PG mostly talks about intrinsic reward in this article. We should work on stuff that is interesting to us, and brings us fulfillment. However, I believe that Paul is missing a huge component here, and that is extrinsic reward.

Extrinsic reward complements intrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward allows us to push through the hard, difficult work that we might not be interested in, because we know the work will be rewarded. It is the light at the end of the tunnel for difficult work. PG, and Bill Gates were able to work so hard because they had internal belief that there was an extrinsic reward for all the work they were doing.

In a perfect world, we would all be completely self motivated to work on every task, but this just isn't realistic. Especially in today's working work. People like PG, and Bill Gates are able to fully credit intrinsic reward, but fail to mention that the extrinsic reward ($$) validated the hard, gritty work they put in.

In my professional life, that motivation has all but disappeared for me. I already have the comfortable salary I hoped for, and individual achievements aren't directly rewarded with more money in the short. So what else is left as an extrinsic reward that can provide that drive on a daily basis?

I haven't found the answer to that yet myself. Sometimes I feel like I've been given too much too soon and that's removed my hunger to work. That plus existing in a collaborative environment instead of a competitive one.

I think that's where you went wrong. The backpacking at hostels is the best (as long as you pick hostels and fellow travelers that do not look like your typical backpacker haha). The thing is, now that I'm 30, I feel it's probably out of fashion. But these nights I spent in big-city hostels had the most fun, stories and affairs.

> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.

Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status.

What you're thinking about doing over the period of 15 years, I've done in about the span of a year. Life is too short to spend it inside working. You won't get your youth back - once it's gone, it's gone.

I think we need to agree on what's a night out. If you come back at home around 3AM and sleep at 5AM; I find it hard that you can work the next morning and keep at it everyday. It's possible to do that at weekends, but then you probably have errands to run at that. A month in another country avoids any onshore errands and also brings adventure.

Sure you can go out every-night for 1-2 hours at your local pub/coffee. But these hardly bring any adventure or novelty; they are just part of the routine and honestly now, I couldn't care less about them. They are forgettable events: irrelevant. I'd rather be doing interesting work, or just sit down in front of Netflix.

If you do things enough - the memories aren't likely to last. Things that are novel are what create memories. For you - you were visiting countries and seeing things you'd never seen. Unrealistic for regular 9-5 life. Doesn't mean that you still can't have a good time in a non-novel thing though. I had plenty of good nights that I don't really remember but I enjoyed them still.

Travel enough - and you might find out... the novelty wears off there too.

But novelty shouldn't be the only pursuit in life.

The only thing that stopped me was having kids, so the best reason possible. Corona would just mean closer travels and more mountains rather than people if we didn't have them.

I see no reason to stop unless your body or mind can't handle it anymore. Which with taking good care of oneself (and a bit of luck) can be easily 75, met quite a few of those.

But Paul Graham never recommends mindlessly working on things that don't interest you for the sake of some imagined tomorrow.

He even recommends not to do it:

"...if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself."

That's a strawman version of what Paul is suggesting.

" Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to?"

"The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting"

"Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are."

"It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach."

Listen to PG kids. Not some misinterpretation of what he's saying.

But I hope you can find the peace you're searching for. I really do.

I understand the agony of not being able to get what you want.

There are few things I enjoy more than just sitting on a beach. When you go on vacation, actually go on vacation. Turn off your phone. Leave your laptop behind. Bring some fiction, or maybe select non-fiction (biographies are great). Put sunscreen on. Get a cold beverage. Fall asleep with the book on you.

I recommend learning new things while you're on vacation! But learn about the place you're vacationing at. Learn about the culture, the people, the history, the geography. Expand your horizons and waste time.

Those books actually contain tons of useful information apart from their main focus (accommodation & restaurants). History of a state and its various parts, culture, mindset, local quirks, food. And then you actually mingle with people, ask for directions, look for accommodation, trying to get last bus to some other place, start a chat with a stranger going same direction.

This are one of the most rewarding experiences in my life. Constant discovery of how amazing our world actually is and people inhabiting it. I've met the utmost kindness from the poorest of this world like Dalits in India who have nothing and shared everything with a lost traveler.

I come back from such trips richer and more experienced than ever. But yeah just sitting mindlessly on the beach, which I think not many people do actually might be a cure for near or complete burnout, otherwise just a waste of precious time off.

