I really like this, but to to add an alternate perspective: I’m skeptical of deathbed regrets, and regrets in general. I don’t think your present self actually knows what your past self went through. We remember events but are bad at remembering emotions except in very broad, general ways. You might say “I wish I had spent more time with my kids and less time at work”. But you won’t remember the feeling of dissatisfaction you had with your home life and the pride you felt when you delivered on a difficult project. You could say “I wish I was more satisfied with my home life” but how much control do you have over that, really?
I don’t remember where I heard this: “every person you see is fighting a battle that you know nothing about, so be kind, always”. I think we can extend that same kindness to ourselves.
My daughter is turning 5 in a few weeks. I realized I only have 3 more of these until she’s (likely) moving out. 4x5=20, and she’ll likely be living her own life by 20. Most of the time you spend with your kids is spent by the time they’re 16.
I moved away from my hometown. I see my immediate relatives twice a year now, once at Christmas and once in the summer. Most of my family is getting old. I probably have 125 or so more visits with my parents, 20-50 with my grandparents, and less than 10 with my great grandpa. I keep these numbers in mind every time I go home.
Life isn’t short. Meaningful moments are. Don’t take them for granted.
I'm able to shorten life by doing mindless "have to" tasks and consuming distracting media (music, books, movies, games, etc.)
I'm able to lengthen it by deliberately, reflectively doing anything (thinking, programming, breathing, etc.).
I spent almost three decades in school -- grading and getting graded. I made that time race by as much as I could so I could get to the part where I have kids and a job that I can actually enjoy.
Now I'm savoring every minute. I feel the natural compression of time that comes with age, of course, but I'm more than able to counter it by consciously enjoying life.
For anyone wondering why it is "vb.html", it certainly comes from "vita brevis" (life is short), often used as "Ars longa, vita brevis", which references Hippocrates[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ars_longa,_vita_brevis
8 years with your kids is short, 8 years with cancer is long, 8 seconds with your hands on a hot stove is very long.
If you succeed in developing a good or at least occasionally enjoyable life, your perspective on life is different than others barely enduring it at all.
In general, it is short in the way of a bell curve. It is long when you are a child or at the end of a long life enduring hardships of old age.
> If you're a freelancer or a small company, you can do this at the level of individual customers. If you fire or avoid toxic customers, you can decrease the amount of bullshit in your life by more than you decrease your income.
The one I never forget is how PG describes his mother's death.
"I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was."
I read this the last time it was posted and this scared the living hell out of me. It has reminded me to never take people, especially my family, for granted. I used to be much more reluctant to go home, but as I've grown older I now appreciate the finiteness of life.
"One great thing about having small children is that they make you spend time on things that matter: them. They grab your sleeve as you're staring at your phone and say "will you play with me?" And odds are that is in fact the bullshit-minimizing option."
This may be true, but this is not the majority of your life - unless you’re on some mission to repopulate the earth, you’ll have maybe 8-10 years when you have children who aren’t babies who want to play with you. Apparently people become magically wise during those years and then quickly forget these wisdom after. If that’s not true then you should be seeing a glut of extremely wise people who’ve been “corrected” by their child raising experience decades ago.
The reality is, kids trigger happiness centers in our lizard brains. Enjoy the short time with them, but let’s not fool ourselves that children fundamentally change your life view in any way. If anything the person you should be working to prioritize is your partner, who if you do it right will be with you fairly unchanged all your life. Given the divorce rates though, most people don’t seem to have gotten that memo however.
Be careful about the rosy picture he's painting for himself and others here. When he wrote this he was probably already rich and into the pontification phase of his career. I'm going to go ahead and bet had plenty of ways to escape his kids when desired, plenty of help with childcare, etc. If you are really just looking at your phone while you're at home, great, but if you are (like many people here , I'd guess) interested in doing creative or focus-intensive, non-kid things while at home, those things are seriously going to suffer when you have kids.
Here’s my perspective on life: dying is probably the whole point of your life, or perhaps coming to terms with it, and conquering your fear of it. All other forms of “importance” derive from this root.
- It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life?
- you have only the present, and your unreliable recollection of the past to mark your existence. The present is ephemeral, the past is mutable, and neither carry any clear indication that the experience of either matters beyond themselves. Time is sending us all beyond the threshold of both, as best we can tell. With such imperfect information, what planning can you rationally do? To quote Stephen Covey, if it is out of your hands, why worry?
