Add links

static/archive/macwright-com-ovx2h6.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,166 @@
+Tom MacWright
+
+tom@macwright.com
+
+Tom MacWright
+
+  • [1]Writing⇠
+  • [2]Reading
+  • [3]Photos
+  • [4]Projects
+  • [5]Drawings
+  • [6]Micro
+  • [7]About
+
+Work hard and take everything really seriously
+
+Every few months on Twitter, there’s some dustup about work-life balance and
+whether it’s a good or bad idea to work hard when you’re young. Like most of
+these recurring debates, it has generated two opposite archetypes:
+
+The anti-capitalist tells the young worker not to trust HR and not to buy into
+the idea of work as family. Your employment contract is the only thing that
+binds you to your job, and that can be terminated on either side. Arrive at 9,
+leave at 5. Prioritize the family.
+
+The hustlebro tells you to wake up at 7am and get to work, and give it your
+all. Hustle, and earn as much as you can, build those connections. You can get
+work-life balance when you’re older, your early 20s are the time for making
+that cheddar and staying up till 1am.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+In the short form, it’s hard to take a stance and not get grouped into either
+extreme. It’s also hard not to feel baited by someone who’s engagement-farming
+their social media presence by using time-tested bait questions.
+
+This last time I responded something like:
+
+    work really hard and take everything very seriously
+
+But I deleted it. A truism as an answer will lead people to all kinds of
+unintended conclusions about me and whatever I’m saying. I’ll need to use more
+words.
+
+Wisdom is acquired by experience
+
+I think the honest answer is that most people can’t gain perspective and
+moderation and maturity by reading someone’s advice online. The wise 35-year
+old dads on Twitter can follow their own advice about work-life boundaries
+because they’ve suffered the consequences. There’s no shortcut to perspective:
+you have to [8]acquire it by experiencing bad things and suffering consequences
+.
+
+Energy begets energy
+
+I attribute a lot of my career path to my working really hard and caring a lot
+about things. I quickly internalized the lesson that a 9-5 job wouldn’t teach
+me enough, and wouldn’t give me all the intellectual stimulation or rigor that
+I wanted – so I worked longer hours, worked on side projects, hunted down my
+interests like a puppy chasing a squirrel.
+
+The thing is, when you find a good thing to focus on, a thing to pour energy
+into, it can be positive-sum. It can give you energy in the rest of your life,
+give you a sense of purpose. The human body is [9]not like a battery with a
+finite amount of energy. There are lots of things you can do, like exercise,
+learning, and practice, that can be rewarding and increase your ability. This
+is obvious, right?
+
+If you have that thing that drives you, and that thing isn’t work and can never
+be work, then sure – get the lightest-duty job you can. Pour time into that
+thing. Maybe what you do at work is your main output, or part of your output,
+or just what you do for money.
+
+Most jobs don’t give you time to learn
+
+Many jobs, especially in technology, don’t have real, intentional, educational
+components. There is no time set-aside for learning, no time to practice, and
+no dedicated instructor.
+
+It’s unlikely that what you learned in college fully prepared you for the job.
+It’s possible that you’ll have a wonderful mentor with lots of time to spare,
+but probably not.
+
+I’ve worked with people who are smart enough to learn everything on the job,
+from 9-5. I’m not one of them. For me, to really understand something, I need
+to build it two or three times, write about it, use it incorrectly, and learn
+the consequences. Working hard meant playing around, having fun, but
+essentially playing with a lot of things that were not directly part of what I
+was paid to do at that time. This, honestly, worked out extremely well and some
+of those things led to jobs and opportunities that I never would have had
+otherwise. Writing this blog is one of those things.
+
+Working hard on boring repetitive stuff is bad
+
+Probably the biggest caveat to this whole post is that working hard in my
+experience was never working double-shifts or “hustling” for money or having
+multiple jobs. There are a million kinds of work that you simply don’t learn
+anything from, after a point. Thankfully, technology work is usually accretive,
+as are other sorts of knowledge-work.
+
+Maybe you don’t want to do this, but I did
+
+Maybe you don’t want to follow that path. That’s fine: not everyone is
+compelled by learning or intellectual rabbit-holes or exists in an industry
+where it’s pretty easy to self-educate. Or wants to “max out” their career. And
+it’s dangerous to generalize from a single experience. And it’s also dangerous
+to judge “a career” based on external appearances, which don’t tell you whether
+the person turned out to be happy, or rich. I haven’t maxed out either of those
+things, but I have few career regrets: I’ve always cared most about building
+useful things and learning and I think I’ve nearly maxed out those categories.
+
+This is the answer to that question, of what advice could I have for someone in
+their early 20s. Well, that’s what I did – I worked pretty hard and was pretty
+unrestrained in pursuing interests. It worked out fine. Now that I’m older, my
+priorities have shifted slightly and I spend a little more time on other
+things, and am slowly becoming more balanced. But balance isn’t how I got here.
+Balance isn’t how a lot of the people I admire got to where they are now.
+
+    I’m all for moderation, but sometimes it seems
+    Moderation itself can be a kind of extreme - Andrew Bird
+
+When your priorities shift, you’ll know
+
+In the end, most people gain responsibilities. You’ll have a baby or a family
+member to take care of, or a thriving social life that demands more of your
+time. Your priorities will snap into place and you’ll realize that you care
+about new things. This is great. This will probably happen. But before you have
+those new responsibilities, you don’t have those new responsibilities. You have
+time to try and build a ‘rocket ship’ startup or chase down silly projects or
+learn a new instrument or run a thousand miles a year. Do that stuff. You don’t
+have to prematurely act like you’re older.
+
+━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
+
+So, heed the warnings of those 30-somethings about burnout and workplace
+boundaries. And don’t work 24/7 on busywork for a startup if you’re not
+learning anything.
+
+You can burn out by going too fast, or your flame can dim because you don’t let
+yourself spend silly amounts of time on silly projects to satisfy your
+intellectual curiosity. Beware of both outcomes: cultivate your enthusiasm for
+the things you want to hang onto.
+
+It isn’t a revolutionary idea that people who are excellent in their fields
+often get there by trying really hard. If you can figure out the difference
+between busy-work that only benefits your employer, and the kind of work that
+makes you as a person feel like you’re making progress and becoming more
+skilled, then you’re ready to learn.
+
+January 28, 2024  [10]Tom MacWright ([11]@tmcw, [12]@tmcw@mastodon.social)
+
+
+References:
+
+[1] https://macwright.com/
+[2] https://macwright.com/reading/
+[3] https://macwright.com/photos/
+[4] https://macwright.com/projects/
+[5] https://macwright.com/drawings/
+[6] https://macwright.com/micro/
+[7] https://macwright.com/about/
+[8] https://blog.pinboard.in/2014/07/pinboard_turns_five/
+[9] https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/trump-body-finite-energy/
+[10] https://macwright.com/about/
+[11] https://twitter.com/intent/follow?screen_name=tmcw&user_id=1458271
+[12] https://mastodon.social/@tmcw