>For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to

>For a period of 1-2 years, they would scour books ranging from self-help to moral philosophy in order to build a Simplistic System for Living. Maybe it had to do with getting their first engineer salaries, because a central tenet of my friends' philosophies somehow always ended up being "time and money are interchangeable." I went through this too. It,s a result of pressure to Do More, Faster, which comes with that engineer salary and long work weeks. You have 1-2 hours free per day, max, and feel an enormous pressure to do something worthwhile with that time. It,s chasing meaning while already having given away most of your time to build someone else,s meaning.