8 ms·

Ask HN: What is your 'end game'? What kind of life are you striving to live?

34 points by rblion 9y ago

Something that's been on my mind lately. I enjoy the depth of thought on HN, I always learn the most here.

Joona 9y ago
I haven't really come up with the perfect endgame yet, but some ideas I've had: Teaching in an university or such (I love teaching) Traveling the world to meet my friends Financial freedom to do things I'm interested in (racing, VR)
- ilovecars2 9y ago
  I’d love to have enough $$$ to spend 3-4 months each summer living and driving the Nurburgring. This is what I’m working towards in life. Right now I go once a summer and it costs about $3000 - all in. That includes hotel, food, track car rental and lap tickets. When I have more capital I want to build a car for the ring and get a lease on a house, but that requires about $50,000 disposable income (Year 1) that I don’t have at 25YO. Disclaimer: I am British and live in the U.K., prices in USD because of the wider international audience on HN.
  - Joona 9y ago
    Sounds great! I'm looking to race a little closer to where I live, maybe karts or something like Legends Cars.
abusoufiyan 9y ago
End game is to move back home and bring back the share of the first world which was stolen from my home and planted there.
- celticninja 9y ago
  I'm confused.
- fghtr 9y ago
  In other words, justice?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
fghtr 9y ago
If there is somewhere the meaning of life, we did not discover it precisely yet. It means, it must be beyond our scientific knowledge. Therefore, anyone who helps to expand the knowledge in any way, helps to find the meaning of life. The catch is to take part in this process hoping that the answer might appear already during the life.
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  Meaning of life isn't going to be found by scientific knowledge. Sorry to burst your bubble.
  - fghtr 9y ago
    You, of course, may be right. But if you cannot prove it, you shoudn't be too sure.
    - abusoufiyan 9y ago
      This is such a silly way of thinking. Everything in the world cannot be proven. Everything that cannot be proven sufficiently to you right now shouldn't be assumed to be untrue.
      - fghtr 9y ago
        This reply is quite rude. I will ignore the insulting part. Scientific knowledge [0] is in principle the only true knowledge in the word. It is repeatable and testable, which means it is reliable and can be applied. (By the way, too many people do not know what science means. They think it is just one of the ways to discover the world...) If the meaning of life exists, it must be possible to find it with science. I see no contradictions here. If you see, you are welcome to reveal them if you will. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge
        abusoufiyan 9y ago
hguhghuff 9y ago
To own a house. To not be on abject poverty as I grow old. Two goals that should not be this hard, except we are now in a society of rich and poor and I'm not rich, I'm poor.
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  May I ask why you want to own a house? I am kind of realizing that the majority of people in the world do not own a house.
  - celticninja 9y ago
    Because then it's yours. If all else fails you have 4 walls and a roof over your head. Also it's not fair to compare an individual to the rest of the world due to the large and varied place that it is.
    - mud_dauber 9y ago
      Exactly.
    - jazzyk 9y ago
      But in the US, some people argue that the house is not completely "yours" - if you don't pay your (ever increasing) real-estate taxes, the house may be taken from you.
  - imtringued 9y ago
    That's not actually true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...
patatino 9y ago
Financial freedom so I can work on whatever I want.
- abusoufiyan 9y ago
  And what do you want to work on?
cmorgan8506 9y ago
I'd like to be a good role model for my kids and help some people along the way.
amingilani 9y ago
Goal 1: make $25 million to take money out of the equation for my work plans Goal 2: hit the three coma club (billionaire) and ensure long-term cryogenic storage for me and my wife at EOL Goal 3: solve the global food and clean water crisis
- alltakendamned 9y ago
  Ambitious. So, how are you doing ?
  - amingilani 9y ago
    Currently at my third startup, first one with a steady revenue stream.
- 089723645897236 9y ago
  I'm borrowing yours but replacing Goal 3 with: push fusion power over the technical hump. Which is pretty much the same thing right?
bigbluedots 9y ago
My end game is the same as everybody's: to die and eventually be forgotten, along with whatever I may have done while here.
malux85 9y ago
10 million GBP to eliminate need for money. Retire and use my data engineering and deep learning skills to help genetics and drug discovery field. I think this area is ready for vast technological improvement, and we can help alleviate a lot of suffering here. Almost at the 10M, maybe in 1-2 years I’ll be there
- aaavl2821 9y ago
  The time is right for applying data engineering to drug discovery. Probably the best time ever to work in this field, and markets like this don't last long. Why not start pursuing this right now and earn a smaller paycheck (presumably compared to what you do now given your net worth :) rather than wait until you hit your net worth threshold?
  - malux85 9y ago
    I'm working on it part time. The largest problem at the moment is datasets, I have crawling infra that has about 280GB of molecular data pulled from universities and every public dataset I can find. I've also gone quite far into novel vectorization and auto-encoder spaces, and have several models now ready I need to sell my company soon, that'll push me over the line, then I will get to work. Do you work in the field? We should keep in touch ...
    - aaavl2821 9y ago
