Life is a game, this is your strategy guide (2014)
oliveremberton.com
oliveremberton.com
I recently had to quit my job because I wasn't performing well. I could see the writing on the wall and decided to leave before getting fired. I just could never be assed to pick up the stupid tickets. I don't care about php, I don't care about their legacy codebase, I don't care about their bugs. Literally couldn't bring myself to do these tasks.
Sometimes I'm in the position where I want or need to do something even though I'm dreading it or am not excited about.
A few things have helped me when that's the case: 1. Coaxing myself rather than trying to crack the whip. - Finding what's interesting about the task - Thinking through how it might be made interesting or easy - Thinking through whether I can automate it away - Starting on a tiny piece without committing to finishing it right away - Lowering my requirements on quality for a first try to basically zero - Developing a habit around the task with a reward like a streak or a check mark 2. Writing out my thoughts - Why do I want to take on this task? - Why don't I want to take on this task? If I can drill down on both of those maybe I can come to some kind of resolution
Anyway, a lot of what works depends on what's broken in the current situation. I think that sometimes your desire to avoid something is right and sometimes it needs to be worked around. But in either case it can be at least heard with thoughtfulness and compassion. There's probably insight in the feeling that you don't want to miss out on.
On the other hand, I think it's a mistake to treat these feelings as the only thing either. Often even strong feelings are temporary and situational and getting better information or just letting time pass or building up a feeling of success from small wins will let the storm move on.
and
> Anyway, a lot of what works depends on what's broken in the current situation. I think that sometimes your desire to avoid something is right and sometimes it needs to be worked around. But in either case it can be at least heard with thoughtfulness and compassion.
Thanks for sharing these examples! I'm just wrapping an article which I think you and the OP would find interesting as it deals with this very problem. My goal is to help people see procrastination, laziness and play in a more useful manner.
I am terrible at working on things I don’t give a shit about. The list of those things extends with every passing year. And, I realised very late (mid 30s) how much stress was caused by forcing myself to brute force this problem instead of trying to understand it better.
To paraphrase Daniel Ariely: we’re irrational creatures, but the beautiful part is that we’re predictably irrational. Know your flaws and set up systems to help account for them. In other words: it’s not your fault that you feel a certain way, but it’s your responsibility to act when you can.
It'll be ready by Tuesday (if you're interested, drop me a line and I'll send you the link: hello@<my site domain from the profile page>).
(It used to be publishing, then helping small startups grow, then privacy and now a cross section of mental health and tech.)
Ideal:
1. Build a small thing solving an actual problem
2. Tell as story and teach people something using the thing I build: https://sonnet.io/posts/sit/
Here's how not to approach this problem:
I had spent ages thinking about this, or rather justifying my existing choices. I literally had SWOT analysis charts describing different paths I could take.
The main issue was that I was approaching this from a purely rational point of view. But, I had to first learn about the emotional component of my decisions and biases. I grew up without financial security so that also tends to cloud my judgement (e.g. by comparing myself to people who work more stressful jobs). I was busy, overworked and really stressed then (but well paid!).
Scaling down was very hard, in terms of self-judgement, but my health has improved drastically.
I don't have time to write about this here, but in short: I think that many people who end up in engineering careers tend to get caught in a situation where they keep getting rewarded for solving problems, but eventually lose the context of what kinds of problems they're solving.
For _example_: you start with your first SWE gig in an area you like, move to a tech lead/architect, then to a CTO working on a much meatier/"serious" problems.
But as soon as you step back from the game progression graph (intentionally or not) you realise you lost the context, you don't give a shit about adtech or crypto, or marketing, or agile. You are really good at something you actually don't give a shit about.
I don't think that SWEs are the only to end up with this issue, but that people who choose this line of work are more predisposed to getting a kick from chasing problems.
I was quickly promoted becuase of this and got raises swiftly. This eventually led to the company allowing me to start my own company and build them a saas that they paid me for every month for a decade even after I left. I found I enjoyed development again.
