Marriage rates have dropped over 70%.
There are extremely thriving sub-communities in places though. Graft on to those.
Can you explain how you see a causation between religion and marriage success?
I don't have kids but I am at the age where more and more of my friends are having kids, there definitely does seem to be something there. They are exhausted but most definitely have a renewed spark of sorts.
Unfortunately this is difficult to A/B test. So I'd avoid having kids to fix burn out.
Like two people can't be together without being married.
But mostly it's a low effort low with quality comment that adds zero value and implicitly passes judgment on those who are not married and don't have kids.
As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
I should have made that part clearer but my comment was solely on the kids part of their statement. I don't think marriage is inherently different from any other long-term partnership when it comes "existentially starving".
> As if married people with kids are the happiest people in the world lol.
That's not what I meant at all. The article is about how burnout is a catchall that hides that at our core we actually struggle for meaning. "When facing the existential vacuum, there's only one way out - up, towards your highest purpose". Children do in a lot of way give meaning to your life, suddenly you have a reason for suffering. It's a hell of a stretch to call that happiness, but it's definitely something.
(Before anyone gets onto me I lived in a single parent household for years.)
That's how life on earth worked for 3 billion years. I think that assuming humans are somehow above that is unwise. We're not.
I'm past the age where I can (or rather should have) kids and I have to say, the past decade or so I'm more and more thinking that people SHOULD have kids to have (more) meaning in their life. Put it another way, I've begun thinking that having children is a nice way to have a default baseline of meaning in your life. I really see that with all my friends, who all have kids.
Then I'm not even focused on the content more than I'm scanning through it for signs of AI slop writing so I don't have to waste brainpower consuming that which took no brainpower to produce.
Also unfair perhaps but I think writers in particular, like the author of this post, should be aware enough of the patterns of AI written slop to consciously avoid them nowadays.
It doesn't matter if you used to write like this, the reality is people will question you now if you do.
Also if you do want to use "it's not X, it's Y" as a clincher, you better make sure that Y in fact builds on X in some way (which implies that X and Y actually have to be similar enough to be plausibly associated with each other) and Y isn't just some orthogonal concept.
It was a revelation to find out how little one needs materially to feel happy.
But a basic income or something is mandatory IMO as it's the only thing that can remove us from the rat race and free us from the zillionaires. Oh, sorry. We need to get rid of the zillionaires first, the last thing they want is normal people who aren't hungry and desperate for pennies.
But sadly the people I know who made enough money to be able to retire young are workaholics that will hire people to raise their kids. Because their workaholism is what made them rich in the first place. See Elon for an extreme example, I doubt he can even name all his biological children.
It’s never quite as much time as expected, though. Each is a marginal addition of free time that brings its own complications (like my friend who did an alarming amount of DoorDash and is now investing a lot of time into dropping weight and managing cholesterol and blood sugar)
My parents buy groceries delivery what is really useful and time saving on other hand. House cleaner is difficult topic, they do seldom a good job even when offered more money. Typical example: there is dirt under edges of carpet after vacuuming.
This really bothered me when I was in social situations with college students who would alternate between bragging about how much they spent on DoorDash and complaining about how they’re always struggling with money.
It was only a handful of people out of a larger group of mostly rational students, but it drove me crazy.
Of course this has always been a thing with prepared restaurant food (just listen to various comments Anthony Bourdain made over the years about restaurants and butter use) but I'm somewhat convinced the friction removal of having these foods delivered at nearly any time of the day is going to cause an uptick in middle age heart disease in a group of people who are going overboard in trading money for time without thinking of the long term consequences.
The American Heart Association’s narrative is based in observed clinical relationship between saturated fat intake, LDL, and coronary events.
There’s been a big social media push to turn saturated fat into a good thing, but everything I actually read in the research still points to excess saturated fat being a bad idea.
It is about spending your time doing what you want (including doing nothing if that's your thing), and outsource the things that you don't want to do.
> and call a contractor for every small thing that needs to be done. They’re buying time.
I _really_ wish I could find a contractor that didn't suck up more time than they save every single time!
I have kids, but I don’t think having kids or even a lack of money is necessary to experience the type of burnout you’re describing.
While everyone and every situation is different, my personal experience is that having kids led to less burnout for me over time. I expected the opposite after reading comments online, but it turns out that for me the time spent caring for the kids was energizing and purpose-providing. The job no longer felt like some isolated drudgery without purpose because it played a clear role in my family’s well being. I also learned how to manage time and prioritize better after having kids.
But I will never gatekeep burnout or try to differentiate burnout based on having kids or money. I can even think of someone who was clearly experiencing burnout despite having neither kids nor a job and while not having to worry about money. Burnout isn’t a simple function of life circumstances, personal circumstances and mental well being play a large role. In some cases, certain personality types can seemingly become burned out under any circumstances. It’s a heavily personal reaction.
Though, to be fair, you gain a whole new set of much scarier things to worry about.
And work = highest purpose!
Depends. At 3am it's not.
Before having kids I read so much about this difficult period and thought it was going to be the defining feature of having kids.
Then you go through it and one month you realize they’re sleeping through the night. Then you have an entire lifetime.
So yeah, it’s not fun. But it’s also such a tiny segment of parenthood that the emphasis on it feels pretty excessive.
It’s a missed opportunity for posts like the link to also mention and reinforce the importance of family planning. Many go into setting up a family because of peer pressure without assessing that it’s a very long term commitment. I’m sure you’re doing the best you can, of course. Maybe raising awareness that having kids is no longer an imperative for humans living in the 21st century could be something we do more of.
If you want to have kids do it when you're in your early 20s.
Which is also OK. It's financially smart to realize you don't have the resources and not have kids.
If {some subset of the government, rich people, people who control the economy} want more people to have kids, which is something I keep hearing from that class of people: They need to collectively figure out how to put more money into the pockets of people. Higher salaries, drastic tax cuts, cheaper housing, more people will be financially ready and more kids will happen as a result. Also, work hours need to be standardized at 4 hours/day per person OR costs of living need to be designed that 1 parental income is enough.
the problem is lifestyle and career demands.
The upper class is financially smart, AND has the resources (20+ years of child rearing costs already secured upfront, ability to hire night nannies, ability to take a few years away from work without income, own a home and not at the mercy of rent increases), so they have kids.
The lower class is often not financially smart, is not health smart, and systematically poisoned to sacrifice themselves and buy things they cannot afford. They are given insufficient resources and told that they should have kids, so they do.
i don't believe that is true.
raising kids is not that expensive. what is expensive is the high expectations for what you should spend on your kids with that middle class and high earners have. like sending kids to college.
Huh? In a world where people have zero job security, could get put on some layoff or 15%-per-year PIP quota any time and lose their income at the whim of some politics 5 levels above, and any random health issue could cost hundreds of thousands due to insurance not paying, I'd say as a self-proclaimed financially literate person, that you'd need to save up a couple million in cash and set it aside to even begin considering kids.
