15 ms·

Life Is Short (2016)

346 points by zuhayeer 6y ago

tallgiraffe 6y ago
Fyi, submitted link is HTTPS but PG's site isn't. The link fails to open in some browsers.
boring_twenties 6y ago
Is it just me or is SSL completely broken on this site? First I get this: Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for paulgraham.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: .store.yahoo.com, .store.yahoo.net, store.yahoo.com, store.yahoo.net, .stores.yahoo.net, stores.yahoo.net, .csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1.csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2.csell.store.yahoo.net OK, I guess that's close enough, but when I "Accept the risk and continue," I get this, which can't be bypassed: An error occurred during a connection to paulgraham.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP
- tlb 6y ago
  Fixed by changing the URL to http, thanks.
serniebanders 6y ago
Life is short when you want more than what is available around you. I just chill, tend to the nature around me, do my best, and try to make people around me happy. Simple life, just the right amount of time.
- stanislavb 6y ago
  I guess that’s the answer. Nothing more complicated than that.
- 082349872349872 6y ago
  Sometime I need to read The View from 80, but an excerpt my father sent me was to the effect that, being in his eighties, the author can now view with amusement all the young people around him so busy white-rabbitly striving.
  - pmoriarty 6y ago
    Ok, but we have to remember that not all 80-year-olds have the same outlook on life. Some people remain very active and ambitious well in to advanced age, as long as their body and mind can hold out, which is something that will differ from person to person. Here's a telling example: [1] In his 60's, Robert Owens was running marathons and undergoing Navy SEAL tests that would regularly crush 18-year-olds, and everyone he knew was trying to dissuade him from because they thought it would kill him. He still did it, and though he wasn't quite 80 at the time of the video and his body was starting to give out, he was insanely ambitious and accomplished at an advanced age, well past the point where most people would have thrown in the towel. I've seen artists who are very active in to their 90's, and have heard of people running marathons in their 90's. On the other end of the spectrum, the rate of suicide, depression, and loneliness among the elderly is very high. That's not to mention the devastation of dementia and other mental and physical afflictions. People deal with aging very differently depending on their body, mind, socio-economic circumstances, support networks, how they were brought up and their outlook on life, all of which vary greatly. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q
- cthonicthulu 6y ago
  I admire this worldview. The recipe for a life well lived does not require complication.
vecter 6y ago
> One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin. This is so concisely and beautifully put. It's a good mental model and test for me to apply to things in my life to see whether or not I should spend time on them.
- Waterluvian 6y ago
  “Oh my god he’s just shitting all over my code with his different linting settings” I started too many fights caring about the dumbest stuff. It absolutely was a sudden spike of mattering. But ultimately matters almost not at all: the area under the spike is nada. Another thing I do is rubber duck it with my wife. I explain what’s bothering me in terms she (A non coder) understands. And usually by the end I already have my answer.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  If someone who's been postponing living now with the aim of saving up for the distant future gets hit by a truck today, they'll never get what they saved and their life would have been in vain. There's something to be said for living in the present instead of delaying gratification to a time that you might never get to or not be able to enjoy much when you do get there, due to bodily or cognitive infirmities, or the friends or family you could have appreciated something with now being gone then.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Afforess 6y ago
It's cool that Hacker News decided to nuke the "Chadwick Boseman"[1] thread from site and replace it with this 2016 repost nonsense. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313165
dio1337 6y ago
You were great and everyone received so much from your experience and knowledge Absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. I am Staff Website Promoter at https://isc888s.net/ https://isc888s.net/ the online market place resource for Telecom engineers and businesses and the Fastest Growing Start-up with a Global Workforce in 147 Countries .
dang 6y ago
If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446
- wtvanhest 6y ago
  I read this essay in 2016, and was fortunate to have a child in late 2018. This essay had a profound impact on me, and by extension a profound impact on our son's upbringing. There are very few weekends that go by that I don't think of it. I am sure PG isn't wasting his time on HN anymore, but if he does happen to read this, I just want to say thanks.
closeparen 6y ago
This is one of those things that everyone “knows” but no one really gets until they experience it. In my case it’s the realization that the deadline to establish the relationships for this chapter of life passed in March. The social network may open up again in a few years, but my peer group is going to be a bunch of newlyweds and new parents by then.
- rrishi 6y ago
  I am 27 with a lot of people around me already married or getting closer to getting married. Whereas I am probably not going to be at that place for maybe the next 5-7 years. I fear the next 5-7 years are going to be very lonely, maybe I will get another chance to socialize once I am married myself. But till then, maybe I'll have to contend myself with my own company. The sad bit is that its only now that I have finally started to grasp social interactions. Lived a majority of my life in a very depressive state and only been able to get out of all that recently.
  - jacobush 6y ago
    Cross age limits
  - RobPfeifer 6y ago
    You’ll be good - you’ve done the hard part :). Just reach out if you fall back into it! Also, every interaction Is social - keep up the new skill when you shop, chat online, get gas, etc. Most people like people (I know, I don’t get it either a lot of the time) so just keep putting yourself out there!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
- torusenthusiast 6y ago
  This one hits me hard, I'm in a very similar situation right now. After finally overcoming social anxiety to the point I could get out I was starting to finally build some connections, but now it pretty much seems hopeless. By the time this is all over and society resumes I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"
