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You know I used to be so busy with learning things when I was younger but now I've started watching football at the weekends. Finally experiencing the normie li

by jwmoz 4y ago

You know I used to be so busy with learning things when I was younger but now I've started watching football at the weekends. Finally experiencing the normie life :D

re-thc 4y ago
Congrats on learning football! It's all perspective.
urthor 4y ago
Honestly, I've spent so much time learning computer science trivia. I truly enjoyed learning all that computer science knowledge in my spare time. Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. I spent so long just jamming my brain full of Vim shortcuts and functional programming theory... I need to make some money out of it. Hard to enjoy my hobbies when I'm in debt to the bank and my mortgage isn't paid.
- illys 4y ago
  "Hard to enjoy my hobbies when I'm in debt to the bank and my mortgage isn't paid." You are young and worried for a mortgage to complete... and that prevents you to enjoy what you like in life? What will you say when you get older and have sick relatives, dying parents, troubled teenagers, health issues... and so on? Life is not about waiting for the end of the storm to be happy. It is about learning to danse in the rain. Be sad when it is time, manage crises when you have to... And collect and share as much joy as you can the rest of the time. No matter what, don't wait and enjoy your life!
- whiplash451 4y ago
  Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and will most likely not happen. Why set yourself up with such a goal, and how do you know it will even correlate with happiness in the end? You are much better off developing a specialty that you enjoy. Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence.
  - newjersey 4y ago
    > Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence. A million is a lot but my first reaction to your comment was this is something only wealthy people can afford to say. Especially in the US where we don’t have universal healthcare. Just typing this made me realize I need concrete, achievable goals though so I appreciate your comment. I am not the gp but this is something I expect a lot of us need to work on. Something like: 1. What are my financial goals? 2. Is it realistic to have those goals? 3. How do I know if I am on track? If not, what can I do to correct my course?
    - Ntrails 4y ago
      Personal views entirely... Money is largely a product of working, but broadly uncorrelated with time or effort. If you think this is untrue, try working a minimum wage job or two for a while. This shouldn't stop you working hard for returns. but it should offer a reality check. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove stressors. However realistically this is linked to income-outgoings / debt. Earning a lot but being highly leveraged and living an expensive lifestyle ends up not being much less stressful. I may work until I'm 70. I may be dead before I'm 50. I don't want to be miserable today in order to live a mythical good life in the future. So I plan assuming the most important thing is being content day in day out. I guess I have a high discount rate. It's not obviously right!
      - xpe 4y ago
        Using a discount rate is a decent start, but it is a vast simplification of how people think. If we want to make it a little more nuanced to capture more of the human condition, I would suggest: 1. Allowing one's discount rate to vary with age. 2. Varying the time horizon. Exponential decay probably doesn't map very well to how people think across different phases of life. For many people, their discounting may change roughly as follows: - When you first pop out, life is only the present. - When young, e.g. 2 or 3 years old, kids may want things very soon, within seconds, minutes, maybe hours. - Young'uns start to understand money. They might look towards saving for their first bicycle. Now time horizons look more like 1 to 12 months. - As people start to develop educational and professional goals, they allow more deferred gratification: preparing for their career or buying a house. This horizon might be around 1 - 10 years. - Somewhere in a career, people might start planning 5 - 50 years out, often for for kids and retirement. - As people approach their end of expected lifespan (or face a life threatening illness), they probably care a lot about: -- personally, living in the moment. This might mean checking off the bucket list as well as high quality relationships -- financially, allocating money away from themselves towards emphasizing long-term, inter-generational goals, like providing for their family or donating to charity. These goals have 20+ year horizons. - The ultra wealthy have the means to create charities with 50+ year time horizons via an endowment.
- hluska 4y ago
  I respect your ambition and like your goal! Good work and best of fortune!! :)
- xbar 4y ago
  Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and overall, you will most likely greatly exceed your current expectations, but perhaps not on exactly the timeframe you set. Do not let anyone slow you down.
- yonaguska 4y ago
