Yet, it is worth asking, what makes for a meaning life? What makes the 4000 weeks worth it? For some, they chase wealth, power, career success, get one's name recognized, etc - these are milestones to be achieved. Things to accomplish.
Others will say, such accomplishments are not the purpose, let us accumulate as many meaningful experiences as possible. So do things like travel the world, and so on.
But it is worth reflecting, a few years from now, what really is the difference between a dream you had a few days ago, compared with an experience from, say 10 years ago? The difference is very little. Our memories are fuzzy, and to chase experiences will also likely leave us feeling unfulfilled.
Human relationships are also similarly shallow, even if we seek social connection, the odds of it being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of it lasting when we need it, is low.
So what's my point? The point is, whatever pursuits we undertake with the belief out there that something that I accomplish, accumulate or experience will bring me happiness and fulfillment is a futile endeavor.
Instead, if we can function from a state of feeling content as we live each day, whatever the circumstances, then what we do during the lifespan given to us matters little. However long or short, the inner contentment makes it meaningful.
Sorry for the long response, but wanted to share how I look upon this topic.
I recently came across a term for this. Telic vs. atelic activities [0]. Telic activities are things with some terminal state, e.g. a typical goal-oriented project, or something like the act of getting married.
Atelic activities are those activities where the continuous process is the goal. Certain types of learning, being a good parent, and so on.
The important thing to realize is that in most cases it's not the activity itself that defines whether it's atelic or telic, it's how we approach it. You can make "traveling the world" a very goal-oriented activity with a checklist that you must get through, or you can approach it as a continous lifelong project where the enjoyment is in figuring it out as you go.
I believe this distinction is also important for work. Making something telic, e.g. with an agile process, comes with the danger of taking the day-to-day enjoyment out of an activity such as programming that you would normally enjoy. Of course there must be some amount of planning, but I think we've pushed too far into the goal-oriented direction that makes people miserable.
> Atelic activities are those activities where the continuous process is the goal. Certain types of learning, being a good parent, and so on.
Reading the article, I understand this differently. Telic activities are indeed activities that have a terminal goal. However, the idea of a continuous process being the goal seems orthogonal to the telic/atelic distinction. You can have an activity that is both enjoyable and has a final goal: one can play a video-game both because they want to beat it and because they enjoy playing it. An activity being telic doesn't mean it's not enjoyable by itself. You can also have atelic activities that don't have any goals.
There's no reason, a priori, that making an activity telic should take away from the day-to-day enjoyment. Having a final goal shouldn't stop people from enjoying the journey. It does change the game (from an open-ended sandbox to a more linear game), but it doesn't make it unenjoyable per se. What really takes out the enjoyment of the process is not the introduction of the goal, but rather an excessive optimization toward a goal at the expense of the process.
I'll always remember this.
Live a life of atelic enjoyment.
I've had experiences that I enjoyed every minute of (for example because they were new, or doing things that I love). Periods of hard work that stand out in my memory because of how much I learnt, accomplished, felt the 'flow' state. And time spent with people I'm close to that deepened those relationships and gave me a huge sense of connection.
For me, being conscious of what I invest my time in is less about the category of experience, and more about generating opportunities for high quality experiences, making sure I don't pass them up, and being present in the moment during them. I'm not great at this, but it's what I try for.
I think a life full of connection is generally better than one with no connection. I'll even go so far is if anyone response to this saying they're better off with no connection they're lying because the fact that they wrote a response at all suggests they're trying to connect. I'm not saying HN = connection but writing to people in forums is reaching for connection.
I also don't agree contentment is the end of it. I know of every few people who claim being content is best who would give up their partner or be just as happy without them.
I agree. The older I get, the more important they become. And I say this as a person who is generally comfortable alone.
Of course not every connection is deep, but that doesn't make them any less meaningful.
You're spot on about teaching/influencing others, and you don't have to be an actual teacher. Just giving advice and/or helping others when asked (and sometimes when not) is a bigger deal than I think many realize.
