Thread by @dan_abramov

where do you hope to see yourself in five years? earnestly. (both professional and personal counts)

let me try to answer for myself..

i don’t want to work at a big company and i don’t want to work at a startup. i think this means i don’t want to “work” at all. as in, i want to be doing things, but i don’t want to be in an arrangement where i owe my time to someone on a regular basis.

i want to have the freedom to allocate a large portion of my time to “useless” things. for example learning math, learning a foreign language, maybe doing some physical activity. i want to spend a significant chunk of my “work time” doing these useless things. maybe >50%

i don’t want to run a company or be involved in running a company. that sounds like it’s a lot of responsibility and worrying about money and stuff. i don’t want to worry about money or about investors or about product-market fit or about burndown charts or any of that crap.

this seems to leave me with a few plausible options: 1. win a lottery — okay maybe not too plausible, 2. do super expensive consulting a few days per month (plausible), 3. have passive income from selling products like courses (plausible), 4. occasional workshops (?)

i don’t want to compromise on the lifestyle and i actually want to increase expenses. for example it would be cool to have a workspace that’s private but close to other people, where i can stop by for discussions and lectures, checking out multidisciplinary projects, a night club

it would be cool to do live lectures and work with students directly. though bootcamp teaching salaries probably not that good (?) internet-first education is more impactful quantitively, but i envy irl teachers and how they get to *see* concepts “click” in people’s eyes

i’d like to get stronger physically. my body is kind of neglected and most physical activity is incredibly boring and offputting to me. i hope to find something engaging that i’ll enjoy doing. probably something to do with other people. (hence this thread)

https://twitter.com/dan_abramov/status/1439961706424324096

i’d like to keep doing some open source stuff / advocacy stuff for things i actually like. eg it would be cool to stay on react core and contribute when i’m interested while having no actual job. then disappear for six months. then come back again.

have some more thoughts but will thread them after dinner

it would be nice to make some friends irl. i don’t know how people do that without knowing each other all their lives but surely there has to be some way

i want to have a passport of a country where i actually live. would be dope to be able to vote and stuff

i want to see more of the world. at least 10 places for 2 weeks each. something like half a year just to travel by myself

[redacted]

i want to stay happily married, it’s been great so far and hopefully she won’t dump my ass

i hope to stay healthy of course and not to die

i’d like to explore teaching outside of programming. for example popular math. more artsy projects like justjavascript

i’d like to leave a positive mark on how programming is taught. so that there is a “before” and an “after”. this is solely for my ego

i’d like to eat a lot of delicious things

anyway, these are my goals. here’s a system i use to achieve them. first, i break down each goal into a list of bwahahaha no i just hope it’ll all work itself out

btw i know it’s a rather privileged take and so on. and also all of these are pretty selfish. but the heart wants what it wants and i’m just being honest. if i get there hopefully some of the byproducts are useful to others

is this post-work