...there’s a deeper reason... so many people don’t have hobbies: We’re afraid of being bad at them. If you’re a jogger, it is no longer enough to cruise around the block; you’re training for the next marathon... When your identity is linked to your hobby — you’re a yogi, a surfer, a rock climber — you’d better be good at it, or else who are you?
Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... It steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.
...leisure is time away from work, not facilitating it.
By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives. (I know, wild idea.)
> When your identity is linked to your hobby [...]
> Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it...
Isn't this the issue, though? If "you are what you do", because you link your identity to that, and what you do isn't "good", I can see how than can cause some issues.
To take your example, if you're taking up jogging, so you can run a marathon, so you can take some Instagram photos at the finish line, so you can get the likes, this is the end result. So of course, just cruising around the block won't attract the likes, so it doesn't really help the end goal, does it?
I think the issue is one of not stopping to smell the roses.
I'm embracing the spirit of wandering in my life, and there is something special about knowing what is a priority versus what is joyful work.
For example, I'm currently working on a low-latency durability solution for my SaaS (shameless plug: https://www.adama-platform.com/ ). Do I need to be working on this? No... I should be working on the consumer side. However, I'm currently getting decent results. Granted, I'm having to wade through a bunch of optimizations, but the potential is right there: 1 ms commit time.
Just need to figure out why it craps the bed every 30 seconds or so. It's super fun! And, I'm already got 8x the performance of RocksDB.
bedobi|3 years ago
Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it... It steals from us one of life’s greatest rewards — the simple pleasure of doing something you merely, but truly, enjoy.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/29/opinion/sunday/in-praise-...
...leisure is time away from work, not facilitating it.
By viewing work as something we do to support our leisure time, rather than our hobbies as something to lower our stress so we can get back to work, we can actually start enjoying our lives. (I know, wild idea.)
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/10/smarter-living/the-case-f...
vladvasiliu|3 years ago
> Lost here is the gentle pursuit of a modest competence, the doing of something just because you enjoy it, not because you are good at it...
Isn't this the issue, though? If "you are what you do", because you link your identity to that, and what you do isn't "good", I can see how than can cause some issues.
To take your example, if you're taking up jogging, so you can run a marathon, so you can take some Instagram photos at the finish line, so you can get the likes, this is the end result. So of course, just cruising around the block won't attract the likes, so it doesn't really help the end goal, does it?
I think the issue is one of not stopping to smell the roses.
mathgladiator|3 years ago
For example, I'm currently working on a low-latency durability solution for my SaaS (shameless plug: https://www.adama-platform.com/ ). Do I need to be working on this? No... I should be working on the consumer side. However, I'm currently getting decent results. Granted, I'm having to wade through a bunch of optimizations, but the potential is right there: 1 ms commit time.
Just need to figure out why it craps the bed every 30 seconds or so. It's super fun! And, I'm already got 8x the performance of RocksDB.