Further you're trying to disguise a chicken-and-egg paradox as some deep insight.
> if we can function from a state of feeling content as we live each day .. then what we do during the lifespan given to us matters little
Why do you think people desire meaning in the first place?
"Nothing matters, just be content" is a poor substitute for the things you call a futile endeavor.
Kind of nihilist.
Or at least a little bit.
But i don't think nihilism itself looks deep into the "be content" part, but way more in the "nothing matters" which is not the point of the article.
Existencialism and Absurdism in the other hand, seems like a "better label" for it imho.
So, if I am acting from a state of fulfillment or contentment, what I choose to do with my life might be quite different from what I would do if I felt unfilled and lonely.
Maybe Hedonism is sound.
Happiness and fulfillment are both choices.
Otjerwise where does it end? You start worrying about the purpose of your legacy since what does it matter anyway the sun will explode, swallow the earth whole, and eventually the whole universe will go through heat death.
Pleasure is also consistent but less so: eating an applie pie is pleasurable. Maybe not two days in a row though.
Satisfaction is much less certain and reliable. Something might be satisfying today but not next week.
Hanging out with friends. Satisfying. We laugh. Then it gets less satisfying. We still laugh. But no satisfaction.
Mental state matters here. A cut stings, but I've been cut and not noticed.
> Pleasure is also consistent but less so: eating an applie pie is pleasurable. Maybe not two days in a row though.
I think some forms of pleasure stem from novelty. "Variety is the spice of life" and all that.
Depends on the dream and the experience. I can recall many dreams and many experiences in breathtaking clarity as if they were actual photos. Compared to photos, these also carry sentiment, meaning and they have impact.
After I was enlightened, I chopped wood and carried water.
This isn’t true
almost everyone has some kind of long term connection with other people because we meet so many people in our modern lives.
but chances of "them being reciprocated in the manner we value, or of them lasting when we need it" are extremely low.
Many people don't even have a good relationship with their families or with their parents or with their kids.
It is also closely linked to aging.
The older we get, the fewer friends we have. According to a recent study by experts from Aalto University in Finland and the University of Oxford in England, our social network shrinks after we reach our mid-20s.
this is specific to Americans
https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/c_fit,f_au...
The opposite is called Eudomonia
I’ve found, as I watch friends and family age, that learning to confront and work with this dread is essential to living life fully. Especially as decline and decay start to dominate aspects of your life more and more.
The people that I know that are uncomfortable talking about these topics progressively live in a world of fear and doubt as they age. The others, become increasingly resilient.
Arguably the single act that defines maturity is facing this dread and learning to accept and exist with it.
Until then you are living a half life, only dealing with the part of existence you find comfortable, but so much of who we are as individuals is defined by this other aspect of being.
Maybe there is something to just living in denial until your quality of life has degraded and your friends are gone and death seems a welcome release.
The Dalai Lama allegedly meditates on dying every day. With the whole decay visualization business.
You, and many others in this modern world, remind of Dostoyevskian characters: neurotic, overly-emotional, busy buzzing around, the cause of all their own problems. No one can sit still in silence, alone with themselves -- they're always running away. There's always some emotion taking hold of them, and can't simply let it run its course. No, "something must be done!"
It reminds me of the Russian "martial art" система: the more you "hold on," the more pain you will feel, and less effective your moves will be. Somehow, people have never learned to let go, and become completely relaxed. They're constantly holding onto something, and being thrashed around by life.
Perhaps you people need to try ayahuasca? Or maybe meditation? Maybe drink less coffee? Maybe stop forcing yourself to do all of this stuff you really don't want to do? Take a break? Become mindful of your body, mind, and soul?
I have 2,000 weeks left. My life will not be lived "fully" to the standards of some over-socialized urbanite. That is fine. I have things I want to do. I don't care about anyone's opinion on them. Knowing I have lived half of my life already doesn't stir any emotions in me. There is no existential dread.