- some of the largest structural entities mankind has ever built are based on the “afterlife” (ie religion), and many possess a concept of heaven and hell. In addition, there are more modern attempts to inspect the qualia of death. The notion of going to heaven or hell intersects with the notion of having a good trip or a bad trip. And of course now I have my shining Joe Rogan moment where I cite the huge DMT trip awaiting most of us (assuming your death not by complete annihilation, such as nuclear explosion, or other).
Therefore, the only thing that you really need to plan for is getting to the end of your road, and not having your exit DMT trip be sponsored by the ninth circle of hell, if you can.
In conclusion it really doesn’t matter. Time eternally marches forward, there are no actual stakes because everybody is damned. Include the notion that we as a society do a pretty dog job of (1) not producing fucked up people (2) not fucking people up as it all goes and (3) pledging to change that, so it’s basically just a daydream that mankind will ever transcend to be anything of transcendent/indisputable value. Don’t know how to phrase the last part.
> It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life?
Forward few million years to the future. It turned nobody mattered, talented or not, recorded in history or not. High chances the whole civilization will disappear without any trace. So, essentially, nothing ever matters except now.
Your view of what matters is really narrow. Not everything has to have an impact in the style or singular magnitude how Aristotle, Charlemange or Muhammad did. You could edit a wiki article that inspires someone to contribute to a software that has a button that someone will push and change things. Human life has billions of nuances like this every minute. And even if most of that is ericadated by a catastrophe, some percent of this experience might continue, containing an essence of it all. We must drive life forward with such beliefs, thinking not just of ourselves.
DMT trip sounds rather nice. The closest I ever was to death was a simple fall into darkness. No more fear. Peaceful. With a single regret: leaving the family around in pain.
At 51, I am trying to come to grips with wasting my life in my 20s, 30s and 40s. I don't remember doing anything memorable during that time. I spent too much time doing bullshit programming or doing the same old comfortable things with friends. I wish I dated more. Tried more things that young people can do. I was too scared to make mistakes. Now I can't go back. It's driving me nuts.
What can young people do now that you could not do ? Internet stuff?
The way I see it, young people now can do less than when I was young. For example lots of dangerous activities got prohibited (e.g. fireworks) or they added too much regulations (alcohol, cigarettes, mopeds). For good or worse, no more compulsory army at 18. We live in a very protective society where every threatening activity gets banned.
As a European, I studied in the UK and got a masters, tutions fees paid by the European Union. My children cannot do this anymore.
My young is 17 and spend his free time in the gym, and he is not alone. It is true I could not do this at his age, but I do not understand it.
This is a grander version of what I do when I procrastinate: fret about the time I’ve wasted, beat myself up about what I wasted it on, and anxiously berate myself every minute that I don’t _just stop wasting time_. None of that ever works, and nothing feels better than forgiving myself for it, forgetting all of it, and just getting started. You don’t have any “then” left, but you do have “now” left.
For bad (and for good), what you did in the past does not matter that much. Good memories can help your current moment, but only a little if you can't do the same now.
For example, if you dated more and had more good relationships can do some good for your self esteem, but you'll still miss these things now if you don't have them.
And the end of the day only the current moment really matters.
Another stat I read recently: Parents spend ~75% of their child’s life with them before the age of 12. Puts into perspective the good and bad influences long before they fly from the nest.
I was explaining to my 12yo son when he wanted to play video games instead of hanging with the family that I only had 6 more Christmas eves while he lives at home.
An antidote to bullshit (e.g., unproductive meetings that you still have to go to) is journaling. When you're writing to yourself, for no other audience but yourself, you can be 100% honest. So that helps serve to counteract it and give strength, sometimes you also see things from another person's perspective. e.g. the meeting may have some value to your boss, which has follow-on benefits to you that you hadn't considered.
I have recently started wondering about the nature of a very specific bullshit enabler these days, which is attention commoditization. It almost looks like in the pre-AI days, there was a surge of online marketers trying trying to learn about people and behavior, occasionally employing dark patterns to get you to click. Later, with the surge of social media use, AI models were used to recommend content incongruent with the user's best interest. And it worked as it becomes increasingly difficult to go out in the internet to get a particular job done, but the sheer amount of rabbit-holes ventured to must me astounding. And now the trend seems to be shorts/stories/tiktok, which only looks to me as means to groom human attention for even easier override with clickbaits and ads.