submeta 6y ago
> When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long. This reminds me of Parkinson‘s Law: „work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“. So if we know we will be travelling in three days, we need tree days to pack our stuff. And if we get a message from our boss telling us we need to travel this noon, we‘ll quickly pack a few things and get a toothbrush at the airport. If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it. We would just - my hypothesis - need that much more time to accomplish our milestones. I read somewhere about putting Parkinson‘s Law in reverse: Committing to return the assignment in a week. That way we have a limited time budget, a boundary. That pushes us to move quickly.
- activatedgeek 6y ago
  On the note of Parkinson's Law, here's some fun extensions: https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/11/slackers-and-stakhanovites https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/11/slackers-and-s... An accessible version - https://outline.com/CbyPxD https://outline.com/CbyPxD.
- Viliam1234 6y ago
  > If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it. We would probably need to work 10 times longer, because everything would be more expensive. We compete for scarce resources with other people, and if we have more time and they have too, the extra time will be burned in the zero-sum competitions.
  - adventured 6y ago
    That and the human population would rapidly saturate the planet within this century. That of course may happen anyway, however as is we at least have a fighting shot at managing it. Life expectancy expansion has to be gradual so we can adjust to it (in numerous ways), otherwise it'd likely prompt a cataclysmic humanity crash (bubble then crash). Beyond things getting more expensive, we'd probably just have a plain resource-driven civilization crash in much of the world. Annual births more or less peaked in 1988 at around 139/140 million, which is close to the level we're still at today [1]. Annual deaths however keep climbing, from roughly 48m in 1988 to 60m or so today. Births are set to decline while deaths keep climbing throughout the century. Clear most of the natural deaths for just the next 80 years, and it's the difference between then having 18-20 billion (or more) people in the year 2100 versus the present common projections of around 11'ish billion. Would have to resolve in the fantasy age extension scenario whether people can keep having children for hundreds of years, as that would change projections radically. Governments would likely aggressively regulate population expansion if so, rather than hoping for self-restriction (eg if it took a natural form of tapering via per capita births dropping to match the changes). Does raising a child become a 100 year responsibility? Does our pre-adult immaturity / adolescence time expand to fill the allotted life expectancy? Lots of questions in the fantasy premise. [1] https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
keiferski 6y ago
It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly. - Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 49 AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortness%20of%20Life.php http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortnes...
- farrarstan 6y ago
  Don’t buy it.
  - stingraycharles 6y ago
    I’m all for a discussion about the quote, but it would help if you explain why you’re not buying it.
  - JoeDaDude 6y ago
    Why not? Is it because it's about 2000 years old and no longer under copyright? https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu01seneuoft#page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu01seneuoft#page/n...
- jabits 6y ago
  Great reference! Thanks.
- comboy 6y ago
  Seneca lived in different times. By the time you get "proper education" and then secure yourself financially you are quite old in today's world. So better enjoy the process treating it as the thing rather than the means. Longer lifespan helps but not that much. Biologically we just tend to peak pretty early. One thing I may disagree with PG is that if you enjoyed doing something while doing it, then I think the time wasn't wasted, even if later in life you think you may have spent that time better. Otherwise logical conclusion is that you should live with a mind of a very old man.
healthsuccess 6y ago
Beautifully written.
Abishek_Muthian 6y ago
Not for the one in pain. Be it from illness, inequality or just mere existence and yet one endures the pain due to primordial urge to live.
audiodude 6y ago
I'm simultaneously in a married relationship where children are off the table (by our choosing), and am hopelessly bored most of the time. It's interesting to contrast these two facts. I think life is too long, because I don't believe in any afterlife and if I die today or 40 years from now, what's the difference? Just a bunch of pain and boredom all the way down from now until then.
- aggie 6y ago
  Nietzsche's writing on "eternal return" helped me with similar thoughts. It gives life heaviness, as Kundera says in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return Also, learning to "imagine Sisyphus happy." Easier said than done, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
  - audiodude 6y ago
    Thanks for the links. I actually read the whole Sisyphus essay, but it didn't really inspire me. I think I'm probably an Existentialist to some degree, I believe that life has no inherent meaning or value and that we have to create for ourselves such meaning. But most days I'm just going through the motions and I'd rather tune out, or "drop out" as it were. Or as Weezer says "Why bother? It's gonna hurt me."
    - Trasmatta 6y ago
      Are you familiar with Epicureanism at all? It's not as popular these days as, say, Stoicism, but I found it's general tenets somewhat helpful for very similar thoughts. I'm also a bit of an Existentialist, so I agree that it's up to us to create our own meaning. But maybe that meaning can be just as simple as limiting our own suffering as much as possible, and finding the sustainable things that bring is happiness or enjoyment. The meaning we bring to our life doesn't necessarily need to be grand or far reaching. Anyway, that's sort of where I'm at right now. My personal philosophy is a super messy mix of Stoicism, Epicureanism, Existentialism, and Buddhism. Not particularly well thought out, but it's been useful lately for helping me carve out a little bit of happiness from this bizarre existence.
sanchezdev 6y ago
"Bullshit is the junk food of experience." Well put!
farrarstan 6y ago
hackernews.txt
wintorez 6y ago
It’s actually the longest thing you will ever experience.
- everfree 6y ago
  ...according to some schools of belief. Truth is, there is no way to prove or disprove that, it's a debate for the ages between atheism and religion.
