[tidydata]

Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day.

Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).

The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending the prime years of your life slaving to a computer is something I think a lot of people will regret.

So, no, I won’t listen to PG. My most fulfilling work is being a dad.

[sharkweek]

I want to make it very clear that I do not expect everyone to want kids, and I'm never ever one to say "oh you'll love kids once you have your own!" to anyone, but...

I cannot understate for me personally how much having my own kids over the past few years has shifted my priorities. The best parts of my weeks are when I'm with my family all doing something fun together. Work is now only a means to provide and is not a source of personal fulfillment anymore (again, YMMV!!!!)

It's hard to stay "extra motivated" at work now, though. I went from being willing to put in the long hours and weekends to barely being able to get 30-40 hours a week.

But you know what? There are plenty of perfectly great jobs that allow for that. The place I'm currently working told me in the interview loop they can't compete with FAANG salary ranges, but they promised me total autonomy on when/where I work as well as great work-life balance, which has proven to be true.

[Godel_unicode]

I worked very hard in my 20s and I'm extremely glad I did. The work was interesting, engaging, maturing, and super valuable for society. It also set me up with an extremely valuable skill set, of hard and soft skills, that are useful in both my professional and personal lives.

This trend of saying you enjoyed your life and therefore yours was the only correct choice is extremely closed-minded, and tends to come from parents in particular a lot. What if instead you solicited the opinions of people whose life you clearly don't understand? Are you so scared of the idea that other choices made other people happy?

[tidydata]

I’m definitely not scared. Are you okay?

I also totally understand being single, childless, and driven to a career. I’m happier now. Who is the one not listening to other’s opinions? You sure you understand?

[Godel_unicode]

"Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know)."

But sure, have it your way.

[bhupy]

> Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know).

The vagueness of "work" in this article is (IMO) a feature, and not a bug. Raising your children can be great work, to your own point. You can't half-ass raising your kids, as you well know, and it sounds like you get the most purpose and fulfillment from doing that. What PG appears to be arguing is that, whether you're doing a "great" job of it depends on: 1) how hard you work on raising your kids, 2) your natural ability, and 3) effort — and I trust that you satisfy all 3 of those preconditions, as a dad.

> The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful

First of all, to call it an "unknown future prize" is a bit of a mischaracterization. If someone were to argue that one ought to spill their lives into their career with no well-defined end goal, then I'd agree that it's silly and wasteful. But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification. Keep in mind that in the experiment, the child knows that there's a second marshmallow coming if they wait. Adults need to know what their second marshmallow is before delaying the first one.

Second of all, I don't think it's fair to make such a sweeping generalization for how other people ought to live their lives. The neat thing about PG's post is that it's sufficiently abstract that it can apply to anyone, regardless of what they consider "great work".

[BeetleB]

> But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification.

The one thing I often don't find people discussing is that you may actually achieve your goals and find them not at all worth the effort.

I'd put a lower bound of at least 50% likelihood that the goal you seek is not the goal you'll be happy with if you achieve it. Of course, you won't know until you get there.

I have goals - I hope I attain them and I do work towards them. But keeping the above in mind, I will try to ensure that my present life is also on the positive. Even if I attain my goal and find it worthless, my time/life would not have been wasted.

[tidydata]

But is _is_ an unknown future prize, and countless stories prove that. Pension funds go belly up, whole industries made obsolete, an accident/injury disrupts everything, etc.

I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!

[bhupy]

> But is _is_ an unknown future prize, and countless stories prove that. Pension funds go belly up, whole industries made obsolete, an accident/injury disrupts everything, etc.

This is only an "unknown future prize" if the defined goal is very specifically to have a successful pension fund, or to thrive in a specific industry.

Using the example of what makes you, personally, feel the most fulfilled: children die prematurely (disrupts everything), or they have developmental challenges that make it difficult to do much else in life. None of that changes the fact that you're probably still better off devoting your life right now to rearing children.

You're absolutely correct that there's uncertainty in the future, but none of that refutes any of what I said in my comments, or PG wrote in his article. It's a "yes, and" addition, rather than a "no, but" refutation.

YES, there's significant entropy in life, AND given that, the most reliable way to do "great work" is still <dot dot dot> (as laid out in PG's blog post).

> I think your premise of “telling people how to live their life” falls more on the popular notion that investment early in career, rather than family or life experience, is more important. I believe this is wrong and it’s repeated more frequently than my counterpoint!

I argued no such thing. It clearly bears repeating that the more abstract notion is that investment in XYZ early in your life, rather than ABC is more important. XYZ and ABC can be the exact same thing, if your circumstances permit; there's no requirement that they be different things. If you find the most fulfillment and joy in life raising children resources notwithstanding, then you can certainly start doing that early in your life. If you think that raising children will only be more fulfilling if you have some baseline threshold of wealth, then you may have to defer that in favor of a career. Again, it all depends on how you, as an individual (or as a family), defines XYZ and ABC.

I have no problem with how people define XYZ and ABC. What I have a problem with is in telling people how they ought to define XYZ and ABC. Neither PG's post nor my comment did the latter.

[publicola1990]

Framing it that way makes it seem that he's espousing a Stakhanovite approach.