macwright-com-ovx2h6.txt (8163B)
1 Tom MacWright 2 3 [email protected] 4 5 Tom MacWright 6 7 • [1]Writing⇠ 8 • [2]Reading 9 • [3]Photos 10 • [4]Projects 11 • [5]Drawings 12 • [6]Micro 13 • [7]About 14 15 Work hard and take everything really seriously 16 17 Every few months on Twitter, there’s some dustup about work-life balance and 18 whether it’s a good or bad idea to work hard when you’re young. Like most of 19 these recurring debates, it has generated two opposite archetypes: 20 21 The anti-capitalist tells the young worker not to trust HR and not to buy into 22 the idea of work as family. Your employment contract is the only thing that 23 binds you to your job, and that can be terminated on either side. Arrive at 9, 24 leave at 5. Prioritize the family. 25 26 The hustlebro tells you to wake up at 7am and get to work, and give it your 27 all. Hustle, and earn as much as you can, build those connections. You can get 28 work-life balance when you’re older, your early 20s are the time for making 29 that cheddar and staying up till 1am. 30 31 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 32 33 In the short form, it’s hard to take a stance and not get grouped into either 34 extreme. It’s also hard not to feel baited by someone who’s engagement-farming 35 their social media presence by using time-tested bait questions. 36 37 This last time I responded something like: 38 39 work really hard and take everything very seriously 40 41 But I deleted it. A truism as an answer will lead people to all kinds of 42 unintended conclusions about me and whatever I’m saying. I’ll need to use more 43 words. 44 45 Wisdom is acquired by experience 46 47 I think the honest answer is that most people can’t gain perspective and 48 moderation and maturity by reading someone’s advice online. The wise 35-year 49 old dads on Twitter can follow their own advice about work-life boundaries 50 because they’ve suffered the consequences. There’s no shortcut to perspective: 51 you have to [8]acquire it by experiencing bad things and suffering consequences 52 . 53 54 Energy begets energy 55 56 I attribute a lot of my career path to my working really hard and caring a lot 57 about things. I quickly internalized the lesson that a 9-5 job wouldn’t teach 58 me enough, and wouldn’t give me all the intellectual stimulation or rigor that 59 I wanted – so I worked longer hours, worked on side projects, hunted down my 60 interests like a puppy chasing a squirrel. 61 62 The thing is, when you find a good thing to focus on, a thing to pour energy 63 into, it can be positive-sum. It can give you energy in the rest of your life, 64 give you a sense of purpose. The human body is [9]not like a battery with a 65 finite amount of energy. There are lots of things you can do, like exercise, 66 learning, and practice, that can be rewarding and increase your ability. This 67 is obvious, right? 68 69 If you have that thing that drives you, and that thing isn’t work and can never 70 be work, then sure – get the lightest-duty job you can. Pour time into that 71 thing. Maybe what you do at work is your main output, or part of your output, 72 or just what you do for money. 73 74 Most jobs don’t give you time to learn 75 76 Many jobs, especially in technology, don’t have real, intentional, educational 77 components. There is no time set-aside for learning, no time to practice, and 78 no dedicated instructor. 79 80 It’s unlikely that what you learned in college fully prepared you for the job. 81 It’s possible that you’ll have a wonderful mentor with lots of time to spare, 82 but probably not. 83 84 I’ve worked with people who are smart enough to learn everything on the job, 85 from 9-5. I’m not one of them. For me, to really understand something, I need 86 to build it two or three times, write about it, use it incorrectly, and learn 87 the consequences. Working hard meant playing around, having fun, but 88 essentially playing with a lot of things that were not directly part of what I 89 was paid to do at that time. This, honestly, worked out extremely well and some 90 of those things led to jobs and opportunities that I never would have had 91 otherwise. Writing this blog is one of those things. 92 93 Working hard on boring repetitive stuff is bad 94 95 Probably the biggest caveat to this whole post is that working hard in my 96 experience was never working double-shifts or “hustling” for money or having 97 multiple jobs. There are a million kinds of work that you simply don’t learn 98 anything from, after a point. Thankfully, technology work is usually accretive, 99 as are other sorts of knowledge-work. 100 101 Maybe you don’t want to do this, but I did 102 103 Maybe you don’t want to follow that path. That’s fine: not everyone is 104 compelled by learning or intellectual rabbit-holes or exists in an industry 105 where it’s pretty easy to self-educate. Or wants to “max out” their career. And 106 it’s dangerous to generalize from a single experience. And it’s also dangerous 107 to judge “a career” based on external appearances, which don’t tell you whether 108 the person turned out to be happy, or rich. I haven’t maxed out either of those 109 things, but I have few career regrets: I’ve always cared most about building 110 useful things and learning and I think I’ve nearly maxed out those categories. 111 112 This is the answer to that question, of what advice could I have for someone in 113 their early 20s. Well, that’s what I did – I worked pretty hard and was pretty 114 unrestrained in pursuing interests. It worked out fine. Now that I’m older, my 115 priorities have shifted slightly and I spend a little more time on other 116 things, and am slowly becoming more balanced. But balance isn’t how I got here. 117 Balance isn’t how a lot of the people I admire got to where they are now. 118 119 I’m all for moderation, but sometimes it seems 120 Moderation itself can be a kind of extreme - Andrew Bird 121 122 When your priorities shift, you’ll know 123 124 In the end, most people gain responsibilities. You’ll have a baby or a family 125 member to take care of, or a thriving social life that demands more of your 126 time. Your priorities will snap into place and you’ll realize that you care 127 about new things. This is great. This will probably happen. But before you have 128 those new responsibilities, you don’t have those new responsibilities. You have 129 time to try and build a ‘rocket ship’ startup or chase down silly projects or 130 learn a new instrument or run a thousand miles a year. Do that stuff. You don’t 131 have to prematurely act like you’re older. 132 133 ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 134 135 So, heed the warnings of those 30-somethings about burnout and workplace 136 boundaries. And don’t work 24/7 on busywork for a startup if you’re not 137 learning anything. 138 139 You can burn out by going too fast, or your flame can dim because you don’t let 140 yourself spend silly amounts of time on silly projects to satisfy your 141 intellectual curiosity. Beware of both outcomes: cultivate your enthusiasm for 142 the things you want to hang onto. 143 144 It isn’t a revolutionary idea that people who are excellent in their fields 145 often get there by trying really hard. If you can figure out the difference 146 between busy-work that only benefits your employer, and the kind of work that 147 makes you as a person feel like you’re making progress and becoming more 148 skilled, then you’re ready to learn. 149 150 January 28, 2024 [10]Tom MacWright ([11]@tmcw, [12]@[email protected]) 151 152 153 References: 154 155 [1] https://macwright.com/ 156 [2] https://macwright.com/reading/ 157 [3] https://macwright.com/photos/ 158 [4] https://macwright.com/projects/ 159 [5] https://macwright.com/drawings/ 160 [6] https://macwright.com/micro/ 161 [7] https://macwright.com/about/ 162 [8] https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/ 163 [9] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-body-finite-energy/ 164 [10] https://macwright.com/about/ 165 [11] https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=tmcw&user_id=1458271 166 [12] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw