|
Indeed. I think there are a lot of "ex-bankers" in the world, especially now. I am an ex-banker as well and was driven to the edge by my BlackBerry going off at 10:00 every Saturday night with more "urgent" work to do. How on earth could this be urgent? I eventually realized that to the bankers above me, it was urgent because they loved what they did. I sincerely think that many did. On the other hand, some had workaholism, which is a whole other [sad] issue. For me, it was unnecessary stress--I didn't feel that the tasks were so important that I needed to grab a cab to the office and update those powerpoint slides as fast as humanly possible. I'm in agreement with several others on this page that finding your calling, although necessarily resulting in a sacrifice of many extracurriculars, is superior. But it's very difficult. In the meantime, living a balanced life with enjoyable time spent outside of work is critical. If you're killing yourself for something that means nothing to you, you're wasting significant chunks of your very limited stint on this planet. Interestingly, I re-read the "Smart, and Gets Things Done" and "Done, and Gets Things Smart" articles today, and was thinking about how these map to some of these people that I work with. To my eyes, these sorts of people fit squarely in the category of those who have found their calling, and that calling is to crank out good software 24x7. They are so excited by cranking out good code that they are propelled to do it nonstop. Coding is an intellectual, creative process, and you can't just force it to happen with a high salary or stock options; it comes from an internal drive, a desire to get all that code that's trapped inside out into the world. To me that is the mechanical result of finding your calling: you're so invested and interested in something that you can't find enough time in the day to work on it, to develop it, and to get it out to the world. When I think of people like this I see artists, writers, academics--people who work tirelessly to show their passions to the world, perhaps even trying to cast out the inner demons that torment them. Interesting, semi-obvious, yet mandatory observation: I have not found this yet, considering that I'm posting on HN. |