I could be on the chopping block tomorrow at work and then have to downsize my lifestyle next week, but I'm prepared to downsize as a child-less person. If I didn't have the entire course of child-rearing costs saved up in cash I wouldn't consider starting the process. If children cost $2 million over the entire course of their life, I need to have $2 million now. In cash. That's the financially smart way in an income-uncertain world; you don't ever assume things that you don't already have.
20 years ago, job security was pretty good, you could relax and saving up the full cost in cash was not a prerequisite. You could throw your money into a mutual fund and get rich, because the US had sane economic leaders. You were virtually guaranteed a job if you had skills. None of this is guaranteed anymore. Nowadays, you either have it or you don't; the system guarantees you nothing about the future.
And if one wants to avoid that chopping block in today's corporate work environments, working nights and weekends is a good start, but then you'd have no time for kids.
food, clothes, school materials, a bike. maybe a computer. also a bed and a few square meters of space in your home. everything else is optional. that doesn't cost 100,000 per year. not even 10,000.
sure, with less money you have less to offer or your kids. no or only cheap vacations, no expensive toys. no fancy brand name clothes. no expensive extra curricular activities. and certainly no money for college. but none of these things are necessary to have and raise kids. and it is not irresponsible to have kids and raise them that way either.
Start with housing. A few more square meters costs ~$1000 more on top of what I pay now, per month.
That's $200K in today's dollars or $500-700K over their childhood (0-18 years) if you include inflation, rent increases over the next 20 years.
If you want to sleep 8 hours a day AND work demands 12-15 hours a day, you absolutely need nannies, add $500K for that.
Because today's work environments demand that many hours a day, you evidently don't have time to cook anymore so you need to buy all your food, add $20K/year for that, or $350K.
Costs add up pretty quick.
and your math only works for middle to high income earners.
2k/month for a nanny to compensate for 5 hours lost per day means that you have to earn 20$ per hour extra. in a minimum wage job that only pays $15 per hour you would be financially better off to work less, so you don't need that nanny.
so you simply aren't going to work 15 hours per day. same for the food. 20K per year is more than $50 per day. again, you are going to work less in order to make the time to cook because the extra money earned does not make up for the higher expense of eating out.
are you suggesting that there are no jobs that demand less than 12 hours per day? so your choice is either work 12-15 hours or be unemployed? i do not believe that.
It's sad to see people so deep in the consumerist rat race that giving life is seen as a cell in their life's financial excel sheet.
Weirdly enough people who actually don't have money are the one having the most kids. And people who lived pretty much from 300k years ago until the ~1950s had it worse than you yet they had more kids. People making 1m a year have less kids than people working in fucking coal mines 100 years ago.
We don't have less kids because we're poorer than 50 years ago, we have less kids because we drunk way too much capitalist kool aid and put traveling, buying shit, careers, money in front of everything else on our list of priorities: https://www.wsj.com/articles/americans-pull-back-from-values...
It is, though. My own food, water, housing, heating, hobbies and things that make me happy, are all cells on that sheet as well. The numbers add up now. Money for kids would absolutely obliterate all the other cells on that sheet, and the numbers wouldn't add up.
on the contrary. global population growth will plateau in a few decades, and negative population growth is already a problem in many countries, like all western countries, south korea, and also china.
https://assets.ourworldindata.org/uploads/2016/03/ourworldin...
https://population.un.org/wpp/graphs?loc=900&type=Probabilis...
The problem at hand is not growth rate slowing down, it’s humans divided in tiny pockets of countries burning through what little we have left of natural resources.
People who have kids today, do so knowing that their children will most certainly be displaced by natural disasters.
what is the evidence for that? if that were true then we would have lot's of people going hungry, but that's simply not the case. poverty is getting reduced world wide. if we could not sustain the current population, we should have lots of people dying from hunger and the population should stop growing. but the reason why population is growing especially in africa is exactly because the growth is still sustainable. if it wasn't, then it could not be growing.
I burned out basically because I'm stupid and decided to work a demanding full time job while also remodeling my house by myself. Like all renovation jobs, it ended up being bigger than planned (I actually expected it to grow from us discovering something that had to be done during the renovation, I just never expected the thing we found to be as large as it was: we had to redo the whole foundation of our 1840 house, and because a machine wouldn't fit through the doors, we ended up digging out around 16m3 of hard packed dirt by hand and carrying it out of the house, also by hand)
What was supposed to be a kitchen upgrade turned into roughly half our house looking like something out of tomb raider for a year. 8 hours of intellectually demanding office work followed by 8 hours of grueling digging in "the mine" as came to nickname the ground floor really did a number on both me and my wife.
She crashed out first, which left me with no choice but to keep pushing long past what I felt I could handle. Saw a doctor who diagnosed me with burnout and told me to rest for 6 months,I instead held out for another ~6 months until my wife was back on her legs before allowing myself to rest.
The 6 months of sick leave the doctor prescribed wasn't nearly enough.
But hey, my kitchen is fucking gorgeous, so there's that, at least!
I also took on a remodel under similar conditions and I think that the decision they undertook was likely very reasonable at the time. The outcome, in retrospect, would be obvious as well. But sometimes you have to grit your teeth and finish something.
You're right, one shouldn't DIY the foundation of ones house, unless you really know what you're doing(and honestly, not even then: it's too much work!)
I'm not sure it was clear in my original comment, but the 1840 I wrote in there is the original construction year of the house. The technique my foundation was built with hasn't been used for a little over a century: Not a lot of construction firms around with experience in it! And it's not easy to replace a foundation, because, well, it's under the house! Luckily repairing turned out to be possible(simplifying again, sorry!), and not particularly difficult in technical terms. It just wasn't easy either, but in physical terms.
I did have a professional "building conservationist"(rough translation) over for consultation. Basically he looked over what was, I told him my plan, and then he told me what to do instead. (I actually wasn't far off - I had spent a lot of time reading up on it before he came - he just added a few (possibly vital) details I hadn't thought of)
The conservationist did have a construction firm and offered their services, but we had budgeted for a kitchen upgrade, and while we had some margins in the original plan, with the extra work we got surprised with, we were strained to afford the materials. Just the ground insulation material cost almost as much as the new IKEA kitchen furniture!
The good thing in all this is that the new construction should, in theory, according to the conservationist who actually does know these things, probably last a couple of centuries!
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, the planned changes, combined with the unplanned ones (which were like 90% of the work), put the project well outside our budget unless we did it ourselves.
But yeah, in the end even my budget was stretched to it's limits! Not that I was in any way poor, pulling around 3x the average salary in my area. Shit just got crazy expensive. Had I known the condition the house was in when I bought it, I would've lowered my offer by around 25%. But it was impossible to inspect the foundation without first breaking up the floor, and I don't blame the seller for not wanting to do that. I don't think they knew the condition either tbf. Based on the bottled message I found, nobody had looked under those floorboards since shortly after Kennedy's assassination!
Now, empty nested, I can see that I was both rudderless and identity-less before the kids. I'm wandering now (and retired) trying to find a replacement identity.
I'm still a father of course (and husband) but with less input and less to do. In fact I feel inclined to step back and let the girls have their lives now. So I road-trip, come up with projects to keep me busy, try to be an "educator".