      Not bad for a side project :). I work in drug dev and dont understand the technical side of Ai one bit, but from conversations with folks who do (at big companies and universities) the compute resources and models certainly are challenges, but the lack of good datasets is the real bottleneck What's your thesis / search space if you dont mind me asking? Ie virtual structure or ligand based screening with structure or affinity data, machine vision for analyzing cell based assays or histology slides etc, lead optimization, mining annotated genomic data etc
inertiatic 9y ago
Get a remote job (and keep getting them) that's interesting enough, move to a smaller town. That would free up so much time and energy to help experience life with my family by spending time with them, travelling etc. while also allowing me to have both the time and energy to learn about stuff, which is the only other thing I care about really. A somewhat hedonistic pursuit but whatever works.
mud_dauber 9y ago
Waking up to a (very good) cup of coffee. Donning a favorite old band t-shirt, some ragged hoops shorts, flip-flops, and sipping my coffee on the back deck of a VERY modest, but paid-off, house. Watching the deer from said deck. Then riding my bike into town (TBD, but someplace with <50K people) to a part-time job at the local supermarket. Plan B: doing the same at a local, for-young-people rural incubator & being the wise software sage. Making enough to pay for a Lagunitas Lil Sumpin or two. At night: dinner with friends. Probably a bowl of pho. Steakhouses (and the requisite dress codes) are for other folks. Twice yearly: taking the trailer to a coast. Probably alternating between Port Aransas, Texas and the North Carolina barrier islands.
- toomuchtodo 9y ago
  This is my favorite end game. Modest, reasonable, full of happiness and enjoyment without costing you decades of your life to achieve. You have good taste.
  - mud_dauber 9y ago
    I'll leave the porch light on for ya. :-)
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
- rblion 9y ago
  I like you. I'm halfway there already and will soon have the rest. I'm 28. I drink coffee I got from Colombia or Guatemala in the morning. While the coffee is brewing, I go through everything I'm grateful for and brush my teeth. I drink my coffee while I check my email, reddit, HackerNews. I make a list of everything I need to do or continue the list from the previous day. I don't have Facebook, rarely check Twitter or Snapchat, save Instagram for later in the day or bathroom breaks. I turn on some good music that isn't overwhelming too sometimes. I'm a consultant/creative director, I work remotely. I wear a comfy tee (band, Star Wars, plain) and sweat pants or basketball shorts. I'm scaling my agency/consultancy at the moment by adding bigger and more interesting clients. I have gotten out of debt and started saving money to reinvest into some side projects that can become income streams. The end goal: to own a camper van and travel all of North America with my camera while running this company from coffee shops and BnB's. It would be nice to share this with a dog and a woman, but the latter is optional. I can save money from my income streams to travel the world and eventually buy a cabin/farm out West somewhere, live a quiet and peaceful life away from the hustle and bustle of the city but still have good wi-fi and good shipping times from Amazon. In the last year, I've quit drinking, smoking, and meat. I've added meditation, yoga, and grown closer to my family. I don't feel the need to 'change the world' or 'be the best' anymore. I just want to be a nice person, enjoy my day, create value for others. I'm so glad I asked this question, I don't feel weird for not wanting the 'SV dream' anymore.
SirLJ 9y ago
As soon as the "internet form space" becomes a reality in the next few years, I am selling my house (my kids are almost out the door) and buying a catamaran and sailing around the world with my wife for the next 10 years (or whatever we feel like), until I find a place I like to spend my golden years, reading, fishing, etc...
NotQuantum 9y ago
FIRE and move to the Netherlands. Work on open source projects.
rayalez 9y ago
Be healthy and rich. Live in NYC. Build a startup in the field of AI. Spend my free time writing comedy (and get really great at it). Maybe teach the stuff I've learned about startups/CS (through articles/books/video courses). Find a group of good friends. Get a dog. Invest in life extension and cryonics so I'd get to enjoy my life for as long as possible. Really long term: Live long enough to upload my brain, and merge with AI. Explore the universe, learn everything there is to know. Create a universe that doesn't suck (or fix this one).
psyc 9y ago
Bare-minimum, subsistence (+laptop +internet) lifestyle, fully supported by independent game programming.
aaavl2821 9y ago
I was thinking about this the other day. I'd like to provide my family with all they need to be happy (but not necessarily all they want), to live somewhere near nature and have a small farm / garden, and spend my time learning about science, software and medicine and applying that knowledge to solve problems Then I realized I'm doing a lot of that now, but without much financial security and with a lot of stress. I live in a small apartment but my gf and I have a nice outdoor garden in our complex, I volunteer at a ranch working with kids with disabilities on weekends, and all of my work is at startups trying to use science and software to solve medical problems. I make a small fraction of what I did working in finance, at the moment not enough to save much even with low expenses, and the stress of trying to make super early startups work is real, but I really enjoy my work and have almost complete control over where and how I work. My biggest worry is not making enough to provide for the family at this point. I have a few years to see if I can make it work until this issue trumps all others and I'm forced to get a "real" job, make enough money, and then retire to do what I'm doing now :)