[ Years later, I found out, I just enjoy developing for myself but that's another story :) ]
That seems to be the main issue. I tried sysadmin for a while, it was more varied than a swe role and I enjoyed it more, but after a while it still became "boring" and mentally unbearable. I like writing software for myself however.
I've had this issue since school. And as soon as a subject is done with, and the pressure of "have to" is relieved, I actually start to give a shit about it. By then however, I had already gotten a bad grade on the exam.
I'm probably some kind of neurodivergent. Not sure what exactly is "wrong" with me, although I've had plenty of "professional" help.
One idea, may not be your cup of tea though... I don't know your situation as far as family.
Have you considered joining the military? It provides structure, a million different career paths, travel, comradery and physical fitness. Plus a pension if you stay in for 20 years. On top of that there are multiple branches to choose from depending on your wants.
If I had reached burn out in my twenties, I would have joined the military.
I'm like you: I have very hard time working on something someone tell me to do, yet I can spend hours working on my own projects without any issue. Of course this led to pretty big issues like failing my PhD and having to go back in my country. Then I quitted my first real job after 4 months because I was feeling I wasn't pay enough and the conditions weren't to my liking, and finally found a full remote one which pays quite a bit more.
My advice would be to either find a job in which the conditions aren't too bad (4 days weeks, full remote, etc.), or a government worker like position where you can be paid doing jack shit.
I'm in a very similar position to what you were probably in and honestly taking a random office job does feel like the "right" choice here.
I could never stomach a 65% pay cut though because I have dreams/goals of someday not working at all. I save a significant portion of my income and live well within my means all toward a goal of retiring hopefully around 50 or 55.
One could reasonably ask why I am delaying pleasure now for pleasure then, but my answer is simple. While I am burned out and while I am struggling, I'm not sure I am struggling as much as I would be at 50/55, potentially battling some horrible illness, and unable to stop working or even cut back because I had saved so little.
I was younger and didn't have kids yet. I couldn't do it today. I was probably 8 years into my career making I think around a 100k. I travelled for work every couple months, 11 days at a time. Those trips I worked 6am to midnight every day. I was so burnt I couldn't think straight. Prior to that job I was burnt as well, I just couldn't take it anymore. I was late 20s and felt 50. I called my wife from one of the trips and asked her to just start reading me the list of open positions at her company that were not tech. She mentioned one, I said that's it. Interviewed the next week, they offered me the job that day and I started 2 weeks later. It was try something different or be miserable. I was very seriously considering enlisting as well just to get out.
1) My brother died from a sudden illness (genetic, but no known predisposition in our family, e.g., unavoidable) in his 30's with four young children. Stress was really bad for this. Accepting significant stress and burnout now for only a possibly low-stress future is not necessarily a good bet or trade-off.
2) My dad was a workaholic because he was worried about money and retirement and being the "invaluable employee" when I was a kid. He worked often until late at night and on weekends. He came to lots of my games and stuff, but he always missed everyday life. Always. He and his mates were all eventually "downsized" from his high-paying job at a Fortune 100 when they sold off his software development unit to a competitor when I was a late teenager. He realized he fucked up our relationships and was fucked up himself by the lack of work-life balance, and took a job that was less demanding and of course paid less, but it was already pretty late by then. I was maybe 17 or so already. You can't get that back, and our relationship was never the same as when I was really little.
Anyway, a fat paycheck is nice, but there are other nice things in life too. I hope you do what is right for you.
Things can go the other way too. Too much willpower and you find yourself at work Sunday morning because, unlike everyone else, you didn't raise hell about not working weekends. Then you get an angry email from your boss saying that the fiscal year is ending and you haven't used all your vacation days yet. We all must find a happy middle between just walking away from all work, and the inability to ever walk away.
> Literally couldn't bring myself to do these tasks.
Nobody would bring themselves to do these tasks if the corporations weren't paying for it!
And when I say high sugar intake, I truly do mean high. I can and will eat ~500g of candy in one sitting if I have unfettered access to it.