I would say hang in there, and once in a while give yourself permission to prioritise the "care for myself" over the "maintain a household".
Do things in little increments and don't torture yourself about not being full of energy all the time
Many of my posts and most of my book were written in either the first two hours after they go to school or the first two hours after they sleep.
I got a rare Sunday afternoon off, which is why we got this post now!
Totally agree that work only to pay for a household is a tough life. I'm trying to connect more people with work that can give more meaning now and maybe more money long-term. People chasing their highest potential tend to create greater projects!
Healthy Minds https://hminnovations.org/meditation-app
good luck to you though
Often times ourselves get the short end, but others find a way to give each their due including themselves
We're humans and no matter what you're pursuing, you'll hit a point where your brain will adjust to the new reality and things will start feeling mundane. This is called the hedonic treadmill.
To me, what has helped is developing hobbies and relationships outside of work. We're social animals and need connection with others to feel fulfilled. Personally, my own life feels way more fulfilled right now than when I was just working on interesting projects at work or on my startup (that went nowhere).
The happiest people I know treat work like the necessary evil to be endured to fulfill all other facets of life.
Work shouldn't be treated as a "necessary evil".
Reconciling the work vs. meaning split is hugely important.
Even if it means making less money short term, aligning work and purpose through work like politics and writing can make us way happier long-term.
You work to earn, you earn to buy.
But buying is not meaning. It's a momentary sugar high that's lost to the wind the moment the transaction is over. No deeper life meaning can be derived from this.
When your culture is based around constant self satisfaction, there's nothing bigger than the self.
Community is dead, culture over generations is dead, building and making is dead, even cooking your own food is dead - "just order it". There's nothing for us to do except our individual parts, and our individual parts often feel like we're just putting a quarter into a machine that spits out a paycheck.
Etc etc
So, don't condense your thought here, I would love to read everything.
And people sit around stupidly asking why everyone is pissed off and angry.
With TFR rapidly falling, current and future children are much less likely to even have any family other than parents, which cuts out another pillar supporting community and tradition, too.
I don't have a pat answer or know where this is going, but--assuming humanity survives--unless we want to turn into Asimov's Spacers, we'll have to find something to care about.
The older generations have everything and still feel burnt out and unhappy? Cool. Cool cool cool. That will certainly help with the nihilism.
Also, there were no jobs.
Gen X was called the Slacker Generation because we didn't think it was worth trying very hard. We didn't want the life of our parents: working all day at a job they hated just to buy stuff to impress neighbors that they didn't like. [Yes, Fight Club was about Gen X--or at least that's what we tell ourselves.]
But it got better. For me, computers were a salvation. I found that all that time I spent writing PC video games resulted in skills that companies valued. We were the first digital natives. I remember having to teach 50-something year-old CEOs how to type ("Hold down the shift key for uppercase").
I don't know what unique characteristics will save today's Gen Z. They be able to take advantage of the wrenching change that AI is about to unleash. They'll be in the thick of the changes, but still young enough to adapt. Us older generations will have a harder time.
Their words implied they were a member of your generation.
And we all knew people who had died of AIDS, and I wasn't even in an at-risk community. Gay men I knew felt that they had gone through an apocalypse, like they were the survivors of a secret war that no one talked about.
Home ownership when I was growing up was around 50%. Not owning a home was extremely normal, not a sign of deprivation.
Which isn't anything new. It's feudalism, and the way things usually are. But that's a far greater concern for those in that situation, than AIDS or nuke scares.
My life rules hahaha. Only problem is that the older generations are going to parasitize my kids for disability money and shit but I’ll just move them to where humanity is growing if it comes to that.
Bizarrely my parents also feel like their generation had a great time. So who can tell. Maybe I’ll make it so that Gen Beta says the same story.
Millennials and younger are all fucked for the same reasons and are going to continue getting fucked over unless some revolutionary change happens.
We’ll also be in this together as we watch our boomer/genx parents burn up the last of any existing generational wealth sitting comatose in a nursing home because they refused to accept that they will actually die some day, and so made no plans for it
I'm not as confident it's bouncing back as fast this time. College debt wasn't as bad in 2010. You didn't need to compete against thousands of people around the globe in 2010. There were still human interviews in 2010.
Put in the simplest terms: Economic nihilism happens when no house.
Do student loan costs go down if you move to a low cost of living area?
We had some movement in the direction of people immigrating to low cost areas like that with the rise of remote work, but then execs decided they didn’t like not having control over their workers live and did RTO. To their offices in the cities with high rent and home prices.
You never heard about people taking that “great deal” because it’s not a great deal. Like really, you think there’s money left on the table like that and there’s not at least some low double digit percentage of the population that would have sought out the benefit? Or is it more likely the market evaluated the option and it’s not good
In a city, you have both much better chances of finding employment suited to your skills specifically, better chances of being paid well for it, and better chances of upwards mobility. Plus, should it become necessary you're more likely to be able to find something to keep the bills paid with even if it's not what you'd like to be doing.
Low CoL areas by contrast come with scant employment that's generally poorly compensated and almost always has a low ceiling.
In some cases one can commute into the city for work and live in LCoL area, but then you're burning time — multiple hours each day, usually — that you'll never get back on your employer instead of yourself or with your family, plus the myriad expenses that come with driving that far and often.
The countryside gets romanticized a lot but reality is not so rosy.
Even if that wasn't a factor and both locations paid the same, a dense city with many employers gives you a much better chance of finding a job when needed or seeking out better opportunities if you are being ambitious.
I grew up in one of these "great deal" towns with 2-3 employers that had more than 10 employees. Anyone who had a bad interaction with a single employer, which included asking for a raise, was blacklisted from employment and effectively homeless if they didn't leave town looking for work.
Whenever I visit my parents back home I notice how there appears to be no one in the town in their 20s to early 30s. Its either retirees or older parents who moved there to give their kids a country experience.
The few people I've kept in contact from growing up who are in that town currently make less money than an entry level McDonald's does near the city, and are only able to survive due to the help from their parents either in the form of free room and board or direct subsidizing.
People think all there is to do is work in a waffle house in the shadow of a closed steel mill, but really these are cities that by definition need a somewhat diversified economy to even function as a city at all. They have all the various pieces that make a city a city and a region a region. Sorry, not much startups, but that's about the only exception, truly, and may not even be the case adjacent to the state flagship universities.
People this detached really need to spend a few days on linkedIn applying to jobs. Not with their connection, but through those horrible workday portals and thousands of apps turned in after an hour of the post.
>if you want a tech job, well there are quite a few in Alabama
Hiring or "had a job up for 2 years but seemingly can't find nobody"?
Seriously. Try applying to some of these jobs and see how far you get. It's tough out there. it's not like 2015 where half your apps get a response.
I am nearly 15 years into being a tech professional and competing with these kids for jobs and the thing that is horrifying me is that I am being told I am not qualified enough after getting through the filter where these kids are all washed out for not having 10 years of experience in a 4 year old field.