34 points by rblion 9y ago

Something that's been on my mind lately. I enjoy the depth of thought on HN, I always learn the most here.

I haven't really come up with the perfect endgame yet, but some ideas I've had: Teaching in an university or such (I love teaching) Traveling the world to meet my friends Financial freedom to do things I'm interested in (racing, VR)

ilovecars2 9y ago
I’d love to have enough $$$ to spend 3-4 months each summer living and driving the Nurburgring. This is what I’m working towards in life. Right now I go once a summer and it costs about $3000 - all in. That includes hotel, food, track car rental and lap tickets. When I have more capital I want to build a car for the ring and get a lease on a house, but that requires about $50,000 disposable income (Year 1) that I don’t have at 25YO. Disclaimer: I am British and live in the U.K., prices in USD because of the wider international audience on HN.
- Joona 9y ago
  Sounds great! I'm looking to race a little closer to where I live, maybe karts or something like Legends Cars.

abusoufiyan 9y ago

End game is to move back home and bring back the share of the first world which was stolen from my home and planted there.

celticninja 9y ago
I'm confused.
fghtr 9y ago
In other words, justice?
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

fghtr 9y ago

If there is somewhere the meaning of life, we did not discover it precisely yet. It means, it must be beyond our scientific knowledge. Therefore, anyone who helps to expand the knowledge in any way, helps to find the meaning of life. The catch is to take part in this process hoping that the answer might appear already during the life.

abusoufiyan 9y ago
Meaning of life isn't going to be found by scientific knowledge. Sorry to burst your bubble.
- fghtr 9y ago
  You, of course, may be right. But if you cannot prove it, you shoudn't be too sure.
  - abusoufiyan 9y ago
    This is such a silly way of thinking. Everything in the world cannot be proven. Everything that cannot be proven sufficiently to you right now shouldn't be assumed to be untrue.
    - fghtr 9y ago
      This reply is quite rude. I will ignore the insulting part. Scientific knowledge [0] is in principle the only true knowledge in the word. It is repeatable and testable, which means it is reliable and can be applied. (By the way, too many people do not know what science means. They think it is just one of the ways to discover the world...) If the meaning of life exists, it must be possible to find it with science. I see no contradictions here. If you see, you are welcome to reveal them if you will. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_knowledge
      - abusoufiyan 9y ago

hguhghuff 9y ago

To own a house. To not be on abject poverty as I grow old. Two goals that should not be this hard, except we are now in a society of rich and poor and I'm not rich, I'm poor.

