9 ms·

The Top Of My Todo List

• ejfox 14y ago
  I wanted to make a poster of this for myself so I did. Sharing in case anyone else might wanna use it, you're more than welcome. All respect to Paul Graham & Bronnie Ware. There's a 26" x 39" poster version, in case you happen to have a big-ass printer around, and an 8.5" x 11" smaller version if you're normal. http://cloud.ejfox.com/G1IE http://cloud.ejfox.com/G1IE Also available in black: http://cloud.ejfox.com/G1Wm http://cloud.ejfox.com/G1Wm
  • reledi 14y ago
    Thanks! I noticed others in this thread saying it's better to avoid negatives. For example, "Pursue your dreams" instead of "Don't ignore your dreams". Can you make a positive version of this poster?
• hackermom 14y ago
  So, can you offer me and everyone else a nice job that makes all of this possible? That makes it possible to NOT be a cog? Or is this just another set of advice that only the privileged ones can afford to heed...
• mgallivan 14y ago
  I think that the fifth rule, be happy, is either: - a guiding principle by which the other four rules are derived or... - the effect of following the previous four rules I don't think of "be happy" as a rule so much in itself.
  • sunsu 14y ago
    I think that, more often than not, being happy requires choosing to be happy. There are far too many unplanned moments in life where, even if you've followed the other four rules, you will not be happy unless you actively choose to make lemonade out of your lemons.
    • japhyr 14y ago
      That's true. People who say "I'm bored" are usually boring people. Many first- world people who are unhappy on a daily basis just have little sense of agency. This isn't meant to blame those people; many people are told to follow their dreams by adults who have given up on their own dreams. Few people are explicitly taught how to follow their dreams.
      • reinhardt 14y ago
        And then there's those of us who never really had anything resembling a lifelong dream in the first place. Calling it boredom is an understatement, sounds more like acedia.
    • koji 14y ago
      I think this is a great point. The key to happiness is not planning, because life will not accommodate those plans. The key is to be flexible when life happens. Anyone remember the book "Who Moved My Cheese?"
  • deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  • davidlains 14y ago
    Many people have a hard time realizing they are happy. It is all too easy, especially for hacker types, to continuously focus on 'the problems' or things that can be improved or tweaked. Its hard to know you are happy if you never stop and smell the roses.
• allbombs 14y ago
  "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." Will counter and say, it's impossible to achieve dreams (or the first big exit) without putting your head down, working insane hours, neglecting friends, and being miserable. Need to live the bad times, ultimate lows, to fully realize happiness and no regrets.
  • conanite 14y ago
    That might be the wrong dream. Find a dream that balances your other needs, and follow that one.
  • tomp 14y ago
    The thing about dreams is, they don't need to be achieved; even failing to achieve them is better than not trying - at least you've tried. I know this, now I have to go out and actually do it.
    • japhyr 14y ago
      Although the trying should lead to some fruition. Always trying but never having succeeded would be a pretty sad way to end up. This awareness gives me the stamina to work through all the details it takes to end up with a polished product.
      • koji 14y ago
        I agree that achieving your dreams often takes a lot of work, and often at the cost of other aspects of your life. Finding balance is key, but that's easier said than done. I think that's what we're all striving for, but if it was easy we wouldn't be having this conversation. Personally, I'm working on segmenting my life. When it's time to work, work hard and focused. But remind yourself there's time to play. If you don't play, what's the point of working hard? If anyone has figured out how to achieve your dreams while maintaining your life balance, please let us know!
      • kolya3 14y ago
        Sure, though when you start a project often times the goal you set out to reach turns out to be the wrong one. Enjoy the journey and be flexible on the goal. The mere act of trying, produces fruits that you didn't expect. I always loved this quote from Jobs: "...you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future." And they very often do. So be sure to start that project, whatever it may be, just take the next smallest manageable step instead of just thinking about it. Go west and whatever fruits that produces might turn out to be very successful, just not in the way you originally planned.
• architgupta 14y ago
  Its like getting consistent physical exercise, isn't it? Keeping fit should be a priority - we feel happier, fitter, more relaxed after a workout. Yet its easy to laze around, sometimes checking email, hn, finding excuses to not go in today. In Ms. Ware's essay - consciously choosing happiness is a very intelligent thought. On some days I feel miserable, then I look around (I am in India). I thank heavens for a wonderful life. Being miserable, then appears to be a choice.
  • jarek 14y ago
    Ah, that most Western of ideas — that to get consistent physical exercise it is necessary to "go in" for a "workout."
    • architgupta 14y ago
      I am in Delhi (have also lived in San Francisco). Actually in SF, it was easy to remain fit, by just walking 7-8 miles after work with friends up and down the hills. In Delhi (at least in my part of town), its unsafe to walk/cycle in streets due to bad driving and traffic. better to go to a public park or a gym. So yeah, its the east where rapid urbanization isn't leaving space for a random walk.
• ptn 14y ago
  This reminds me of Neil DeGrasse's Tyson's "two main philosophies in life": http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qccer/i_am_neil_degrasse_tyson_ask_me_anything/c3wgffy http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/qccer/i_am_neil_degras...
• namityadav 14y ago
  I would change "cultivate friendships" to "cultivate relationships". With family, friends, acquaintances, etc. And I'd also add "Focus on your health"
• IsaacL 14y ago
  I'd rework Paul Graham's list a little, as the first two items are phrased in negative terms (it's easier to do stuff than to not do stuff). "Follow your dreams; take a break; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." The idea of putting them at the top of your todo list is interesting. At the moment I organise myself with Trello, one list per project, and at the top of each list I have a card that reminds me why I'm doing the project. Every now and again I check these cards to see if any projects should be culled -- if they're not meeting their goals, or if there's a better way to achieve those goals, or if I no longer care about those goals. Keeping long-term priorities in mind when caught up in the midst of your daily tasks seems like a winner. Your life is lived one day at a time, after all -- if you don't seize the day, you won't seize your life. Anyway, the whole idea of combining your todo list with your bucket list -- your daily goals with your life goals -- is interesting. I've seen a few startups based on this idea (evr.st, Goalhawk). It'll be interesting to see if the model works.