  I've spent at least 30k on my hobbies over past 10 years, since graduating college. I still have a mortgage, I'm still in debt. But, my hobbies have given me something to enjoy outside of work. I love programming, but I consider myself lucky when my work and passions actually align. Sometimes I get to solve interesting problems. That's a luxury. But you know what is always there for me when I clock out? My family, and my hobbies. When the weather is nice, I can look forward to a motorcycle ride. I enjoy going to the gym, learning jiu jitsu, gardening, cooking, repairing things. Yes, it costs money. But, I'm in my 30s, in good shape, happy, and in debt. I see people that maxxed out their work life, and neglected their personal lives, and they tend to be miserable for one reason or another. Getting in shape and being active gets harder as you get older. Relationships take time and work as well. Money is not going to buy you a happy relationship, it's not going to buy you friends, and it's not going to buy you health. It absolutely helps, but it's not the priority. Work so that you can live well, not so that you can accumulate numbers.
- eropple 4y ago
  > Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. 35-year-old here, with a similar box of CS knowledge floating around. Comfortably sub-million, but with a nice house and a couple dogs. You really aren't obliged, and you don't really need to "make some money" out of it. More money would be nice, don't get me wrong. But you said you learned it because you enjoyed it. Which I did, too. I got my money's worth out of the learning. You are not obligated to financialize everything you enjoy. It's super important to understand that. The mortgage anxiety--I get that too. YMMV, but for me, all it took was practice. I don't think about the mortgage on my house. I've owned it for about five years. The money goes out every month. I work on renovating a room or building some furniture or going for a walk with my dogs. It need not be a terrifying specter; it'll either get paid in due course or I'll die and won't have to worry about it. I think there are a lot of brains (and mine is definitely one) wired to make a bigger deal of things than necessary to provide a sense of direction and meaning, but this one is so abstract and so luck-based that, for me at least, it was deeply valuable to fight against it. I kicked it into the back of a closet, and for me it's a lot easier now to just live. Again, YMMV.
  - nightski 4y ago
    With your career you are trading time for money. It makes complete sense to optimize that. Most of the professional work you do will not be what you would work on in your free time anyways, it’s work to make some other person rich.
    - eropple 4y ago
      > It makes complete sense to optimize that. Maybe? Like--define optimize. VC-chasing (alluded to by the great-grandparent poster elsewhere in-thread) is almost certainly less optimized from an EV perspective. If it's one's dream, absolutely chase it--but it should not feel obligatory because you absolutely can have a lot of happiness now without precluding later happiness, too, if you so wish.
      - nightski 4y ago
- stcroixx 4y ago
  Sunk cost fallacy.
- racl101 4y ago
  If I've learned anything over the years, is that technology moves so fast day to day that, that to keep up with absolutely everything all the time is a fool's errand. You need to pick an area that you really like and focus on it and I think the money will come when you improve and specialize your talents in that area. That area, of course, should preferably coincide with the jobs available in your area in order to make it easier on yourself, but nothing says you can't apply for remote jobs.
- NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
  >Honestly, I've spent so much time learning computer science trivia. I truly enjoyed learning all that computer science knowledge in my spare time. Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. Bad news: computer science knowledge has rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point in the real world.
walthamstow 4y ago
Nothing quite turns the 'work' part of the brain off like a live sporting event. Fast-flowing games work better, soccer is particularly great because it has 2x 45 minutes of solid action. NFL has too many breaks where my brain can start thinking about other things.
- urthor 4y ago
  Gridiron games edited down to 45 minutes are one of humanity's greatest inventions. I say this as an Australian. Gridiron edited down so it's only back to back plays, no ads no stoppages, is the greatest sport on television.
  - red-iron-pine 4y ago
    > no ads no stoppages lol good luck. if anything the amount of ads will only increase. it's why soccer (futbol) never became a thing in the US -- no channel on the planet is going to air 90 minutes without ads.
  - 1980phipsi 4y ago
    Where you get that?
    - benji-york 4y ago
      In the US it is available as part of the NFL+ service. A short summary can be seen at https://support.nfl.com/hc/en-us/articles/5403911854236-What-is-a-condensed-replay-How-long-are-they- https://support.nfl.com/hc/en-us/articles/5403911854236-What... As an avid American Football fan, I agree; condensed replays are great, especially when you are interested in, but not deeply invested in a particular game (for those, I prefer to watch long-form).
- ilyt 4y ago
  Esports are like that for me, particularly Dota 2.
racl101 4y ago
We all want to get to that point where we can watch football on weekends.
- HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
  What's stopping you right now?
  - racl101 4y ago
    I'm just talking generally that we'd all like to be there.