abusoufiyan 9y ago
May I ask why you want to own a house? I am kind of realizing that the majority of people in the world do not own a house.
- celticninja 9y ago
  Because then it's yours. If all else fails you have 4 walls and a roof over your head. Also it's not fair to compare an individual to the rest of the world due to the large and varied place that it is.
  - mud_dauber 9y ago
    Exactly.
  - jazzyk 9y ago
    But in the US, some people argue that the house is not completely "yours" - if you don't pay your (ever increasing) real-estate taxes, the house may be taken from you.
- imtringued 9y ago
  That's not actually true. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_ownership_rate https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_home_owne...

patatino 9y ago

Financial freedom so I can work on whatever I want.

abusoufiyan 9y ago
And what do you want to work on?

cmorgan8506 9y ago

I'd like to be a good role model for my kids and help some people along the way.

amingilani 9y ago

Goal 1: make $25 million to take money out of the equation for my work plans Goal 2: hit the three coma club (billionaire) and ensure long-term cryogenic storage for me and my wife at EOL Goal 3: solve the global food and clean water crisis

alltakendamned 9y ago
Ambitious. So, how are you doing ?
- amingilani 9y ago
  Currently at my third startup, first one with a steady revenue stream.
089723645897236 9y ago
I'm borrowing yours but replacing Goal 3 with: push fusion power over the technical hump. Which is pretty much the same thing right?

bigbluedots 9y ago

My end game is the same as everybody's: to die and eventually be forgotten, along with whatever I may have done while here.

malux85 9y ago

10 million GBP to eliminate need for money. Retire and use my data engineering and deep learning skills to help genetics and drug discovery field. I think this area is ready for vast technological improvement, and we can help alleviate a lot of suffering here. Almost at the 10M, maybe in 1-2 years I’ll be there

aaavl2821 9y ago
The time is right for applying data engineering to drug discovery. Probably the best time ever to work in this field, and markets like this don't last long. Why not start pursuing this right now and earn a smaller paycheck (presumably compared to what you do now given your net worth :) rather than wait until you hit your net worth threshold?
- malux85 9y ago
  I'm working on it part time. The largest problem at the moment is datasets, I have crawling infra that has about 280GB of molecular data pulled from universities and every public dataset I can find. I've also gone quite far into novel vectorization and auto-encoder spaces, and have several models now ready I need to sell my company soon, that'll push me over the line, then I will get to work. Do you work in the field? We should keep in touch ...
  - aaavl2821 9y ago
    Not bad for a side project :). I work in drug dev and dont understand the technical side of Ai one bit, but from conversations with folks who do (at big companies and universities) the compute resources and models certainly are challenges, but the lack of good datasets is the real bottleneck What's your thesis / search space if you dont mind me asking? Ie virtual structure or ligand based screening with structure or affinity data, machine vision for analyzing cell based assays or histology slides etc, lead optimization, mining annotated genomic data etc

inertiatic 9y ago

Get a remote job (and keep getting them) that's interesting enough, move to a smaller town. That would free up so much time and energy to help experience life with my family by spending time with them, travelling etc. while also allowing me to have both the time and energy to learn about stuff, which is the only other thing I care about really. A somewhat hedonistic pursuit but whatever works.