> One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard

This is such a narrow definition of "great things" that it is useless. Great things in PG's eyes maybe, but I hope no one's life goal is to impress him.

> "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one."

That quote makes me sick to my stomach.

Bill Gates knew what he really wanted to do and what interested him so not taking a day off was probably a no-brainer.

If you had been able to realize earlier that travelling the world was what you wanted to do, then you could have put all your efforts into making that happen.

I think the essay is suggesting that merely working hard without enough of that effort spent on the directional problem won't yield the results you want, ultimately. So I think the suggestions here taken holistically are useful to a theoretical-younger version of you.

It's also almost a guaranteed misrepresentation of the truth.

PG I suspect and many others derive intrinsic happiness from the grind. From achievement. Yet this is a very myopic way to live that for the vast majority of people will result in a fair amount of unhappiness.

A far healthier and happier way to live is to live a balanced life. Work efficiently when you need to work, and be focused on your objectives. Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter. You can still be successful, grow yourself, etc. but without killing yourself in the process.

And for the love of god... take time for yourself to enjoy the finer things in life. Take a walk and try to find the beauty in things. Go travel somewhere new! Enjoy some you time and treat yourself.

I cannot disagree more with PG here, sadly. But that's all it is... a disagreement. Everyone gets to choose what life they want to live.

It's more often things like going on a walk and identifying the birds, going to the bar and getting better at telling stories or playing pool, seeing patterns in watching daily traffic or weather. Things you absolutely could go deep on, but just can't justify as "character building exercise" because they won't directly lead to you acquiring property or power.

And that's where the alarm bells start to come in; if you get anxious about that, you can get stuck on the idea of work and cut yourself off from a balanced set of interests, and this hits young people especially hard because they don't know what the balance could look like, or they observe media(including HN) where the balance is clearly defined towards one extreme, think "I will become that" and treat it as a masochistic exercise. I believe this to be a deep affliction of the online world particularly since, without trying you can stumble into media containing the "best" of everything.

While working at Tesla, we definitely all built great things but that's all we did. I left, took a 70% paycut to start my own consulting business and work 4-5 hours a week while being a 'Digital Nomad'. I've never been happier and guess what, that nagging feeling of 'I'm not doing real work' or finding 'idleness distasteful' goes away when you don't feel like the whole team has a gun to your head.

Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now, because we're trading that off for a potentially better life X years from now (where in our case, X = 5-10 years).

X can be whatever you want, and it's up to individuals (or families) to decide that for themselves. But once you do, delayed gratification is an important social concept; as evidenced by the marshmallow test administered in children. For adults, "rejecting the marshmallow" can mean working a little harder in your '20s, so that you may get 2 marshmallows when you're in your '30s — which for a lot of people is important as that's the age when they have children.

Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).

The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending the prime years of your life slaving to a computer is something I think a lot of people will regret.

So, no, I won’t listen to PG. My most fulfilling work is being a dad.

I cannot understate for me personally how much having my own kids over the past few years has shifted my priorities. The best parts of my weeks are when I'm with my family all doing something fun together. Work is now only a means to provide and is not a source of personal fulfillment anymore (again, YMMV!!!!)

It's hard to stay "extra motivated" at work now, though. I went from being willing to put in the long hours and weekends to barely being able to get 30-40 hours a week.

But you know what? There are plenty of perfectly great jobs that allow for that. The place I'm currently working told me in the interview loop they can't compete with FAANG salary ranges, but they promised me total autonomy on when/where I work as well as great work-life balance, which has proven to be true.

This trend of saying you enjoyed your life and therefore yours was the only correct choice is extremely closed-minded, and tends to come from parents in particular a lot. What if instead you solicited the opinions of people whose life you clearly don't understand? Are you so scared of the idea that other choices made other people happy?

I also totally understand being single, childless, and driven to a career. I’m happier now. Who is the one not listening to other’s opinions? You sure you understand?

But sure, have it your way.

The vagueness of "work" in this article is (IMO) a feature, and not a bug. Raising your children can be great work, to your own point. You can't half-ass raising your kids, as you well know, and it sounds like you get the most purpose and fulfillment from doing that. What PG appears to be arguing is that, whether you're doing a "great" job of it depends on: 1) how hard you work on raising your kids, 2) your natural ability, and 3) effort — and I trust that you satisfy all 3 of those preconditions, as a dad.