  • knowtheory 14y ago
    I dropped by to make precisely your first point. Re: adding items to your todo lists, i feel like PG's 5 exhortations (which seem more like general advice than specific prescriptions) fit into something like the "epics" that were recently introduced into Pivotal Tracker, than actual items to do. One should take a look at each of the items placed on a todo list and ask "does this item take me closer or further from my goals?"
  • Tyrannosaurs 14y ago
    I think take a break misses the point of the second one. The spirit is closer to what my father always says - no-one ever died wishing they'd spent more time in the office. Take a break makes it sound like an hour or two out rather than what it is, basically saying it's really not all about work.
  • pg 14y ago
    I didn't phrase them that way by accident. "Follow your dreams" is too strong. I wrote about that here: http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html. "Don't work too much" is phrased that way because it really is a matter of avoiding something.
• elviejo 14y ago
  Objectives in the negative have a bad effect on the brain according to NLP so "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much; say what you think; cultivate friendships; be happy." Can be better expressed as: " pursue your dreams, get appropriate rest and relaxation, say what... " (if you believe in NLP)
  • mdda 14y ago
    I'm not sure whether belief in NLP is a matter of taste : The techniques are basically a distillation of what therapists (notably Erickson) have uncovered during hypnosis. To further amplify your point, the unconscious mind doesn't seem to be any good at parsing logical statements - so things that one 'says to oneself' should be cast straightforwardly. At its most basic, the command "Don't think of a pink unicorn" brings to the surface exactly what you don't want. Drilling yourself to process 'bad stuff' unconsciously is (as you said) counterproductive.
• unimpressive 14y ago
  I once did something similar, except inverted. I'd put at the bottom of my to-do list "...Die unfulfilled and unhappy" I figured seeing that at the bottom of my to-do list would remind me to make sure it doesn't happen. And maybe even rethink the items on top.
  • dazbradbury 14y ago
    So logically, by completing all your items on the todo list, you die unfulfilled and unhappy. Where's the incentive there?! How about you put something like this at the bottom... n-1)Immediately think of something important and meaningful to do, and add it above. n)...Die unfulfilled and unhappy
    • sundeep_b 14y ago
      :) Well, the idea is that he won't reach the end of the list. So, two more items at the end will make no difference except add only more backlog!
  • sundeep_b 14y ago
    I'm stuck whether to call this optimistic or pessimistic, but I can sure call it clever.
    • unimpressive 14y ago
      It's sort of like the mental trick of deciding by seeing what you hope for in a coin toss. [0] If the line seems really dissonant with the rest of the list you're probably fine, if it doesn't, or even seems to naturally progress from it, you should seriously rethink what you're doing. [1] [0] First result I got: http://positivemed.com/2012/04/15/when-faced-with-two-choices/ http://positivemed.com/2012/04/15/when-faced-with-two-choice... [1] At least if it's the latter.
• japhyr 14y ago
  There are two ways of living: fear-based, and love-based. People who live fear-based avoid things. They avoid things that might cause heartache, pain, difficulty, etc. but all of the most interesting pursuits in life have the potential to cause these things sometimes. People who live love-based move towards things that bring happiness and satisfaction in the long term. They work hard and play hard, and when they hurt they know that things may get better. I heard this several years ago now, and I see one of these approaches in most people around me.
  • koji 14y ago
    I think this can also defined in the level of risk one's willing to accept. Fear-based is having a low risk tolerance. It's so easy to choose the safe route; steady corporate job, work your way up the ladder, etc. It's predefined and historically tested. But I fail to see a lot of happy people at the end of this line. Making big life changes is hard, and a risk. The more I talk to people about this topic, though, the more I can see in their eyes that they wish they had taken bigger risks in their youth.
    • mmatants 14y ago
      You have described a much more "realistic" model for this - it's a spectrum of risk-aversion, not a binary attribute. A complementary attribute is the level of "abundance mentality" present in the person. The difficult thing, though, which is what everyone glosses over, is that it is difficult to achieve abundance mentality. It's a good metric to look at, but there is much, much more work necessary to improve it. And that work is actually not at all trivial, unfortunately, and hard to pick up on the Internet, as it is highly personalized.
      • sigs 14y ago
        Abundance mentality is an excellent term, I'll happily rip it and use it from now on. Indeed, the "safe" route could be called survivor mentality; to maximize the chances of not dying without offspring. What about a world where you are not really in danger? When you already have food, clothing and a house, and no one is preventing you from procreating at will? Those who in that position still want a bigger house, more food, a yacht, expensive sports car and a harem; they're still in survival mode _after already having survived_ past any meaningful definition of survival. They're over-survivers; and indeed, it's not a binary thing but a spectrum. Hence, try to enjoy the abundance, and let others enjoy it; develop your attitude towards abundance mentality. We all have already survived.
• dmvaldman 14y ago
  I'm glad PG is finding the time to write essays more frequently. Maybe this is a result of finding the time to do the things that make him happier.
  • monkeyking 14y ago
    that is hardly an essay.
• jetxs 14y ago
  Forking the list: Don't tie your dreams to objects; work enough to keep you satisfied; don't be an arrogant prick; build effective relationships; be happy.
