Ask HN: Do you ever feel that you’ve done “enough” work for a lifetime?
2 comments
Yes, and I want UBI (basically, there ability to not work as much), because I hate that right when my son is getting a personality and knows who I am to him, I'm supposed to find another job (currently unemployed) that will take me away from him for 10 or 12 hours per day. If I had UBI, I could work part time or work remotely on contacts, but instead I have to trade my time with him for some faceless company who will lay me off with no regard to my time there and contributions.
i'm not sure what you mean by the desire/urge to create is artifical, in the sense of societal demands or not, and it can be a big topic... so i'll address something else and we can revisit that if you'd like.
i think it's great you've had such drive to produce work, for whatever reasoning it came from. i think you're at a point where you would like it to mean something to you, or you want your work efforts to amount to something, so perhaps you need to figure out how to satisfy that. if you are interested in the "process of creating work", maybe you need to find a new topic to create writings on, or maybe you can reflect on past work and reiterate on it with some goals in mind (catering to another kind of audience, updating info/processes, adding more research to the work, etc). i'm not too sure where your interests lie other than writing, so it's hard to make further suggestions right now.
i think it's great you've had such drive to produce work, for whatever reasoning it came from. i think you're at a point where you would like it to mean something to you, or you want your work efforts to amount to something, so perhaps you need to figure out how to satisfy that. if you are interested in the "process of creating work", maybe you need to find a new topic to create writings on, or maybe you can reflect on past work and reiterate on it with some goals in mind (catering to another kind of audience, updating info/processes, adding more research to the work, etc). i'm not too sure where your interests lie other than writing, so it's hard to make further suggestions right now.
- Thousands of long-form help docs and troubleshooting articles.
- Hundreds of thousands of thoughtful, considered emails sent to customers, each addressing a unique problem or piece of feedback.
- Entire sections of employee handbooks—hiring, onboarding, training, security, support, and so on.
- Hundreds of product pitches, briefs, specs, and countless iterations to product and marketing copy.
- And more team, business, and feature launch updates than I can remember.
Almost all of this work is still used in one way or another today. And it’s not shoddy work, it’s good stuff. I took pride in writing, self-editing, and presentation. In the long run none of it will matter, but the process of creating the work mattered to me at the time.
I would imagine that many of you are in the same boat—your years have been feverishly productive. That is something to be proud of, right? And yet I find it so difficult to let go of the (artificial) urge to continue to create, to continue to produce, if only because that’s what we are "supposed" to be doing.
I’ve written so much to and for other people that I no longer have the desire to write anything for myself or the people in my life. Does anyone else want to put down the pen for a few years? I think most of us, as purposeful knowledge workers, have produced more content, more work, than our grandparents could have ever needed or wanted to produce throughout their lives.
Surely we have sent enough emails, reviewed enough pull requests, and written enough documentation for a lifetime? I don't mean to imply that I want to stop working. I'm not sure what I am grasping at here.