This is why I highly suggest every once in a while go on a cruise. Specifically a cruise. You’re trapped on the boat. Forced to face the moment, forced to let it go, and party until you get back to reality.
Positive vibes where you have no choice but to shed the stress. It’s worth it. Even a cruise to no where for 5 days.
brabel · 2h ago
I live in Sweden where taking 5 weeks off in the summer is the rule. Never got used to it, I take just 2 or 3 and leave the rest of mu vacations for the winter… but I almost never take the full 5 weeks and end up accumulating it over the years. I think I have over 12 weeks pending even after already having taken 3 weeks in July. I just get too bored and start coding anyway, so why not just work and get paid for doing it !
TrackerFF · 20m ago
I'm from Norway, and we have 25 days a year, which also comes out to 5 weeks. I had 7 extra day transferred from last year, so 32 days this year. This year was the first I took out 4 weeks of summer vacation, but usually 3 is enough for me. Travel is fun, but after 2-3 weeks of traveling I start to get a big exhausted, and want to focus on hobbies, house work, or similar stuff.
My routine has been: 1 week vacation during spring/Easter, 3 weeks in summer, 1 week fall or Christmas vacation.
On the other hand, I've also worked in other countries where there's much less focus on vacation. I like our balanced view very much.
zelphirkalt · 2h ago
If your work projects are as interesting as your free time projects, I congratulate you to having a great job.
PopAlongKid · 36m ago
> I almost never take the full 5 weeks and end up accumulating it over the years.
Companies should have a policy to limit accumulation of unused vacation, such as 3 weeks maximum. The problem with unlimited accumulation is that it essentially allows the employee to assign themselves paid overtime[0] without any business reason or management oversight. For example, if the company policy is to have you work 49 weeks and take paid time off 3 weeks a year, but instead you work 51 weeks and carry forward 2 weeks vacation, you have just assigned yourself 2 weeks of overtime.
I used to work for a large corporation that finally implemented such a policy to address exactly what this person has done: 12 weeks of paid overtime that no one asked for and that the company probably hasn't budgeted for.
[0]I don't mean overtime in the sense of time-and-a-half pay or anything like that, rather overtime in the sense of working more paid hours than you were hired for.
bityard · 6m ago
In the US, the only common use of the word "overtime" implies three things:
1. Working outside of your normal shift hours or days on a non-routine basis to meet some deadline or specific business goal.
2. Working overtime is not generally voluntary on the part of the employee.
3. However, most companies acknowledge that overtime is an unwanted burden on the part of the employee and thus usually compensate overtime at a higher hourly rate. This is partially a reward for putting up with that burden, and also discourages managers from assigning overtime on a regular basis.
One of the reasons companies are hiring a higher percentage of their workforce on salary is that they can ask them to work longer hours and occasional weekends without the downside of paying them more.
anonzzzies · 1h ago
From the Netherlands and not having had to work since I sold my first company at 25 (over 25 years ago), I cannot do more than a week vacation before getting annoyed and bored. I like building stuff: programming, welding, soldering, guitar playing, cooking. But I have no patience for doing one thing: normally I code myself and vibe with multiple claude codes on the boil, my electric guitar is on my lap, there is either YouTube presentations from meetups/events or science podcasts on in the background and then there is cooking and soldering when I happen to get up from the desk. Or I go for a run or meet up with friends. When my friends tell me about their vacation, I fall asleep listening to it, let alone having to live through it. It is a Me thing and nothing wrong with them or me and luckily my wife is even worse, so we work almost nonstop generally. Never makes us exhausted though; quite the opposite.
hattmall · 9m ago
"Working" but not having to worry about money certainly doesn't sound very exhausting.
anonzzzies · 1m ago
Indeed. Saying the working is not the exhausting, like the Swedish GP also indicated. You won't mind working a lot if you like the work and your life doesn't depend on it. In the EU (and nordics), depending on your wishes and choices, your life doesn't depend on it.
apples_oranges · 1h ago
Save it up for when you have kids ;)
MichaelRo · 31m ago
In Romania I also have some 5 weeks of vacation, but never take more than two at a time. Two in the summer, two in the winter (Christmas - New Year period) and the rest, sprinkled throughout the year, either for errands or bridge days. Like when there's a holiday on Thursday, I'd take Friday off as well.
Honestly two weeks at a time seems enough and conversely, being absent at work for three-four weeks or more, seems excessive to me. I also have stuff to maintain and new developments to meet a schedule promised to customers, two weeks plus or minus isn't affecting those but I couldn't leave for a month and meet the schedule without killing myself with overtime, effectively negating the whole idea of unwinding during vacation.
But ... speaking of Sweden, one colleague is taking 3 months off. Indeed, Sweden is something else :)
slyfox125 · 2h ago
Life isn't inherently easy - or fair. For most, it is much easier today because of the efforts of those who came before us. We are lucky for those efforts because they afford us moderation and comfort that are not guaranteed.