> The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful

First of all, to call it an "unknown future prize" is a bit of a mischaracterization. If someone were to argue that one ought to spill their lives into their career with no well-defined end goal, then I'd agree that it's silly and wasteful. But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification. Keep in mind that in the experiment, the child knows that there's a second marshmallow coming if they wait. Adults need to know what their second marshmallow is before delaying the first one.

Second of all, I don't think it's fair to make such a sweeping generalization for how other people ought to live their lives. The neat thing about PG's post is that it's sufficiently abstract that it can apply to anyone, regardless of what they consider "great work".

The one thing I often don't find people discussing is that you may actually achieve your goals and find them not at all worth the effort.

I'd put a lower bound of at least 50% likelihood that the goal you seek is not the goal you'll be happy with if you achieve it. Of course, you won't know until you get there.

I have goals - I hope I attain them and I do work towards them. But keeping the above in mind, I will try to ensure that my present life is also on the positive. Even if I attain my goal and find it worthless, my time/life would not have been wasted.

I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!

This is only an "unknown future prize" if the defined goal is very specifically to have a successful pension fund, or to thrive in a specific industry.

Using the example of what makes you, personally, feel the most fulfilled: children die prematurely (disrupts everything), or they have developmental challenges that make it difficult to do much else in life. None of that changes the fact that you're probably still better off devoting your life right now to rearing children.

You're absolutely correct that there's uncertainty in the future, but none of that refutes any of what I said in my comments, or PG wrote in his article. It's a "yes, and" addition, rather than a "no, but" refutation.

YES, there's significant entropy in life, AND given that, the most reliable way to do "great work" is still <dot dot dot> (as laid out in PG's blog post).

> I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!

I argued no such thing. It clearly bears repeating that the more abstract notion is that investment in XYZ early in your life, rather than ABC is more important. XYZ and ABC can be the exact same thing, if your circumstances permit; there's no requirement that they be different things. If you find the most fulfillment and joy in life raising children resources notwithstanding, then you can certainly start doing that early in your life. If you think that raising children will only be more fulfilling if you have some baseline threshold of wealth, then you may have to defer that in favor of a career. Again, it all depends on how you, as an individual (or as a family), defines XYZ and ABC.

I have no problem with how people define XYZ and ABC. What I have a problem with is in telling people how they ought to define XYZ and ABC. Neither PG's post nor my comment did the latter.

When I was 25 I had the time and the money to take a couple of weeks off and travel. I wouldn't have stayed in the nicest hotels or eaten in fancy restaurants, but I could have done it. It would have had no negative impact on my career and my current financial status.

What kept me from doing it wasn't a careful look at my life goals and the cost/benefits ratio, but a mental model that stopped at "Work hard now and you'll be rewarded I promise"

I didn't see any accounting for that in PG's essay. "Great Men Work Hard And Succeed" is the only message I got.

From PG's article, he acknowledges that the hard work is a necessary but not sufficient condition to do "great work" (in his words).

"There are three ingredients in great work: natural ability, practice, and effort. You can do pretty well with just two, but to do the best work you need all three"

The vagueness of "great work" means that it can apply to any kind of work. Raising children can be "great work". Writing a book can be "great work". Learning something new can be "great work". Traveling can be "great work", etc.

> When I was 25 I had the time and the money to take a couple of weeks off and travel. I wouldn't have stayed in the nicest hotels or eaten in fancy restaurants, but I could have done it. It would have had no negative impact on my career and my current financial status.

Great! And for you, forgoing a marshmallow means something very different from someone else. The advice in this article is sufficiently abstract, that when applied to the circumstances of your life, should still track consistently.

I would tell them, my friend, come back with some ideas of yours, please do not list simplistic views just to get the nod of approval of your audience of middle-school students/ bored teachers/programmers.

PS. We all have seen plenty of people who did great work with top natural abilities, little effort and little practice. Such is life. I had a similar reaction of disbelief when at a work-sponsored leadership development program, the instructor told us that one of the special traits of Fortune 500 CEOs (they all like to talk about CEOs) is empathy. It sounds good, yes it does; the only problem is that it contradicts what one can see with their own eyes every single day.

I lost a whole bunch of friends in my 30s and nearly died myself a few weeks ago. Later on doesn't arrive for everyone.

I don't think that means you should never delay gratification but just don't put all your eggs in the future basket.

Always "living in the moment" can be bad, depending on what you want out of life. Always "living in the future" can also be bad, depending on what you want out of life.