  - lcall 6y ago
    Sufficiently for my own decision-making at least, I have proven it and it helps me much.... (My simple-tech web site I hope provides more info in a skimmable way; it is mentioned in my HN user profile, for what that may be worth, or more specific links if requested.) (With any downvotes, a thoughtful comment is appreciated. thanks.)
state_less 6y ago
If you're dealing with a lot of bullshit, remember that the game should be worth the candle. Hopefully that motivates you to change things up if it's been shitty too long.
modernerd 6y ago
Amit Gupta's “you don't get forever” talk is a good complement to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk
cammil 6y ago
On this level of thinking I think we should consider the possibility that the notion of time is highly subjective. Indeed I think we should consider the possibility that time is an illusion. That illusion is created by the mind, which habitually simulates the past and the future. The thinking mind is a simulator. This is why the past can be changed, because the past is a thought. It is also possible to suspend this simulating, and you can experience timelessness. You might have experienced something similar in "flow states". A practical mnemonic I use is to consider not filling time with your actions, but rather filling your actions with time. This means slowing down, observing in as much detail as possible, and appreciating every possible moment within each action. Hope someone finds this useful!
- alexpetralia 6y ago
  This is wonderful. I feel like there is more here however. If our perception of time is manipulable (e.g. flow states, psychedelics, confabulation), how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life? Is it mastery over self-delusion? Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being? What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.)
  - cammil 6y ago
    > how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life? I think this is also a construct of the simulating mind. It is simply a thought (or series of thoughts) that leads you to "perceive" that your past was enjoyable. This thought passes and once it has, there is no concept of your past. Of course this thought might come back again. I would suggest rather than hoping you can live a life in which you regularly perceive your past as enjoyable, simply observe the fact that you are thinking this thought. > Is it mastery over self-delusion? I am not sure what you mean by this. > Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being? In my experience, definitely yes. > What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.) This is a hard one to answer I think. (Good) Science I think won't lead you astray. Eastern philosophy has so much to offer I think, but there is also a lot of nonsense that you probably should be careful to avoid. I think you have to use your common sense when judging. Does it make sense to you? Does it correspond with your experience, or is someone simply asking you to believe something? (This of course is the scientific process.) BTW, these ideas are not confined to Eastern philosophy, similar ideas were philosophised in the West. There is so much written about these ideas so I couldn't give you the canonical source of it all. One thing that I probably should mention is meditation. It seems to be the one common denominator. The way I see it, is it's the exercise that practically helps change the way you see, think and act. If you want some concrete recommendations I am happy to suggest some, but I find it's often more helpful for people to discover what resonates with them.
jacobr 6y ago
Some people seem to be able to shrug off bullshit at work, just go home and think about things that “matter”. If I see bullshit, things that are wrong, or just legitimately hard problems I have a very hard time not working hard to fix it even though I would not really care about the outcome in 10 years. The dilemma is the balance between doing work that matters, maybe finding something where I care more about the outcome, or learn to brush things off and focus on other things in life that matters.
OneGuy123 6y ago
For me the most important take-away of that article is this: Do you know "life is short" merely intelectually or do you feel it in your bones as if your body is on fire?
amadeuspagel 6y ago
> And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was. If you had 8 cars to choose from, it wouldn't seem so limited, would it? The idea that you can take a number, and in absolute sense say that it's "not a lot" is bizarre. Even 8 books might seem like a lot in a different situation, like if someone packed that many books in his suitcase for a weekend trip.
- quickthrower2 6y ago
  Plus only 8 christmas but with 2 kids you'd have 16 birthdays, plus maybe 100 or so friends birhdays, 2 first days at school, etc. etc. lots of moments.
ransom1538 6y ago
Routines. Routines speed up your life. Time will blow by quicker if you are covered in routines. What is worse, your days will become blurred - each day - too similar to the next - for you brain to hold on to distinct memories. Example: if you drive to work the same way each day - you will often not even remember the drive by 10am. That hour will be gone forever. However, if you were to take BART instead for the first time, that one particular day will last a lifetime. Try moving. Move to a different town, force yourself to get new friends, take three saxophone lessons. Your days will last. alternative: Alarm beeps, Wake up, drive your kid to school the same way, drive your commute the same way, work with the same people, tell the same jokes, work on similar problems all day, watch netflix all weekend. You will wake up at 45 when someone in your family passes. Change things up.
- t-shaped 6y ago
  Exactly. I realised this a while ago that if I keep having the same day everyday, I'm not going to remember anything about my life. Everything would be insignificant because it happens everyday. It came to my mind when I started to lose track of my week. Did I have pasta on Tuesday or Wednesday? What time did I come home last Thursday? Why can't I distinguish one day from the other? Because everyday is the same. Now I track my days and its much much better.
- agumonkey 6y ago
  The neurology of time is a topic hard to read about.
  - ido 6y ago
    Do you mean it's emotionally hard? Or hard to understand?
    - agumonkey 6y ago
      neither, my post was utterly incomplete.. hard to find writings about :)
- LUmBULtERA 6y ago
agumonkey 6y ago
Everything is short when viewed that way. A climber said: on a wall, a second is a century. Maybe our culture should reinstate sublime difficulties, preferably in groups, to make the limited space denser :)
justcomments12 6y ago
It's not that life is short, it's that we waste to much of it - Seneca
austincheney 6y ago