To expect results without hard work is presumptuous and pretentious, of which this author has in spades.
dakiol · 25m ago
It’s a bit trickier than that imho because Hard work doesn’t guarantee results either. And since, as you said, life isn’t fair, we are faced to… randomness. True story, working hard/intelligently does buy us some tickets to a decent life, but it’s not 100% jackpot. I know plenty of people that worked hard, they studied things that are not in demand, and so they are work in whatever they can with shitty salaries. I worked as hard as them, but studied (by luck I guess) something with demand (software engineering), and so I can afford some more niceties in life. And I know people who didn’t work as hard as others, and live a better life than many. So, it’s more complicated than “work hard”.
Havoc · 2h ago
So much fluff
Thank goodness for LLMs
>The author's core message is about breaking free from a lifelong pattern of tying self-worth to constant productivity and output, realizing that true creativity and well-being require intentional rest and "revery" (contemplation/dreaming), rather than relentless striving.
thom · 1h ago
You're born, you live, you die. There, I have freed you from the rest of this mortal coil.
mre · 2h ago
As a counterpoint, I quite enjoyed the writing style. Not everything has to be summarized. To me, it was more about the human experience.
uludag · 2h ago
The author is literally an artist though. What you call fluff may be a worthwhile artistic and emotional expression.
If someone stopped at this summary they would have missed out on a nice poem by Emily Dickinson for example. Oh wait, let me summarize it:
> The poem describes how a prairie can be made using clover, a bee, and imagination.
there, that's better. no more fluff.
_luiza_ · 2h ago
Oh, this is lovely! It's rare that I see such a clear cut argument for how _not_ to use llms.
People do argue for and against, but usually less effectively than what you did here. Kudos to clarity!
> I used to think that once I made it ... stashed away some savings to weather a health crisis or creative drought ... I’d finally feel free to slow down ... Instead, accomplishment—and the sense of “arrival” I imagined would come with it—proved elusive.
I mean, yes? You do indeed need an emergency fund, and the theory, which various retirement vehicles are designed to support, is you set up your affairs to permanently slow down at around 65.
Before that is outside of the reach of most people, but if you want to do it sooner, the way is straightforward: increase your savings rate.
It's math and economics... once you don't need the income anymore, you get to slow down, until then, you manage your stress and anxiety as best as you can.
I am also self employed, fortunate enough to be in the technology profession where we're relatively well paid - I hit the "I could stop at 65" number a few years ago and the way I see it every year I put in at this point, is just bring that number down lower. At some point my age and that number will meet in the middle.
dakiol · 19m ago
I used to think like that too (because it seems like rational thinking and nobody around me could prove me wrong). But as I get older I start to think about the things I’m putting “aside” for when I have time when I’m retired. Doesn’t sound as good as before anymore. I still save for the future, but I don’t delay things anymore because I may not make it (accidents happen), or the people I love may not make it, or some other things can happen in between. You never know. So yeah, I’m trying not to put aside things for the future anymore, even if that means not saving as much as I could.
JKCalhoun · 51m ago
> At some point my age and that number will meet in the middle.
Hopefully.
The author mentions: "The leukemia diagnosis and relapses certainly intensified the urgency I feel around work…"
pelagicAustral · 2h ago
How did this climbed to hard into the first position is out of my reach, truth is, without so much effort around me I feel like I've outdone myself in a dream, so powerful and clean, that I even shadow myself into irrelevance. /s
This whole post is so self-serving and iconoclastic it kind of feels like satire, and if it was, it would be gold, but it's not.... I mean, I don't think it is...
The post ends with a "read me or not, but if you want more of my genius, pay me", which I guess it's alright, since I would pay Carmack to write about Doom all day long, but some guy with dogs "curled" around it, writing about how hard it is to conceptualize his next "Sistine chapel"? GTFO
JKCalhoun · 48m ago
> I would pay Carmack to write about Doom all day long
That just shows that each of us have different tastes.
You can keep yourself pretty busy if engaging in wondering how every post makes it to the front page of HN.
AkashKaStudio · 2h ago
The amount of em—dashes in there exhausted me lol
plainOldText · 2h ago
We used to infer one’s mind from their writing. Nowadays?
I’m surprised people are too lazy to even remove them dashes.
Well, in fact it might actually be a good thing for one can spot when something was AI generated much easier.
I feel like original writing is pretty much dead these days. We’re all best selling authors now.
JKCalhoun · 45m ago
I've been (over) using em-dashes ever since I discovered them. I have no intention of changing.
Curiously, I find in editing my dad's auto-biography that a certain generation went crazy over-inserting commas — wherever they think you might want to pause to take a breath or something. To my eye (ear?) the result is a staccato sentence.