Even looking at retraining into a different career, every single US corporation has completely shed their training costs to put onto their labor force, but we've gotten to the absurd point where 4-8 years of training is needed for an entry level job while corporations wont guarantee that the field even exists in a year.
The people I've spoken to in the field who have the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps, everything's better than in the past, why are you all complaining" mentality are the same ones who have verbatim told me that having a job in charge of a technical area at a faang that pays only mid 6 figures and has 5 peers on the planet, is a non prestigious job because their father is a near billionaire.
A lot of people on this forum are going to be shelling out for security in the next decade or finding out that they are made of meat, and hungry people don't really care where the food comes from.
I'd just like a proper job again, thanks. Just like I had before the tech industry shit itself 2-3 years ago. My current "cool" ideas are not being in debt and not worrying about a 3000 dollar catalytic converter replacement.
Now my "really cool ideas" is being able to take a bus around town without being stranded if I miss the last bus at 8pm. But that's blue sky thinking right now.
https://www.bls.gov/web/laus/laumstrk.htm
https://www.statsamerica.org/sip/rank_list.aspx?rank_label=h...
2. saying "move to a state with less job opportunity" to afford necessities really shows how out of touch people are with the youth. They moving to another state with what money? How are they getting approved without a job in tow?
3. "I understand that failed progressive policies have ruined opportunities for youths in some other states" is a doubly loaded sentence. a) it was not "progressive policies" that enabled zoning laws, lobbied out workers rights and unions, and made women lose agencies of their bodies. b) This isn't a "state by state" thing. Tell me how the job market is in Kentucky and why it's thriving compared to New York
4. "nationwide the future is still bright" The nation is bright when old people prosper and the youth suffer (which you half acknowledge)? So what's happening in 20 years when most of those people die? Is it gonna finally trickle down this time?
Among the youth who cannot get into entry level work, or the displaced who can't find a new job: yes.
>Put your prejudices aside and look at the actual economic data.
https://www.pymnts.com/gig-economy/2025/gen-z-turns-side-gig...
>Side hustles account for 43% of the average hustler’s total income. That share climbs to 57% for Gen Z consumers and a striking 76% for those earning under $50,000 annually — turning what was once a cushion into a core source of liquidity.
Okay, your turn. Where's your economic data instead of "I know a young rocj dude who bought a house". Or is it easier to blame everyone else instead of taking a look at the reality around you.
You can point out that things weren't as good as they're presented back then either, or that people are falling for advertising, but no one is really impressed that their living standard is better than the 1800s or earlier.
The world may be physically comfortable but I do not feel safe. And that's because they do not feel safe from me. I don't want to sound defeatist but there is no objective way to describe it without sounding cynical.
It’s not even like the physical infrastructure is all that much better. I live in a house built in the 50s, and clearly the people living in it then led a pretty similar life to mine. It just cost me a lot more money.
The world is less broken when you only look at the top of the K shaped economy. There's less immediate turmoil, but also much less opportunity, and tons of flags saying opportunity will only decrease more. That's now how you encourage a high trust society.
I'll also add "Radicalization is when no community". And community is certianly broken among Gen Z. By design of those who want to maximize profits. Even the serfs of centuries ago had community because you need to work together to stay alive. Today's society is slowly realizing that, but this is after 80 years of individualism.
Yes, housing, education, and medical care are way more expensive now than in my era. There's no sugar-coating that. Education, you already have, don't try to buy more unless the math works out. You're young so hopefully you don't need much medical care. Housing is a big problem, I agree. If you can move to a cheaper state (Ohio? New Mexico?), that might help.
The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus. Are there any AI matchmakers yet? [Just kidding, maybe]
But don't worry about the world. The world has been broken ever since we discovered fire. My parents were born literally in the middle of World War II. Somehow it all worked out.
My parents were born in Peru in 1941/42. Peru was neutral for much of the war, but in 1942 they began deporting Japanese individuals suspected of Axis sympathies to internment camps in the US. In 1945 Peru entered the war on the Allied side. If the war hadn't ended, I'm pretty sure my dad and his family would have been interned.
And even after the war, the situation was unreal. My dad's uncle didn't believe that Japan had lost the war. He thought it was all just allied propaganda. In 1949 he sold all his possessions and took his family back to Japan--to Okinawa, in fact. When he got there, he saw the truth: the country was smashed to rubble, and he had to beg in the streets for food. My grandfather travelled to Japan, taking my 10 year-old father in tow, to bring the uncle back to Peru.
That's probably one of the tamest, least tragic stories from that time. Even in the US, 400,000 never came home and 600,000 came back wounded. That's a million families affected. Germany, Japan, Russia, France, China, Korea, and even Britain, had far worse stories.
Whatever troubles we have now (and we have plenty), they are not on the same scale as those from that time.
400,000 US soldiers/marines never came home. Another 600,000 came back wounded. That's at least a million families affected.
And by 1950, only five years after the end of the war, millions of men were sent overseas again for the Korean War.
And after that, the children of the returned WWII soldiers were sent off to Vietnam, unleashing the greatest civil unrest in the US since the Civil War.
And you think it was a great time for all because the dollar was worth a lot?
it's already hard enough finding jobs in traditionally properous states. What am I finding in New Mexico?
I also think it's a bit ironic that we need to work on relationships and meanwhile also need to move away from what's likely our existing social networks.
>The real problem is dating and relationships. I think that's where we all need to focus.
We do 1000% need to regulate dating app algorithms. We can't let tech companies exploit the human connection for money. But with all the other BS out there, meeting women seems so far down the list of priorities at the moment.
But that is almost certainly not true. You are playing a high-dimensional game with a few hundred degrees of freedom and imperfect information. You already know how to play this game: make a move, see the result, adjust your strategy and make another move.
Of course, it's not easy. Maybe you don't know which move to make. Maybe you don't know which moves are available. Try the following: Ask HN. Describe your current situation, describe your goals, and ask HN for advice. I guarantee there are lots of smart people here who will answer. One of those answers might even be helpful to you. You never know.
But that's just me, as a late millennial that had some professional experience before the rug was pulled from under me. I have value to show to the few companies looking for actual labor. People a few years younger than me are absolutely thrown on a chess board with 2 pawns and told "good luck, I did these moves when I graduated... (with a bishop and Knight)". I don't know what actionable advice I can give outside of "survive until the market improves. Work on your portfolio and network if/when you can to prepare for that". But it's not great advice.
My bias is that talking about how unfair it is for Gen Z (or whomever) is the worst kind of advice because they can't do anything about it. It's not their fault.
I think advice that gives people hope (that things get better) and agency (that they can make moves on the game board) are more likely to improve the situation.
But that's just my opinion.
But that mentality is part of the issue. "they" can't do much about it. "we" as a collective can. have our representatives at the very least penalize ghost job postings and that's already a big step. And then from there we could make disincentives for outsourcing and reel in the abuse of the H1-B program. You'd be surprised how quickly things can change when politicians have a fire under their butts to do something.
But all that first requires awareness, and then empathy. Something that some of this community clearly lacks.