When ever this subject comes up I think of the song Time from Pink Floyd. I included the lyrics below. If a typical person has 72 years of life that is: * 26,298 days (includes 18 leap days) * 631,152 hours, 37,869,120 minutes, 2,272,147,200 seconds (not counting leap seconds) That sounds like an enormous amount of time. Time is like money. For some people it always seems to slip away. For other people its a multiplicative empowering factor that builds on itself like a compound interest. For others still there is plenty of time meaningfully spent performing intentional tasks. ------------ Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. --- Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. --- So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. --- Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say. --- Home Home again I like to be here When I can --- When I come home Cold and tired It's good to warm my bones Beside the fire --- Far away Across the field Tolling on the iron bell Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spell
sak5sk 6y ago
I once had a dream that felt like it lasted a lifetime. In this dream, I had a whole new life, a different wife, kids, and I lived it through to the end. Then I woke up. It was the weirdest thing ever and I often think about it.
- qzw 6y ago
  I think you had an encounter with an alien artifact [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_Th...
- jpxw 6y ago
  There’s absolutely no way of knowing that you’re not living in a dream as we speak right now.
  - sak5sk 6y ago
    That's the scary part! I woke up very disoriented, full of all sorts of emotions - disappointment, sadness, total confusion. I couldn't make sense of what just happened. It was scary. I also missed my "dream family". I couldn't believe they were gone and it was all a dream. I've told this to people, and they did not believe me. It took a good 3 days to shake off all of the emotions I was feeling over a dream. I did a fair bit of research on this and found that many people report the same happening to them.
- anaxag0ras 6y ago
  Reminds me of this anecdote[0], where the person 'lived' an entirely different life while he was lying unconscious on the ground. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oc7rc/have_you_ever_felt_a_deep_personal_connection_to/c3g4ot3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oc7rc/have_you_e...
pedro1976 6y ago
Jordan Petersen once said "working means sacrificing the present for the future", which is an amazing statement. Its incredible how much our society believes working is a must, especially fulltime. I once did a sabatical and people giving me a weird look, after finding out that I don't do a regular job. Quite sad, imho.
- swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
  It's especially cruel to be living paycheck to paycheck. At that point, you're not sacrificing the present for the future. You're sacrificing the present for survival.
imranq 6y ago
One trick I learned to slow down time is to keep a journal and write both about the future (either as a narrative or plan a schedule) and about the past (either as a journal entry or an audit). This could be about anything, any minute detail you encountered throughout the day or goal you are planning - the number of clouds outside or an application to graduate school you're thinking about or seeing someone interesting on the street. Do this regularly, each day for 30 minutes, for 2-3 months and you will find that your memory improves by 10x and your days feel much more fulfilling and purpose driven. The reason I think this works, is that by both explicitly planning and examining, your brain will create its own BS filter and guide you to things that are naturally fulfilling and worth your time.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago
  Tell us more. I went on and off with journaling for most of my life, but I wouldn't consider the effort successful. Just right now, and for the next two weeks, I am trying to journal every day, as a little experiment. Again, tell us more. Keen to hear.
  - imranq 6y ago
    Of course. Just expanding on the idea behind journaling is that it is a scaffolding for your mind. For me, without journaling, my mind will wander and probably resemble a random walk. Instead, I found that by organizing my days into "packets" which have a forward-looking journaling session in the beginning and a backward-looking journaling session at the end was a tremendous boost to how structured my thinking is and how I spend my time. For me, each "packet" is 2-3 day period and each journaling session is about 30 minutes. So two journaling sessions is a 1 hour investment to get better results over 48 hours (~2%) doesn't seem too bad. More practically, I just keep two composition notebooks for these journals, and try to keep to a zettelkasten style[1] in Evernote. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel...
    - simonebrunozzi 6y ago
simonebrunozzi 6y ago
> One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. Love this passage. Don't have kids, but I can totally see this happening to parents I know.
NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago
> Arguing - Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. I love this one, certainly something I need to practice.
dstick 6y ago
"It is possible to slow time somewhat" I've discovered how during a holiday in a camper 2 years ago. Do a -lot- of new things on a single day. We had a 6 day trip and it felt like 3 weeks. It was magic. While routine and habits have their place, if you want to slow down or bend the flow of time - do new things every day.
sg47 6y ago
I have a different take on this. Not everyone is Paul Graham. Paul Graham would not have written this before founding his company. He'd not have thought "there are only 52 weekends when I'm 25 so let me just party". Most people, especially those who have not made it in life, are worried about survival. Especially people with kids. They sacrifice their time with kids so that their kids can have a better life than them. So that they can move them from <insert class here> to upper <insert class here>. They work hard, attend pointless meetings so that they can get ahead in their career, not upset anyone and make sure they have health insurance. They do insane commutes for the same reason. Most people do not have the luxury to choose. People are more unsure of their survival despite greater wealth. A single medical incident could bankrupt them. There are people on Blind wondering if $2 million is enough to retire. A friend of mine was worried that he'd not be able to hit his goal of a net worth of $5 million at his current company (he makes around $600k). Everyone is trying to get ahead and there's serious FOMO if one is not ambitious. This is prevalent especially in Silicon Valley companies. The only solution to live life the way PG envisions is to guarantee basic income, shelter and healthcare.