I think the post is giving questionable advice about the role of willpower in making the right choices. I think it is advising the use of willpower for challenges that may be better addressed in other ways.
If "life is a game", and willpower is a jetpack with limited fuel, the piece reads like a strategy guide that tells you how to best use your jetpack to go about routine tasks, and focuses on preservation of fuel to ensure you can keep using the jetpack for those tasks. It fails to ask the question: is a jetpack the right tool in the first place? Is the preservation of fuel just sidestepping a deeper and more fundamental issue? Should you really be using a jetpack to ascend a few flights of stairs?
I see my collapse at work as partly due to a misapplication of willpower to surmount obstacles that could be best bypassed by navigating around or through those obstacles instead of assuming that the only option is up and over. This was a perspective that I could not see while I was in the situation, but as I've gained more critical distance, I've started to realize that lack of willpower was not the primary problem.
Everyone is different of course, but for me, establishing a mindfulness meditation habit in the morning and then building a solid core routine of daily habits around that and around tested cognitive approaches to reframing problems has been a much more sustainable path.
I think of it as priming my mind to make hard decisions with less effort, thus reducing the need for willpower in the first place. And the impact has really felt magical. Things I could hardly convince myself to do even after mustering every bit of willpower suddenly started to become automatic and effortless - no willpower required.
This started with the most basic of things: doing the dishes regularly, eating better foods, going to bed earlier, etc. This habit loop has a cascading positive effect. Better sleep led to better sessions of mindfulness and more moments of experiential insight. This in turn led to even more pronounced effects and less "limbic friction" for daily tasks. The effect doesn't seem to be that you gain more willpower, but that the willpower required to complete a task is reduced drastically, because your brain has seen more clearly the cost/benefit of each possible path.
I suddenly found myself digging in to some tasks and problems that I'd been avoiding for months/years. I suddenly found myself believing that this set of foundational habits would become the core of my next work endeavor.
I should disclaim that I'm still very much mid-journey, but I've done the willpower thing and failed. Cognitive approaches that change how your brain weighs decisions seems far more sustainable, and leaves the jetpack ready for when you really do need to scale the side of a cliff.
> This habit loop has a cascading positive effect.
"The power of habit" is a great book on how to establish good habits. I no longer need willpower to do sports in the morning unless I'm completely trashed. Once something truly is a habit, it doesn't take willpower to do it anymore. It rather takes effort to deviate from it.
> This was a perspective that I could not see while I was in the situation, but as I've gained more critical distance, I've started to realize that lack of willpower was not the primary problem.
Taking a step back when finding a situation awful or feeling bad is also a helpful habit.
I wasted way too much jet fuel due to my own cognitive biases and emotions. Usually it's so much better to simply raise that issue with that friend, colleague or partner than to swallow things down and try to power through.
Lack of willpower is really just "right now, your body can't seem to see the value in what you're theoretically supposed to do." There are two ways of dealing with it, one might be "no, seriously, this sucks and is pointless, so just DONT DO IT."
The other is usually, find a way to trick yourself. Play little games, timers, whatever. Just understand that "is there something wrong with me" is a trap. There isn't, you just have to figure out the trick.
decision fatigue is another aspect of this. to many decisions to make and you are getting tired of that. i solve that by automating many things. (like watching tv or listening to books, i have them on a schedule, and the only time i need to make a decision is when i need to find something new to watch which happens every few months.
From https://oliveremberton.com/about/
> Not naturally in tune with people’s feelings and reactions
Yeah dude, I wonder why. Go write a blog post about it.
https://oliveremberton.com/2013/how-do-i-figure-out-what-to-...
That photoshopped picture of Bill Gates holding a potato is genuinely funny though, lol.
There's nothing controversial in the writing, tl;dr where you spend your time has an effect on how your life turns out and some examples.
You never know the effect your writing will have on someone. Someone might read that post, something in the way it's written will cause an epiphany and that person's life will get better. There's no reason to be so negative :).