by jwmoz 4y ago

You know I used to be so busy with learning things when I was younger but now I've started watching football at the weekends. Finally experiencing the normie life :D

re-thc 4y ago

Congrats on learning football! It's all perspective.

urthor 4y ago

Honestly, I've spent so much time learning computer science trivia. I truly enjoyed learning all that computer science knowledge in my spare time. Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. I spent so long just jamming my brain full of Vim shortcuts and functional programming theory... I need to make some money out of it. Hard to enjoy my hobbies when I'm in debt to the bank and my mortgage isn't paid.

illys 4y ago
"Hard to enjoy my hobbies when I'm in debt to the bank and my mortgage isn't paid." You are young and worried for a mortgage to complete... and that prevents you to enjoy what you like in life? What will you say when you get older and have sick relatives, dying parents, troubled teenagers, health issues... and so on? Life is not about waiting for the end of the storm to be happy. It is about learning to danse in the rain. Be sad when it is time, manage crises when you have to... And collect and share as much joy as you can the rest of the time. No matter what, don't wait and enjoy your life!
whiplash451 4y ago
Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and will most likely not happen. Why set yourself up with such a goal, and how do you know it will even correlate with happiness in the end? You are much better off developing a specialty that you enjoy. Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence.
- newjersey 4y ago
  > Money is a side-effect of happiness and persistence. A million is a lot but my first reaction to your comment was this is something only wealthy people can afford to say. Especially in the US where we don’t have universal healthcare. Just typing this made me realize I need concrete, achievable goals though so I appreciate your comment. I am not the gp but this is something I expect a lot of us need to work on. Something like: 1. What are my financial goals? 2. Is it realistic to have those goals? 3. How do I know if I am on track? If not, what can I do to correct my course?
  - Ntrails 4y ago
    Personal views entirely... Money is largely a product of working, but broadly uncorrelated with time or effort. If you think this is untrue, try working a minimum wage job or two for a while. This shouldn't stop you working hard for returns. but it should offer a reality check. Money doesn't buy happiness, but it can remove stressors. However realistically this is linked to income-outgoings / debt. Earning a lot but being highly leveraged and living an expensive lifestyle ends up not being much less stressful. I may work until I'm 70. I may be dead before I'm 50. I don't want to be miserable today in order to live a mythical good life in the future. So I plan assuming the most important thing is being content day in day out. I guess I have a high discount rate. It's not obviously right!
    - xpe 4y ago
      Using a discount rate is a decent start, but it is a vast simplification of how people think. If we want to make it a little more nuanced to capture more of the human condition, I would suggest: 1. Allowing one's discount rate to vary with age. 2. Varying the time horizon. Exponential decay probably doesn't map very well to how people think across different phases of life. For many people, their discounting may change roughly as follows: - When you first pop out, life is only the present. - When young, e.g. 2 or 3 years old, kids may want things very soon, within seconds, minutes, maybe hours. - Young'uns start to understand money. They might look towards saving for their first bicycle. Now time horizons look more like 1 to 12 months. - As people start to develop educational and professional goals, they allow more deferred gratification: preparing for their career or buying a house. This horizon might be around 1 - 10 years. - Somewhere in a career, people might start planning 5 - 50 years out, often for for kids and retirement. - As people approach their end of expected lifespan (or face a life threatening illness), they probably care a lot about: -- personally, living in the moment. This might mean checking off the bucket list as well as high quality relationships -- financially, allocating money away from themselves towards emphasizing long-term, inter-generational goals, like providing for their family or donating to charity. These goals have 20+ year horizons. - The ultra wealthy have the means to create charities with 50+ year time horizons via an endowment.
hluska 4y ago
I respect your ambition and like your goal! Good work and best of fortune!! :)
xbar 4y ago
Aiming to make a few millions (presumably in savings) before you are 35 is extremely ambitious and overall, you will most likely greatly exceed your current expectations, but perhaps not on exactly the timeframe you set. Do not let anyone slow you down.
yonaguska 4y ago
I've spent at least 30k on my hobbies over past 10 years, since graduating college. I still have a mortgage, I'm still in debt. But, my hobbies have given me something to enjoy outside of work. I love programming, but I consider myself lucky when my work and passions actually align. Sometimes I get to solve interesting problems. That's a luxury. But you know what is always there for me when I clock out? My family, and my hobbies. When the weather is nice, I can look forward to a motorcycle ride. I enjoy going to the gym, learning jiu jitsu, gardening, cooking, repairing things. Yes, it costs money. But, I'm in my 30s, in good shape, happy, and in debt. I see people that maxxed out their work life, and neglected their personal lives, and they tend to be miserable for one reason or another. Getting in shape and being active gets harder as you get older. Relationships take time and work as well. Money is not going to buy you a happy relationship, it's not going to buy you friends, and it's not going to buy you health. It absolutely helps, but it's not the priority. Work so that you can live well, not so that you can accumulate numbers.
eropple 4y ago
> Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. 35-year-old here, with a similar box of CS knowledge floating around. Comfortably sub-million, but with a nice house and a couple dogs. You really aren't obliged, and you don't really need to "make some money" out of it. More money would be nice, don't get me wrong. But you said you learned it because you enjoyed it. Which I did, too. I got my money's worth out of the learning. You are not obligated to financialize everything you enjoy. It's super important to understand that. The mortgage anxiety--I get that too. YMMV, but for me, all it took was practice. I don't think about the mortgage on my house. I've owned it for about five years. The money goes out every month. I work on renovating a room or building some furniture or going for a walk with my dogs. It need not be a terrifying specter; it'll either get paid in due course or I'll die and won't have to worry about it. I think there are a lot of brains (and mine is definitely one) wired to make a bigger deal of things than necessary to provide a sense of direction and meaning, but this one is so abstract and so luck-based that, for me at least, it was deeply valuable to fight against it. I kicked it into the back of a closet, and for me it's a lot easier now to just live. Again, YMMV.
- nightski 4y ago
  With your career you are trading time for money. It makes complete sense to optimize that. Most of the professional work you do will not be what you would work on in your free time anyways, it’s work to make some other person rich.
  - eropple 4y ago
    > It makes complete sense to optimize that. Maybe? Like--define optimize. VC-chasing (alluded to by the great-grandparent poster elsewhere in-thread) is almost certainly less optimized from an EV perspective. If it's one's dream, absolutely chase it--but it should not feel obligatory because you absolutely can have a lot of happiness now without precluding later happiness, too, if you so wish.
    - nightski 4y ago
stcroixx 4y ago
Sunk cost fallacy.
racl101 4y ago
If I've learned anything over the years, is that technology moves so fast day to day that, that to keep up with absolutely everything all the time is a fool's errand. You need to pick an area that you really like and focus on it and I think the money will come when you improve and specialize your talents in that area. That area, of course, should preferably coincide with the jobs available in your area in order to make it easier on yourself, but nothing says you can't apply for remote jobs.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
>Honestly, I've spent so much time learning computer science trivia. I truly enjoyed learning all that computer science knowledge in my spare time. Now I feel obliged to work even harder to make a few million dollars out of it before I'm 35. Bad news: computer science knowledge has rapidly diminishing returns past a certain point in the real world.