346 points by zuhayeer 6y ago

Fyi, submitted link is HTTPS but PG's site isn't. The link fails to open in some browsers.

Is it just me or is SSL completely broken on this site? First I get this: Websites prove their identity via certificates. Firefox does not trust this site because it uses a certificate that is not valid for paulgraham.com. The certificate is only valid for the following names: .store.yahoo.com, .store.yahoo.net, store.yahoo.com, store.yahoo.net, .stores.yahoo.net, stores.yahoo.net, .csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2-edit.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc1.csell.store.yahoo.net, .us-dc2.csell.store.yahoo.net OK, I guess that's close enough, but when I "Accept the risk and continue," I get this, which can't be bypassed: An error occurred during a connection to paulgraham.com. Cannot communicate securely with peer: no common encryption algorithm(s). Error code: SSL_ERROR_NO_CYPHER_OVERLAP

tlb 6y ago
Fixed by changing the URL to http, thanks.

serniebanders 6y ago

Life is short when you want more than what is available around you. I just chill, tend to the nature around me, do my best, and try to make people around me happy. Simple life, just the right amount of time.

stanislavb 6y ago
I guess that’s the answer. Nothing more complicated than that.
082349872349872 6y ago
Sometime I need to read The View from 80, but an excerpt my father sent me was to the effect that, being in his eighties, the author can now view with amusement all the young people around him so busy white-rabbitly striving.
- pmoriarty 6y ago
  Ok, but we have to remember that not all 80-year-olds have the same outlook on life. Some people remain very active and ambitious well in to advanced age, as long as their body and mind can hold out, which is something that will differ from person to person. Here's a telling example: [1] In his 60's, Robert Owens was running marathons and undergoing Navy SEAL tests that would regularly crush 18-year-olds, and everyone he knew was trying to dissuade him from because they thought it would kill him. He still did it, and though he wasn't quite 80 at the time of the video and his body was starting to give out, he was insanely ambitious and accomplished at an advanced age, well past the point where most people would have thrown in the towel. I've seen artists who are very active in to their 90's, and have heard of people running marathons in their 90's. On the other end of the spectrum, the rate of suicide, depression, and loneliness among the elderly is very high. That's not to mention the devastation of dementia and other mental and physical afflictions. People deal with aging very differently depending on their body, mind, socio-economic circumstances, support networks, how they were brought up and their outlook on life, all of which vary greatly. [1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yg9kJeule7Q
cthonicthulu 6y ago
I admire this worldview. The recipe for a life well lived does not require complication.

vecter 6y ago

> One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin. This is so concisely and beautifully put. It's a good mental model and test for me to apply to things in my life to see whether or not I should spend time on them.

Waterluvian 6y ago
“Oh my god he’s just shitting all over my code with his different linting settings” I started too many fights caring about the dumbest stuff. It absolutely was a sudden spike of mattering. But ultimately matters almost not at all: the area under the spike is nada. Another thing I do is rubber duck it with my wife. I explain what’s bothering me in terms she (A non coder) understands. And usually by the end I already have my answer.
pmoriarty 6y ago
If someone who's been postponing living now with the aim of saving up for the distant future gets hit by a truck today, they'll never get what they saved and their life would have been in vain. There's something to be said for living in the present instead of delaying gratification to a time that you might never get to or not be able to enjoy much when you do get there, due to bodily or cognitive infirmities, or the friends or family you could have appreciated something with now being gone then.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

Afforess 6y ago

It's cool that Hacker News decided to nuke the "Chadwick Boseman"[1] thread from site and replace it with this 2016 repost nonsense. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313165 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313165

dio1337 6y ago

You were great and everyone received so much from your experience and knowledge Absolutely amazing, thank you for sharing your knowledge with me. I am Staff Website Promoter at https://isc888s.net/ https://isc888s.net/ the online market place resource for Telecom engineers and businesses and the Fastest Growing Start-up with a Global Workforce in 147 Countries .

dang 6y ago

If curious see also 2018 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446

wtvanhest 6y ago
I read this essay in 2016, and was fortunate to have a child in late 2018. This essay had a profound impact on me, and by extension a profound impact on our son's upbringing. There are very few weekends that go by that I don't think of it. I am sure PG isn't wasting his time on HN anymore, but if he does happen to read this, I just want to say thanks.

closeparen 6y ago

This is one of those things that everyone “knows” but no one really gets until they experience it. In my case it’s the realization that the deadline to establish the relationships for this chapter of life passed in March. The social network may open up again in a few years, but my peer group is going to be a bunch of newlyweds and new parents by then.

rrishi 6y ago
I am 27 with a lot of people around me already married or getting closer to getting married. Whereas I am probably not going to be at that place for maybe the next 5-7 years. I fear the next 5-7 years are going to be very lonely, maybe I will get another chance to socialize once I am married myself. But till then, maybe I'll have to contend myself with my own company. The sad bit is that its only now that I have finally started to grasp social interactions. Lived a majority of my life in a very depressive state and only been able to get out of all that recently.
- jacobush 6y ago
  Cross age limits
- RobPfeifer 6y ago
  You’ll be good - you’ve done the hard part :). Just reach out if you fall back into it! Also, every interaction Is social - keep up the new skill when you shop, chat online, get gas, etc. Most people like people (I know, I don’t get it either a lot of the time) so just keep putting yourself out there!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
torusenthusiast 6y ago
This one hits me hard, I'm in a very similar situation right now. After finally overcoming social anxiety to the point I could get out I was starting to finally build some connections, but now it pretty much seems hopeless. By the time this is all over and society resumes I will be pretty far past the cutoff point for fixing my social life and still managing to be relatively "normal"

submeta 6y ago

> When I was a kid I used to wonder about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was short if we lived 10 times as long. This reminds me of Parkinson‘s Law: „work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion“. So if we know we will be travelling in three days, we need tree days to pack our stuff. And if we get a message from our boss telling us we need to travel this noon, we‘ll quickly pack a few things and get a toothbrush at the airport. If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it. We would just - my hypothesis - need that much more time to accomplish our milestones. I read somewhere about putting Parkinson‘s Law in reverse: Committing to return the assignment in a week. That way we have a limited time budget, a boundary. That pushes us to move quickly.