• orofino 14y ago
  This is about priority. I'd argue that while this reminder is nice, it doesn't go far enough, it is too passive. Actively working towards those goals is the only way you'll actually achieve them. Instead of putting these generic statements at the top of your list, put some concrete action or goal there. This is something I'm trying to live right now. A month ago I quit my job [1] to travel the world after having saved and dreamed about it for years. During the time I was dreaming we put together a plan, set aside money, and tried to reign in expenses. All tangible actions that lead to an end. [1] http://orofino.me/homeless-and-jobless-travelling-the-world/ http://orofino.me/homeless-and-jobless-travelling-the-world/
• siavosh 14y ago
  I think many of us mistake expressing our feelings with saying whatever comes to mind which can lead to a bigger wreck than ignoring or suppressing them. I would change it to: don't ignore your feelings. How you act on them is where wisdom comes in.
• Estragon 14y ago
  It's hard to step outside the systems of social domination which suppress dreams, encourage overwork, etc. because they operate from fears which are often so deep-seated we're often not even aware of them. Bringing those fears into the light and unlearning the reactions they trigger is the main goal of spiritual practice (at least of mine.) This sort of emotional study and training is on the critical path for all of the desiderata pg lists (again, at least for me) and would have to precede them on my todo list, if I had one for this sort of thing. Something my teacher wrote along these lines: http://www.unfetteredmind.org/learned-helplessness/0 http://www.unfetteredmind.org/learned-helplessness/0 Can learned helplessness be undone? Well, that’s the big question, isn’t it? The answer is “Yes.” The cost, however, is high. We can only undo learned helplessness by severing our internal connection with the system that gave rise to it. Our motivation must be clear and strong. We must really want to hear and respond to our own questions about life. We must really want to live our own life and not one prescribed by our family, society, culture, profession or tradition. Metaphorically, we must be willing to go north, the direction that takes us out of society. We must be willing to endure pain, know from direct experience, act on what we see and receive what happens. We must yearn to experience what is without relying on anything to confirm our existence.
  • technology 14y ago
    Another tool for designing out choices is called "Nudge" [1] By a nudge we mean anything that influences our choices. A school cafeteria might try to nudge kids toward good diets by putting the healthiest foods at front. We think that it's time for institutions, including government, to become much more user-friendly by enlisting the science of choice to make life easier for people and by gentling nudging them in directions that will make their lives better. "Most people know they should save money, but many don’t save enough and may not even be sure what amount is enough. Most savings advice goes against human nature and asks people to make complex calculations. To help people save, nudge them. When it is time for employees to enroll in your firm’s retirement plan, make signing up the default. People can choose not to sign up or can quit any time, but inertia and the status quo conspire to keep them from doing what’s good for them. Try a “Save More Tomorrow” program that “invites participants to commit themselves in advance to a series of [savings account] contribution increases” as their wages rise. This approach recognizes that people fear loss, and may perceive savings as a loss of disposable income, so it links increases in their savings rate to parallel increases in their salaries. When people earn more, the company automatically deducts more in savings. They don’t have to decide to save." Set up choices in a way that takes advantage of how humans make decisions. You can nudge people in beneficial directions. To facilitate better decisions, design a default option that benefits people unless they explicitly choose otherwise. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happiness/dp/0300122233 http://www.amazon.com/Nudge-Improving-Decisions-Health-Happi... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nudge_(book) quick summary - http://www.slideshare.net/sgmitch/nudge09 http://www.slideshare.net/sgmitch/nudge09
• dkrich 14y ago
  At the risk of sounding cynical, I wonder how much it actually matters. We tend to live our lives thinking as we go that we should be striving to end up at some optimal place and that the purpose of our lives is desperately trying to keep us exactly on that course. If we don't ask the girl to the dance, or give up on an idea, or spend extra nights at the office to get a promotion instead of hanging out with our family we think that we are drifting off of our optimal course and we drive ourselves crazy wondering at every step if we are losing our way and strive to keep our future regrets to a minimum. But the reality is that life is no more valuable at the end than at the beginning or the middle. Why worry about what our future selves will regret while forgoing present happiness? Why should I worry today about what I will feel tomorrow if I know I can be happy today? When I hear somebody say "I wish I would have spent more time with my family" I wonder whether they really wish they had spent more time with their family or if they just miss their old family and wish they could have them back. That is to say I wonder whether people confuse nostalgia with regret. As you get older you regret not taking advantage of some things in the past, but I tend to think that what you feel as regret is actually just longing for being young again.
  • foobarian 14y ago
    To add to your comment, I wonder what the "regret bulletpoints" look like for the people who actually did all those things that PG listed. Maybe they wish that they worked more instead of hanging out with friends all the time?
    • drzaiusapelord 14y ago
      My old stoner underachievers who never finished school still live in the same shitty hometown, got married young to the same high school girlfriend, have mental illness/drug issues, have kids who hate them, and otherwise live miserable lives. I think the whole "be an underachiever, there's happiness in it you stupid capitalist" is something of a myth. Truth is, life is little more than trade-offs and opportunity costs. Truth is that if you want something of a comfortable life, want to not live in the ghetto, and do things like have expendable income, take foreign vacations, etc you need to give a good chuck of your life to work.
• read_wharf 14y ago
  "Don't be a cog." Inserted as the subtitle at the top of my TiddlyWiki organizer (my rolling ToDo list), and linked to pg's essay.
• K2h 14y ago
  My boss doesn't read hn, so I can get away with this. In the last few years, after my daughter was born, I made a decision to not work too much. I consciously reduced my working hours as much as possible. To my surprise and delight, my productivity and overall work completion has actually gone up. By being time bound (I am leaving at 5 no matter what) I often have to work like mad to get my work done. I have to make decisions quickly and implement. The results are more projects done, sooner. If a mistake is made, or a more complete solution is needed you iterate and do it tomorrow. Already you are two iterations in where 2 years ago I would have been stalled still trying to work up a good starting point. Try it.
