8 ms·

Let me get this straight. Your solution to feeling socially isolated, having no fulfilling hobbies outside of work, and your apparent unhappiness, despite your

by phillmv 13y ago

Let me get this straight. Your solution to feeling socially isolated, having no fulfilling hobbies outside of work, and your apparent unhappiness, despite your success, is to open a co-working space? Folks, this is as clear as an indictment of the culture as you get. I work out of a co-working space. They're great. I am slowly working my way up the informal foosball rankings. And I'm not particularly good at living life, but we're still working at the financial stability part. There is more to life than work, even if you were blessed with huge natural reservoirs of motivation. Learn to paint. Learn to cook. Learn another language. Write fiction, investigate some non-fiction, learn how to take beautiful photographs (pro-tip: your iPhone is an amazing camera), READ BOOKS, start playing a team sport in an adult rec league, go camping, if you can afford it GO TRAVELLING, oh my god you have the money and total flex but you won't go travelling?, VOLUNTEER at the homeless shelter, at the library, at the office of a political cause you believe in, INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS [in a setting outside of "lol tech startups" once in a while].

Bulkington 13y ago
As is often mentioned on HN: in times of great distress/confusion/boredom/pessimism, stop up the intertubes and get some exercise. Fresh fruit and vegetables are good, too. (So are junior-college girls, but I don't need the bad karma.)
mkrecny 13y ago
Thanks for your wisdom Phil.
- phillmv 13y ago
  I'm figuring this stuff out. I'm on the "adult rec league" stage. These shiny textfields and the illusion of pseudonymity, even when you use your real name, make it easy to write and sound really snarky and mean and I'm sorry if I came off that way. I think what I'm trying to say is, you sound unhappy, dude. Trying to up my empathy, in your context maybe you do just need work-mates. I convinced a friend to quit his job for precisely the same reason: after a few months of working out of coffee shops and being alone all the time I was starting to go nutty. It's just the lead-in to your decision sounds so… morose, and we're all capable individuals here who should find ways to not be morose. I don't know, maybe I mis-read your tone.
beeffective 13y ago
Towards the opposite end of the spectrum, I have too many hobbies and I usually don't focus enough on work (software development), but that may be caused by wanting mental stimulus combined with physical activity (or being outside). To add on to your list, I really enjoy golfing, woodworking (building outdoor furniture), bbqing & cooking, tomato gardening, jeeping, fishing, hunting, and skiing.
philbarr 13y ago
Exactly. Feel like you don't know enough people? Go out and join a club and meet some. Or go down your local pub enough that you start getting recognised. Hiding indoors waiting for your girlfriend to come home because that's your only interaction for the day is a SIGN.
JonnieCache 13y ago
I've recently started going bouldering (indoor climbing without ropes) and it's pretty perfect for this stuff. You turn up to a room full of people all with different skill levels, it's very social, very non-hierarchical, talking to strangers is normalised. Imagine a gym where 80% of the people are sitting on the floor relaxing at at given time (this is forced on you by the nature of the activity.) It's perfectly suited to geeks because its non competitive, you simply measure your own improvement, and there's a strong culture of peer learning. The other nice thing is that there will always be routes which will challenge you regardless of your fitness level, build etc. It's apparently the new cool sport, so I'm guessing SV denizens will be spoilt for choice with regards to venues. Give it a shot, and remember to moisturise your hands between sessions :)
- neutronicus 13y ago
  Indoor bouldering is cool. There's a definite video-game-type dynamic about trying to send gradually more difficult routes.
kamaal 13y ago
Where exactly do you find time to do all that?
- danneu 13y ago
  It was a list of ideas. And you can do all of that, just not in a single day.
Taylorious 13y ago
It's disturbing that some people need to be told to have hobbies and have fun. It also seems like a lot of CS oriented people don't realize how much fun can be had away from electronics. EE stuff, CS stuff, video games, pet projects, etc. are all great hobbies, but why don't more "nerds" spend their free time doing something less related to their day to day work? Mountain biking, exercising, fishing, hunting, woodworking, metal working, art (sooo many different kinds of art), music, writing, philosophy, languages, reading, traveling (you don't have to trek through the Amazon, there are likely many beautiful and interesting places in your own country). The list f things you can do in your spare time is practically endless. Which is the reason why I can never understand how people can get bored.
- digitalsushi 13y ago
  How could an anorexic starve at a buffet?
- sixdimensional 13y ago
  Devil's advocate - I'd have a lot more fun, interest and open "head space" for doing those things if I didn't worry about having to make a living and pay the bills. Alas, I don't have a > $2,000/month successful MVP under my belt.
  - scarmig 13y ago
    Interestingly, many people whose jobs are less secure, less financially lucrative, and less... suited for the future manage to have hobbies and do things for fun =) I think it's a psychological quirk of the techier or nerdier crowd. Many of us have a great desire for a sense of not only autonomy but complete control over our own lives; indeed, feeling autonomous seems like it requires having complete control over our lives. In as market-based a culture as our own, that amounts to us being sold a story about how having an amount of money X (where X's amount is perpetually significantly larger than present but reachable) will give us that control, and we should perpetually aggregate as much money as possible until we reach X and then can live off capital gains. We like rules, and we like systems of rules that we can optimize against. Most people do, in one way or another. But we have it more than most, I believe, and it is perfectly capable for us to make the numbers work out to retire between 30 and 40 by working a stable desk job. Hence the constant draw and temptation to always push those non-pecuniary, non-market labors sometime into the future, where you'll theoretically have time in spades.
