Hacker News Reader

Comment by a3voices | Hacker News Reader

Why would you want to force yourself? Life isn't about how much work you can do. If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work.

View on HN

Because of the idea of ultimate goals vs. proximate goals. Greedy algorithms are poor ways of finding happiness.

I know that I find work fulfilling. However, I don't like starting work. If I took your advice, my life would be far less pleasant (and not only materially).

That's how it should be, but I suspect that in most cases, people work simply because they are supposed to.

E.g. (quoting the article)

> If it is 2pm, then I will stop what I’m doing and start work on the report Bob asked for.

What's the long term goal here? Being in good terms with Bob? Keeping your job? Are those the goals that you should care about?

> Are those the goals that you should care about?

Yep.

At the very least, you want to abandon your current job on your own terms, not by being fired. But keep in mind that even great jobs (including owning your business here) have boring tasks that must be fulfilled.

> If you feel like working, then work. If you don't, then don't work

I know this is HN, but please don't over-parse the headline. Telling your boss or customers that you just don't feel like working today is a luxury that almost no one has.

Some people do not have such a luxury. I cannot arbitrarily decide to ignore my daily duties simply because I don't feel like working. I'd be fired. The same goes if you are a business owner in charge of your working hours. You cannot arbitrarily decide that your client portal outage doesn't matter because you don't feel like working. Your client is going to fire you.

If you get fired, then what? Even if you don't find a new source of income, you're not going to starve. Only a few hundred people starve per year in the U.S. What's the big deal? It's all just psychological issues in your brain. Either way is actually fine.

You are correct, most people would not starve; however, losing one's job is not something to be taken lightly. I imagine the following would be a very difficult conversation with your family: "Well, I just didn't quite feel like working today. As a result, I lost my job. You may have to go without many of the things I have previously worked so hard to get for this family, but at least everyone won't starve."

EDIT: Also, the issue of hunger in the United States is much more serious than you think.

http://feedingamerica.org/hunger-in-america/hunger-facts/hun...

My friend, you sound as if you've never been in the situation of having to find work or find yourself on the streets. I spent a few months out of work early last year, and got to the point where I had to stay with an Ex girlfriend while looking for work, because I couldn't afford to move away from town. At my age - 28 and with a Comp Sci degree- it is almost impossible to even get a job at McDonalds because they know that you will leave when something better comes up.

Regardless on if I would have starved or not, it was the most stressful and horrible time of my life. To say "what is the big deal" to me says you've never actually been in that position.

Thankfully, I eventually found an ok job, and am now taking that ex-girlfriend on an international holiday just to say thank you.

Right, and what if I don't feel like working, but I do feel like eating?

You can't eat comfort.

I don't know but all this looks like Reptilian conspiration telling young people if they don't feel like working they should not. You should party hard YOLO and that kind of stuff, then comes reality and depression, creating miserable adults who are lonely and have unrealistic expectations of life.

It looks exactly the opposite for me. People realizing work is slavery, and that they were only given a little freedom to prevent revolts, and the Reptilians are giving us techniques to continue working no matter what. They tell us if we can't go on it's because we are depressed or whatever, and we need to take some pills to make that feeling go away.

If you don't feel like working, the bills don't take a vacation and the kids still eat and get sick.

I think the larger issue is that usually when you are forcing yourself for a long time, your quality and quantity of work suffer. So I agree with you on the whole.

However the question usually isn't whether to do a task you don't want to but how to start a task you don't want to start out of fear or feeling like you don't have a grasp of it, or just aren't in the mood for it. If you can start a task, then you shouldn't have to force yourself to complete it. If you do, that's bad.

But there are things we have to do that we may not want to at any given moment. The question is how to structure one's work so they get done.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com