>I think advice that gives people hope (that things get better) and agency (that they can make moves on the game board) are more likely to improve the situation.
I feel issue #2 is that there is such thing as "toxic positivity". Giving hope instead of recognizing that things are bad only enrages those who feel bad. People don't like having their lived experienced invalidated, especially by those who haven't lived it themselves.
Advice needs to be tailored as such too. Saying "just keep interviewing" is technically realistic advice, but not one that gives much agency if the issue of burn out is applying for jobs.
Perhaps the problem starts with the fact that we continue to steer society in the direction where everything we want costs money.
If I was seeing lots of comments say something like "The cost of life is preventing me from pursuing my dreams" then the article would be relevant to that.
>You got the great job. You built the startup. You took the vacations. But that’s not what you really needed.
And people will lash out if they haven't even gotten that far. it's tone deaf to the wider realities of society.
I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending. I don't have any good advice as to how to defeat this perspective, but I am constantly reassured that because I'm not the only one that thinks things are shattered, there is a path to fixing it all.
Join some like-minded individuals and do something amazing. Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
Will you? https://siepr.stanford.edu/publications/policy-brief/recessi...
Maybe you did, but statistically those people are permanently behind.
>I wasn't a fan of the article either but I think at any point in history you can make a convincing argument that the world is ending
There's hoplessness of impending doom, and hopelessness of no progression. I do think Gen Z has a unique experience of the latter, where the former generations were mostly facing worries over the former. Boomers had the nuclear scare, Gen Z had the peak unease of the cold war, Millenials had 9/11 and a decade of questionable wars.
Gen Z doesn't have that impending doom... yet. COVID was very impacful, but not apocalyptic as long as you followed mandates (I know, a big "if" in the US). But I wouldn't hold my breath given all the conflicts out there, and the US's own warmongering riling up again.
Meanwhile, many can't even get their foot in the door. Not many 20 years olds ever felt like the future was hopeless, no matter what they did.
>Fuck it, create a dating app without perverse incentives.
Pay my rent for a year or so and you got a deal.
Otherwise, I feel like this is highlighting the exact tonedeafness Gen Z is tiring of. Gen Z doesn't just get to sit down and hack in their free time. They are doing gig work to pay rent and applying to thousands of jobs a day for hope of an interview (not even an offer).
I won't say it's uniquely bad. But it's bad in different ways from when you or I were growing up.
I’ll get downvoted into oblivion for stating the obvious, but if you’re tired of running yourself ragged you should turn to Jesus.
His burden is easy and his yoke is light.
And yes. odds are that those who are going to church already have the "simple life" covered. So be careful of selection bias.
Good luck if you're not strongly religious, though.
>And Church youth / under 30 groups are basically marriage express lanes
Given recent news, this is part of why I'm not religious.
In the past two months I've been on two 4-6 hour incident management calls due to failures in our service providers and it's been quite some time since I felt that good about a day's work. No meetings, no planning, no bullshit...just raw collaboration and tactical problem solving. Even got to flex some of the skills that have been dormant for far too long.
Feelsgoodman.
The core insight it, if you start to feel the need to stop caring, instead of changing your character and values, treat it as a strong signal to change your environment.
[1]: https://anandprashant.com/posts/i-want-to-give-a-lot-of-fuck...
If your problem could be fixed with a raise or a nice vacation, that’s overwork. 996 schedules, crunch time, and a high cost of living make overwork.
Burnout is when you stat asking yourself “what’s the point of doing any of this?” and your life is overwhelmed with apathy and anhedonia. Closer to a career-induced bout of major depression.
Maybe in extreme cases where a raise translates into big time savers like a maid, but those are not the type of raises you while keeping the same job.
But if you’re in a position where there is difficulty affording your living expenses, a raise can make a huge quality of life change. It can remove enough stress from your life that the stress of your job goes from pushing you over the edge to staying within your limits
Dreading work is very different than overwork.
I'm arguing we replace the "what's the point?" question with a "what's my highest purpose? exploration.
In that second answer is the solution to what many are calling burnout.
I know I'm burnt out (increasingly severe burnout at that) and I ask myself that question daily. The truth is there is no point and I can't motivate myself anymore. I don't see any solution to the problem and I expect I will lose my job sooner or later at which point I'm not sure what I'll do.
I've largely come to the conclusion that what I need to be mentally healthy and what society needs from me are fundamentally incompatible things.
What worked is:
- Realize that not loving my work is fine, as long as I have something else that I love and want to do.
- YouTube channel “Napoleon Hill Notes”. Yeah, it is AI voiced and I have no idea whether what it says makes sense or not. But it works for me, tremendously. Whenever I fell into a low mood, I boot up a session and I felt better afterwards. Now I use it to brainwash myself into a better version.
I also wonder about the "now it's time to lift everyone else into abundance" earlier in the article. I don't disagree that this is valuable, but it doesn't solve the existential "why", it just puts it off for a few decades until the poorest humans are as rich as wealthy Americans are now. "What a problem to have!" one might say, but literally that is the problem that the article is about, right? Going back to power-level everyone else doesn't actually solve the problem of what to do when someone reaches the level cap.
Ultimately there is nothing that is obviously and provably more important than the individual reading or writing this, as there kinda was in previous eras. Some candidates include religion, panhuman expansion or thriving (Musk), building a successor entity or entities (Altman), and the State or politics (the OP). I don't know of any argument better than personal preference, at the moment.
I would argue that content should never highlight anything. Highlighting should be reserved for the reader to highlight the parts they find important or relevant. Authors have plenty of other tools at their disposal - all of which this article uses - and the preemptive highlighting is distracting and almost.....offensive in a sense that the author thinks I can't determine the relevant parts simply based on the fact that they are also in bold.
The high level of visual distraction detracts from the article as 20 elements on screen are all screaming for my attention and making it significantly harder to read the content in its entirety. It's like the text-only version of a mobile website filled with ads popping in and out.
I decided to step away from my job as an engineering VP and try something I actually wanted to do. It's terrifying, especially in this economy, but I wake up and feel excitement in the morning instead of dread for the first time in as long as I can remember.
What are you trying now that you actually want to do? Cheering for you!
(And please let me know what you would've liked to see in the second half! Blog posts are easy to edit!)
I haven't been lucky enough that startups I got in on early panned out so I don't have the ability to take a sabbatical.
Gave up on greatness a long time ago, I'd settle for an "ordinary", where people just kind of try to NOT make bad things worse, or good things less enjoyable.
I found that working in politics, against corruption and for Positive Politics, is how I make the most positive impact and gain the most energy!
Safety, convenience, infrastructure, everything around you isn't solely designed to price gouge you and exploit you, and all of that was just a minor benefit. The biggest thing I felt was an immense existential dread lifting from me. It's like the world millennials were promised when we were young actually exists - working on meaningful things with mental space to breath.
There's too much that can possibly be said of this, but up until now I genuinely thought there was only one way left and we were all doomed to fail, trying to pound sand into intractable problems. I somehow have hope in my life again.
