[shoo]

There is another possible path, and it goes something like: understand that the vast majority of people do not have jobs that they like, the day job is to pay the bills.

Instead, build meaning in other areas of your life outside the day job.

(optionally) optimise your day job & savings rate towards saving and investing enough so you can afford to spend more time on meaningful activities, and less (or no) time on the day job to generate income. If you save enough that you don't have to work for 25 years, then if you invest that in the stock market it may produce a real return of 4% each year- which on average covers your expenses.

Then maybe you have the rest of your life to look for more meaningful activities, and you also have the option of doing activities that don't generate any cashflow.

It may be worthwhile to explore and learn what kind of work you enjoy doing, to pinpoint some more specific characteristics you are looking for than 'meaningful'. Some ideas:

* you have autonomy vs being assigned goals from up the chain * you understand how your work contributes to a goal, and you care about the goal * the day to day work is enjoyable enough of the time * the physical work environment suits you * you get to see your work getting used & get feedback from people who use it

(if I score my own job on these five points it gets a score of about 1.5 / 5)

[MyAnonymousAcc]

>There is another possible path, and it goes something like: understand that the vast majority of people do not have jobs that they like, the day job is to pay the bills.

From personal experience it seems to me that the majority of people do not enjoy their jobs and at the same time have given up on finding meaningful job. Another way of interpreting what you said could be to notice how people that have given up on finding meaning in their jobs are left with a job that primarily is there to pay the bills.

>(optionally) optimise your day job & savings rate towards saving and investing enough so you can afford to spend more time on meaningful activities, and less (or no) time on the day job to generate income. If you save enough that you don't have to work for 25 years, then if you invest that in the stock market it may produce a real return of 4% each year- which on average covers your expenses. Then maybe you have the rest of your life to look for more meaningful activities, and you also have the option of doing activities that don't generate any cashflow.

To me this imposes the risk of wasting your life in order to not work in your 50s and since we don't live twice that risk feels to big.