There is no "start" to living a life. You're living one already. If there are things that stir emotions in you, let them. Never exploring your feelings, leading to the emotional depth of a middle schooler, is one way to not live a "full" life -- not some inanity about "spending" your time "better" (to reduce life to some abstraction is only for the soulless).
I seriously wish people on HN and more broadly would stop suggesting drugs and tripping out so often as a solution to any depression or existential dread.
I get it's one of several suggestions you made, but it's the most dangerous suggestion of all of them. People end up seriously harmed by this stuff, it's not to be taken lightly.
But as we all know: those who scold random people are the great teachers-by-example.
> As with all things, moderation.
Sure, but in my anecdotal experience the vast majority of people are spending more time on YouTube than what their own values would permit. And also anecdotally, people who experience more existential dread seem to be those who realize they aren’t living their life quite the way they’d like to.
My point is that I’ve seen a million of these. Hell I’ve read 4K weeks! You’ll get no argument from me that spending your time wisely is important but try to keep in mind that making the most of Every Second Of The Day is a sure way to make yourself miserable. I should know. I’ve done it. So, the intent of this page might be to inspire, but for a lot of folks it will trigger unnecessary existential panic.
I guess just try to remember the very wise advice from LOTR: “not all who wander are lost.”
If one individual fails to change, that’s their problem: if a method of change doesn’t work for the vast majority of people, then the problem is with the method.
Just my pet theory here but I don’t think that most people can just get off reddit because they have only X weeks left; can lose weight because they know they are eight kilograms overweight; can start exercising because someone told them something bad will happen to them in twenty years if they don’t; can start socializing because someone told them that in studies XYZ, people who are lonely are 90% more likely die of pancreatic cancer… it’s all completely backwards.
Because you know what makes people do anything? A purpose, goal, or meaning. By trying to “get the most out of my remaining 2800 weeks” like some little optimizing robot, you’re trying to improve “in life” (who wants to be a loser in life right) by doing the equivalent of maintaining your garden by removing all the weeds with a tweezer; already having some kind of purpose is what compels people to lose weight and to focus their time, because they might need that time to fulfill their purpose, they might need to lose weight in order to be fit enough to do what they need to do, and so on.
I also notice that having a purpose has a large impact on getting through the day. Because then everything I do, I do in support of that purpose. But when I lack a purpose? Then most things are mundane, robotic, tedious checklists. Things I do in order to avoid things like maybe possibly getting pancreatic cancer in thirty years time.
Another is: love yourself, but avoid narcissism.
I regard 4000 Weeks as one of, if not the, most important books I’ve ever read. The message might not be important for everyone but it changed my perspective in several important ways.
I was mentioning the 4000 weeks idea to a friend and how I found it interesting and thought-provoking, and their reaction was quite the opposite as it was way too dark for them.
I wonder if this idea highlights some fairly clear differences in people's personalities and mental models (at least, at the time and place in their life they're evaluating it).
If you have taken an intro philosophy class or even watched some videos on YouTube you will have already seen these ideas.
A much better use of someone’s limited time would be to just read an intro to Buddhism or existentialism. You will get the same basic concepts and much better ideas on how you can address these issues in your life.
Again, depending on how you see it - it can be both shackling but also liberating.
The both of extremes of:
- I want to put my head in the sand and ignore the reality (we are mortal)
- YOLO
are not exactly ideal. As you said yourself => balance.
But a common thread I’ve seen is that being adaptable to what you need and helps you thrive is better than setting arbitrary impossible expectations. That seems totally healthy to me regardless of some finer points I might dispute in individual comments. I hope there’s a chance this discussion will reach a point with less talking past each other, because there’s an awful lot that seems to be held in common.
Be curious about other people. Act immediately on a generous impulse. Live with intensity and focus.
Having directly actionable advice is extremely helpful, even as a reminder.
And I agree with you the site is extremely well done.
People should spend their time how they please but I strongly feel that feeding The Algorithm directly into your brain for hours is objectively less mentally healthy than staring at a sunrise, even if the sunrise is mind numbingly boring.
I try to hold both ideas in my head at the same time.