But there's a determined, undeniable sense of "we're going to make the world a better place", and you can physically see and touch it in China. Once you take a big inhale of that air, you realize just how much you missed it and needed it.
The US probably felt a little like that in the immediate post war period. The enthusiasm coming out of a terrible war and a terrible depression and seeing actual changes take place in the scale of weeks before your eyes must have been something else.
But today, most cities seem to have been content with solidifying into amber over the last 50 or so years. No investments into society. The poor are still poor and objectively have worse opportunities given the buying power of the jobs available to them. Development isn't happening on a scale to actually meet the population's needs. Transit and most public good efforts are an afterthought because of no direct business profitability angle. It becomes hard to get excited about medical advances when you understand the realities of our healthcare system and that many who need these medicines or treatments won't ever get them. No enthusiasm for anything. A large population of people against anything changing. Young people and young ideas stonewalled out of positions of power in favor of people who ought to have retired by now maintaining the status quo. Technological advances seemingly solely focused on establishing new ways to rent seek, gouge, police, control thoughts, versus things that are simply beneficial to others. "no brainer" ideas facing pushback. Common sense not being valued. The optimism coming out of the civil rights era dashed away against the realities that hate towards your fellow human is a position that will carry popularity in this country. Profit above all. Control above all. Blatant corruption and cronyism by the ruling elite. Awareness that we haven't taken off the shackles of feudalism.
Everything else sounds great, or tolerable at worst. Public transportation, a more respectful culture, actual 3rd places, housing that isn't treated as an asset to preserve.
I'll still get back to my Japanese learning once things stabilize. Just in case.
Anxiety is meant to have your senses heightened to perhaps hear the tiger stalking you and encourage you to seek out a safer environment where you can comfortably rest. You aren't built to be in an anxious state for such extended periods of time. The tiger would have gotten you by then, with the way this system was designed. You aren't built to constantly run from the tiger.
1. I'm intelligent enough to raise questions about the point of life.
2. I've always been an outcast, having it extremely difficult to build meaningful relationships, which are number one predictor of quality of life.
3. I live in a dirty, noisy, overcrowded city full of people who don't share my culture and work for a company that has no morality.
There is nothing for me to look forward to, and no straightforward way to build anything. I'll never have a group of friends to do things with, I'll never feel loved, and I'll never be important in any sense of this word. I'm an autistic ant in an anthill.
Oh that and that the dog will miss me. But as we all know they don't live for long.
The purpose of work (for most people), once you’re past comfortable survival, should be to buy time for you to spend living your life in ways you enjoy and that gives you meaning. If you don’t have something that gives you that feeling, find it!
Also, many people are genuinely burnt out from overwork, not just existential malaise. When you're juggling demanding work, family responsibilities, and barely have time for basic self-care, the problem isn't finding your "highest purpose" - it's structural.
That said, I agree that meaning matters. But meaning doesn't always come from work. Sometimes the healthiest thing is treating work as necessary fuel for a meaningful life outside of it - relationships, hobbies, community involvement.
The "go into politics" solution is fascinating though. Zero-sum games as existential fulfillment feels counterintuitive.
I do feel like I'm an example of someone who's juggled marriage, kids, startups, etc. where how I finally got a clean source of sustainable energy was having a part of my life to truly chase my highest potential. And to me that's politics, and specifically anticorruption and Positive Politics.
Glad that the "go into politics" ideas piqued your interest!
The next steps highly depend on where you live. Your HN profile says Australia, so at least safety-wise you are in a better spot. Connect to people in your area (preferrably offline), for example by organizing a local meetup, maybe there is one already. Activities can range from exchanging ideas to spreading awareness in your community to actively going against corrupt affairs. Make sure you know what and who you are up against, or you will have a very bad time.
Anticorruption is a group effort because it requires a lot of work and often special knowledge (info tech, law, finance, opsec, public relations and propaganda, ...) and, more importantly, a group provides safety from corrupt actors. On your own you will not be able to deal with lawsuits, misinformation, character assassination and worse.
Family and building things are much more positive sources of energy to me.
IMO People focus way too much on national politics and not enough on local.
Both parties would cast me out for heresy for some of my beliefs and opinions. Why volunteer for that?
Focus on one issue and one bill, like you would with a startup MVP.
You can solve some of these problems in weeks!
Raising my family and building lasting things for the world are my positive sources of energy too!
I'm just saying that after 15 years founding three startups, I've found my building instinct works incredibly well in politics!
This seems quite wrong in my experience. Meaningful work stays meaningful and exciting, every single day.
Not to demean your experience, but for me (5+ years now of daily grind for one purpose) that statement is very VERY real.
My thinking is - it's just another one of the struggles of doing real meaningful change - there's recurring, long and arduous timespans where no observable/exciting results manifest and one has to trudge forward.
If you know how to ease THAT part, please share (I'm begging you lol).
What I once found meaningful 20 years ago largely no longer feels that way. Both due to a lack of novelty and personal growth, and seeing how I was so naive regarding the outcomes and future I was supposedly building.
Those daily grinds back then for purpose were great - but sometimes the purpose never materializes since others (customers, business partners, society as a whole, etc) disagree with that purpose.
At least that’s how I tend to feel my life largely went. I thought I was building towards a different goal than what ended up happening, which makes me feel I wasted my life. Now it’s questioning whether or not I will ever find something that gives me that sense of purpose again without it ending up being a lie in the end. Why bring my “whole self” into a given task if it’s not going to end up with any sort of mental payback later?
Usually, I find, one has to invest an enormous effort to just find that purpose in the first place. And trying out paths/goals is part of that journey too.
I know I did a lot of soulsearching, in fact I was privilledged enough to save up for a couple of years to do JUST that, and I can report that it was a resounding success (with a sample size of one!).
However, as we're discussing this in the context of burnout, it's obvious that having a higher meaning did not take me out of my suffering. I still experience life as any other human being, I just feel like my life is not wasted - and the side effects of always striving for a goal - like focus and discipline - and other virtues - are a pleasant bonus. So I do sincerely think, that having a crystalized idea of my purpose creates a happy life for me.
There's nothing wrong with NOT having a goal, I just couldn't do it, even though matter IS ephermal, I believe that every action that we take, ultimately does have meaning.
Your work may have coherence and purpose, but if it doesn’t have significance then it isn’t the source of meaning you thought it was.
Last time it took a depression and intense widespread economic pain for them to pick up socialism-lite. I don’t expect it to take anything less next time around. Nobody was asking for universal healthcare during/after the pandemic, we need an actual depression.
The effects of 2025 and 2026 are pretty much what we should have had in 2021. Prepare yourself.
Be kind to yourselves, people.
edit: but yes, now that I have done that work, purpose is good, and what keeps me positive and away from the black dog.
And while I don’t doubt that there are serious physiological conditions that warrant, even necessitate, medicating, my impression is that the first response to “depression” in general shouldn’t be medication.
I’ve been depressed in the past, in my 20s even severely. Clinically, you could say. But in the end, every one of those depressive episodes were because something was not right in my life.
Whether I acknowledged it or not, whether I even realized that there was a problem, once I figured the issues out and took the sometimes very painful and exhausting steps to sort them out, the depression faded away.