But the truth is I know nothing about grammar rules — I slept through sentence diagramming in elementary school.
sd9 · 1h ago
This reads like original writing to me. Too creative for LLMs, at least based on my experience.
SethMurphy · 1h ago
I have started using —ahem— em dashes more regularly so people think I am as smart —well clever at least— as AI.
drooby · 58m ago
It's not just about using well placed em dashes — it's about creating a sense of awe and enlightenment.
JKCalhoun · 42m ago
I agree. I could drop using em-dashes. I feel though like the narrative feels broken up. It stops and starts too frequently.
Positive vibes where you have no choice but to shed the stress. It’s worth it. Even a cruise to no where for 5 days.
My routine has been: 1 week vacation during spring/Easter, 3 weeks in summer, 1 week fall or Christmas vacation.
On the other hand, I've also worked in other countries where there's much less focus on vacation. I like our balanced view very much.
Companies should have a policy to limit accumulation of unused vacation, such as 3 weeks maximum. The problem with unlimited accumulation is that it essentially allows the employee to assign themselves paid overtime[0] without any business reason or management oversight. For example, if the company policy is to have you work 49 weeks and take paid time off 3 weeks a year, but instead you work 51 weeks and carry forward 2 weeks vacation, you have just assigned yourself 2 weeks of overtime.
I used to work for a large corporation that finally implemented such a policy to address exactly what this person has done: 12 weeks of paid overtime that no one asked for and that the company probably hasn't budgeted for.
[0]I don't mean overtime in the sense of time-and-a-half pay or anything like that, rather overtime in the sense of working more paid hours than you were hired for.
1. Working outside of your normal shift hours or days on a non-routine basis to meet some deadline or specific business goal.
2. Working overtime is not generally voluntary on the part of the employee.
3. However, most companies acknowledge that overtime is an unwanted burden on the part of the employee and thus usually compensate overtime at a higher hourly rate. This is partially a reward for putting up with that burden, and also discourages managers from assigning overtime on a regular basis.
One of the reasons companies are hiring a higher percentage of their workforce on salary is that they can ask them to work longer hours and occasional weekends without the downside of paying them more.
Honestly two weeks at a time seems enough and conversely, being absent at work for three-four weeks or more, seems excessive to me. I also have stuff to maintain and new developments to meet a schedule promised to customers, two weeks plus or minus isn't affecting those but I couldn't leave for a month and meet the schedule without killing myself with overtime, effectively negating the whole idea of unwinding during vacation.
But ... speaking of Sweden, one colleague is taking 3 months off. Indeed, Sweden is something else :)
To expect results without hard work is presumptuous and pretentious, of which this author has in spades.
Thank goodness for LLMs
>The author's core message is about breaking free from a lifelong pattern of tying self-worth to constant productivity and output, realizing that true creativity and well-being require intentional rest and "revery" (contemplation/dreaming), rather than relentless striving.
If someone stopped at this summary they would have missed out on a nice poem by Emily Dickinson for example. Oh wait, let me summarize it:
> The poem describes how a prairie can be made using clover, a bee, and imagination.
there, that's better. no more fluff.
People do argue for and against, but usually less effectively than what you did here. Kudos to clarity!
I mean, yes? You do indeed need an emergency fund, and the theory, which various retirement vehicles are designed to support, is you set up your affairs to permanently slow down at around 65.
Before that is outside of the reach of most people, but if you want to do it sooner, the way is straightforward: increase your savings rate.
It's math and economics... once you don't need the income anymore, you get to slow down, until then, you manage your stress and anxiety as best as you can.
I am also self employed, fortunate enough to be in the technology profession where we're relatively well paid - I hit the "I could stop at 65" number a few years ago and the way I see it every year I put in at this point, is just bring that number down lower. At some point my age and that number will meet in the middle.
Hopefully.
The author mentions: "The leukemia diagnosis and relapses certainly intensified the urgency I feel around work…"
This whole post is so self-serving and iconoclastic it kind of feels like satire, and if it was, it would be gold, but it's not.... I mean, I don't think it is...
The post ends with a "read me or not, but if you want more of my genius, pay me", which I guess it's alright, since I would pay Carmack to write about Doom all day long, but some guy with dogs "curled" around it, writing about how hard it is to conceptualize his next "Sistine chapel"? GTFO
That just shows that each of us have different tastes.
You can keep yourself pretty busy if engaging in wondering how every post makes it to the front page of HN.
I’m surprised people are too lazy to even remove them dashes. Well, in fact it might actually be a good thing for one can spot when something was AI generated much easier.
I feel like original writing is pretty much dead these days. We’re all best selling authors now.
Curiously, I find in editing my dad's auto-biography that a certain generation went crazy over-inserting commas — wherever they think you might want to pause to take a breath or something. To my eye (ear?) the result is a staccato sentence.
But the truth is I know nothing about grammar rules — I slept through sentence diagramming in elementary school.