is the best thing I’ve ever lived for."
I don't think it's bad to put a puppy first, where the indictment of society seems to stand for me is that this is "the best thing" they've ever lived for.
I'm really really happy for the OP because it's really good to have a wonderful thing to live for, of course. And, dogs are awesome (albeit as sibling said, genetically engineered to be awesome, not that that really matters). More like... this feels to me another example of the extreme isolation of our modern society, especially in countries like the USA which lacks a degree of freedom enjoyed by many of us (freedom from fiscal anxiety caused by medical or education debt, freedom from fear of homelessness, freedom of travel, of leisure). I don't know the OP's location but the story smacks true of so many of my American friends who have found joy in their isolated lifestyle after getting a dog. Functionally alone in the suburbs, after driving home alone from work, too far from social meeting places and too tired to go to them after getting home around 7, their greatest joy is the dog that greets them earnestly when they get home. Their outside time is forced (happily) by the dog that needs a walk, otherwise, why bother? Walk around in the suburbs? If there's even a sidewalk, you're lucky.
But there's plenty of people for whom human interaction is basically torture, and in cases like that I'm really happy that such people can still find a form of social joy through a dog. We could be completely missing the mark with the OP, basically projecting our frustration with modern society on a very short paragraph from a stranger.
> But there's plenty of people for whom human interaction is basically torture
On HN, sometimes doubly so. I’ve several times deleted similar comments anticipating they’d be misunderstood. But “indictment on society” and reinforcing that as an illness of society is beyond the cruelty I’d imagined people here would come up with.
> We could be completely missing the mark with the OP, basically projecting our frustration with modern society on a very short paragraph from a stranger.
Maybe? You think? Random people telling me there’s something wrong with the whole society around me because I love my dog?
You catalogued a bunch of big, wrong, assumptions about my life and circumstances, and about my disposition towards them. You went on to acknowledge that it’s possible you’re projecting. Which would be reasonable, even kind and a welcome amount of self-awareness relative to some others’ reactions, except…
I confirmed that yes, you’d been projecting, and yes your assumptions were wrong. And your reaction to that is to double down, strongly. So we’re back at my individual relationship, as one human, with my one pup, has anything at all to do with society, and that my affection is somehow an indictment thereof.
Look, I regret sharing that affection here and its reaction has lived rent free in my head for more time than I’d prefer to admit. But I’m also not going to pretend that total strangers translating I love my pup to anything about society is anything less than totally absurd, particularly anything negative.
And look, I’m prone to missing social cues, so when I saw the first reply I sincerely wondered if there was something implicit in my comment or these reactions that wasn’t connecting for me. But having read your and other explanations, I don’t think it’s me.
Anyway, hell is other people so I’m going to try my best to put this discussion out of mind, confident that my relationship with my pup and with my friends and family who don’t shrug when told they’re being cruel is much healthier than … whatever the hell this has been.
The back stage pass to stuff you’d be embarrassed to do (or not think off doing) without kids is pretty cool too! Floor is lava, water parks, toy shops etc.
The older I get, the more I appreciate the wisdom of religions, especially (but not exclusively) Buddhism. Versions of this can be found in many wisdom traditions.
Strive for tranquility and peace of mind by living simply, deeply caring for others, increasing genorosity, taking pleasure in the simple things, controlling the mind, cultivating positive emotions, being ethical.
If you do these things you will reduce suffering for yourself and others. That to me is an ultimate goal.
Time speeds up as you get older because every day is a decreasingly smaller proportion of your life lived. A fixed 24 hour duration is perceived as a smaller and smaller window into our lives, at any point in time. So life speeding up is just a mental distortion.
Instead then, focus on figuring out how to live more healthily. Advances there objectively provide dividends.
Also if you’re selfishly wondering what type of problems to devote your life to, develop your empathy and do things that benefit others, because as your time on the clock runs down, the value of your successes in that category don’t also diminish, unlike everything else. Giving is the gift that keeps on giving, so to speak.
Man, yeah, I feel that; I just don’t have enough time to do everything I want to do.
- me, laying on my couch and mindlessly browsing HN
There are things I want to do that I legitimately don’t have time for, even though I have time to browse HN. Or at least, I won’t make time for them, because they’re quite time consuming. I want to learn Japanese, make my own top-down RPG, get a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Build some cool woodworking projects. Start a blog. Photography. Get better at golf. I’m interested in everything, I could rattle off tons more things that I would love to spend time on.