Victims are the worst, they become wholly engulfed by their personal tragedy and shape their world view and strategy for life around it, producing a twisted, pessimistic interpretation of how to live a decent life. And people listen to victims, because with time they get better and better at perfecting their backstory so that it hits all the right emotions and amplifies their victimhood. They are naturally viral. Being the victim thus becomes their security blanket, their shield from any criticism about anything else they do in life. It’s intoxicating. But also exhausting, because a victim will feel compelled to lash out at anyone who may call their motives into question, or simply doesn’t agree with their perspective. And some people are victims, and they don’t even know it. I see such victims, all the time.
Frankl was a hack.
Edit: The current HN bio of this user amazes me. "Used to have close to 1000 karma, got destroyed over time by hackernews cancel culture and a change in downvote algorithms." This user is literally the victim who doesn't know that they're a victim that they "see all the time." This makes perfect sense, assuming they own mirrors
Now, if I had a victimhood mentality, I would be decrying the fact that this comment was downvoted. But I won't, because the downvoting is a positive that helps prove my point. Thank you for the downvote, unknown victim of victims, I am eternally grateful to you and your kind
This is not that. It's opinionated life advice. Engaging seriously with the content requires asking "Who are you, and why should I follow?"
2008 called, it wants it ad hominem attacks back.
As if programmers are not people. All Programmers are not rich and privileged, there are all kinds of programmers, rich ones, middle class and poor ones too.
I raise issue with this assertion.
> I’m the founder of Silktide and possibly the most unashamedly ambitious person you know.
And now you see why he has it. Like the post the other day said, an entrepreneur giving life advice is like someone telling you what numbers they picked to win the lottery.
My own experience in the past few years is that starting a company was a great way to make much less money per year compared to my old job while having lots more worry about taxes, health insurance, bookkeeping, etc. I lost out on a lot of extra money I would have been able to invest in that interim and worked 2-4x as hard as with my old job in science that had a wonderful reliable paycheck every month and no worries ever. Luckily this realization hit after three years and I start a new even cushier science job in two weeks.
This person may be in a good spot in their life and feel like if they share their world view or advice, someone else could find their happiness through it. That person obviously isn't you.
Nonetheless, I think it's less about being pretentious or thinking that your words are so precious and wise they must be read by others than it is about what I said before.
I like the impulse of "do things, improve" and the positive attitude, but it overpromises and is light on personal experience. Overall stinks of wishful thinking.
The overall game metaphor is quite nice and useful, also in relation to what the author writes about "fairness" [1].
[1]: https://oliveremberton.com/2014/the-problem-isnt-that-life-i...
Taking a drug that permanently damages your heart, lungs or even liver, often isn’t.
Dangerous sports need risk analysis, and failing to do that increases the chance of an irreversible result.
Having kids is not reversible - if you change your mind six months in, you don’t get the same outcomes for the rest of your life as if you had never had them in the first place. It’s not consequence-free, whatever route you take from there.
You might be ok with downsides and risks associated with a decision when you make, but it doesn’t mean the decision is reversible. Some decisions (“should I move my family to a foreign country?”), have greater consequences and less reversibility than others (“shall I have an extra slice of toast this morning?”).
I also want to stress something I wish I’d grasped when I was younger: when you’re 25 you get to experiment more with the big stuff than you do when you’re 35 or 45. And that time passes fast. At 45 you will not have the same degrees of consequence-free reversible decision making you had when you were 25.
But there are still decisions you make at 25 that will stick with you forever, no matter what. Choose your friends and lifestyle carefully.
I said that every decision is irreversible, not reversible. Every last one. No exceptions.
Some things can be reviewed and done again, but again, those retries are also irreversible.
Just that most choices we do, even though being irreversible, are of little consequence. Like, there's not much impact between eating fried chicken vs pizza, or deciding between 2 movies. But... How does one unwatch a movie, or uneat pizza? Simply put, we can't. Hence irreversible.
Note that decide's root is -cide ,or kill. To decide is to kill a certain future or class of futures. That's a very interesting, yet often used term without realizing its root is of death.
