The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I am very talented but I lack passion. I don't feel the urge to do or create anything. I don't want to express myself. I do absolutely nothing, and this has started to bother me.
Occasionally, I am motivated to make something, but it's because I see someone else's work and think I can easily do better. I always do.
Due to circumstances, I am going to be stuck in a limbo state for the next year, unable to pursue the only goal that I do have. During this time, what can I do to earn extra money online?
Game development seems like a good enough grift, right?
And, to be honest, what actually bothers me isn't that I don't do anything, but that I don't seem to have the natural urge that would lend itself to monetization.
Don't fall for the passion meme
https://80000hours.org/articles/dont-follow-your-passion/
The 80,000 hours guys largely did follow their passion, though, the founder is a philosophy prof and the site essentially exists to encourage future SBFs to work in finance so they can maximize their contributions to Effective Altruism charities. Besides, the site generally just tends to say ‘become a software engineer, a quant or an investment banker’, both easier said than done and as easily derived from a conversation with a high school guidance counselor to whom the question “which jobs pay the most” is posed.
Yes sure, it's funny when Will Macaskill tells you not to do philosophy.
https://80000hours.org/career-reviews/philosophy-academia/
EA no longer suggests earning to give as a top career option. They are talent constrained so they'll tell you to work for an effective organisation. So now the meme is to become an AI safety researcher.
Ben says he thinks the right person in the right role is worth the equivalent of $3-10M/year
https://80000hours.org/2021/07/effective-altruism-growing/
EA and 80k hours are not there to help the average student with career advice. They exist to recruit top tier talent into the ecosystem. That's why the EA hubs are in London, Oxford and Cambridge.
All that said, I agree with the passion article. I don't think it's a good frame to think about things.
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