Maybe this website would serve some purpose if we weren’t constantly being reminded of getting older, weaker, not having much time left, maybe you will get Alzheimers if you don’t do this One Weird Trick, etc. But as it stands we are reminded plenty of how short our lives are.
I'm not so sure life is short; but spending it reading self-help books and unsolicited advice is one sure way to waste time.
The point is not to focus on time, or calculating how much of it you have; the point is to live in the present and step out of time. Forget it. The past is only in your mind. The future does not exist. The only real thing is right now.
If you are depressed you are living in the past. If you are anxious you are living in the future. If you are at peace you are living in the present. --Lao Tzu
The past isn't generally depressing and there are lots of things worth to be remembered. The past is not only in my mind, it is around me all the time and it is the context I'm living in.
The future needs some planning.
We just need to live in the present, but also have to make decisions based on past&present&future.
"'I want to feel alive!' Its easy. You cant think about the past. 'Why did I do that??' It'll just turn to anger. You also can't think about the future. 'Will it be okay?' It just turns to worry. In that case, hold on for dear life! Stake your entire life in here and now!"
It's worth a read, but perhaps it found me at the right time in my life.
https://waitbutwhy.com/2014/05/life-weeks.html
After reading this, I used this nice online PDF generator to print out my personalized life calendar, and kept it in my home office with a pen nearby, checking off the passing weeks occasionally (every month or so).
Spending some time to check off the first ~2k weeks -- checking a little box for each week of my life thus far -- was quite an emotional thing, actually.
I read it every January or so.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/life-clock-new-tab...
"For we are mistaken when we look forward to death; the major portion of death has already passed. Whatever years be behind us are in death's hands."
Every moment is sand through the hourglass that once expired does not come back. It's up to us whether those moments were lived well or squandered.
Our final moment is when we stop dying, when the candle has burned all the way down and run out of wax.
Your site is a great summary reminder of the key points and it brought me back into the experience of reading the book.
For folks reading this, I do recommend reading the book since the website is just a taste of the book. It's lessons may hit different not having gone through the full journey.
Thanks again for making the tribute!
I have to scroll over 30 years back in time by months.
In an attempt for simplicity I used a simple <input type=date> field which means it uses your OS or browser’s native date picker. As a Mac/iOS user I’m pretty familiar with those, but I’ll admit I did not test this across Windows or Android devices which apparently have not done a great job at this UI element.
Strive for tranquility and peace of mind by living simply, deeply caring for others, increasing genorosity, taking pleasure in the simple things, controlling the mind, cultivating positive emotions, being ethical.
If you do these things you will reduce suffering for yourself and others. That to me is an ultimate goal.
Instead then, focus on figuring out how to live more healthily. Advances there objectively provide dividends.
Also if you’re selfishly wondering what type of problems to devote your life to, develop your empathy and do things that benefit others, because as your time on the clock runs down, the value of your successes in that category don’t also diminish, unlike everything else. Giving is the gift that keeps on giving, so to speak.
- me, laying on my couch and mindlessly browsing HN
There are things I want to do that I legitimately don’t have time for, even though I have time to browse HN. Or at least, I won’t make time for them, because they’re quite time consuming. I want to learn Japanese, make my own top-down RPG, get a black belt in Jiu-Jitsu. Build some cool woodworking projects. Start a blog. Photography. Get better at golf. I’m interested in everything, I could rattle off tons more things that I would love to spend time on.
But these must compete with other things I love to do, as well as things I must do.
I’ve been doing some game programming recently and have gotten really excited because I finally have grokked Godot. But, I’m not sure I have the time to actually make my own game of any quality.
Actually just giving up on that project might be freeing. Like when I gave up on Advent of Code on Day 17 due to problems taking me too long, I was more relieved than anything. I think this is what’s behind giving up on the idea of being able to do all of the stuff you want to do.
The problem is that this is fairly soul-crushing. When I have a side project going that I’m really interested in, it’s quite fun and energizing.