I wonder how many people daily fail to focus on what matters because of the attention problems induced by the modern tech and is there any research about it?
Having kids is hard, but yeah it is one of the best things.
My wife would get annoyed when we would pass someone walking and they would see our kids and say "enjoy your time with them while they are young!" Because she hadn't slept and was stressed out. She would think "you enjoy your freedom and your full night of sleep!"
"The days are long but the years are short" is a quote I think about a lot.
I think the key is the same whether you have kids or not: peace of mind in the present moment. If you are happy now you won't regret it later.
> If you had a handful of 8 peanuts, or a shelf of 8 books to choose from, the quantity would definitely seem limited, no matter what your lifespan was.
I find this argument strange, especially since he uses the word "seem". "Seem" does not mean "is".
If you really want to make life seem short, measure it in millennia. You only get a fraction of one.
Personally, I feel it's about your state of mind. If you're depressed, life feels unbelievably long. If things are going well, then you don't want the good times to ever end, and it seems short.
I don't really know how to conclude whether life is or isn't short. All I can conclude from the article is that PG is quite happy with his!
> I find this argument strange, especially since he uses the word "seem". "Seem" does not mean "is".
As he writes in the beginning, there is no objective truth to answer this question. Since it is subjective "seeming" is all that matters. If life seems short to you, it is (for you). If not, it isn't.
[+] [-] digbybk|3 years ago|reply
I don’t remember where I heard this: “every person you see is fighting a battle that you know nothing about, so be kind, always”. I think we can extend that same kindness to ourselves.
[+] [-] r3trohack3r|3 years ago|reply
I moved away from my hometown. I see my immediate relatives twice a year now, once at Christmas and once in the summer. Most of my family is getting old. I probably have 125 or so more visits with my parents, 20-50 with my grandparents, and less than 10 with my great grandpa. I keep these numbers in mind every time I go home.
Life isn’t short. Meaningful moments are. Don’t take them for granted.
[+] [-] jbaber|3 years ago|reply
I'm able to lengthen it by deliberately, reflectively doing anything (thinking, programming, breathing, etc.).
I spent almost three decades in school -- grading and getting graded. I made that time race by as much as I could so I could get to the part where I have kids and a job that I can actually enjoy.
Now I'm savoring every minute. I feel the natural compression of time that comes with age, of course, but I'm more than able to counter it by consciously enjoying life.
[+] [-] dang|3 years ago|reply
Life Is Short (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24313158 - Aug 2020 (164 comments)
Life is Short (2016) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16729555 - April 2018 (184 comments)
Life is Short - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12845945 - Nov 2016 (11 comments)
Life is Short - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10917446 - Jan 2016 (408 comments)
[+] [-] Jugurtha|3 years ago|reply
"""
Vīta brevis,
ars longa,
occāsiō praeceps,
experīmentum perīculōsum,
iūdicium difficile.
"""
"""
Life is short,
and art long,
opportunity fleeting,
experimentations perilous,
and judgment difficult.
"""
[+] [-] badrabbit|3 years ago|reply
If you succeed in developing a good or at least occasionally enjoyable life, your perspective on life is different than others barely enduring it at all.
In general, it is short in the way of a bell curve. It is long when you are a child or at the end of a long life enduring hardships of old age.
[+] [-] menomatter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kovac|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] davidmpaz|3 years ago|reply
This have been proven true to me so many times!
[+] [-] gallerdude|3 years ago|reply
It’s a perfect metaphor in so many ways, there’s some fundamental truth glowing behind it like a lightbulb.
[+] [-] SCUSKU|3 years ago|reply
"I lived as if she'd always be there. And in her typical quiet way she encouraged that illusion. But an illusion it was."
I read this the last time it was posted and this scared the living hell out of me. It has reminded me to never take people, especially my family, for granted. I used to be much more reluctant to go home, but as I've grown older I now appreciate the finiteness of life.
[+] [-] aryamaan|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdkee|3 years ago|reply
This. He is right about this.
[+] [-] ramraj07|3 years ago|reply
The reality is, kids trigger happiness centers in our lizard brains. Enjoy the short time with them, but let’s not fool ourselves that children fundamentally change your life view in any way. If anything the person you should be working to prioritize is your partner, who if you do it right will be with you fairly unchanged all your life. Given the divorce rates though, most people don’t seem to have gotten that memo however.
