working at a lower-paying job (and doing more hours) is a poor way to satisfy the upper end of the Maslow pyramid of needs (ala, self actualization).
The most important metric is consistent and passive income from wealth. Once you have "enough" of such passive income, you can spend your time on self actualization.
Most people don't reach the level of passive income required for their chosen lifestyle quality, and so cannot expend time for self actualization. So instead, they double up their career and make that the mode for self actualization (after all, two birds one stone and all that). But i do believe that it mostly does not work, unless the job is somehow a 1:1 mapping to that particular person's method of self actualization. Unfortunately, a lot of people kid themselves and pretend that it does match.
If you find your work to be meaningful, then working more hours at a job where you can spend most of your time actually getting work done can be a great way to satisfy the upper end of Maslow's hierarchy.
Many things worth doing can't be accomplished without a team, sometimes a large team. It can be impossible to do this solely on passive income (unless you're a billionaire or something).
> The most important metric is consistent and passive income from wealth.
This is an opinion with which reasonable people can disagree.
You write as though it’s impossible to hold a job you don’t love and at the same time work toward self-actualization. This is clearly not true for all definitions of self-actualization that I’m familiar with.
the number of people actually able to obtain a job for which they would also self-actualize with if given unlimited money, is so small as to be a statistical anomaly.
Sure, part of the job being satisfying can be that you actually need the money so doing it means you provide for your family. While still craving that the job be intrinsically satisfying.
As a thought experiment, can you imagine hunting being more satisfying to a person than eating a farmed cow? Maybe it satisfies some innate desire to hunt? Maybe they like they challenge?
Now could you imagine that same hunting being far more satisfying if they are hungry, or if their family needs the food, than if they already have access to infinite food?
Similar for job satisfaction. Many people might be most fulfilled when doing something challenging where generating work product directly translates to meeting material survival needs.
> Many people might be most fulfilled when doing something challenging [as a job]
i challenge the notion that this can apply to many people. It applies to _some_ people - arguably, a very small number, compared to the number of jobs.
The activities that many people self-actualize on are likely to be non-essential and require capital to perform. Activities such as sports, arts, music, literature, etc. Very few people would self-actualize on being a carpet cleaner, flipping burgers, or being accountant.
Spending your time constantly fighting other members of your own company to protect your team is exhausting. Work-life balance usually has a much bigger factor than just "time spent working" and it's the result and morale that goes with it. If you are working overtime but you're getting results it's often very rewarding and doesn't lead to burnout.
He clearly was working on projects at google that were exhausting for his scope of mind, the specific hours were less relevant than the fact that he was spending 30-40 hours a week could be "wasted" hours, even if he's now doing 60 hours a week, they're all more gratifying.
Couldn't have put it better. I worked remotely at Google and I worked remotely at a startup. I worked 1/8 the hours at Google and was paid 3x the amount of money. Don't get me wrong, the work was boring as shit compared to the startup, but I had the coveted "4 hour workweek" Tim Ferriss became famous for. It was like being retired. In fact, it was better, because I still had my youth.
I could sympathize with OP if this "loss of productivity" meant sitting in a physical office twiddling your thumbs, but Covid changed the game. I cooked during meetings. I sat in the sauna, did yoga, played videogames, or hung out with my friends when I was blocked. When I was waiting for blaze to build/run my code, or was waiting for presubmit checks to pass (shit took forever), I would switch tabs in iTerm and would work on my side project. I never touched my corp laptop after I figured out how to VNC/SSH in from my personal computer.
If it weren't for mandatory RTO I would still be at Google and I probably would be for the rest of my career, or till my side hustle was bringing in serious cash. We'll see how remote Facebook compares. If it's at all similar to remote Google, I am never going back to being an employee at a startup. In a post-covid world, having a "meaningful" corporate job is for suckers. It's all about minimizing hours and maximizing pay.
The most important metric is consistent and passive income from wealth. Once you have "enough" of such passive income, you can spend your time on self actualization.
Most people don't reach the level of passive income required for their chosen lifestyle quality, and so cannot expend time for self actualization. So instead, they double up their career and make that the mode for self actualization (after all, two birds one stone and all that). But i do believe that it mostly does not work, unless the job is somehow a 1:1 mapping to that particular person's method of self actualization. Unfortunately, a lot of people kid themselves and pretend that it does match.