mud_dauber 9y ago

Waking up to a (very good) cup of coffee. Donning a favorite old band t-shirt, some ragged hoops shorts, flip-flops, and sipping my coffee on the back deck of a VERY modest, but paid-off, house. Watching the deer from said deck. Then riding my bike into town (TBD, but someplace with <50K people) to a part-time job at the local supermarket. Plan B: doing the same at a local, for-young-people rural incubator & being the wise software sage. Making enough to pay for a Lagunitas Lil Sumpin or two. At night: dinner with friends. Probably a bowl of pho. Steakhouses (and the requisite dress codes) are for other folks. Twice yearly: taking the trailer to a coast. Probably alternating between Port Aransas, Texas and the North Carolina barrier islands.

toomuchtodo 9y ago
This is my favorite end game. Modest, reasonable, full of happiness and enjoyment without costing you decades of your life to achieve. You have good taste.
- mud_dauber 9y ago
  I'll leave the porch light on for ya. :-)
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
rblion 9y ago
I like you. I'm halfway there already and will soon have the rest. I'm 28. I drink coffee I got from Colombia or Guatemala in the morning. While the coffee is brewing, I go through everything I'm grateful for and brush my teeth. I drink my coffee while I check my email, reddit, HackerNews. I make a list of everything I need to do or continue the list from the previous day. I don't have Facebook, rarely check Twitter or Snapchat, save Instagram for later in the day or bathroom breaks. I turn on some good music that isn't overwhelming too sometimes. I'm a consultant/creative director, I work remotely. I wear a comfy tee (band, Star Wars, plain) and sweat pants or basketball shorts. I'm scaling my agency/consultancy at the moment by adding bigger and more interesting clients. I have gotten out of debt and started saving money to reinvest into some side projects that can become income streams. The end goal: to own a camper van and travel all of North America with my camera while running this company from coffee shops and BnB's. It would be nice to share this with a dog and a woman, but the latter is optional. I can save money from my income streams to travel the world and eventually buy a cabin/farm out West somewhere, live a quiet and peaceful life away from the hustle and bustle of the city but still have good wi-fi and good shipping times from Amazon. In the last year, I've quit drinking, smoking, and meat. I've added meditation, yoga, and grown closer to my family. I don't feel the need to 'change the world' or 'be the best' anymore. I just want to be a nice person, enjoy my day, create value for others. I'm so glad I asked this question, I don't feel weird for not wanting the 'SV dream' anymore.

SirLJ 9y ago

As soon as the "internet form space" becomes a reality in the next few years, I am selling my house (my kids are almost out the door) and buying a catamaran and sailing around the world with my wife for the next 10 years (or whatever we feel like), until I find a place I like to spend my golden years, reading, fishing, etc...

NotQuantum 9y ago

FIRE and move to the Netherlands. Work on open source projects.

rayalez 9y ago

Be healthy and rich. Live in NYC. Build a startup in the field of AI. Spend my free time writing comedy (and get really great at it). Maybe teach the stuff I've learned about startups/CS (through articles/books/video courses). Find a group of good friends. Get a dog. Invest in life extension and cryonics so I'd get to enjoy my life for as long as possible. Really long term: Live long enough to upload my brain, and merge with AI. Explore the universe, learn everything there is to know. Create a universe that doesn't suck (or fix this one).

psyc 9y ago

Bare-minimum, subsistence (+laptop +internet) lifestyle, fully supported by independent game programming.

aaavl2821 9y ago

I was thinking about this the other day. I'd like to provide my family with all they need to be happy (but not necessarily all they want), to live somewhere near nature and have a small farm / garden, and spend my time learning about science, software and medicine and applying that knowledge to solve problems Then I realized I'm doing a lot of that now, but without much financial security and with a lot of stress. I live in a small apartment but my gf and I have a nice outdoor garden in our complex, I volunteer at a ranch working with kids with disabilities on weekends, and all of my work is at startups trying to use science and software to solve medical problems. I make a small fraction of what I did working in finance, at the moment not enough to save much even with low expenses, and the stress of trying to make super early startups work is real, but I really enjoy my work and have almost complete control over where and how I work. My biggest worry is not making enough to provide for the family at this point. I have a few years to see if I can make it work until this issue trumps all others and I'm forced to get a "real" job, make enough money, and then retire to do what I'm doing now :)