>much of this blog post is about winning the game of life in a western capitalist society
Thats true for most human societies, starting from hunter gatherers, where being unproductive to the group meant being clubbed during sleep, or farming societies where being unproductive meant easily starvation and social esclusion.
People who live in welfare states tend to have it good, usually beyond their means as most things are subsidized at a loss. Thats not the norm in any accountable society. We westerners have it easy
> A tired, irritable, unskilled player is not appealing, and probably shouldn’t be looking for a relationship.
It's obviously an exaggeration, but it has a fair point. Applies mainly to young men, less to young women though because they play quite a different dating game.
Working hard on becoming attractive rather than expecting to get interest from women "because you're such a nice person" isn't bad advice. Of course you should still try, but without expecting much.
> See how psychology just helped you become both rich and attractive?
It's even better. Learning just a bit about psychology, understanding yourself and others is also useful for:
- overcoming bad times and habits - helping yourself and others - feeling better overall - solving conflicts - making friends - figuring out what to do with your life
Psychology is probably the best meta-knowledge to have.
You can become an artist immersed into working your entire life in a small chamber eating bread and drinking water. Or a successful entrepreneur in a large mansion. You may become fascinated by the world of literature and read all the great works, …
In a video game, the path and success is programmed whereas in life you have to find and choose it.
Now people really want well structured, knowledgable examples that support emotions they like.
Horses for courses I guess, time sure has gone quickly.
I automatically read it with a bit of tongue-in-cheek but with some valid points, not as "this is the ultimate life advice".
[1] well not really. Times truly have changed.
1) The accident of birth is the greatest uncontrolled variable that affects long-term outcome. If you enter the game as the child of wealthy parents in a wealthy society, your chances of 'winning' are probably about 100X higher than if born to poor parents in a poor society. There are a range of other possibilities, of course - poor parents in a wealthy society (more opportunities), wealthy parents in a poor society (more risks), etc. If it's a game, it's hardly a level playing field. Then there's genetics to consider, which nobody really understands that well, though most seem to claim to.
2) As you move over the playing board, luck will play a huge role in the outcomes, certainly as much as skill will. The ability to discern between people that you should affiliate with and those you should not is certainly among the most important skills to develop. Another one is self-discipline - even if you happen to have above-average intelligence it won't count for much if you don't steadily apply it (though burnout followed by crash is the other side of that coin). Recommend listening to Carl Orloff's O Fortuna at this point (English & Latin):
3. As far as having lots of children, and winning the genetic population dynamics part of the game, those fertility doctors who replaced all their client's sperm with their own come to mind. Donald Cline is the most notorious, but there are several others. Cheat codes? Seems to be some pathology in this 'life is a game' outlook.
Life isn't really a game, a game is an entertaining diversion that can sometimes help develop one's skills. See 'the importance of play in childhood development'. Some people never exit this state, and we we have lots of overgrown children running around these days, starting wars and playing boardroom dominance games and cheating on their partners and so on. The transition from childhood to adult is not very well-managed in modern society.
As far as practical advice, training and developing your mind and body is never a bad idea. Regardless, all roads lead to the grave - what kind of game is that? Life is a mystery, that's a better view IMO.
Sure, we're all accidents of birth and it's not a playing field, but that doesn't lead to actionable advice.
Perhaps, however, there's something fundamentally problematic with this 'life is a game' viewpoint? See Tom Cruise as 'A Player' in Tropic Thunder, that at least was meant as satire:
Now there are more subtle forms of ‘cheating’ that do work well but they require some modicum of success first. You can’t bribe the local government to favor your business if you don’t have one in the first place.
Even if you do believe in a reward system post-game, they all seem to heavily reward helping others, which is another reason to aim for $0.
I'm of the opinion that, barring another technological revolution, we're at the top inflection point of an economic S curve, at least from a global perspective. The insane growth of the past century is an anomaly, and future economic opportunities will be fewer and harder to access. Which means I need to build an Ark for my family to weather the coming flood. Fortunately I'm starting from a relatively favorable position as a US-based software engineer. If I can die with 10 million dollars from a lifetime of investments and work, that ensures my kids can take advantage of the fewer opportunities that will exist. And maybe my work can do some good for others along the way.
