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> All of those non-work things you told yourself you want to do? Now is the time to do them. No. Now it the time to do what you actually want to do, and not wh

> All of those non-work things you told yourself you want to do? Now is the time to do them. No. Now it the time to do what you actually want to do, and not what you always thought you should do if you only had the time. Have the courage to have no goals (says the grasshopper to the ant), at least for a while. Let tomorrow look after itself

marvin 12y ago
Strongly agree with this. Travelling the world, doing an ambitious programming project, learning a new language or starting a hard weight lifting program is a whole lot of work. It's moving your ambitions away from one type of work that society says you should do, and moving it into another type of work that society says you should do. The moral of this story is: Have the guts to take a step back from your goal systems for a few months. Don't worry. Be happy. Chill out. Relax. Have sex or whatever. Complete Portal 2 in one sitting. Eat more chocolate than you should. Way too many of us have been overachievers our whole lives, and keep overachieving even when we have the opportunity to refrain from doing so. This article, which I found brilliant, says that you should try to stop doing this for a while, and see how it makes you feel. If you can feel the existential angst come on full bore, you might want to take a step back and think about what that means.
mercer 12y ago
I'm in the 'funemplyment' situation since december (with little bits of work here and there). After a good two to three months of terrifying nothingness I started noticing new desires and goals, many of them completely different from the 'bucket list' of should-do's I had accumulated over the previous post-college years of working as a freelancer (and consuming massive amounts of Hacker News). I think if I had started working on my should-do's right away, I would've remained stuck in this Hacker News fueled desire to write an app, start a company, learn a new programming language, attend meetups, or 'hack my hourly rate'. And if I had traveled, I would've done so not to find solitude or adventure for the sake of it, but rather so I could tinker on some project or connect with 'interesting' people. Now, I'm not arguing that these are bad goals. It's quite possible I will do these things too. But I'm very happy that I chose to 'do nothing' for a while, as it awakened old goals and desires that I had completely forgotten about since I started working.

marvin 12y ago

Strongly agree with this. Travelling the world, doing an ambitious programming project, learning a new language or starting a hard weight lifting program is a whole lot of work. It's moving your ambitions away from one type of work that society says you should do, and moving it into another type of work that society says you should do. The moral of this story is: Have the guts to take a step back from your goal systems for a few months. Don't worry. Be happy. Chill out. Relax. Have sex or whatever. Complete Portal 2 in one sitting. Eat more chocolate than you should. Way too many of us have been overachievers our whole lives, and keep overachieving even when we have the opportunity to refrain from doing so. This article, which I found brilliant, says that you should try to stop doing this for a while, and see how it makes you feel. If you can feel the existential angst come on full bore, you might want to take a step back and think about what that means.

mercer 12y ago

I'm in the 'funemplyment' situation since december (with little bits of work here and there). After a good two to three months of terrifying nothingness I started noticing new desires and goals, many of them completely different from the 'bucket list' of should-do's I had accumulated over the previous post-college years of working as a freelancer (and consuming massive amounts of Hacker News). I think if I had started working on my should-do's right away, I would've remained stuck in this Hacker News fueled desire to write an app, start a company, learn a new programming language, attend meetups, or 'hack my hourly rate'. And if I had traveled, I would've done so not to find solitude or adventure for the sake of it, but rather so I could tinker on some project or connect with 'interesting' people. Now, I'm not arguing that these are bad goals. It's quite possible I will do these things too. But I'm very happy that I chose to 'do nothing' for a while, as it awakened old goals and desires that I had completely forgotten about since I started working.