But these must compete with other things I love to do, as well as things I must do.
I’ve been doing some game programming recently and have gotten really excited because I finally have grokked Godot. But, I’m not sure I have the time to actually make my own game of any quality.
Actually just giving up on that project might be freeing. Like when I gave up on Advent of Code on Day 17 due to problems taking me too long, I was more relieved than anything. I think this is what’s behind giving up on the idea of being able to do all of the stuff you want to do.
The problem is that this is fairly soul-crushing. When I have a side project going that I’m really interested in, it’s quite fun and energizing.
But I can be obsessive, so all of this extra energy goes towards the project. I think I end up netting negative, because I’m spending so much time and energy on the project. I will also start to abandon other responsibilities and fall behind in other areas of life. Exercise, chores, other but less sexy projects I care about (meditation is always the first to get discarded).
Eventually I hit a point where I realize I need to get my act together, and by then, letting go of the big project is relieving, but sad.
I guess the problem here is more with the obsessiveness than topics in the article, but they might be related. Like, I‘m constantly chasing novelty. This is probably common nowadays due to the internet. I’m a true geek who loves learning stuff, and I like doing it in a hands on fashion. Having an effectively infinite stream of novel things I can teach myself (minus BJJ and such) to do is just plain addicting.
I’m not quite sure what to do about this. This habit has made me a much better programmer. And I’m always doing something I love doing. But there’s collateral damage to other things I care about. And eventually I start feeling like I have no time to do what I need to do, and also what I want to do.
I don't know if you currently do BJJ or are only thinking about it, but I started when I was older, and may never get a black belt. But, I have moved up over the years and know that my belt color changing or getting a stripe on an existing belt doesn't suddenly make me a different person. After chasing goals for so long, BJJ is an amazing reminder that it really is the journey that matters. It's shaped me to be a better person regardless of an arbitrary belt color.
I’m also in this dilemma.
I feel that as time passes, slowly more and more things fall into my plate of ‘want to dos’.
How does one manage time with so many hobbies!
My attempt is to move the goal post back down, so as to not be overwhelmed.
Like learning Japanese for an example. Rather than me saying, I want to learn Japanese, I’ll set a goal for myself to, pick up the basics if hiragana and katakana.
I think this approach will help reinforce motivation for me to be short-term goal minded.
The reading did open my eyes to the thought that not everything on our list will be completed. You might be young, but at my I age have some things to eliminate from this list; or more specifically, move them down further in terms of priority. My reasoning is a personal one, at my age, things tend not to stick as well as when I was younger.
I suggest you inform yourself about (adult) ADHD. Your behavior matches mine exactly. It was only after I learned about ADHD when everything finally made sense.
My fiancee has ADHD and sends me memes and videos and such about it. And I'm always like, these videos are dumb, doesn't everyone do those things? I've been wondering about this for a while, but I've tended to write it off due to me having pretty different symptoms/behaviors from her - but I guess it can manifest in different ways.
What intervention(s) have you found the most helpful? Or are there any resources you can point me to? Thanks.
> these videos are dumb, doesn't everyone do those things?
Have any person go through the adult/inattentive-type ADHD symptoms [1]. Everyone will see themselves nodding. It's difficult for people to understand the difference if they are not affected. There's a difference between common headaches and migraine, or between bad mood and depression. It's about the intensity and the frequency (broadly speaking). This doesn't mean that everyone who procrastinates has ADHD. It's really hard to explain the state of complete mental unability to perform a task that I don't like to do vs. "being lazy". When I first described my symptoms to my wife, she was also like "everyone has those symptoms from time to time". Only after reading a chapter from a book about adult ADHD she understood the difference. Unfortunately, the book is in German. What I can recommend is Dr Russel's ADHD presentation [2] and Roman Kogan's ADHD Wiki [3].
> What intervention(s) have you found the most helpful?
Well before learning about ADHD, I have developed many coping mechanisms. The use of todo lists, calendars and alarm clocks has probably made the biggest difference. As you have mentioned the "chase for novelty", I can only imagine how big your bookmark list has become. I've coped with this one by having a single "inbox" bookmark folder and clearing it frequently. Anything I want to keep for a longer time ends up in one of my tools (Static Marks [4] - a tool I've made for long-term bookmarks, OneNote for notes, my blog drafts for research material, Todoist for todos etc.).
