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"If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that's bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people's mistakes,"

So basically any job?



I've seen people work in tech working on more efficient renewable energy, improving crop harvesting, improving safety on the road... All while having a happy team of well-organized people.

Not every job is bullshit and not every way of working is bullshit IMO.


The job doesn't have to be bullshit. But basically every job has bullshit. If there's a job that's truly bullshit free, sign me up.


Fair enough. But just like every job has bullshit, every part of life has some level of bullshit. I don't think in terms of "eliminating" bullshit, but rather minimizing it.


You won't find a job that's 100% free of it. But everyone intuitively knows which ones are in the 90 to 99% range. Emergency responders, garbage collectors, transporters, powerplant employees, nurses... basically any job that's actually essential and not just something that grows another person's fortune. Once these people stop working, you notice.

So would you sign up for these jobs? Probably not, because they often require a lot of work or not much money (very region dependent) or something hard to deal with. In comparison, you can be paid insane amounts to code skinner boxes or ad optimisation in a well-lit office.


A former boss taught me of the "law of conservation of bullshit" :-)


One man's bullshit is another woman's compelling, rewarding effort. I imagine Musk deals with plenty of bullshit in order to keep his organizations focused on the compelling goals he feels are essential. Ramping the model 3 or getting the original falcon into orbit for the first time come to mind.


Musk is a good example because he does many non-bullshit, but also his fair share of bullshit things.

Even if we drop the semi-religious way people speak of him, or even view him in the most uncharitable light, he has a ton of awe-inducing projects going on. At the same time, he seems to spend a lot of time getting embroiled in the most inane nonsense, to say nothing of his social media activity.


Some people are lucky enough to do work that is meaningful and rewarding to them, that gives them a sense of autonomy, mastery, and purpose in between all those other things.


That sounds pretty rare. Or maybe they are just the people creating the bullshit for others?


I'd say a proportion of any job. The trick therefore is to either find a job or tweak your current job so that the "bullshit proportion" is minimized.


Yes.




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