And yes in the grand scheme of the heat death of the universe my family's welfare is meaningless. But that perspective only produces excess suffering for no purpose. If you require fundamental, universal, logically substantiated meaning to feel like life's worth living, that's vanity. No human has ever had that or will ever have that, why should you? Being comfortable with "I don't know" is part of being an adult.
Corporations and the government are, short sufficient (0.1%) wealth to protect your assets upon death, finding ways to confiscate any left over wealth, and prevent it from transferring to children/spouses/charity/etc.
Medicaid cost recovery, for example.
Sure perhaps we are heading to a Cyberpunk 2077 dystopia, but there's no guarantee of that. Even in such an apocalyptic dystopia, where every non-0.1 per-center's family wealth is directly or indirectly confiscated, I foresee a thriving black market for money-laundering and other services, and knowing how to navigate it will be routine for the successful and expected by the powerful.
Regardless, my family will be as best positioned at my death as I can manage. I can only manage so much. There's no use in living life assuming an extinction-level asteroid strike or similar. Worst case scenario at least I'll have done my best, the alternative is stagnation and despair, stuck in an endless cycle of wondering if I could have done better interrupted by periodic hedonistic numbing with vacations/video games/alcohol/other vices. I already did that for most of my twenties, it was perfectly rational (given my circumstances at the time), miserable and unproductive. Much worse than having some assholes steal all my shit at the end of my life, which I don't think is terribly likely anyway.
But the goal is to make do with what you have. There’s no use complaining that you were born in worse circumstances, try to make the most of it.
I was born in a poor third world country and had several serious medical conditions as a child (I almost died twice) as well as autism/ADHD (not diagnosed till later of course since no one in my hometown even knew of those things). But I have ended up fairly well off, with a family, in a rich country (earning mid 6 figures). If you had guessed whether it’d be better to be born me or a random American in San Francisco you’d probably have been wrong. Of course I was lucky to be born with some positive traits (smart, interested in programming) that helped as well. I’m not saying that everyone else should follow my path, but what’s the point in just complaining that your life sucks without trying to make it better?
I checked the FAQ, it had this quote:
"I don’t have all of life’s answers. I write about what I know; what you don’t see is all of the things that I don’t know."
I haven't looked into his class background but I'd say so far your appraisal isn't looking completely Sherlock Holmesish.
I want to work but more so than ever before I am lacking that spark to sit down and hammer out some code. I guess it's burnout / boredom, but my normal techniques for combatting it aren't working!
For example: - Stop listening to music or podcast while you exercise - Go for "silent walks" outside - Meditation
Sometimes we need to find "the other battery to recharge", so to say. For me, just resting isn't fulfilling that need.
That was an enjoyable read with helpful basic advice for most people.
> Life begins when you’re assigned a random character and circumstances:
I feel like that framing would ideally make most think "hmm... these characters don't look so random".
boooooooriiiiiiing
and content is just preachy overall. Not a fan.
> See how psychology just helped you become both rich and attractive? You should study that.
Oh yeah, it has been a while since I have seen such a clear statement of white male goals.
I'm actually surprised the parent didn't feel the need to be a bit more specific to avoid all criticisms: cis-white-male is usually the accepted term. Take this with a grain of salt though. "Cis white male" has the clear inconvenient of including disabled cis white males, which we can't do if our intent is to bash on an entire portion of the population. I've seen more and more the thankfully more precise term "bodyabled-cis-white-male" being used to fix this problem.
Guidance like this is rarely ever helpful, and serves as a bias of n=1 cause it 'worked for me'.
There's some obvious things like "drinking and smoking are bad". And there's good things like "time is your most important asset". But suggestions past those, are well just completely subjective.
Like the recommendation to move. How do you tell what a community is like before you're moved there? And most of us can't afford to move around the country chasing some illusory 'maybe'.