However, no coping mechanisms will solve the constant inner restlessness. I've made several excuses for not getting myself an official diagnosis, but I want to do that soon™.
>You have lived one thousand seven hundred seventy-four of them so far
That’s a significant amount of the weeks you’ll see. The psychologist Erik Erikson suggests that at this phase of life you focus on the virtue of love. Share yourself more intimately with others and invest in happy relationships so that your future weeks can be lived well with companionship and purpose.
Tapping on the year at the top in the date picker popup should open a year chooser. This should be the native Android date picker (<input type="date"> in the HTML), e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/56789808/623763.
The older I get (I’m in my 50s) the more I look forward to death (not that I’m doing anything to hasten my way there). No more taxes. No more work. No more responsibilities. No more concerns. Rest in Peace indeed.
From reviews, I kind of perceived it's only about limiting work in progress and adopting a more slow and human approach to things.
I feel these insights were already brought by many industrial production methodologies, e.g. Toyota, in a more rational and less newage-y package. Am I missing something?
Its from the perspective of someone who was obsessed with productivity porn coming to terms with the idea that none of that will ever actually work. He addresses why he thinks that and supports it with different ideas. I don't think anything is new, but he takes disjointed ideas and kind of puts it all together from his perspective. I thought it was interesting and it was a quick read.
I think this is a good description. What I missed from some other comments on HN that were complementary to the book is how personal it is. I think people who are already familiar with Oliver would enjoy it best.
Some sections were so specific to a certain type of guy, but phrased as if everyone will relate to it. I still liked it overall, but it really is for "productivity porn" strivers with a certain background. I mean, I go on HN, I'm familiar with GTD and pomodoro, I'm anxious about my own achievement, I kinda thought I was that guy. But after reading 4000 weeks, I could be like, ok, wow, uh, interesting things to chew on, but these are not really my problems.
(And I am still baffled by the idea that people would look down on you for having hobbies. Is this a British thing? Do I have to ascend a social sphere to get this? Because if I am chatting with some pals, let's say could be a few other engineers, miscellaneous office workers, various retail, service and trades, well... what is going to come up? bowling, maybe model kits, horror movies, booze? Are we going to discourse seriously about public affairs? Maybe someone thinks my motor controller firmware I worked on that day is cool, but I don't really want to talk about it)
This makes me wonder if any books have been written about Toyota’s engineering practices / just in time production / production and logistics in general. I’m sure it would be fascinating.
I feel lots of lean and kanban literature misses the point and it's a far cry from the real thing.
Toyota placed a lot of emphasis on producing things without alienating humans. E.g., they tried to remove muri, unreasonable burden on people.
Other lesser known engineering efforts approached the same problem from a different angle. E.g., Volvo attempted to build a plant that departed from Ford-type assemblies to improve worker satisfaction [1]. Volvo's approach was to let small groups build entire cars to give them a sense of connection. It was a success from a quality and cost perspective, but it never caught on.
This goes much beyond techniques and tools, this is very philosophical, about slowing down, adjusting your expectations, realizing that you live on borrowed time, that future-orientation makes us miserable, that a lot of our issues comes from the finitude of our lives, that we need to embrace it, etc.
I consider it one of the most important non-fiction books I’ve ever read. His thoughts on commitment, efficiency, planning, and distraction changed my perspective on work and life in general in many important ways. I listened to the whole book twice and have it on my nightstand to read again.
Someone mentioned this book recently on HN and I discovered I had already listened to section one of the audio version which I didn’t remember, so I listened to it again. This page seems to be a nice summary including the more practical advice later that I haven’t gotten to either time I started listening to it.
This post strongly resonated with me. Recently I have had no external life commitments for an extended period and I've constantly had the impression that I'm wasting my life. Most days I wake up trying to grasp at something meaningful to do with my time, but no matter what I accomplish - say on personal projects that I more often than not eventually abandon - it doesn't feel enough. I routinely ask myself, "What am I doing with my life" but I don't know how to answer these questions. I tend to fill my days with consuming media, personal hobbies, socializing and physical survival (cooking, eating, sleeping) but it all seems trivial. I wish I had something meaningful to do, like working towards a cause that I deeply believe in, or raising a family, but those things just haven't happened for me yet.