walthamstow 4y ago

Nothing quite turns the 'work' part of the brain off like a live sporting event. Fast-flowing games work better, soccer is particularly great because it has 2x 45 minutes of solid action. NFL has too many breaks where my brain can start thinking about other things.

urthor 4y ago
Gridiron games edited down to 45 minutes are one of humanity's greatest inventions. I say this as an Australian. Gridiron edited down so it's only back to back plays, no ads no stoppages, is the greatest sport on television.
- red-iron-pine 4y ago
  > no ads no stoppages lol good luck. if anything the amount of ads will only increase. it's why soccer (futbol) never became a thing in the US -- no channel on the planet is going to air 90 minutes without ads.
- 1980phipsi 4y ago
  Where you get that?
  - benji-york 4y ago
    In the US it is available as part of the NFL+ service. A short summary can be seen at https://support.nfl.com/hc/en-us/articles/5403911854236-What-is-a-condensed-replay-How-long-are-they- https://support.nfl.com/hc/en-us/articles/5403911854236-What... As an avid American Football fan, I agree; condensed replays are great, especially when you are interested in, but not deeply invested in a particular game (for those, I prefer to watch long-form).
ilyt 4y ago
Esports are like that for me, particularly Dota 2.

racl101 4y ago

We all want to get to that point where we can watch football on weekends.

HeyLaughingBoy 4y ago
What's stopping you right now?
- racl101 4y ago
  I'm just talking generally that we'd all like to be there.