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>>But this typically seems to involve taking what you are as a person as given, preferring instead to simply try and change one's circumstances to match that.

Relevant quote: “The reasonable man adapts to the world around him, whereas the unreasonable man tries to adapt the world around him to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

Something to think about next time you find yourself wanting to just get up and leave when things stop going your way. ;)

> They ask themselves "is this really what I'll want?", as opposed to "is this what the person I'll be after a few years of this will want?" or "will this turn me into a person I want?". By unconsciously taking one's self-image as fixed in that way, it becomes harder to find meaning in work and as a bonus also makes it somewhat more likely that you'll make the wrong decision because your potential future mental state isn't accounted for.

Thank you for this!

I think people overestimate how static the "self" actually is—everyone changes over time, and given how many hours a day you spend doing it, a job would almost definitely change you.

It's amazing how much of a revelation this can be! I remember it was shocking for me at first. The implications of being even a little less rigid in self-perception open up this entire giant conversation with yourself about how your world shapes you. And being able to talk about it is the first step to being able to do anything about it.

It's actually quite fun to think explicitly about what else you could become (and why), I think.

If the meaningful work you want to do is in education or environment... There is basically no well paying jobs.

There's no business profit in clean water or air, so capitalism doesn't cover the need. The fact there might be no customers in an area in 50 years is outside the scope of economic patterns. In 40-45 years all the current business leaders will have their pockets lined & be retired... and new leaders will beg the government to fix "the problem no one saw coming"... Shifting businesses profits today for taxpayer-funded fixes later for "economic revitalization" or "environmental repairs"

On top of these issues... if you have bills, you often can't take a pay cut to pull this off. I'd be willing to take a pay cut for meaningful work, but it would still need to cover child care and rent. My wife looked at jobs with the EPA, they offered $50k for masters degree and 8 years of experience. A single family home on 1/5th acre is $500k+. If we both did meaningful work we could not live there, let alone have kids ($1250/month child care).

We decided we just couldn't do meaningful work in the DC area and left. This stinks because we really need to be worried about this stuff for our children's future. But as long as private industry pays 50-75% more, the rising costs of everything to accommodate those well paying jobs chokes out teachers, environmental workers, and low-wage retail jobs (aside from kids still living at home)

I just don't agree with this viewpoint at all. There are plenty of profitable startups directly focused on education and the environment. Maybe you don't agree with their definition of meaningful but don't let perfect be the mortal enemy of better.

whatever meaningful means to you should be a highly personal measure, not the classic, obvious societal ones. It also helps if the macro-benefit of the act is a symptom of the behaviour vs. the goal. example: I ride a bike to work everyday because it's fun, good for me and cheaper than driving. I dn'to it primarily because it's good for the planet, but hey, it's a nice bonus. We need to look for lots of opportunities that do good for others as a consequence of doing well for ourselves, not a subsistute.

> If the meaningful work you want to do is in education or environment... There is basically no well paying jobs.

Lambda School is an existence proof that you can do good and make money in education. Minerva University looks pretty good too. Udacity and Coursera are helping and have helped a ton of people as well. When I was a kindergarten teacher I used Starfall.com all the time. Mathletics and ixl.com come highly recommended by friends who teach primary school. Outschool.com are working on a teacher student marketplace for classes. Baselang.com is the best place to learn Spanish on the internet, hands down. Italki.com is a pretty good marketplace for language lessons too.

You can’t do much with schools really because schools are run for the benefit of teachers not students but if you want to help students there’s a lot to be done in education, and plenty of people doing it.