activatedgeek 6y ago
On the note of Parkinson's Law, here's some fun extensions: https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/11/slackers-and-stakhanovites https://www.economist.com/business/2020/07/11/slackers-and-s... An accessible version - https://outline.com/CbyPxD https://outline.com/CbyPxD.
Viliam1234 6y ago
> If we had 10 times more time to live, we wouldn‘t necessarily be getting ten times more out of it. We would probably need to work 10 times longer, because everything would be more expensive. We compete for scarce resources with other people, and if we have more time and they have too, the extra time will be burned in the zero-sum competitions.
- adventured 6y ago
  That and the human population would rapidly saturate the planet within this century. That of course may happen anyway, however as is we at least have a fighting shot at managing it. Life expectancy expansion has to be gradual so we can adjust to it (in numerous ways), otherwise it'd likely prompt a cataclysmic humanity crash (bubble then crash). Beyond things getting more expensive, we'd probably just have a plain resource-driven civilization crash in much of the world. Annual births more or less peaked in 1988 at around 139/140 million, which is close to the level we're still at today [1]. Annual deaths however keep climbing, from roughly 48m in 1988 to 60m or so today. Births are set to decline while deaths keep climbing throughout the century. Clear most of the natural deaths for just the next 80 years, and it's the difference between then having 18-20 billion (or more) people in the year 2100 versus the present common projections of around 11'ish billion. Would have to resolve in the fantasy age extension scenario whether people can keep having children for hundreds of years, as that would change projections radically. Governments would likely aggressively regulate population expansion if so, rather than hoping for self-restriction (eg if it took a natural form of tapering via per capita births dropping to match the changes). Does raising a child become a 100 year responsibility? Does our pre-adult immaturity / adolescence time expand to fill the allotted life expectancy? Lots of questions in the fantasy premise. [1] https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png https://i.imgur.com/8buRWJS.png

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

keiferski 6y ago

It is not that we have a short space of time, but that we waste much of it. Life is long enough, and it has been given in sufficiently generous measure to allow the accomplishment of the very greatest things if the whole of it is well invested. But when it is squandered in luxury and carelessness, when it is devoted to no good end, forced at last by the ultimate necessity we perceive that it has passed away before we were aware that it was passing. So it is—the life we receive is not short, but we make it so, nor do we have any lack of it, but are wasteful of it. Just as great and princely wealth is scattered in a moment when it comes into the hands of a bad owner, while wealth however limited, if it is entrusted to a good guardian, increases by use, so our life is amply long for him who orders it properly. - Seneca, On the Shortness of Life, 49 AD https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Brevitate_Vitae_(Seneca) http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortness%20of%20Life.php http://www.crtpesaro.it/Materiali/Latino/On%20the%20Shortnes...

farrarstan 6y ago
Don’t buy it.
- stingraycharles 6y ago
  I’m all for a discussion about the quote, but it would help if you explain why you’re not buying it.
- JoeDaDude 6y ago
  Why not? Is it because it's about 2000 years old and no longer under copyright? https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu01seneuoft#page/n7/mode/2up https://archive.org/stream/adluciliumepistu01seneuoft#page/n...
jabits 6y ago
Great reference! Thanks.
comboy 6y ago
Seneca lived in different times. By the time you get "proper education" and then secure yourself financially you are quite old in today's world. So better enjoy the process treating it as the thing rather than the means. Longer lifespan helps but not that much. Biologically we just tend to peak pretty early. One thing I may disagree with PG is that if you enjoyed doing something while doing it, then I think the time wasn't wasted, even if later in life you think you may have spent that time better. Otherwise logical conclusion is that you should live with a mind of a very old man.

healthsuccess 6y ago

Beautifully written.

Abishek_Muthian 6y ago

Not for the one in pain. Be it from illness, inequality or just mere existence and yet one endures the pain due to primordial urge to live.

audiodude 6y ago

I'm simultaneously in a married relationship where children are off the table (by our choosing), and am hopelessly bored most of the time. It's interesting to contrast these two facts. I think life is too long, because I don't believe in any afterlife and if I die today or 40 years from now, what's the difference? Just a bunch of pain and boredom all the way down from now until then.

aggie 6y ago
Nietzsche's writing on "eternal return" helped me with similar thoughts. It gives life heaviness, as Kundera says in The Unbearable Lightness of Being. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_return Also, learning to "imagine Sisyphus happy." Easier said than done, of course. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myth_of_Sisyphus
- audiodude 6y ago
  Thanks for the links. I actually read the whole Sisyphus essay, but it didn't really inspire me. I think I'm probably an Existentialist to some degree, I believe that life has no inherent meaning or value and that we have to create for ourselves such meaning. But most days I'm just going through the motions and I'd rather tune out, or "drop out" as it were. Or as Weezer says "Why bother? It's gonna hurt me."
  - Trasmatta 6y ago
    Are you familiar with Epicureanism at all? It's not as popular these days as, say, Stoicism, but I found it's general tenets somewhat helpful for very similar thoughts. I'm also a bit of an Existentialist, so I agree that it's up to us to create our own meaning. But maybe that meaning can be just as simple as limiting our own suffering as much as possible, and finding the sustainable things that bring is happiness or enjoyment. The meaning we bring to our life doesn't necessarily need to be grand or far reaching. Anyway, that's sort of where I'm at right now. My personal philosophy is a super messy mix of Stoicism, Epicureanism, Existentialism, and Buddhism. Not particularly well thought out, but it's been useful lately for helping me carve out a little bit of happiness from this bizarre existence.

sanchezdev 6y ago

"Bullshit is the junk food of experience." Well put!

farrarstan 6y ago

hackernews.txt

wintorez 6y ago

It’s actually the longest thing you will ever experience.

everfree 6y ago
...according to some schools of belief. Truth is, there is no way to prove or disprove that, it's a debate for the ages between atheism and religion.
- lcall 6y ago
  Sufficiently for my own decision-making at least, I have proven it and it helps me much.... (My simple-tech web site I hope provides more info in a skimmable way; it is mentioned in my HN user profile, for what that may be worth, or more specific links if requested.) (With any downvotes, a thoughtful comment is appreciated. thanks.)