Ultimately, they both depend on the same thing: what you want out of life. The key is for everyone to define that goal for themselves; an exercise which is possibly the single hardest part of the human condition.

My own take is that question comes very much from the living in the future side of things.

It can be a great way to live a life, and once you've decided that that's your answer, you'd obviously spend more of your mental capacity in the "living in the moment" side of the spectrum.

That being said, it's an answer that has the possibility (though not a guarantee) of having very real negative consequences to one's future well-being. Individuals that choose to go that route should be responsible for those consequences, if any.

I also don’t see why you think there is risk in it. After all you can have a long term plan to do extremely dangerous things to self actualise. Both routes (a false dichotomy in itself) in fact have a possibility of having very real negative consequences even if your plans are dull.

It depends on what your life goals are. If you want to travel the world, do that. If you have big ambitions™ then work hard. Either is OK.

This essay is not a call for everyone to work hard, it is a guide for those who choose that path.

I had a near miss on this front which turned me. I'm a lucky one.

Also never listen to an ideolog. I haven't met one that isn't wrong yet.

In my 20s I was similar. A 'long' vacation was a long weekend in Vegas with friends. Fun, but not much of a vacation. I was fortunate to meet my wife in my early 30s who pushed me to slow down a bit and take at least 2 consecutive weeks off a year (sometimes even twice) in a time zone that made work near impossible. We've been to many places across Europe spending 3-4-5 days in a single location, which is long by American standards.

> when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels

There is a lot of room between staying in hostels and traveling in style. It's possible to travel relatively cheaply and still be comfortable. I know some hostels are nicer than others, but tbh nothing about staying in a hostel sounds vacation like to me.

> Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out.

It's hard to know. If I didn't work as hard in my 20s would I be in the position to take off 2-4 weeks/year since then? IDK. Hindsight and all that...

Finally, I think the most important thing people can do is learn to enjoy the day to day. Even if you're working hard, learn to appreciate those fun moments with your co-workers or those moments with your dog when you come home. Not everything has to be about the big adventure. As I get older I'm learning to find happiness in all sorts of mundane things, even something as simple as sitting the backyard with the sun on my face.

It really depends on what you're working for. If your goal is retire in 50s that's pretty achievable without working terribly hard (for most engineers).

If your goal is to be as good at soccer as Lionel Messi probably not so much.

Define what your goals are really well, then you can figure out what level of work is required to get there, then decide if that's a sacrifice worth making to you or if you want to adjust your goals.

Of course, there's some unknown in there, but if you don't want to be incredibly rich and change the world it doesn't take the same inputs.

I made many millions *for other people* -- and as luck would have it, I left several companies a month or so before big aquisitions.

SI spent years as a consultant, where I was brought in to focus on a specific project and get-it-built - so I never got stock in those companies - just had a high paying hourly rate... which obviously life happens, and all the material bullshit I acquired meant nothing and is now all gone and I am pretty minimalist.

I worked with a guy once who would work for six months, then take six month off to travel - every single year. That was a good model...

Also, I became a manager WAY too early in my career - so I had to focus on people/people-skills, which actually took time away from me going deeper on some of my technical skills/creative interests.

Beautiful typo :-)

All my friends are like this too.

Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day.

I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.

Meetup is a great place to do that. Just turn up at random events outside of your usual comfort zone outside of your usual calendar cycle. Amazing the variety of people out there who are interesting and friendly.

It's easy to find dozens of excuses to avoid going into the unknown. Don't let them control you.

Doing things alone is a radically different experience than doing them with other people, and I love both, for different reasons.

This is physically unsustainable. Our bodies and our minds are not built to sit at a desk and work 60 ours a week.

Ignore that and you'll get all sort of issue ranging from back pain to mental illness.

We don't need lavish vacations in fancy places. We need to stretch every hour, go for a walk in the park every other day, some hours for cultural and social life every day.

My suggestion for you and possibly advice for myself is if you can’t “travel” then move.

For me I imagine working 2 years from New Zealand outside of a city, somewhere beautiful to be a cool thing to do. You need to travel to get there but then you can stay put for the most part, doing short trips when it suits.

I think world trips are overrated. I did some backpacking in SE Asia and in some ways it feels like IKEA: a bunch of sheep following the same path around doing the same things trading money for a buzz. It’s interesting to see places but boring at the same time, everyone wants to “party”

If I had the time again I’d trade those 3 months travelling for a year in NZ, Tasmania, some parts of Eastern Europe or US and very slowly travel while working remote. Really wish I could have had that idea planted in my head.