But I can be obsessive, so all of this extra energy goes towards the project. I think I end up netting negative, because I’m spending so much time and energy on the project. I will also start to abandon other responsibilities and fall behind in other areas of life. Exercise, chores, other but less sexy projects I care about (meditation is always the first to get discarded).
Eventually I hit a point where I realize I need to get my act together, and by then, letting go of the big project is relieving, but sad.
I guess the problem here is more with the obsessiveness than topics in the article, but they might be related. Like, I‘m constantly chasing novelty. This is probably common nowadays due to the internet. I’m a true geek who loves learning stuff, and I like doing it in a hands on fashion. Having an effectively infinite stream of novel things I can teach myself (minus BJJ and such) to do is just plain addicting.
I’m not quite sure what to do about this. This habit has made me a much better programmer. And I’m always doing something I love doing. But there’s collateral damage to other things I care about. And eventually I start feeling like I have no time to do what I need to do, and also what I want to do.
How does one manage time with so many hobbies!
My attempt is to move the goal post back down, so as to not be overwhelmed.
Like learning Japanese for an example. Rather than me saying, I want to learn Japanese, I’ll set a goal for myself to, pick up the basics if hiragana and katakana.
I think this approach will help reinforce motivation for me to be short-term goal minded.
The reading did open my eyes to the thought that not everything on our list will be completed. You might be young, but at my I age have some things to eliminate from this list; or more specifically, move them down further in terms of priority. My reasoning is a personal one, at my age, things tend not to stick as well as when I was younger.
We’ll see.
I suggest you inform yourself about (adult) ADHD. Your behavior matches mine exactly. It was only after I learned about ADHD when everything finally made sense.
What intervention(s) have you found the most helpful? Or are there any resources you can point me to? Thanks.
Jesus, I'm going to cry. FML.
I'm using Brave on Android.
1. Telling you how many weeks you have been alive for 2. What people usually focus on during the period of life you're in, according to research
But also on Android -- am I missing something or am I supposed to scroll backwards month by month to 1989?
There is 0% chance I would go month-by-month to anything before 2010. And I would still have 20 more years.
From reviews, I kind of perceived it's only about limiting work in progress and adopting a more slow and human approach to things.
I feel these insights were already brought by many industrial production methodologies, e.g. Toyota, in a more rational and less newage-y package. Am I missing something?
We get preoccupied with the minutiae of day to day life and forget that we didn’t even know we were dead before we were born, and we won’t even know we’re dead when we die. And here we are right now, perhaps only minutes, hours, or days before we go back to being dust.
I find it helpful to think about this when my partner gets yet another parking ticket, I feel directionless in my career, or it seems like my teenage children think I’m lame.
Things are fine. They’re actually great. They can get a lot worse. It is worse for many others. I’m very grateful for the cards I was dealt.
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here. We privileged few, who won the lottery of birth against all odds. How dare we whine at our inevitable return to that prior state, from which the vast majority have never stirred?
> While you live, shine
> have no grief at all
> life exists only for a short while
> and time demands its toll.
Culture and social structures can mollify or exacerbate the problem of a sentient brain contemplating its demise but wont make it go away.
Once we accept that, it is an empirical problem to find which arrangements work for most of people most of the time.
A frequently proposed solution that underlies many philosophies and religions is ubuntu, "finding meaning through others": from family and friends to generic strangers on HN.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/life-clock-new-tab...
It's also open source: https://github.com/benkaiser/lifeclock
Big disagree on this. I'm so much happier now when I've started saying no to anything I don't want to do. What's the cost? Sure, I meet and bond with less people but doesn't really feel like a big loss. I'm happy being alone with a few good friends and family that respect my integrity and don't demand or expect me to do stuff I don't want.
When you get farther into the site and it’s telling you what you should be doing… no thanks. That comes off as prescriptive and condescending to me. I did not get that from the book.
I found the book to be more of a thoughtful reflection on “the productivity trap”. Also the pace at which the book introduces and moves past existential dread is much smoother.
Also, stop wasting hours a day reading HN.