  • antidaily 14y ago
    I just forwarded this to your boss.
    • K2h 14y ago
      That made me laugh. I would be ok with it though as he is very happy with my performance. Reviews were yesterday.
  • vbtemp 14y ago
    For heaven's sake! If I worked 2 or 3 days a week my productivity would shoot up dramatically! With a lifestyle based around communiting to work 5 days a week 95% of the year for a relatively good salary and very modest annual raises, there's little incentive to do more than the absolute minimum to get by. Unfortunately, even though it makes sense, no manager would ever work out this kind of arrangement while keeping my current salary.
• astrofinch 14y ago
  Or you could work to end aging.
• adrianhoward 14y ago
  Freaky. I had exactly the same reaction when I read that list a couple of years ago. It really reminding me of some of the conversations I had with my dad just before he died, and I knew I didn't want to have those regrets. At the top of my to do list is: Honour dreams. Work less. Speak honestly. Have friends. Be happy.
• ErrantX 14y ago
  Hmm. About 2 years ago I bought myself a canvas and wrote on it the following: Live happy, make friends, enjoy. Make those dreams happy It was for much the same reason - to inspire me. However, about 6 months later I thought those idea through and realised that, actually, it was an example of "making me feel better". I could sit and look at this poster and think; "yeh, I'm following my dream, I'm going to be happy". I even had a list of goals to meet. But really you're not; you're following an arbitrary list, and all that is is con-straining. Here's my thought process; trying hard to be happy isn't being happy... That thought mulled for a long while; I was doing cool stuff, with people I liked, and having plenty of down time. But I still felt like it was an effort to pursue. This year has been a revelation. I did something "stupid" and spent a lot of my savings on two big holidays (many years ago I discovered my truest love is travel). Yesterday I spent a big portion of what is left on my third holiday of the year. I've barely done any work since January - one product release and some bugfixes. I started writing, then stopped, wrote a little program for myself, tried some carpentry, almost trashed my car trying to fix it, stood for at least three elections (politics and social communities) on a whim, dated two girls at once. And this is the tip of the iceberg. All of this wouldn't sync with the person who wrote that maxim 2 years before; it would seem reckless and silly. As if I was throwing away what I had worked for years to build. A load of fucking rubbish. Right now I'm free. And I smile more than I ever have in my life. I have more friends. My life is barrelling along where, 6 months ago, it was stagnant. So I wrote a new canvas (about 2 weeks ago, actually) which now says: Let rip My point is this; take care, with some of these ideas, that you don't get too focused on the means to the end. Just relax, close your eyes, do what you feel like. In the end it will work out. One day we will all be dead - till then I am going to enjoy myself. :) There is nothing wrong with a todo list topped by the words "don't ignore your dreams". But only if it makes you happy.
  • melvinram 14y ago
    I struggle with this from time to time. I'm building a business that I plan/hope will allow me to have the freedom to do whatever I want with my time at some point in the future. Today, however, I work. I work a lot. 12 hours is the low end for a day. I've put work ahead of lot of things. If I were to truly close my eyes and do what I feel like, I'd be headed to a river/lake or getting on a plane. But I have clients, whom I've promised deliverables on Monday & Tuesday. So I'm going to work today. In addition, we're generating a lot of sales leads from our website but our sales process isn't as effective as it needs to be to justify hiring a dedicated sales person to handle that task. Once I can improve the sales process, put in place the tools necessary for a higher closing rate, revenues will increase and I'll hire someone to manage that aspect of the business and move on to a different/higher quality problem. So this weekend, I'm going to be working on the sales process (emails/pdf brochures/demo video/etc) as well. Yes, I could just go have fun and maybe I get to the same goal, just in a slightly longer time... but at least I enjoyed the journey more. Right? Maybe, but I don't see it that way. If I don't work my ass off today, I perceive that my chances of "making it" are going to be much lower. I'm not sure if that perception is true or not, but can I really afford to take a chance? So this weekend, I'll work. I'll put in the time and hope that the small successes will build up to a mega success and make all the sacrifies (like leaving cousins birthday party after a quick drop-in or skipping out on a date) are justified at the results (money and freedom to do spend a lot of time with people.) I don't know if that's the right call or not. I struggle with it all the time, particularly when friends are taking vacations 2-3 times a year. For now, I'm placing my bets on "work now. enjoy later." PS: I do make time for the absolutely critical things in my life like talking with my sister every other day, talking with my parents, keeping in touch with friends and more recently, taking my health a bit more seriously. PS2: Two of my deepest fears: 1) not trying hard enough, 2) succeeding and realizing it wasn't worth the sacrifice. I don't think they are likely to happen.
• kenrikm 14y ago
  My dad died when he was 49, I'm 27. 49 - 27 = 22; Keeping that in mind gets me moving every day. Enjoy the time that you have, build great things and do great stuff.
• gms 14y ago
  "Don't ignore your dreams; don't work too much;" Aren't these two mutually exclusive? My feeling (caveat: I'm only in my late 20's) is that it's impossible to simultaneously eliminate all the regrets on Ms. Ware's list. If you work really hard in order to chase your dreams, you end up neglecting friends and family for a bit. Stick around among your family and friends, and you don't get to chase your dreams as much. It's hard to know where the exact boundaries lie such that a satisfying equilibrium is achieved. Makes me wonder if some regret is always inevitable.
  • maigret 14y ago
    Depends what your dreams are. One of my dream was to fly planes. I did learn all that without getting burned out - would not help me much keeping my medical certificate for flying!!! Actually, this was quite some time taking learning, but that doesn't made me put my other social activities aside. How do you define a dream? Do you define your dreams compared to the others, so you have to better than anyone else, and so you have to work like crazy? Or do you define your dreams by achievements you would like to get to yourself, in which case I'd ask you why you can't just adapt your pace to your life?