calinet6 13y ago
This line baffled me: "I found myself in a co-working space the other day. I passed row after row of neatly ensconced workers and realized that I would be just as lonely working there, separated in that manner." Ridiculous. People look like they're isolated when they're working. That's how you get work done. It's one of the great things about a coworking space, that it's still a coWORKing space: people are there to work. But they're also there to be social, to work in the same space, go to lunch together, get to know each other, and generally have a structure to their lives and their work that's similar to a "real job" but still working on independent stuff. And it works. I spent 9 months in a coworking space, totally stabilized my life/work/psyche, and made more friends than I could have imagined. Were they all tech people working on startups? Absolutely not and the better for it—it's great to have some diversity in your social interactions. Knowing such a wide variety of types and personalities of people is a goddamn blessing. I just don't get it: why reject coworking and then go start a coworking space? This has an air of hipster entitlement that I just can't shake. I'm glad the author found a way to get out of his rut, and perhaps found an interesting tech incubator spinoff, but it could have been a lot simpler and less dramatic.
- sixdimensional 13y ago
  I'm not sure but, at least for me, I work even better literally working with another person actively on a project (not just sitting next to them working independently). Working directly with another person (like pair programming - also in small groups of people collaboratively) was the most fun, productive and best experience I've ever had working on anything.
hkmurakami 13y ago
"doing stuff" with other people is so fun and rewarding. My personal favorite is organizing hikes for my group of friends (esp since some of them are dangerously out of shape and I want to do what I can to encourage -- but not force -- healthy habits in my friends), which I love for the exercise, the conversation, the views, and brunch afterwards :)
sown 13y ago
Why does everyone say 'travel' or 'volunteer' when these questions get asked? I'm not being rhetorical or sarcastic. I genuinely don't know. I can only assume that it's something I'm missing and everyone else just 'gets' without having to say it outloud (this has happened) or ... something else? I've done both and I can't say I really cared for travelling since it's such a hassle. As for volunteering, which I've done, it feels exactly like work -- except even less people wanted to talk than before. Do people who give this advice actually go volunteer? > INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS Yelling at people doesn't help. It kind of feels like people are telling a person to just cheer up if they're clinically depressed. I think that the problems here, and their solutions, are a lot more complicated than anyone gives them credit for.
- dwild 13y ago
  If volunteering feels like work, than you are doing it wrong. I remember the day I volunteer for a local video game convention. That week-end I did more hours than I would be ready to do for work. I also meet great people. You could argue that I liked it because it was a video game convention... but it's my point. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if you volunteer but you don't like what you do, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it (except if your goal was to do a good deed, but in this conversation, it's not the goal). However I don't think this is actually a solution for anyone. It worked well for me because these people were like me... and this is exactly why I think his idea of open co-working space is amazing. I hope to see more co-working space like that.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  When people talk about travel in this sense, it's not about schlepping your bag from point A to B. I like this quote: "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." ~ Henry Miller
- peacemaker 13y ago
  Travelling really opens your eyes to the way the rest of the world works. You will find that your little bubble is such a tiny part of things and that's a GOOD thing. You will make friends, meet people with completely different mindsets, see amazing places and experience totally random (good and bad) things. And if all you care about is business, I can tell you that after a year travelling I had a notebook stuffed full of start-up ideas I didn't even know where to begin. Travelling is AWESOME.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
peterwwillis 13y ago
INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS [in a setting outside of "lol tech startups" once in a while]. This is the most important thing anyone on HN has said in a long time. You must surround yourself with people and subjects that are completely different from your usual pursuits. It will help your work, it will help reduce your stress levels, and it will give you new ways to think about the world. Pivoting is not just for startups.
mratzloff 13y ago
I agree. I'm a workaholic, but I channel that restlessness into projects and hobbies with the same fervor as my day job. Sometimes those are technical in nature, but not always. Just because you're a workaholic doesn't mean that the object of your focus should always be your job.
androidb 13y ago
This post is a marketing ploy. This guy developed Followgen, and this is one of his other controversial but popular posts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5607186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5607186