state_less 6y ago

If you're dealing with a lot of bullshit, remember that the game should be worth the candle. Hopefully that motivates you to change things up if it's been shitty too long.

modernerd 6y ago

Amit Gupta's “you don't get forever” talk is a good complement to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AP1hoNJkMk

cammil 6y ago

On this level of thinking I think we should consider the possibility that the notion of time is highly subjective. Indeed I think we should consider the possibility that time is an illusion. That illusion is created by the mind, which habitually simulates the past and the future. The thinking mind is a simulator. This is why the past can be changed, because the past is a thought. It is also possible to suspend this simulating, and you can experience timelessness. You might have experienced something similar in "flow states". A practical mnemonic I use is to consider not filling time with your actions, but rather filling your actions with time. This means slowing down, observing in as much detail as possible, and appreciating every possible moment within each action. Hope someone finds this useful!

alexpetralia 6y ago
This is wonderful. I feel like there is more here however. If our perception of time is manipulable (e.g. flow states, psychedelics, confabulation), how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life? Is it mastery over self-delusion? Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being? What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.)
- cammil 6y ago
  > how do we use that knowledge to perceive having lived a more enjoyable life? I think this is also a construct of the simulating mind. It is simply a thought (or series of thoughts) that leads you to "perceive" that your past was enjoyable. This thought passes and once it has, there is no concept of your past. Of course this thought might come back again. I would suggest rather than hoping you can live a life in which you regularly perceive your past as enjoyable, simply observe the fact that you are thinking this thought. > Is it mastery over self-delusion? I am not sure what you mean by this. > Does undivided attention on the passage of time contribute to well-being? In my experience, definitely yes. > What resources would you recommend to learn more (e.g. science? Eastern philosophy? etc.) This is a hard one to answer I think. (Good) Science I think won't lead you astray. Eastern philosophy has so much to offer I think, but there is also a lot of nonsense that you probably should be careful to avoid. I think you have to use your common sense when judging. Does it make sense to you? Does it correspond with your experience, or is someone simply asking you to believe something? (This of course is the scientific process.) BTW, these ideas are not confined to Eastern philosophy, similar ideas were philosophised in the West. There is so much written about these ideas so I couldn't give you the canonical source of it all. One thing that I probably should mention is meditation. It seems to be the one common denominator. The way I see it, is it's the exercise that practically helps change the way you see, think and act. If you want some concrete recommendations I am happy to suggest some, but I find it's often more helpful for people to discover what resonates with them.

jacobr 6y ago

Some people seem to be able to shrug off bullshit at work, just go home and think about things that “matter”. If I see bullshit, things that are wrong, or just legitimately hard problems I have a very hard time not working hard to fix it even though I would not really care about the outcome in 10 years. The dilemma is the balance between doing work that matters, maybe finding something where I care more about the outcome, or learn to brush things off and focus on other things in life that matters.

OneGuy123 6y ago

For me the most important take-away of that article is this: Do you know "life is short" merely intelectually or do you feel it in your bones as if your body is on fire?

amadeuspagel 6y ago

> And while it's impossible to say what is a lot or a little of a continuous quantity like time, 8 is not a lot of something. If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was. If you had 8 cars to choose from, it wouldn't seem so limited, would it? The idea that you can take a number, and in absolute sense say that it's "not a lot" is bizarre. Even 8 books might seem like a lot in a different situation, like if someone packed that many books in his suitcase for a weekend trip.

quickthrower2 6y ago
Plus only 8 christmas but with 2 kids you'd have 16 birthdays, plus maybe 100 or so friends birhdays, 2 first days at school, etc. etc. lots of moments.

ransom1538 6y ago

Routines. Routines speed up your life. Time will blow by quicker if you are covered in routines. What is worse, your days will become blurred - each day - too similar to the next - for you brain to hold on to distinct memories. Example: if you drive to work the same way each day - you will often not even remember the drive by 10am. That hour will be gone forever. However, if you were to take BART instead for the first time, that one particular day will last a lifetime. Try moving. Move to a different town, force yourself to get new friends, take three saxophone lessons. Your days will last. alternative: Alarm beeps, Wake up, drive your kid to school the same way, drive your commute the same way, work with the same people, tell the same jokes, work on similar problems all day, watch netflix all weekend. You will wake up at 45 when someone in your family passes. Change things up.

t-shaped 6y ago
Exactly. I realised this a while ago that if I keep having the same day everyday, I'm not going to remember anything about my life. Everything would be insignificant because it happens everyday. It came to my mind when I started to lose track of my week. Did I have pasta on Tuesday or Wednesday? What time did I come home last Thursday? Why can't I distinguish one day from the other? Because everyday is the same. Now I track my days and its much much better.
agumonkey 6y ago
The neurology of time is a topic hard to read about.
- ido 6y ago
  Do you mean it's emotionally hard? Or hard to understand?
  - agumonkey 6y ago
    neither, my post was utterly incomplete.. hard to find writings about :)
LUmBULtERA 6y ago

agumonkey 6y ago

Everything is short when viewed that way. A climber said: on a wall, a second is a century. Maybe our culture should reinstate sublime difficulties, preferably in groups, to make the limited space denser :)