• Kilimanjaro 14y ago
  Dream, relax, express, love, enjoy.
• MrJagil 14y ago
  As a person who is currently pretty much paralyzed by anxiety attacks I can vouch for the "don't work too much" part. Even though the cause of my distress was actually a mixture of work and fun. It sounds counterintuitive but doing stuff you like and being happy can actually be quite stressful. Please remember to take vacations and the like.
• edw519 14y ago
  When I first saw the title of this essay, I thought I already knew what I was going to say... Something about how my own todo this now has only one item on it, the single most important thing to do next. I gravitated to this based on the great quote by chess master Jose Capablanca: [When asked how many moves ahead he looked while playing]: "Only one, but it's always the right one." (from http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ra%C3%BAl_Capablanca http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Ra%C3%BAl_Capablanca). Then I read pg's essay and Bronnie Ware's blog post and realized that this post was less about work and more about life. Then it hit me: My life's todo list still has only one item on it and always has: "Always do the right thing." I realize that this can be very hand wavy because the "right thing" means something different to everyone and even something different to me at different times. But still, it has been the perfect #1 for my todo list. Several years ago, my mother, who lived 1000 miles away, was diagnosed with Alzheimer's and could no longer use the phone. So I began flying back to Pittsburgh every other weekend to be with her. After a while, even this wasn't enough. So I moved to Pittsburgh to be with her every day. People tried to say the right thing to me, but it never was right. They'd say things like, "I admire your doing this, but you really don't have to because she doesn't even know who you are," or "You may be making a sacrifice now, but in time you won't regret it; you'll have nothing to be sorry for." And I thought, "How sad. After all these years these people still don't get it. This isn't a sacrifice from me to her. It's a gift from her to me." I'm a little uncomfortable distilling pg's and Bronnie Ware's five thoughts from down into one, but "Always do the right thing" just works for me. I just hope the others in my life find something that works as well for them.
  • Mz 14y ago
    You did the right thing (re your mother) for the right reason, not merely out of some sense of duty. It's hard to get that across. Many people seem to think that "Do the right thing" means they should dutifully sacrifice themselves. I don't think it does. I rarely know how to express it properly. I hope your story helps make it clearer for some people.
  • js2 14y ago
    "Always do the right thing" - I can't think of a more concise definition of a mensch.
• zackattack 14y ago
  if paul were more of a gangster he would get it tattooed, but i guess he has a right to change his opinion, which probably makes him more calm and rational~ VC gangster // in org-mode (I've been listening to Rap GEnius0
• dbul 14y ago
  It's funny because most of these are problems I don't have yet affect me because others do have them. You forget your dreams Never. I live for my dreams. ignore your family Out of college the first startup concept I attempted was a family social network (family tree, photos, blog). How great would it be to use tech to possibly keep families together? I learned that women and new families loved it, but men seemed to be apathetic. "You spend time with your family?" "Of course" "Good, because a man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man." suppress your feelings I try to keep people around me who don't mind listening to how I feel. Don't be a complainer, but don't hesitate to express yourself. neglect your friends The president of my high school class surprised me when he told me he has to make such an effort to get people to hang out. It is a challenge to know if you have a healthy friendship if you are always initiating the get-togethers. forget to be happy Of all, this seems to be the most difficult. If you aren't making progress with the other four, certainly this point will be true.
• gsharm 14y ago
  I remember where in one of Vonnegut's books, he describes life not as some fixed end-result in time to be celebrated or mourned, but a process, something you could visualize as a roughly drawn line taking all sorts of directions through time, alongside other lines, often interacting with some of them, creating effects, and finally terminating. I suppose, in some sense, it's not far off from our idea of a process running on a computer, often interacting with other processes, launching other processes, eventually terminating. Taking that further, one way to look at this is that life is really a process, running on our software (genetic code), which we have some control over (somehow). We literally are code that writes code, albeit very slowly, over generations. And perhaps that what we really want is to able to look back at what we've etched into this big computer's (i.e. the world's shared) memory and be proud of it.
• Sargis 14y ago
  Does it really matter if you die unhappy?
• apu 14y ago
  I think tlb perhaps disagrees: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644285 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1644285
• ForrestN 14y ago
  I'm very curious what these principles are optimizing for. If they successfully produce the certain kind of life pg desires, how is that life qualified? It seems like this method optimizes for happiness, as well as some kind of self determination. I'm curious if happiness is differentiated from pleasure, or contentment. I'd be concerned that based on the derivation of these rules that they actually are tuned to minimize regret at the end of one's life. If I had the choice between, say, twice as much pleasure throughout my life, but pangs of regret at the end, or a less pleasurable life that I felt satisfied with at the end, it would be a pretty difficult decision for me. edit: downvote? really? to clarify, I'm not criticizing the article. I just want to think through the assumptions that underly it, both to know more clearly what they are and then to evaluate the ruleset by evaluating the goals it's working towards.
• DavidAbrams 14y ago
  6. Use hypens when you spell "to-do list".
• drx 14y ago
  > I would like to avoid making these mistakes. But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? I try to do it by challenging a lot of what I think, almost all the time. It's a solution, although it's very taxing. (I'd like to say I challenge everything always, but I likely have some blind spots)
• alanbyrne 14y ago
  What's so bad about being a cog? I work 9-5 for a large company (100,000+ employees). I clock on each day, they pay me a great daily rate and I enjoy the work that I do. Work doesn't define who I am and I am definitely not unfulfilled. I take French classes, dabble in photography and build the occasional web app. Once a month I take a 3 day weekend and go somewhere I've never been before. So far this year I've been to Switzerland, Belgium, Iceland and I'm shortly off to Madrid. I also enjoy cooking and going to fine restaurants. The only reason I can afford to do these things is because of the money I receive from my work as a cog. Sure, I could try and grow one of my web app ideas, work a bazillon hours for the small chance that it takes off and I become a millionaire. But what would I do then? Most likely the exact same things that I am doing now. I'm not advocating working in a job you hate and avoiding following your dreams. I'm saying that working as a cog allows me to afford my dream, so don't be so quick to bag it.