by phillmv 13y ago

Bulkington 13y ago

As is often mentioned on HN: in times of great distress/confusion/boredom/pessimism, stop up the intertubes and get some exercise. Fresh fruit and vegetables are good, too. (So are junior-college girls, but I don't need the bad karma.)

mkrecny 13y ago

Thanks for your wisdom Phil.

phillmv 13y ago
I'm figuring this stuff out. I'm on the "adult rec league" stage. These shiny textfields and the illusion of pseudonymity, even when you use your real name, make it easy to write and sound really snarky and mean and I'm sorry if I came off that way. I think what I'm trying to say is, you sound unhappy, dude. Trying to up my empathy, in your context maybe you do just need work-mates. I convinced a friend to quit his job for precisely the same reason: after a few months of working out of coffee shops and being alone all the time I was starting to go nutty. It's just the lead-in to your decision sounds so… morose, and we're all capable individuals here who should find ways to not be morose. I don't know, maybe I mis-read your tone.

beeffective 13y ago

Towards the opposite end of the spectrum, I have too many hobbies and I usually don't focus enough on work (software development), but that may be caused by wanting mental stimulus combined with physical activity (or being outside). To add on to your list, I really enjoy golfing, woodworking (building outdoor furniture), bbqing & cooking, tomato gardening, jeeping, fishing, hunting, and skiing.

philbarr 13y ago

Exactly. Feel like you don't know enough people? Go out and join a club and meet some. Or go down your local pub enough that you start getting recognised. Hiding indoors waiting for your girlfriend to come home because that's your only interaction for the day is a SIGN.

JonnieCache 13y ago

I've recently started going bouldering (indoor climbing without ropes) and it's pretty perfect for this stuff. You turn up to a room full of people all with different skill levels, it's very social, very non-hierarchical, talking to strangers is normalised. Imagine a gym where 80% of the people are sitting on the floor relaxing at at given time (this is forced on you by the nature of the activity.) It's perfectly suited to geeks because its non competitive, you simply measure your own improvement, and there's a strong culture of peer learning. The other nice thing is that there will always be routes which will challenge you regardless of your fitness level, build etc. It's apparently the new cool sport, so I'm guessing SV denizens will be spoilt for choice with regards to venues. Give it a shot, and remember to moisturise your hands between sessions :)

neutronicus 13y ago
Indoor bouldering is cool. There's a definite video-game-type dynamic about trying to send gradually more difficult routes.

kamaal 13y ago

Where exactly do you find time to do all that?

danneu 13y ago
It was a list of ideas. And you can do all of that, just not in a single day.

Taylorious 13y ago

It's disturbing that some people need to be told to have hobbies and have fun. It also seems like a lot of CS oriented people don't realize how much fun can be had away from electronics. EE stuff, CS stuff, video games, pet projects, etc. are all great hobbies, but why don't more "nerds" spend their free time doing something less related to their day to day work? Mountain biking, exercising, fishing, hunting, woodworking, metal working, art (sooo many different kinds of art), music, writing, philosophy, languages, reading, traveling (you don't have to trek through the Amazon, there are likely many beautiful and interesting places in your own country). The list f things you can do in your spare time is practically endless. Which is the reason why I can never understand how people can get bored.

digitalsushi 13y ago
How could an anorexic starve at a buffet?
sixdimensional 13y ago
Devil's advocate - I'd have a lot more fun, interest and open "head space" for doing those things if I didn't worry about having to make a living and pay the bills. Alas, I don't have a > $2,000/month successful MVP under my belt.
- scarmig 13y ago
  Interestingly, many people whose jobs are less secure, less financially lucrative, and less... suited for the future manage to have hobbies and do things for fun =) I think it's a psychological quirk of the techier or nerdier crowd. Many of us have a great desire for a sense of not only autonomy but complete control over our own lives; indeed, feeling autonomous seems like it requires having complete control over our lives. In as market-based a culture as our own, that amounts to us being sold a story about how having an amount of money X (where X's amount is perpetually significantly larger than present but reachable) will give us that control, and we should perpetually aggregate as much money as possible until we reach X and then can live off capital gains. We like rules, and we like systems of rules that we can optimize against. Most people do, in one way or another. But we have it more than most, I believe, and it is perfectly capable for us to make the numbers work out to retire between 30 and 40 by working a stable desk job. Hence the constant draw and temptation to always push those non-pecuniary, non-market labors sometime into the future, where you'll theoretically have time in spades.

