http://lazyway.blogs.com/

He is pushing my buttons now. We can't just walk away from our jobs...? Can we?

". Folks subject themselves to ungodly levels of health-debilitating stress by slaving away at pointless jobs, in order to earn money to pay for medical care which tries to mask those job-induced symptoms with expensive drugs that cure nothing. To fuel the vicious cycle, these wage slaves work for the same corporations that unconscionably poison our air, water, soil, food, and psyche, making all of us weaker and sicker."

Eerrrrrrr, tell us Lazy Guy, how? Just get up and walk away?

"Okeeeee, but...gonna set the building on fire..."

Hi. Lazy Guy, here.

To answer your question, you should only quit your job if you want to be successful. You will never find success working for someone else, doing stuff that person wants done. To me that seems like a tragic waste of life.

Success only comes when you are doing stuff you absolutely love to do.

reading ?off is kind of fun. Hmm, I need to make a living doing that.

" Just get up and walk away?"

Yes, of course. That's what I'm going to do, no matter what you guys say.

I liked this one too:

http://paulgraham.com/procrastination.html

It's what I did. I just walked away, moved to NC where the cost of living is much lower and now I just work on my own projects, and take occasional contract work. I work when I want, I go to bed when I want, I wake up when I want.

Oh yeah, and I have a wife and kid, and my wife doesn't have a job either.

i'm a bit puzzled by lazy guy's history. his bio says that in 1979 he started some ice cream company with no money, and it became this huge success. then in 1989 he started a telecom company with no money, which also became a huge success.

what I'm wondering is why did he start his telecom with no money? where was the money from the successful ice cream company? did it disappear?

I think he was booted out? I read the book. Why don't you ask him, send him an email.

"You will never find success working for someone else, doing stuff that person wants done."

Millions of lawyers, doctors, executives, and the first hundred people to have been employed by Microsoft beg to disagree.

ronk!

Are you working on something to sell or you just think you'll do contracting now and again and save for retirement?

Re: Lazy Guy’s ice cream history
I did get forced out of the company I started. I told the whole story in my blog (www.lazyway.blogs.com). Check out the April and May 2005 archives.

Re: Flasher T’s comment.
The first hundred people who worked at Microsoft made their wealth through ownership, not punching the time clock. If you are expecting the same good fortune will happen to you with your current employer, I wish you luck but the odds are definitely not in your favor. Being caged in a cubicle doing mindless tasks for 8 plus-hours a day is a huge price to pay for that long shot. There are infinitely easier, more delightful ways of achieving success.

You call doctors and lawyers successful? Most of the ones I've known are career-centric, myopic, tunnel-visioned, and miserable. :-)

Sure they'll talk at length about their house in the Hamptons and their new BMW and etc etc etc but almost without exception their life is defined materially, or by their place in the "wealthy professional hierarchy." It's a rat race with slightly greater rewards, is all, and an inordinately higher level of stress/risk. Fuck that.

All that said, I'd still like to be a doctor, but I'd get into private practice just as quickly as I could. :)

"The first hundred people who worked at Microsoft made their wealth through ownership, not punching the time clock."

They got ownership by working hundred-hour weeks for many, many years, with very minor rewards if any.

"If you are expecting the same good fortune will happen to you with your current employer, I wish you luck but the odds are definitely not in your favor."

Oh, I'm not getting anything like the good fortune, I haven't been here long enough - but my company is considering going public, and analysts expect it to exceed the worth of a recently IPOd competitor that came to 195 million GBP. Rumors are that there are three principal owners, but it's a fact that everyone in the company got options - and I expect that the top coders who were there at the beginning will get a fairly useful amount out of it.

"There are infinitely easier, more delightful ways of achieving success."

Like what?

"Most of the ones I've known are career-centric, myopic, tunnel-visioned, and miserable."

...and successful. Note that we're not talking about happiness here, but success. And success is measured by external factors.

According to who, Flasher? Not according to me. Not according to a LOT of people.

Financial Wealth != Success. Some people equate the two, and some do not. You can't make a blanket statement like that without sounding a bit stupid. :)

Define success then. What is success according to you?

Contentment. Knowing that I'm where I want to be. Now for me personally it's partly having the home I've always wanted, which is materially measured, sure, but it's not exactly a palace.

More important than the home are my fiance and my daughter. Now that may be a cliche answer but cliches become cliches because they're true, most times.

I've a decent job that allows me to pay my bills on time. I don't have to stress out when the phone bill shows up in the mail, because I've got the money. This is not a material thing, really, this is a comfort thing.

There's a difference, to me, between a comfortable standard of living, which I think ought to almost be a basic human right, and the "House in the Hamptons with two jacuzzis outside next to the olympic swimming pool". For most people that difference in obvious but there SURE ARE a lot of folks on this board trying to claim it's all the same thing. :)

By definition, you cannot be successful if you are average. :P

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=successful

Sounds to me like I can satisfy 1 and 2 while remaining quite average, Flasher.