Over time, I’ve become better at introspection to figure out what’s really bugging me, and also in recognizing a budding early depression as warning signs.
Meds don't magically make you happy and they don't magically get you out of fixing the problems in your life. They make it easier and therefore possible to do so. I'd describe it as the crane that lifts up the heavy weight enough for you to shuffle out.
If you can just think harder about your problems, by all means, do that. But there's zero virtue to rawdogging it when help is available, especially as this can easily lead to an isolation spiral and become deadly.
Not everyone has a support structure they can count on as they fall apart. So some people just need help to get through a rough period even if a solution isn’t long term viable. When a spouse dies being able to function for the next few months can mean keeping the roof over someone’s head.
There absolutely are downsides and risks. There is a reason the SSRIs carry a "blackbox" warning for youths due to increased suicide risks. There's a reason they should only be used under supervision of a doctor and need to be tapered off of.
That is not to say they aren't useful and necessary for some/many people but they aren't and shouldn't be a catch-all treatment.
Glad your journey has been positive, well done :)
Depression is also a broad spectrum condition (much like autism). Years ago I watched this lecture by Sapolsky[0] and it really helped. Breaking down the different classifications is really helpful. The SSRIs always made me feel worse, and this (along with a lot of other research) helped make sense of it. A few years back I was diagnosed with ADHD and a psychologist friend encouraged me to give Adderall a try. It was the first time that medication "worked" and it really made a big difference in my life. The big reason why being that psychomotor retardation and anhedonia were my biggest symptoms. When coupled with an anxiety disorder it creates a strong negative feedback loop.
But here's the thing: medication isn't the cure. For me it alleviates (not eliminates) symptoms but at the end of the day it still requires work from me to ensure I create a positive feedback loop and don't let myself fall into that destructive loop. This is all stuff I had to learn on my own and through reading and seeking out friends with people who are more experts in the area. That's where I think our care system fails.
The best thing I can recommend to people is to be introspective. Each journey is personal, but whatever your issues are try to find the early warning signs. For me it can be little things like the dishes piling up or my desk getting messy (these seem you be common). Things like depression build up, so look for the signs. And most importantly, open up. This was the hardest for me and makes me feel demasculated and embarrassed much of the time. But I've also found it to help build stronger relationships with my partner and friends. That it helps open a door to communicate both ways. Maybe you open the door for you, but you also open a door many are too nervous to open themselves. It's worth the discomfort and gets easier with time. (Talking behind a handle is a great way to start too. So make alt accounts if you need to. That's how I started)
Also remember that everyone reacts differently to things. SSRIs work great for some people, but not for me. So it's worth trying different classes of medicines too but also to make sure that when having more dangerous ones. I made sure close friends knew too
No one should delay any part of depression treatment.
> And while I don’t doubt that there are serious physiological conditions that warrant, even necessitate, medicating, my impression is that the first response to “depression” in general shouldn’t be medication.
It’s very well possible that you, and the person you answered to, are solidly part of the “needs medication” fraction. I do not believe that medication against depression is bad in general.
How shall "proven and safe medication" help here?
My experience from being a mental-health patient is that things take too much time. For me I struggled with how it seemed like that the society universally had agreed that medication for my condition is bad. Taking medicine doesn't mean that you cant threat your illness in other ways as well, in my experience taking medicine helps you to be able to take the changes you need in life.
THIS! Thats the reason why I always refused to take any medication: Doctors said you could "try X or Y and in some days I should feel better" - while the problems where mainly because of problems at work or within relationship.
Why should I take medics if I have problems at work with bad colleagues? This logic never made sense to me.
And my 2ct: If this wouldnt be a hardcore capitalist society in which most people struggle despite the fact living in a rich country, possessing nothing and having no homeownership, then there would be near zero demand for any psy medics.
Please go and get help.
Brains really don't work this way, and you are damaging yourself.
You’re not in the right field you say? Then you’ll be depressed from the poverty that comes from abysmal wages and the complete lack of job security.
For me, I'm always framing whatever I currently earn as "right now". Right now I'm doing ok, but it's fairly likely it won't last longer than 2 years, because it never has, and I have no reason to think it will this time. That means that even if a bank were to give me a long term loan, I'd be stupid to commit to anything but the most manageable terms, which means I'd have to consider what I'd be able to make in a part-time laborer position when layoffs come around or something.
If I can theoretically make myself liable for a 3.5k a month tiny condo mortgage, even if it's less than half my take home, I'd be uncomfortable doing so unless it was half that amount. Therefore, either a miracle needs to happen on the career side or the housing market needs to finally crash before my partner and I move out of this basement, no kids, used car etc.. and that's fine for now. If I lose a job, I need to have at least a year if not more of liquid or close to liquid assets available to cover living expenses, and for that to be possible, I need to have relatively minimal fixed liabilities
If it all comes tumbling down tomorrow, I would be out a ton of money, but basically where I was 5 years ago. I wish I had taken the plunge on each of these things 5 years earlier.
Nothing risked, nothing gained.
> I Got myself liable for a 7k mortgage, about 80% of my take home.
That is... spicy. I guess context matters though, if you're already financially secure and the ongoing income would otherwise just be added to other investments, and the remaining 20% is enough to cover you, and if you're in a place that locks in your interest rate for the whole mortgage, then I could see that being less dramatic. Likewise if you're both working or stand to inherit something.
Additionally, a mortgage is one of those things where if you've consistently earned whatever income it is, then it's more a matter of being excessively cautious. I've probably only ever earned an income for half of my working life; year on year I might make zero or full-time income, and the economy (in Canada) is indeed tangibly precarious right now.
Broadly I agree though. I wouldn't be in the relatively good position I'm in now without a series of scary bets earlier, moving to a new city, trying harder at more ambitious career moves etc..
It's just that there have been multiple times where I've lost a job, couldn't find _anything_ to pay bills with for long enough that I've literally dropped all the way to zero financially, losing the rental, and needing to live out of a car, so those kinds of liabilities just don't (yet?) make any sense. My hunch is that for people who haven't had that experience, it's more of a major milestone that they're eventually going to do without a doubt in their mind, they just need the raw salary number
Don't gatekeep.
I don't complain about mornings, about working, about any activity: I dig most of them, I really like some, but I just can't seem to feel alignment with this "purpose" thing. In my mind, my purpose is to live with health, enjoy life. For that I do the usual: travel, meet new people, practice a different sport or physical activity, hike, dive, go out to restaurants, play video games, watch films, go to theater, cook, draw, paint figurines, I help people (I'm no volunteer, though). I'm only missing woodworking because I live in an apartment and I can't fit any of that here, haha.
Am I cooked? Do I have depression and psychologists can't seem to adequately name it? Or can I simply go on with my life like this without feeling weird that every one else has/perceives all these issues that I don't?
Even nice vacations aren’t enjoyable the way they used to be.
All started at the beginning of the pandemic (long before getting COVID).
Have had poor luck getting doctors to diagnose and treat actual problems, so haven’t tried for this.