[+] [-] thenoblesunfish|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tropicalbeach|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fortuna86|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] henrik_w|3 years ago|reply
"The days are long but the decades are short"
https://blog.samaltman.com/the-days-are-long-but-the-decades...
[+] [-] raydiatian|3 years ago|reply
- It is is unlikely anything you do will “matter”. Out of ~117 billion people to have ever lived over countless millennia, the lives of note throughout history are what? 10k? 100k? Even if it’s 1b meaningful lives that weren’t just an aggregate in the wave of babies, you’ve got a worse than 1% chance of being meaningful. Or, perhaps all lives are significant on a level we are incapable of comprehending. If it defies comprehension, what is the use in crafting a meaningful life?
- you have only the present, and your unreliable recollection of the past to mark your existence. The present is ephemeral, the past is mutable, and neither carry any clear indication that the experience of either matters beyond themselves. Time is sending us all beyond the threshold of both, as best we can tell. With such imperfect information, what planning can you rationally do? To quote Stephen Covey, if it is out of your hands, why worry?
- some of the largest structural entities mankind has ever built are based on the “afterlife” (ie religion), and many possess a concept of heaven and hell. In addition, there are more modern attempts to inspect the qualia of death. The notion of going to heaven or hell intersects with the notion of having a good trip or a bad trip. And of course now I have my shining Joe Rogan moment where I cite the huge DMT trip awaiting most of us (assuming your death not by complete annihilation, such as nuclear explosion, or other).
Therefore, the only thing that you really need to plan for is getting to the end of your road, and not having your exit DMT trip be sponsored by the ninth circle of hell, if you can.
In conclusion it really doesn’t matter. Time eternally marches forward, there are no actual stakes because everybody is damned. Include the notion that we as a society do a pretty dog job of (1) not producing fucked up people (2) not fucking people up as it all goes and (3) pledging to change that, so it’s basically just a daydream that mankind will ever transcend to be anything of transcendent/indisputable value. Don’t know how to phrase the last part.
[+] [-] xvilka|3 years ago|reply
Forward few million years to the future. It turned nobody mattered, talented or not, recorded in history or not. High chances the whole civilization will disappear without any trace. So, essentially, nothing ever matters except now.
[+] [-] poisonborz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bombela|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loandbehold|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msie|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theGnuMe|3 years ago|reply
You can't go back only forward, find peace with your past. A therapist can help. Put another pearl on the string of life and move forward.
My biggest regret is not going to therapy sooner. I would've been so much happier sooner. Now I laugh at the irony of that statement.
[+] [-] Glawen|3 years ago|reply
As a European, I studied in the UK and got a masters, tutions fees paid by the European Union. My children cannot do this anymore.
My young is 17 and spend his free time in the gym, and he is not alone. It is true I could not do this at his age, but I do not understand it.
[+] [-] el_benhameen|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] icelancer|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] handzhiev|3 years ago|reply
For example, if you dated more and had more good relationships can do some good for your self esteem, but you'll still miss these things now if you don't have them.
And the end of the day only the current moment really matters.
[+] [-] FartyMcFarter|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eternauta3k|3 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] ca98am79|3 years ago|reply
My wife would get annoyed when we would pass someone walking and they would see our kids and say "enjoy your time with them while they are young!" Because she hadn't slept and was stressed out. She would think "you enjoy your freedom and your full night of sleep!"
"The days are long but the years are short" is a quote I think about a lot.
I think the key is the same whether you have kids or not: peace of mind in the present moment. If you are happy now you won't regret it later.
[+] [-] GMoromisato|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] osrec|3 years ago|reply
I find this argument strange, especially since he uses the word "seem". "Seem" does not mean "is".
If you really want to make life seem short, measure it in millennia. You only get a fraction of one.
Personally, I feel it's about your state of mind. If you're depressed, life feels unbelievably long. If things are going well, then you don't want the good times to ever end, and it seems short.
I don't really know how to conclude whether life is or isn't short. All I can conclude from the article is that PG is quite happy with his!
[+] [-] aktenlage|3 years ago|reply
As he writes in the beginning, there is no objective truth to answer this question. Since it is subjective "seeming" is all that matters. If life seems short to you, it is (for you). If not, it isn't.
[+] [-] xyzelement|3 years ago|reply
A great sign that we should pay attention to his advice :)
[+] [-] block_dagger|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cableshaft|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
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