Once you can accept that your own life is insignificant and essentially meaningless, you can stop worrying about how many weeks, days, months or minutes you'll be here for and just appreciate the moment in which you are living. Perhaps you can even be grateful that you have lived at all.
We get preoccupied with the minutiae of day to day life and forget that we didn’t even know we were dead before we were born, and we won’t even know we’re dead when we die. And here we are right now, perhaps only minutes, hours, or days before we go back to being dust.
I find it helpful to think about this when my partner gets yet another parking ticket, I feel directionless in my career, or it seems like my teenage children think I’m lame.
Things are fine. They’re actually great. They can get a lot worse. It is worse for many others. I’m very grateful for the cards I was dealt.
I guess this is being downvoted because HN isn't really a place where existential nihilists hang out. But in all honesty, isn't it incredible that anything happens at all! That gives me more hope and encouragement than anything else!
+1 for the concept of "we were dead before we were born". I've always found that the simplest answer to "What happens after you die?" is "The same thing that happened before you were born: everything".
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones.
Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born.
The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara.
Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton.
We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people.
In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds.
How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state, from which the vast majority have never stirred?
One of the oldest known songs is the song of Seikilos from ancient Greece. It goes like this in translation
> While you live, shine
> have no grief at all
> life exists only for a short while
> and time demands its toll.
Culture and social structures can mollify or exacerbate the problem of a sentient brain contemplating its demise but wont make it go away.
Once we accept that, it is an empirical problem to find which arrangements work for most of people most of the time.
A frequently proposed solution that underlies many philosophies and religions is ubuntu, "finding meaning through others": from family and friends to generic strangers on HN.
> In an ideal world the only person making decisions about your time is you. However this comes at a cost that’s not worth paying.
Big disagree on this. I'm so much happier now when I've started saying no to anything I don't want to do. What's the cost? Sure, I meet and bond with less people but doesn't really feel like a big loss. I'm happy being alone with a few good friends and family that respect my integrity and don't demand or expect me to do stuff I don't want.
The site is pretty. However, I do not get the same message from this site as I do from the book it’s based on.
When you get farther into the site and it’s telling you what you should be doing… no thanks. That comes off as prescriptive and condescending to me. I did not get that from the book.
I found the book to be more of a thoughtful reflection on “the productivity trap”. Also the pace at which the book introduces and moves past existential dread is much smoother.
The site is nearly all excerpts including the section with “practical advice” - those ten suggestions are nearly verbatim from the book author from the last chapter
What I never end up understanding about such topics is what is truly meant by "understanding" [that we have finite lives]. Don't we all know that anyways? Are we being asked to calm down and accept that? If so, isn't such futile for those that couldn't initially (as I don't see how reading a book would change their psyche) and placebo for those that could (as they've just never considered life in that way)?
I was just browsing in a bookstore yesterday and this book caught my eye. I promised to myself that I’d only leave with one, so I put it down as I had spotted Jeff Hawkins latest book (from 2021) that I had planned to read.
Does anyone remember an early 90s program for DOS which among other things it would ask for you DOB and output your predicted DOD based on life expectancy?
It was graphics, not text. I faintly remember some skeletons illustrations to this dialog.
I liked this book as much as anyone else, but you can really just read Ecclesiastes, Nietzsche, or any of the big 3 stoics and come to the same conclusions of absurdity -> meaning.
Cool site that matches the color scheme of the book.
Not the kind to usually complain about UI but on my android browser there doesn't appear to be a way to bypass the date picker meaning that I have to scroll back in time a month at a time. 576 times to be precise.
Tapping on the year at the top in the date picker popup should open a year chooser. This should be the native Android date picker (<input type="date"> in the HTML), e.g. https://stackoverflow.com/a/56789808/623763.
I hadn't really calculated what percentage my life I've used up. This is so anxiety inducing. I'm realizing how much of my time I've wasted. I need to live more.
Seems nice but I stopped at the first textbox.
No, I won't waste my time scrolling tru a date picker while I could input the date numbers directly with my keyboard.
It’s funny, I also found this inspiring and thoughtful but for almost the exact opposite reason. I never feel overwhelmed (not that I’d like to), and feel like I’m letting life pass by while I do meaningless crap. I don’t want to work for the sake of work, I want to do great work because of the enjoyment it brings me to learn cool things and work on complex systems. I don’t want to waste more time on Reddit, I want to spend that time on a hobby, or exercise, or learning something.
