by MyAnonymousAcc on 1/18/21, 9:31 PM with 13 comments
by shoo on 1/20/21, 10:33 AM
Instead, build meaning in other areas of your life outside the day job.
(optionally) optimise your day job & savings rate towards saving and investing enough so you can afford to spend more time on meaningful activities, and less (or no) time on the day job to generate income. If you save enough that you don't have to work for 25 years, then if you invest that in the stock market it may produce a real return of 4% each year- which on average covers your expenses.
Then maybe you have the rest of your life to look for more meaningful activities, and you also have the option of doing activities that don't generate any cashflow.
It may be worthwhile to explore and learn what kind of work you enjoy doing, to pinpoint some more specific characteristics you are looking for than 'meaningful'. Some ideas:
* you have autonomy vs being assigned goals from up the chain * you understand how your work contributes to a goal, and you care about the goal * the day to day work is enjoyable enough of the time * the physical work environment suits you * you get to see your work getting used & get feedback from people who use it
(if I score my own job on these five points it gets a score of about 1.5 / 5)
by deepBDC on 1/19/21, 5:21 AM
You mentioned your lack of interest in PhD program despite already 1.5 years into it. You might want to dig deeper into yourself to understand why that is the case. When you say meaningful, do you mean something that will change the world.
If you love doing something but you don't get recognised for it, would that bother you? If you did get recognised for a work which you were not passionate about. Would you still find meaning in it.
When you get more honest with yourself, the easier it will be to find the work that is meaningful. If you are not, then it might take years and you might only to bouncing from one work to another.
After I completed by engineering, I started a company with my friends - thinking this will be meaningful experience. And it was in many ways. It helped me understand myself and the world better. But, it took many years to figure out exactly what I wanted to do and where my heart lies. Most people don't take that journey.
So, if you want to find meaningful work, you need to start on the self exploration journey. Hope that was useful.
by MyAnonymousAcc on 1/26/21, 6:50 PM
[1]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_faith_(existentialism)
by el_dev_hell on 1/20/21, 4:31 AM
That's a very interesting distillation. It seems like you've already decided it's possible to find life "meaning" at work.
Like other comments have mentioned, you've provided no information as to what "meaningful" looks like to you.
I have a friend/former colleague that hated work. We would complain in the lunchroom together about the insanity of cooperate life. I quit the job for an equally insane (but much better paying) role.
A few years later, we caught up for a beer. He quit a few months after I did and got a job with the local government maintaining a wetland area near a large city. He was getting paid 65K per year and absolutely loved the work more than anything. He loved the fact he was actively saving something everyday and wasn't in an office.
Other than the above friend, I know exactly zero other people IRL that claim to have get significant "meaning" from work. Including myself.
by apohn on 1/19/21, 8:21 PM
Are you sure you can find work meaningful? I think lots of people eventually reach a point in their job/career where they stop trying to find meaning in work and try to find meaning elsewhere.
I've got a PhD and have worked in some different types of jobs inside and outside Academia. Instead of meaning, I try to understand if I can feel useful in my job. And by "useful" I don't mean curing cancer, feeding starving children, etc. If a person works in a huge company and builds a simple dashboard that saves people hundreds of hours of manual work, they can feel really useful. Maybe some parts of the job are actually interesting as well as useful.
I feel places like HN massively over-represents people who find or claim to find "meaning" in their work. It's hard to really evaluate what people are saying without knowing their age, career progression, the opportunities they did and did not have, etc.
by davismwfl on 1/18/21, 9:42 PM
I think the key there is I already know what is meaningful to me and what brings me joy overall -- although that took me far longer then I'd like to admit. If you are searching for that still, which is totally reasonable, then I'd say it could take you a year or two if you do some passive activities that bring you opportunities. My suggestion if you are struggling finding something that is meaningful you need to travel and you need to try a bunch of different things to see what matters to you, interact with many different people in areas that you wouldn't normally you'll be surprised what they can teach you. Attempt things you think would bring you meaning, you may find they don't.
by simplerman on 1/20/21, 5:58 PM
Instead think in terms of a project where you will design multiple prototypes. You need to choose one of the prototype and move forward. Let market (your internal state) decide if choice was correct or not. And if it wasn't, design more prototypes while you are still selling the current one.
by killtimeatwork on 1/19/21, 8:48 AM
by vladojsem on 1/21/21, 9:57 AM
you have some savings, 3 years is enough to see if you can start business that grows, plus you learn much in the process.