  • vbtemp 14y ago
    In some ways being a european cog is better than being an american cog. I wish Geneva, Brugge, Rejkjavik, and Madrid were weekend destinations for me! I also wish I had a european-cog vacation allotment!
    • toomuchtodo 14y ago
      Reasons why you don't need to be a millionaire in Europe (vs being a millionaire in the US): -- Guaranteed healthcare -- A sane amount of mandated vacation/family leave time -- A safety net for being unemployed/retired More basic needs are met in EU than in the US, so money has a much lower "value" there than it does here in the US.
    • prawn 14y ago
      I'm an Australian who's visited both a few times, including 15 countries in Europe and 10 states of the US last year. Now, Europe is very diverse and a great place to be, but the US is full of awesome stuff. Sometimes I wonder how many locals appreciate what they have.
      • 14y ago
• shawnwall 14y ago
  That list is now in my .plan
• scotty79 14y ago
  5 most common regrets reflect what most people do. If majority of people worked as entrepreneurs not cogs they would have different list of 5 regrets. But they would still have list of 5 most common regrets. Only different ones. I think that people when they die usually regret the way they lived because they all dreamt about something different. The only way not to regret anything is never dream and be happy with whatever hits you and with whatever comes out of your efforts.
  • alexro 14y ago
    >> The only way not to regret anything is never dream and be happy with whatever hits you and with whatever comes out of your efforts. << It is also non-accidentally the only way to live for a religious person. The thought that you can regret anything does not bring you closer to the heaven. God gives God takes - you just keep the books.
• neilk 14y ago
  I wonder a few things about this... 1) Is it a given that our regrets, when death is close, are wiser than the choices we made when death seemed further away? We clearly choose to do things like move away from our family and friends, to follow spouses, chase careers, have different lifestyles. And that keeps us occupied for decades. If we chose to do none of that, or less of it, would be feel like we were in a rut all our lives? Maybe you'd still feel alone when you were dying, because you never set out in the world to find people who really understood you. Maybe you always feel alone when you're dying and there's nothing you can do about it. I'm just exploring this idea for the sake of testing it; actually I do not doubt the article's wisdom so much here. But my next concern, I believe in a bit more. 2) I wonder how many of these regrets are due to the systems we live under. It seems to me that even a few hundred years ago, "I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends." would be absurd. You'd be sick to death of how close your friends were (in the 1300s, perhaps literally). Americans are particularly likely to move long distances, though. And as for living a life true to oneself, and expressing oneself -- would you even think of such things if your horizon was one town, or one tribe? Maybe you'd have to be far more discreet, without the refuge of a large city, or other forms of anonymity. As for not working so hard, that seems to be the most tied to whatever our political and economic systems are.
• erikb 14y ago
  pg, you should definitely learn something about cultures that are not so self centered then the american one. Your post reads like a prove of a mathematical system that only uses parts of it's own system. Of course it sounds logical.
  • jacquesm 14y ago
    Paul was born in the UK.
  • paulhauggis 14y ago
    His "system" is universal. So you don't have family or friends in Europe or business owners in Asia? It may not fit your vision of reality, but it's certainly not only American. It's difficult for me to see people that don't spend time with their friends and family, never go after their dreams, and work the same boring job for 20+ years not having regrets when they get to the end of their lives.
• Mz 14y ago
  I can't think of any regrets that I have. There are things that seriously annoy me about my life, like I am deeply in debt, homeless and trying to declare bankruptcy/find some solution for my financial problems. But I got into this mess by getting myself and my children healthy when the world says that cannot be done. It annoys the fool out of me that there is no support for what I have done but I could milk the system for scads of money if I took the conventional course of treatment. It just makes no sense. It is so not right. What I have done is both cheaper and more effective than conventional treatments. And no one cares, neither about my plight nor about how to replicate my accomplishment for others. The whole thing makes me crazy. But regrets? That would suggest I made the wrong choices. Given the hand I was dealt, I cannot think of a single thing I "should" have done differently. So no regrets, in spite of wanting to spit nails about my situation.
• cstross 14y ago
  You only get one life: use it wisely. A couple of years ago I had a conversation with a man, then aged 85. Outwardly successful, he took over and ran the family textiles business his father had built, raised a family -- "but did you enjoy the job?" I asked. Because before joining the family business he first did a degree in electrical engineering -- in the 1940s -- and joined an engineering consultancy, and worked in it for some time. "No," he said, somewhat sadly. That's not to say that he had a bad life, but he'd let his father drag him into a line of work that wasn't his dream, and grew old dutifully following it. He was a ho-hum director of a company in a decaying old-world sector, while what he'd wanted to be was an engineer. So my advice (for what it's worth, after 47 years of trying to figure life out for myself) would be: work out what you enjoy doing, then do it. Don't put it off until later, and don't let a false sense of duty lead you down a dead-end occupation. Don't chase an end goal, because if you get it you'll then have to figure out what to do with the rest of your life; build your life around the journey, not the destination.
  • ams6110 14y ago
    I think anything you do for a lifetime has a very good chance of becoming "ho hum." After 25 years in the field, I am starting to feel that way more and more about software development. You see the same ideas come up over and over. The same wheels reinvented over and over, but differently enough that you have to take one step back to take two steps forward. I wonder if it's really possible to for most of us to reach age 65, and if we've spent that time in one field or line of work to not feel some regrets about what we might have done. It might well be that these "deathbed confessions of things I wish I had done differently" are largely unavoidable.