Note that 1 and 2 do not refer to life achievement, whereas 3 does.

You're ridiculous. They all apply.

Are you aware of the accepted structure of dictionaries? Numbers are employed to differentiate definitions of a word as they apply to different contexts.

Life is a many splendored (and contexted) thing, Mr. T. If i have a goal which is contentment and financial stability (not wealth, stability), then haven't I succeeded when I accomplish that goal?

Commence with your word mincing. :)

And what happens if you plan to fail, and succeed?

Then I have succeeded at failing, of course. In that context success and failure aren't mutually exclusive.

Isn't language wonderful?

But if you succeeded at failing then you didn't fail your larger goal, in which case you failed to fail, so then you succeeded at failing, and then... er...

I should have got more sleep last night.

"If i have a goal which is contentment and financial stability (not wealth, stability), then haven't I succeeded when I accomplish that goal?"

You have succeeded at a particular task, yes, but that does not make you a successful person.

Flasher -

Good one, but I don't buy it. The definition of a successful person would be one who succeeds. By succeeding I have become successful.

Since which each get to define our own criteria for success, it would depend on who you asked.

But I don't think so, cynic. Just because your criteria for success is different than mine, I don't think that you could fairly say that I have not succeeded if you personally would not be content in my situation. I think it's incumbant upon each of us (and not others) to define our criteria for success. The only thing you should need to declare me successful is my own declaration.

Now, you could say "well I wouldn't be happy where you are" but I don't think you can say "no, sorry, you've failed" without sounding like a twit. :)

OK - you might legitimately describe yourself as "successful" in that you have succeeded in your aims.

Whether someone else would describe you as "successful" to a third party is another matter...it would require them to know your aims, believe them to be sincere and accept that you have achieved them.

Sure cynic, but that goes for everyone. Success is subjective and highly personal. I can say to you that Bill Gates is successful, but I don't really know. For all I know he cries himself to sleep at night. Maybe his lifelong dream is to be a female NASCAR driver, but he's worried about the combined social stigmas of sex-change, female drivers, and racing in circles.

Exactly. Contentment is dependant upon your own definition, but success is dependant upon the societal definitions.

No. It's not.

Success is succeeding at some arbitrary goal. There's the one context in which successful means wealthy, I suppose, but it's not the only context, and therefore you can't dismiss other forms of success, which do NOT depend upon societal criteria.

Actually in the first draft of that post I was going to ask whether you would describe a self-made millionaire with a shit home life as "successful";-)

Without knowing people's motivations you have to rely on external evidence to describe someone as successful or unsuccessful...at which point the criteria are socially determined. That often implies money but is not limited to it.

"Without knowing people's motivations you have to rely on external evidence to describe someone as successful or unsuccessful...at which point the criteria are socially determined. That often implies money but is not limited to it."

How about "Without knowing people's motivations you shouldn't hazard to open your fat gob." ?

:-)

Probably not...but as the old saying goes "we've all been guilty of that"

"Actually in the first draft of that post I was going to ask whether you would describe a self-made millionaire with a shit home life as "successful";-)"

Yes I would. Unhappy, but successful.

If you're unhappy then you're unsuccessful, overall.

Unless your life's goal is to be miserable in which case you may need some counseling.

Oh, hell no. You can be successful and still unhappy. Loads of people who have achieved everything they've ever wanted are unhappy.

Then they've failed at setting the correct goals. ;)

Warner, I am a Bachelor of Arts in English language and literature. Trust me; I could keep this up as long as you could, and more. :P

Hey I'm game. I've gotten a thread to 469 but not to a thousand yet.

Given this appears to be turning into a test match might I suggest a break for tea...

>> Then they've failed at setting the correct goals. ;) <<

Thank you for bringing this up.

If you set the bar low enough, everyone can be successful. But you're not working hard enough if you do so.

6am: Todays goals are to stay in bed, take frequent bathroom breaks and watch lots of TV.
8pm: Yayyyy! I did it!!!!

Isn't there a "Demotivators" poster about this?

If you're content to lie in bed all day, urinate into a milk jug, and watch wrestling, then I'd say you're successful once you've attained that lifestyle.

It may not be sustainable for a variety of reasons, so the "success" would come from making it sustainable and then living the dream.

Now, if you're not content with that lifestyle, then it's not a success.

How close is this to the 2400 year old Socratic dialogs of Plato?

Which goes like this:

Socrates: "How do I live well?"
Sophist: "By beeing able to do what you like!"
Socrates: "So if I am a paedophile, I live well maturbating with little boys all day long?"
Sophist: "You are beeing rediculous Socrates!"

(Yes, I do spot the spelling errors myself).