Some people learn language primarily by sound. Most native speakers learn that way. They’re more likely to swap their/they’re or horde/hoard as for them the scribbles on paper are secondary.
Some people learn language primarily through writing - a lot of non-native speakers learn this way. To them someone making a their/they’re mistake is bewildering, but they mispronounce words in ways that seem strange to the sound-learners.
The two groups don’t under each other’s struggles and often look down on the other’s language ability.
> Just do nothing... do the least amount of work without getting fired... release yourself of obligation and responsibility... everything you think you need to do has been done before you, and will be done without you... you are not special... the world is fucked, and you cannot unfuck it, so just do you... stop searching for the meaning of life, that is futile, you will die just as confused as you are now... so just be happy
Recently my partner got laid off with a 3 month severance, and after working her ass off for years it's her first chance to relax "without guilt," she's literally being paid to do nothing (and, well, look for a job, but in her market it won't take long to find another). It's been fascinating to watch her jump between guilt at doing nothing but playing Elden Ring, to righteousness that she deserves it, to fanatic exploration of new hobbies and skills, back to tremendous laziness.
She complains about being bored, and it makes me think, what a fantastic opportunity, to be bored. What a privilege, honestly, what a human right, that's been stolen from all of us. The right to be bored. To sit around, having exhausted all the little means to entertain yourself, finally just sitting in your chair, thinking, what's the point? Why am I here? Why am I alive? What should I do with myself?
She gets to explore what her purpose is. I think the way we've structured our society, growth capitalism, has stolen that opportunity from us. We have no chance to feel bored like that, we have to get up at 7 so we can get to the gym in time, so that we can be in the car sitting in traffic mad at eachother for 40 minutes, maybe listening to a podcast so the time is "at least productive." Then you have to be at work and executing someone else's values for 8 hours. Then home, and you MUST take your remaining few hours for either errands and chores, or, enforced leisure time, after all, when else will you get to play Elden Right? Or the hundreds of other games in your Steam backlog? Or your massive unread reading list? Or unwatched TV and Movie list?
But mostly it centers around that work time stealing your purpose, your value. My purpose is I'm a really good engineer, I build really good websites with fantastic SEO, good designs that deliver high click through rates so that my company makes lots of money. That is Who I Am and What I Do Well. Take away that job, close the company down, then what are you? Well, I guess the same thing, but for someone else, soon as you can find a new job. Take it all away, then what are you?
A good accusation of this position is that it could apply to any form of identity. Who are you? A good mother. Take the kids away, then what are you? Well, for a while, probably nobody. But something feels particularly, uniquely, hollow about the purpose of our life being taken away Work.
I think it's long time that we leverage our incredible technology to take a load off our shoulders, let the machines do more of the work for a change, and let ourselves experience a bit more boredom. Maybe only a few of us will because everyone's netflix backlog is big enough to fit a lifetime, who knows, but that doesn't sound so bad either.
This depressive garbage has unfortunately proliferated itself way too much in tech spaces like HN.
Nonsense like this pretends to be wisdom but it's the very opposite of it and it has only one message: become more anxious because time is limited. No one will be helped by this, despite the gorgeous UI it's a filthy life degrading viewpoint that needs to be dismantled.
Avoid those that make you fearful and sad that degrade you back into disease and death. -Rumi
Yet, it is worth asking, what makes for a meaning life? What makes the 4000 weeks worth it? For some, they chase wealth, power, career success, get one's name recognized, etc - these are milestones to be achieved. Things to accomplish.
Others will say, such accomplishments are not the purpose, let us accumulate as many meaningful experiences as possible. So do things like travel the world, and so on.
But it is worth reflecting, a few years from now, what really is the difference between a dream you had a few days ago, compared with an experience from, say 10 years ago? The difference is very little. Our memories are fuzzy, and to chase experiences will also likely leave us feeling unfulfilled.
Human relationships are also similarly shallow, even if we seek social connection, the odds of it being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of it lasting when we need it, is low.
So what's my point? The point is, whatever pursuits we undertake with the belief out there that something that I accomplish, accumulate or experience will bring me happiness and fulfillment is a futile endeavor.
Instead, if we can function from a state of feeling content as we live each day, whatever the circumstances, then what we do during the lifespan given to us matters little. However long or short, the inner contentment makes it meaningful.
Sorry for the long response, but wanted to share how I look upon this topic.