    • cstross 14y ago
      You pluck the low-hanging fruit early in your career. This doesn't mean there isn't scope for new thinking and originality; it just means that it's much harder to do something original, and it will take you longer and make you sweat more. The real mind-death is a job which delivers no challenges and consists of endless repetition.
• rooshdi 14y ago
  Nice reminder to constantly put work/life in perspective. Shifting from defaults can certainly be tricky when you're jumping from one thing to the next and losing yourself in the monotony of it all. There definitely is a problem here, as well as room for a better technological solution. Opportunity for a startup, perhaps?
• AznHisoka 14y ago
  I wonder which 1 of the 5 mistakes PG is least likely to make.
• getpost 14y ago
  >But how do you avoid mistakes you make by default? For me, this is what mindfulness is all about. A mindfulness practice gradually develops the ability to be in the present moment and be aware of the choices you are making.
• dave1619 14y ago
  I think "say what you think" is fundamentally different than "not suppressing your feelings." I think suppressing your feelings goes deeper, into the inner person and getting in touch with who you really are and why you feel what you feel. But saying what you think is a lot easier. It's what a lot of know-it-all people do. You just say what's on your mind but that doesn't mean you're really paying attention to what you're feeling.
• srconstantin 14y ago
  I disagree. Strongly. Following your dreams, not working too much, spending time with family and friends, saying what you think, and being happy, might belong at the top of Paul Graham's todo list. He's already succeeded at what most people struggle at: making a living. He may have forgotten that getting by is hard. What's so wrong about being a "cog in a machine"? Large organizations exist partly because scale and specialization are useful. People aren't "cogs" out of perversity, but practicality. Sometimes your comparative advantage is in being a good cog. And sometimes being a good cog is admirable. Example: surgeons who specialize in one and only one procedure, doing it exactly the same way every time, have a low failure rate. They save more lives that way. Are they creative? Nope. They follow somebody else's rules. They make themselves as mechanical, as repetitive, as possible. And the guy on the operating table lives. Paul Graham is in a very unusual profession, where risk-taking is much more of an ideal than it is anywhere else. Also notice that he makes money off of telling other people to take risks. The more people decide to be entrepreneurs, the wider a pool he has to draw from. "Follow your dreams" is a useful meme for people like that; if a hundred people follow their dreams and fail and ruin their lives, PG never hears about it, but if one person follows his dreams and becomes a billionaire, PG might get a share. This isn't meant to vilify the guy; there's nothing wrong with making a living by inspiring people. And I'm sure he would say that he's fighting dangerous opposing memes against ever taking risks. I just think you can't take posts like this at face value.
  • adgar 14y ago
    The easiest example of this can be seen in one of his comments upthread: > (pg): Sort of. More like working very hard till you achieve financial independence, after which you can do whatever you want. You don't have to stop working; you just never have to work on anyone else's terms. He states that as if anybody but an extremely lucky few can achieve "financial independence" (his words) before 60. One can say he was speaking to a particular audience, but in truth, the overwhelming majority of folks on HN aren't retiring early either. It all comes across as wildly out of touch. If it were anyone else, I'd say the new bubble had blinded the author, but pg's been around since before the last bubble. Perhaps shepherding young people through the new bubble is a blinding force as well.
  • 14y ago
• adgar 14y ago
  Hunter S. Thompson is the only one who had it right. > Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming "Wow! What a Ride!"
• Mc_Big_G 14y ago
  Agreed, however my wake up alarm its named "Now or Never".
• aymeric 14y ago
  Here is my advice to change your defaults. You want to lose weight? Throw away all your junk food. You want more time? Get rid of your TV. You want to be with your family more often? Live close to them. I don't have practical advices for how to not ignore your dreams, not suppress your feelings, not neglect your friends, and not forget to be happy. But I am sure there can be similar advices for these, I just lack the creativity.
• alexro 14y ago
  The best concise system to avoid having these 5 regrets I've heard of is 'SSS' : sport, sex, sleep. Everything else is optional.
• chj 14y ago
  Only successful people can say "don't work too much." The cruel reality is success comes from hard and overtime work.
• username3 14y ago
  repent and be baptized in the name of the Messiah
• ChristianMarks 14y ago
  Brian Leiter wrote about this on his philosophy blog and solicited comments from readers. http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/04/what-would-your-biggest-regret-be-if-this-were-the-last-day-of-your-life.html http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2012/04/what-would-you...
• davemel37 14y ago
  More importantly and likely implicit... "Have Dreams, Work Hard, Think for Yourself, Speak Up, Be Friendly...and you will live a happy and productive life!"
• twakefield 14y ago
  #4 seems to explain a lot of the success that Facebook has had. FB may not be the best venue to maintain truly meaningful relationships but it serves an innate human need and does so at scale, which is why it is so valuable.
• nickm12 14y ago
  I'd have thought the top regret of the dying would be, "I wish I wasn't dying."
• latj 14y ago
  Hey! Paul Graham uses a text file as a todo list like me!
• martininmelb 14y ago
  I like the sentiments expressed in the post and hope that on my deathbed I will not regret "not having spent more time with my children". I think, though, I would regret it more if on my deathbed I thought "My children did not get the opportunity to attend University because we could not afford it", or "If I had the money to send them to a better school, they may have had more opportunities". I also would not like to be a burden on my children if I became sick because I did not have enough money saved to pay for medical care or whatever other care I need. In my fifties, when there are redundancies, I don't want to be the one they say "while all the other workers are prepared to put in the hard yards, he's the one that always leaves at 5:00" or miss out on promotions because the others work longer hours than me.
