Don't Become the Machine

It seems so silly to say but I too have a dream of not wanting to work. Then I can just exist. I came across this YT video about enjoying boredom. It slows down time and you do things you really want to do. I'm currently the type of person that is always plugged into noise (music, podcast, YT). It is rare that I sit in silence. But yeah I'm hoping I can save, exit working, I'll still be making stuff that I enjoy at a good pace. I have this problem where I want to share things that aren't done yet, it's early ego reward. That's the problem with YT too and attention span, things take time to do and it's about the immediate reward. I get it too, attention is a currency and people spend it where they want/deem important.

But I feel it though, the urge to grind. When I have free time I think, shouldn't I be doing/achieving something. If you quantify value by money then yeah there are dumb ways to make money like me driving Uber Eats and donating plasma (an extra 17 hrs of my life per week). I can instead spend less money and enjoy life more.

I almost think social media is the worst thing that I ran into, the points/likes aspect. Going back to sharing things that aren't real yet for the kudos. Anyway ranting. I'm thankful I became self-aware as when Facebook was new I was posting like everything about my life like "omg look at me...". Which is a double-edged sword you know, something like Instagram is how women scope you out and if you don't have a good one...

Tangent, there is also this fetishizing of productivity where you see this clean desk and a little notepad. Or some kind of setup like a minimalist laptop. The whole video is about that but not actually working ha.

I recommend reading the Happiness Files, by Arthur Brooks.

It contain great advice, including on how to handle your professional life. But even more importantly, I feel the world would be a better place if more people followed its advice. A world full of happy people would be a world that runs far better.

> I think hustle-culture and the vision being pushed on my timeline is a corrupted one.

A satirical video which I think captures some of the frustration: "The Hustle" by Krazam - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_o7qjN3KF8U

> Machine Head - Derek Hobbs 1995

For anyone else a little nerd-sniped, the ASCII art head is 54,505 bytes, <=300 chars wide, 182 lines tall, using 20 distinct characters... But then I get hung up on what an equivalent picture could be, since the characters aren't just levels of greyscale intensity, but also contain internal detail that would then take more pixels to describe.

My original motive was something like: "If this were a PNG it would have only taken a much smaller X bytes."

This is something that hit me during my master thesis the first time: I was entirely free to choose my work time, work mode. Since the prof was very hands-off too, only the result after 6 months mattered. That was quite the weird time. But it taught me some pieces about work-life balance and choosing what is 'enough work', as well as giving your brain time off, or time on something else to work through more complex topics and to recharge.

This is also why I honestly enjoy being a salaried employee. My employer buys 40 hours a week from me. Right, some weeks it's 50 and the next week only 30. Some weeks need a machine just executing, some weeks need more careful thought.

I could optimize it for more monetary output, but at the moment it is a predictable, usually not-painful thing with decent monetary output for personally more interesting subjects. I've found appreciation of this.

If you are only useful, you will be used until you not useful anymore. Make relationships that care about you even after you’ve become worn out. Make things that pay off even after you’re done making.

> I was recently recommended a YouTube video with the following title:

> "Ligma balls"

I don't know what I've expected from the article, this is your typical run of the mill tech/linked-in bro fart in the wind. How to write a page and not say anything at all.

Often there is a bell shaped curve where productivity peeks at a point and bigger efforts after that make you actually less productive overall. In my personal experience most projects are a marathon not a sprint. Always sleep the 8-9 hours necessary to feel full-rested. I'm most productive in the morning so I try to work every day during mornings but since in the afternoon I'm a lot less productive I've decided I can allocate that time to entertainment and social activities. My entertainment and social activity tend also to be along learning new things.

The most important thing is not to have a purpose. Machines will always outdo you in optimizing for a goal function.

Don't follow rules and if you really need to, make your own and never tell them to anyone. Keep people guessing and change your mind often. Never ask opinions. They are useless and if you never ask people think you know better.

What you know you think and feel are not what you think and feel but dead remnants of your past thoughts and hunches. You have no personality but an ever evolving process that changes instantly to fill the areas you think are not you or your interest.

"Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave."

The constant anti work agenda that is thrown in your face if you use almost any social media is so annoying.

Have these anti work people ever considered that maybe some people actually like work and labelling them as slaves is insulting?

Around 2019 it became clear to me how much I was underestimating how quickly AI would "take over" and "take credit" for the parts of my identity I wanted to keep (engineering, design taste, invention for example).

But it also made me realize that because I was always at the tip of my chosen curve of tech adoption, I was also the first to be feeling the existential dread that would soon permeate the lives of everyone living a life even tangentially touched by tech.

(I think the author is ahead of the curve too).

But I feel this post identifies the problem and then compounds it with this line:

> This messaging works. Look at me. I feel the need to write a post about it. But it is completely wrong.

I would counter that (intentional) "ignorance is bliss". If you want to play the VC grind hustle game, do it, but be intentional about checking in and checking out, and don't let it into your identity. And don't write posts like this.

It might "feel" dishonest to operate like this, but the alternative is doom, because you are fighting against demons that don't actually exist. I think more and more people will realize this over the coming years -- we are only now starting to react to the personal problems caused by immersion in social media.

This also reminds me of a good piece by PG: https://paulgraham.com/identity.html

Genius does what it must.

Talent does what it can.

You do what you're told.

Now get back to work.

echoing this sentiment. I really do believe at some level there is strength/wisdom in being able to step away from a problem and return to it from a new perspective despite of what narratives are being pushed online by hustle

The very basic (but incorrect) assumption that the “grind never stops” people rely on is

more hours == more productivity

It’s not. If you’re sleep deprived you’ll produce shit, which you’ll probably have to redo later. Sleep properly, produce more in less hours.

But hey, at least your colleagues think you’re busy because you’re last to leave redoing your shitty work!

Edit: read The Brain at Rest by Jebelli, don’t work yourself to death

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