Final thought: if you are a coder it can feel quite bad looking back on your years because most of the code you write has probably been replaced! So I cope with this by thinking of it like I am a gardener and most of my veggies have been eaten. So what? My work was useful and helped people.

Don't over index on high-consequence/low-likelyhood risks, but keep them in mind as part of your overall strategy.

You don't have to be rich to enjoy your life while you're young. Not every experience worth having is expensive!

If you face obvious age discrimination, put them on blast and keep looking.

Those are my people and the answer, at least for my cohort, is an emphatic no. They are extremely mobile and move from job to job with relative ease.

It's unfortunate that tech eats so many people who would rather be academics, researchers, artists, craftsmen. I get it; tech pays stupid high salaries to smart people who can do it, but want to do something else. I've run into a lot of PhD physicists who are coders because there are only so many jobs for a physicist, and they invariably pay less than entry-level web coding jobs. Many of them find they enjoy software, and make for great coworkers. But there are a lot of people who only do it for the money, and science, art, and other fields are worse for it. Tech eats everything.

I'm fortunate, I guess, in that I started in a tech career because it was what I enjoyed as a hobby. When I started out, it wasn't the best way to make a buck. My first few jobs paid less than I was making working in construction, and far less than a teacher made. I got lucky, financially.

ow, my back!

I started by creating a one person llc and a business account, and moving over my expenses. Even before making money the fees are offset by tax writeoffs. My first client was a friend that wanted some help w/ his startup, then my first big client was a former employer. The first quarter you make money you start filing a 1040.

True he doesn't talk much about leisure and retirement, because that's not what this essay is about.

I think one thing that could be added is that the metric of success is not necessarily monetary. Financial success often depends more on socioeconomic conditions, rather than hard work. But intrinsic satisfaction seems to be based on truly earned achievement.

> When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels.

That's the exact line I've been telling myself.

My wife and I want to travel for a couple years before we have kids (and it's getting to the point where we have to stop delaying that.) We've set a year from now as the hard deadline to start. Because otherwise we'll just keep pushing it back until we're too old to enjoy it or something happens and the dream becomes impossible.

I know I wish I had done that when I was young.

"Traveling the world seems like a life goal for extroverts. It is an experience I don't understand the benefits of, personally."

I do agree with some of your main points. You can't learn a culture in a week, and "helping" poor people for an instagram post is definitely problematic.

However being exposed to the different types of cultures around the world can be extremely valuable and eye opening. The world is a beautiful place with lots of interesting places to explore.

My point still stands that travelling the world is not a completely shallow endeavour. However you seem obsessed with labelling people as shallow, which ironically comes across as pretty shallow in itself.

One could make a case for breadth or depth when it comes to world travel, but so far you're not doing that, you're just sniffing dismissively at a stereotype.

I'm a fan of spending weeks or months in a place, rather than days, but spending years in any one place necessarily means seeing far fewer places. Breadth vs depth.

And yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it. Sometimes i read the first couple pages of each chapter and stop reading it. I never claim i read the whole book, or understand every nook and cranny of the rhetoric, but that book will still shape my subconscious going forward.

I feel travel is the same. As you go around the world you learn that no one has the answers, each place is entirely based on your experience of that city and everyone has different philosophies in life. It provides a sense of empathy to ideas. Meeting people who worked at hostels or people who bought a sailing boat, some fishing poles and some rice and traveled vastly changed the way i look at the world. Life is really easy in actuality, we as a species seem to complicate it.

Travel has brought me a vast amount of serenity and peacefulness in my normal life, because normal life can never be as hard as traveling.

“Life is really easy in actuality”

“Yes, I do read a books first 10 pages and stop reading it.”

Yeah we know you do buddy.

- Get a feel for life in a place. How do people live? Where do people eat? How do people move around? Where do people congregate? How does life ebb and flow throughout the day and week? Obviously each one can be expanded to more questions, but I like to experience these things and then compare and contrast. What do I like? Is this better or worse or just different?

- Try new cuisines. It can be really hard to get an "authentic" experience outside of a country for a variety of reasons

- Activities. Skiing can't be done everywhere

- Natural wonders. I find viewing certain nature scenes in person very satisfying