• yukyukyuk 14y ago
  What a bunch of self-absorbed bullshit. When you're rich, you can obsess over this sort of nonsense. The rest of us have lives to lead, pg. Choose happiness? Did George Washington choose happiness? Did Oppenheimer or von Neumann choose happiness? Or Stanley Kubrick? Or Faulkner? How about Steve Jobs or Ken Thompson? Or Bill Gates or Linus Torvalds? Or Elon Musk? Why not choose obsession? Why not choose dedication, and commitment? I say choose fulfillment. Saying "choose happiness" is like saying, "I've built this great foundation for a magnificent building, but I don't feel like building it. I'll just sort of hang out and let people admire this great foundation." Of course you need to be happy to achieve anything. Unhappy people do not get very far in life, same way buildings with no foundation do not stand for very long.
• robertk 14y ago
  Hi from hell
• robertk 14y ago
  Hi from hell! Good list y'all.
• cageface 14y ago
  Sometimes HN really feels like a Tim Robbins seminar.
  • dansingerman 14y ago
    Ahem, I take it you mean Tony Robbins?
• olliesaunders 14y ago
  If you put anything at the top of your to-do list that you don’t _have to_ read and pay attention to you’ll ignore it sooner or later. Ever invited someone new to your home and been surprised at the things that caught their attention? The things we make permanent fixtures in our environment—unless we have to interact with them or they change—ultimately get accepted and forgotten. Many people really hate to accept this because it means that any positive changes that we create in our life will ultimately be eroded. A solution to this problem is one of my main preoccupations. In the mean time, the question that should be being asked is how _exactly_ will you live your life differently in order to adhere to these standards? And apply that question to tomorrow, next week, next season, next year, and the next five years. You could try writing a plan but then plans fail because they speculate. Sorry I don’t have any real answers.
• slackwalker 14y ago
  "We're making the same mistakes we made 1,000 years ago. So they must be the right ones. So relax." -Chuck Palahniuk
• gosub 14y ago
  This article is so unsubstantiated... 1. These are the regrets of the dying. Maybe that it's not the best state of mind to make decisions about your life. 2. The regrets are so generic that every one could see himself in these circumstances, like with oroscopes. 3. It's not explained what it means to be a cog. Am I a cog? Is it possible to never be a cog? How? 4. It is implyied that having a family, dreams and feelings as priorities is a good thing. Maybe it's not. 5. In general, it makes the same error it is trying to avoid, omission. If you are living your life and you are not happy, don't have a family or many friends, maybe it's because you are doing something more important than those. 6. You could be happy and, at the same time, not doing the right thing.
• lbs 14y ago
  When I die, I hope I won't regret not spending enough time with my family. This is a reminder for me.
• harryf 14y ago
  To me this one looks buggy > don't work too much It implies "chillin' out" which is fine occasionally but will not achieve goal 5 "be happy" if over-used. We put a lot of effort into planning, organising and executing our work lives and many of us are good at. The parallel tendency is ignoring our outside-of-work lives. I'd postulate if we put the same kind of techniques we apply to work to our personal lives, it would be far more fulfilling than "chillin' out". I'd also postulate it's a zero sum game - in any given time frame, e.g a week, we only have so much energy, desire and time to invest in being successful, planning, organizing etc. So I'd propose changing "don't work too much" to > reduce the effort put into work and invest that effort in personal life instead Not so catchy unfortunately.
• adrianwaj 14y ago
  "Don't ignore your dreams" Especially re-occurring ones, but the first step is to remember your dreams.
• nato1138 14y ago
  This article completely resonates w/ me. I am building out http://chizzl.com/ http://chizzl.com/ to meet these ends. It's completely changing how I approach life.
• robomartin 14y ago
  I feel that balance, which can be hard to achieve, need a spot on the list. I had a friend who's approach was akin to work hard and be frugal. He was so frugal that he became famous for not cashing his paychecks for weeks. As an engineer he made very good money. He saved most of it and had been buying gold and silver as investments for the last 20 years. He and his wife were going to move to Hawaii and enjoy life. On his last trip there to buy a house he went for a swim out of the same beach they had visited for years. And he never came back. This is an extreme example of a case where lack of balance produced the wrong outcome. He did not enjoy a lot of things in life because of his extreme focus on frugality. Seek balance.
• adrianwaj 14y ago
  And now for the hard part. don't ignore your dreams: build yourself in new ways that initially seem wrong or stupid. don't work too much: be less materialistic but push your limit. say what you think: don't take shit, ask questions, think what you do. cultivate friendships: real bridges don't burn and avoid schadenfreude. be happy: be prepared to let go of what you know to be true and strive for health.
• deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
• valhallarecords 14y ago
  I would just change all these to the positive form rather than the negative form of what you're trying to avoid. Any thought of what you're trying to avoid just perpetuates it. Don't ignore your dreams => Live your dreams Don't work too much => Have fun Say what you think Cultivate friendships Be happy.
• endlessvoid94 14y ago
  I have a similar message that gets echoed ever time I open my shell. It's the journey, not the destination.
• cjmauthor 14y ago
  GET AWAY FRO0M THESE MACHINES JUST A LITTLE BIT MORE! I think technology has created this vacuum where everything around you no longer exists and you find yourself in a place of isolation. To all those like myself jumping from machines at home, to iphones on the train, to machines at work, to iphones on the way home, to machines while you eat dinner, to iphones as you lay in the bed, and finally you wake up and the first thing you do is reach for your iphone. Let's make a serious effort to spend more quality time away from the machines before it is too late!
• robforman 14y ago
  I found this article a few months back and was struck by its simplicity and big-picture view. We would be crazy to not try to learn from those ahead of us since we only get one pass at this. I sent it around to some friends and, oddly, a common response was "You're too young (I'm 30) to be thinking about death." How ironic. We don't want to think about the end until its thrust upon us, but by then its too late to change course. I like the inversion you did. Its a good reminder to live life intentionally.