I was just browsing in a bookstore yesterday and this book caught my eye. I promised to myself that I’d only leave with one, so I put it down as I had spotted Jeff Hawkins latest book (from 2021) that I had planned to read.
Has anyone read this book?
Cool site that matches the color scheme of the book.
(well, next time you see the date picker, anyway)
Either way, your comment is irrelevant to the discussion.
Or, you know, an actual paper book. :)
I’m having a hard time understanding how this mistake is made.
Hoard and horde are not even close to the same. They sound the same, but before you write it, shouldn’t you have read it at least once?
Or consider that maybe ‘mass of people’ is probably not the same word that’s used for ‘amass a a bunch of stuff’?
Actually, now that I consider it, it makes total sense that you’d use the same word for that… guess I’ve answered myself.
Anyway, it’s hoard.
Some people learn language primarily through writing - a lot of non-native speakers learn this way. To them someone making a their/they’re mistake is bewildering, but they mispronounce words in ways that seem strange to the sound-learners.
The two groups don’t under each other’s struggles and often look down on the other’s language ability.
That's a big Nope right there. :(
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I really like the videos by "Unmotivational Speaker Self-help Singh"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8An2SxNFvmU
> Just do nothing... do the least amount of work without getting fired... release yourself of obligation and responsibility... everything you think you need to do has been done before you, and will be done without you... you are not special... the world is fucked, and you cannot unfuck it, so just do you... stop searching for the meaning of life, that is futile, you will die just as confused as you are now... so just be happy
Recently my partner got laid off with a 3 month severance, and after working her ass off for years it's her first chance to relax "without guilt," she's literally being paid to do nothing (and, well, look for a job, but in her market it won't take long to find another). It's been fascinating to watch her jump between guilt at doing nothing but playing Elden Ring, to righteousness that she deserves it, to fanatic exploration of new hobbies and skills, back to tremendous laziness.
She complains about being bored, and it makes me think, what a fantastic opportunity, to be bored. What a privilege, honestly, what a human right, that's been stolen from all of us. The right to be bored. To sit around, having exhausted all the little means to entertain yourself, finally just sitting in your chair, thinking, what's the point? Why am I here? Why am I alive? What should I do with myself?
She gets to explore what her purpose is. I think the way we've structured our society, growth capitalism, has stolen that opportunity from us. We have no chance to feel bored like that, we have to get up at 7 so we can get to the gym in time, so that we can be in the car sitting in traffic mad at eachother for 40 minutes, maybe listening to a podcast so the time is "at least productive." Then you have to be at work and executing someone else's values for 8 hours. Then home, and you MUST take your remaining few hours for either errands and chores, or, enforced leisure time, after all, when else will you get to play Elden Right? Or the hundreds of other games in your Steam backlog? Or your massive unread reading list? Or unwatched TV and Movie list?
But mostly it centers around that work time stealing your purpose, your value. My purpose is I'm a really good engineer, I build really good websites with fantastic SEO, good designs that deliver high click through rates so that my company makes lots of money. That is Who I Am and What I Do Well. Take away that job, close the company down, then what are you? Well, I guess the same thing, but for someone else, soon as you can find a new job. Take it all away, then what are you?
A good accusation of this position is that it could apply to any form of identity. Who are you? A good mother. Take the kids away, then what are you? Well, for a while, probably nobody. But something feels particularly, uniquely, hollow about the purpose of our life being taken away Work.
I think it's long time that we leverage our incredible technology to take a load off our shoulders, let the machines do more of the work for a change, and let ourselves experience a bit more boredom. Maybe only a few of us will because everyone's netflix backlog is big enough to fit a lifetime, who knows, but that doesn't sound so bad either.
Nonsense like this pretends to be wisdom but it's the very opposite of it and it has only one message: become more anxious because time is limited. No one will be helped by this, despite the gorgeous UI it's a filthy life degrading viewpoint that needs to be dismantled.
Avoid those that make you fearful and sad that degrade you back into disease and death. -Rumi
I may write a blogpost about this soon.