calinet6 13y ago

This line baffled me: "I found myself in a co-working space the other day. I passed row after row of neatly ensconced workers and realized that I would be just as lonely working there, separated in that manner." Ridiculous. People look like they're isolated when they're working. That's how you get work done. It's one of the great things about a coworking space, that it's still a coWORKing space: people are there to work. But they're also there to be social, to work in the same space, go to lunch together, get to know each other, and generally have a structure to their lives and their work that's similar to a "real job" but still working on independent stuff. And it works. I spent 9 months in a coworking space, totally stabilized my life/work/psyche, and made more friends than I could have imagined. Were they all tech people working on startups? Absolutely not and the better for it—it's great to have some diversity in your social interactions. Knowing such a wide variety of types and personalities of people is a goddamn blessing. I just don't get it: why reject coworking and then go start a coworking space? This has an air of hipster entitlement that I just can't shake. I'm glad the author found a way to get out of his rut, and perhaps found an interesting tech incubator spinoff, but it could have been a lot simpler and less dramatic.

sixdimensional 13y ago
I'm not sure but, at least for me, I work even better literally working with another person actively on a project (not just sitting next to them working independently). Working directly with another person (like pair programming - also in small groups of people collaboratively) was the most fun, productive and best experience I've ever had working on anything.

hkmurakami 13y ago

"doing stuff" with other people is so fun and rewarding. My personal favorite is organizing hikes for my group of friends (esp since some of them are dangerously out of shape and I want to do what I can to encourage -- but not force -- healthy habits in my friends), which I love for the exercise, the conversation, the views, and brunch afterwards :)

sown 13y ago

Why does everyone say 'travel' or 'volunteer' when these questions get asked? I'm not being rhetorical or sarcastic. I genuinely don't know. I can only assume that it's something I'm missing and everyone else just 'gets' without having to say it outloud (this has happened) or ... something else? I've done both and I can't say I really cared for travelling since it's such a hassle. As for volunteering, which I've done, it feels exactly like work -- except even less people wanted to talk than before. Do people who give this advice actually go volunteer? > INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS Yelling at people doesn't help. It kind of feels like people are telling a person to just cheer up if they're clinically depressed. I think that the problems here, and their solutions, are a lot more complicated than anyone gives them credit for.

dwild 13y ago
If volunteering feels like work, than you are doing it wrong. I remember the day I volunteer for a local video game convention. That week-end I did more hours than I would be ready to do for work. I also meet great people. You could argue that I liked it because it was a video game convention... but it's my point. Maybe I'm wrong but I think if you volunteer but you don't like what you do, then maybe you shouldn't be doing it (except if your goal was to do a good deed, but in this conversation, it's not the goal). However I don't think this is actually a solution for anyone. It worked well for me because these people were like me... and this is exactly why I think his idea of open co-working space is amazing. I hope to see more co-working space like that.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
When people talk about travel in this sense, it's not about schlepping your bag from point A to B. I like this quote: "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things." ~ Henry Miller
peacemaker 13y ago
Travelling really opens your eyes to the way the rest of the world works. You will find that your little bubble is such a tiny part of things and that's a GOOD thing. You will make friends, meet people with completely different mindsets, see amazing places and experience totally random (good and bad) things. And if all you care about is business, I can tell you that after a year travelling I had a notebook stuffed full of start-up ideas I didn't even know where to begin. Travelling is AWESOME.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

peterwwillis 13y ago

INTERACT WITH OTHER HUMAN BEINGS [in a setting outside of "lol tech startups" once in a while]. This is the most important thing anyone on HN has said in a long time. You must surround yourself with people and subjects that are completely different from your usual pursuits. It will help your work, it will help reduce your stress levels, and it will give you new ways to think about the world. Pivoting is not just for startups.

mratzloff 13y ago

I agree. I'm a workaholic, but I channel that restlessness into projects and hobbies with the same fervor as my day job. Sometimes those are technical in nature, but not always. Just because you're a workaholic doesn't mean that the object of your focus should always be your job.

androidb 13y ago

This post is a marketing ploy. This guy developed Followgen, and this is one of his other controversial but popular posts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5607186 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5607186