justcomments12 6y ago

It's not that life is short, it's that we waste to much of it - Seneca

austincheney 6y ago

When ever this subject comes up I think of the song Time from Pink Floyd. I included the lyrics below. If a typical person has 72 years of life that is: * 26,298 days (includes 18 leap days) * 631,152 hours, 37,869,120 minutes, 2,272,147,200 seconds (not counting leap seconds) That sounds like an enormous amount of time. Time is like money. For some people it always seems to slip away. For other people its a multiplicative empowering factor that builds on itself like a compound interest. For others still there is plenty of time meaningfully spent performing intentional tasks. ------------ Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day Fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way. Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town Waiting for someone or something to show you the way. --- Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain. You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today. And then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun. --- So you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again. The sun is the same in a relative way but you're older, Shorter of breath and one day closer to death. --- Every year is getting shorter never seem to find the time. Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way The time is gone, the song is over, Thought I'd something more to say. --- Home Home again I like to be here When I can --- When I come home Cold and tired It's good to warm my bones Beside the fire --- Far away Across the field Tolling on the iron bell Calls the faithful to their knees To hear the softly spoken magic spell

sak5sk 6y ago

I once had a dream that felt like it lasted a lifetime. In this dream, I had a whole new life, a different wife, kids, and I lived it through to the end. Then I woke up. It was the weirdest thing ever and I often think about it.

qzw 6y ago
I think you had an encounter with an alien artifact [0]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_The_Next_Generation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inner_Light_(Star_Trek:_Th...
jpxw 6y ago
There’s absolutely no way of knowing that you’re not living in a dream as we speak right now.
- sak5sk 6y ago
  That's the scary part! I woke up very disoriented, full of all sorts of emotions - disappointment, sadness, total confusion. I couldn't make sense of what just happened. It was scary. I also missed my "dream family". I couldn't believe they were gone and it was all a dream. I've told this to people, and they did not believe me. It took a good 3 days to shake off all of the emotions I was feeling over a dream. I did a fair bit of research on this and found that many people report the same happening to them.
anaxag0ras 6y ago
Reminds me of this anecdote[0], where the person 'lived' an entirely different life while he was lying unconscious on the ground. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oc7rc/have_you_ever_felt_a_deep_personal_connection_to/c3g4ot3/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/oc7rc/have_you_e...

pedro1976 6y ago

Jordan Petersen once said "working means sacrificing the present for the future", which is an amazing statement. Its incredible how much our society believes working is a must, especially fulltime. I once did a sabatical and people giving me a weird look, after finding out that I don't do a regular job. Quite sad, imho.

swagasaurus-rex 6y ago
It's especially cruel to be living paycheck to paycheck. At that point, you're not sacrificing the present for the future. You're sacrificing the present for survival.

imranq 6y ago

One trick I learned to slow down time is to keep a journal and write both about the future (either as a narrative or plan a schedule) and about the past (either as a journal entry or an audit). This could be about anything, any minute detail you encountered throughout the day or goal you are planning - the number of clouds outside or an application to graduate school you're thinking about or seeing someone interesting on the street. Do this regularly, each day for 30 minutes, for 2-3 months and you will find that your memory improves by 10x and your days feel much more fulfilling and purpose driven. The reason I think this works, is that by both explicitly planning and examining, your brain will create its own BS filter and guide you to things that are naturally fulfilling and worth your time.

simonebrunozzi 6y ago
Tell us more. I went on and off with journaling for most of my life, but I wouldn't consider the effort successful. Just right now, and for the next two weeks, I am trying to journal every day, as a little experiment. Again, tell us more. Keen to hear.
- imranq 6y ago
  Of course. Just expanding on the idea behind journaling is that it is a scaffolding for your mind. For me, without journaling, my mind will wander and probably resemble a random walk. Instead, I found that by organizing my days into "packets" which have a forward-looking journaling session in the beginning and a backward-looking journaling session at the end was a tremendous boost to how structured my thinking is and how I spend my time. For me, each "packet" is 2-3 day period and each journaling session is about 30 minutes. So two journaling sessions is a 1 hour investment to get better results over 48 hours (~2%) doesn't seem too bad. More practically, I just keep two composition notebooks for these journals, and try to keep to a zettelkasten style[1] in Evernote. [1] https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettelkasten-method-1 https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/NfdHG6oHBJ8Qxc26s/the-zettel...
  - simonebrunozzi 6y ago

simonebrunozzi 6y ago

> One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option. Love this passage. Don't have kids, but I can totally see this happening to parents I know.

NiceWayToDoIT 6y ago

> Arguing - Your instinct when attacked is to defend yourself. But like a lot of instincts, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in. Counterintuitive as it feels, it's better most of the time not to defend yourself. I love this one, certainly something I need to practice.

dstick 6y ago

"It is possible to slow time somewhat" I've discovered how during a holiday in a camper 2 years ago. Do a -lot- of new things on a single day. We had a 6 day trip and it felt like 3 weeks. It was magic. While routine and habits have their place, if you want to slow down or bend the flow of time - do new things every day.

sg47 6y ago

I have a different take on this. Not everyone is Paul Graham. Paul Graham would not have written this before founding his company. He'd not have thought "there are only 52 weekends when I'm 25 so let me just party". Most people, especially those who have not made it in life, are worried about survival. Especially people with kids. They sacrifice their time with kids so that their kids can have a better life than them. So that they can move them from <insert class here> to upper <insert class here>. They work hard, attend pointless meetings so that they can get ahead in their career, not upset anyone and make sure they have health insurance. They do insane commutes for the same reason. Most people do not have the luxury to choose. People are more unsure of their survival despite greater wealth. A single medical incident could bankrupt them. There are people on Blind wondering if $2 million is enough to retire. A friend of mine was worried that he'd not be able to hit his goal of a net worth of $5 million at his current company (he makes around $600k). Everyone is trying to get ahead and there's serious FOMO if one is not ambitious. This is prevalent especially in Silicon Valley companies. The only solution to live life the way PG envisions is to guarantee basic income, shelter and healthcare.