Medically quite healthy by all measures.
What confuses me is I see people 10-20 years older with passions for doing things. They seem to have a zest for life that I cannot comprehend.
You absolutely can start by saying "I don't seem to have the joy of life that others have" and see where that leads you.
It might not help, but it also might.
I had burnout this year and was too dumbfounded in the supermarket to buy what I always buy or drive a car. I didn't have any mental capacity anymore. Like an IQ of 20 and the physical energy of a 100 year old.
>You got the great job. You built the startup. You took the vacations. But that’s not what you really needed.
I had none of these. I strive for them, but right now the market is rough and I have no time to rest. I think a lot of us are genuinely burnt out from losing the essentials these past few years.
I think its OK if some people don't get to live their dream jobs, some dreams have no equivalent in real life, and some people need to do the mundane, boring underground jobs that keep things together.
I didn’t match the 1) nice place, 2) family and friends.
Apparently an ad huh.
But founders aren’t a big enough target demographic to make money on I guess.
And the problem is there seems to be no shortage of canvassers who'll advocate for such candidates.
So, your 'highest potential' argument is somewhat poisoned.
The middle is full of stories of how I failed for years.
I think I can help you, here's how I failed, then succeeded, you can too!
And my book is truly the next step.
If you liked these ~2,000 words, there's 20x more in Positive Politics!
I specifically believe Positive Politics can best utilize the ambitious optimism of e.g. YC founders to solve the world's biggest problems!
- what is it that I want there to be more of in the world, even after I'm gone?
- what am I doing right now that is trying to help there be more of it?
From memory most people don't have answers to them - and that's fine, but it is handy to reflect on them and perhaps work toward finding answers if you don't have them - and the people who do have answers to these questions typically have higher life satisfaction then the people who don't.
Cleaning a mind of random grievances and addictions is good. Letting a body be weird, dance wrong, move in funny ways, sing poorly: this is good too.
The whole "purpose" thing is a side-effect. It can't be sought directly, I think.
This idea of optimizing for less suffering is logical. A boring corporate life is by all accounts sensible.
Is it boring on Monday? Yeah. But not knowing where your next meal is coming from isn’t boring and not in a good way.
And then this site’s message is clouded by the amount it’s trying to push a book. It’s hard to feel like any source like this is doing fact-based work when the main goal is to convince you to buy their stuff.
I have been looking for meaningful work since I was 18, started in sales went on to marketing and ended up in engineering as a data scientist.
Even though I feel closer than ever I still feel that I am not where I am suppose to be. One of my biggest problem is having to many options, to many callings. And they constantly keep changing, and perhaps that’s normal.
It’s easy and dangerous to get stuck in the idea or quest of finding the ultimate purpose and try to translate that into actual work.
The whole higher purpose narrative is bs to keep sell more books or courses or whatever author is selling. And what's with random yellow highlights and bold formatting on every second sentence?
> The information contained in this communication is confidential, may be attorney-client privileged, may constitute inside information, and is intended only for the use of the addressee. It is the property of JEE
> Unauthorized use, disclosure or copying of this communication or any part thereof is strictly prohibited and may be unlawful. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by return e-mail or by e-mail to jeevacation@gmail.com, and destroy this communication and all copies thereof, including all attachments. copyright -all rights reserved
OR from someone called Philip Barden, here is a part of it:
> This email is intended for the addressee named within only. It may contain legally privileged or confidential information. If you are not the named individual you should not read this email and if you do so, you must not under any circumstances make use of the information therein. If you have read this email and it is not addressed to you, please notify IT@devonshires.co.uk and confirm that it has been deleted from your system and no copies made.
I really want to understand how binding and enforceable these annoying fucking notices at the bottom of emails are that was sent to me without me even asking for or knowing why and sometimes not even fucking certainly knowing whether I was the intended recipient or not.
So if someone fucked up and sent me a so called or really confidential email then not only I have the legal responsibility to delete that I am supposed to inform them that "hey yeah you sent it to me and I deleted it.. hope I was not the intended recipient.." or so.
I mean how does this thing work?
(I had received a couple of bank statements on one of my common Indian first name Gmail emails. I later realised those belonged to a lawyer who was probably informed by his bank that this happened because I had complained to the bank and had asked them to remove my email from that account. I received an email from that lawyer from another address I do not recall the domain of, but it was very angry and entitled and said shit like (paraphrasing) "By revealing this to a third party.. you have broken the law... you must hand over the email address without further delay…". I was younger and stupider, so I had just replied "Go fuck yourself" because I was really pissed. Luckily, I never heard from him again or any court because when I Googled him later he seemed to be a decently pedigreed lawyer from another city. Later, the bank replied saying it had been rectified - not before they wanted my phone number and KYC info and account details even though I had begun my communication to them saying it was not my account.)
Because you weren’t suffering from too much work, you were suffering from too little truly important work.
justchad•1mo ago
thanedar•1mo ago
AndrewKemendo•1mo ago
I did that a few years ago and it’s been transformative.
HMU if you want help.
justchad•1mo ago
AndrewKemendo•1mo ago
My un at icloud is best.
tsunamifury•1mo ago
You burn out creating value for others that you end up either not owning or it not materially contributing to your immediate community.
We evolved to work for ourselves and our tribe again immense satisfaction from that. Cleaning your house, pulling weeds volunteering locally. Etc.
But endlessly serving shareholders (ownership class or not) while giving up way more value then you out in yields a deep sense of happiness because we can’t express the unfairness woven into our life so deeply.
KellyCriterion•1mo ago
Christopgr•1mo ago
I have also been thinking of giving my notice for a while now, but I'm also struggling with finding a purpose so that part also hit me hard. I'm actually scared of leaving my job in case I find out it was the one thing that gave me purpose and I won't be able to find something better.
Congrats on doing it, and please do send a message if you do find something that gives you more purpose, it will greatly help me.
snek_case•1mo ago
asdff•1mo ago
nubg•1mo ago
timfsu•1mo ago
Someone who relies on you, whatever the context, is some of the greatest motivation out there.
nubg•1mo ago
triceratops•1mo ago
Not kids. Maybe start with a gym or workout buddy. Then work your way up to projects or volunteer work, with people you can't blow off.
lunr•1mo ago
Sure, it could be kids, a partner, a spouse, or a friend or family. But it could also be the rest of the team on the weekly bowling league, the puppies at the shelter who need playtime each week with a volunteer human, the community one serves as a volunteer firefighter, the homeless shelter where one helps serve the weekly dinner, the neighbor who needs help with yard upkeep, or any other parts of the village where one lives that relies on you, and makes you feel included, involved, and fulfilled inside by having that purpose.
tyre•1mo ago
nubg•1mo ago
spongebobstoes•1mo ago
e.g. pottery, crossfit, book club. for me, it was bjj, a world of warcraft group, and a "beer club".
regularly watching and chatting in a small twitch stream could be a start, but beware its parasocial nature
solo activities add structure but social bonds reinforce discipline and motivation. "someone will notice my absence".
Aeglaecia•1mo ago