"A girl born in '99 says: Sometimes life is more important than a job."

This article is Lu Canwei's 90th original piece.

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Today I saw a post in a friend’s circle about a 1999-born young lady who said, “Sometimes life is more important than a job.”

I wonder how everyone views this issue.

Unreliable Autobiographies

That young lady can disregard her life, while 996 and 007 seem weak in front of her; it’s just too politically correct. I don’t know how many bosses will use this inspirational story to motivate their employees tonight.

It feels like this generation of young people is too hardworking; compared to them, we are still not diligent enough.

If we read some biographies of famous people, we will find that most of them did not have a smooth journey. They have gone through unimaginable difficulties and overcome numerous challenges to achieve their current success. It seems that if I sleep only 4 hours a day, I can definitely become a big shot like Zhang Chaoyang. As long as I keep replying to emails at 4 AM, I can surely succeed like Xiao Ma.

There was a psychologist named Loftus who conducted an experiment. He prepared a childhood handbook for each participant, which contained three true events provided by their families and one fabricated by Loftus, such as having gotten lost in a mall. He then asked the participants to write down details about each event. The result was that the fabricated experience of getting lost in the mall was written as if it were real, complete with many invented details.

Loftus believed that our memories are always unreliable because humans dislike emptiness and cannot face blank spaces calmly, so they try to fill in their memories. It’s not that people intentionally mythologize themselves; often, we are just deceived by our own brains.

Survivorship Bias

If the autobiographies of others or hearsay are unreliable, then surely the stories around us can be trusted.

The most common example is that we see someone around us working very hard and eventually succeeding. So, does that mean if I also work tirelessly, I can reach the pinnacle of life, become a CEO, and marry a rich and beautiful partner?

Unfortunately, what you see may just be the tip of the iceberg.

Survivorship bias, I believe everyone has heard of this term. It refers to the tendency to focus excessively on people or things that have “survived certain experiences,” while ignoring those that did not survive (which may be unobservable), leading to erroneous conclusions.

During World War II, the U.S. Navy sought the expertise of a statistics guru, Abraham Wald, to answer how to strengthen aircraft protection to prevent them from being shot down. The commander noticed that returning planes had many bullet holes in their wings and thought the wings should be reinforced since they were the most easily hit areas. However, Wald suggested reinforcing the protection of the engines.

The planes that returned had intact engines. Those planes that were hit in the engines did not return at all.

So when we see people around us working late into the night or ending up in the hospital due to work, and then eventually succeeding, that may just be one of the factors in their success. If you take this as a belief, you probably won’t live long. They may have ridden certain waves of opportunity, done the right things, or encountered black swan events, among many other factors, that contributed to their success.

Let me share a personal example. When I started my business, I once worked tirelessly, day and night, and ended up hospitalized for half a year. Even while hospitalized, I was still determined, programming and working on projects with a catheter in my hand. And what was the result? That project was just one of many that ended up buried.

If one day I achieve what society defines as success, this story will surely be brought up, and people will say my success came from relentless effort. It sounds like such an inspirational story, and countless people will package it and rationalize my success in reverse, but that’s just your perspective. My perspective is that being hospitalized is really boring, and the hospital food is terrible; working on projects is much more interesting.

Being Poor Can Lead to Success

Often, people like to say that they used to have certain experiences that made them unwilling to be poor or unwilling to give up, and then they started working hard and eventually found ways to make money, leading to success.

I believe their success has nothing to do with being poor; it’s just an opportunity. Many people are poor and work hard but still cannot succeed. For example, if you pick up garbage all day, isn’t that hard and tiring? But can you get rich from it?

The mindset of being poor and the mindset of suffering come from comparing oneself to others. If you live a very comfortable life at home and then go to college only to find that the living expenses provided by your family are insufficient, but you don’t want to burden them, you decide to use your English skills to tutor others. Your classmates may receive more living expenses and don’t have to consider this issue, while you have to work hard to earn money through tutoring. This comparison indeed feels both hard and tiring.

However, if you compare yourself to those who can’t even go to college and have to work to support their families at a young age, aren’t they poorer and more miserable than you?

Being poor and suffering are not the keys to your success; rather, they force you to step out of your comfort zone, to continuously learn and try new things, which is the prerequisite for your current achievements. Even so, many people may ultimately not succeed for various reasons.

Let me give a personal example. I remember when I went to Shanghai alone to work without any background or education. I experienced living in someone’s living room, staying in hostels, eating instant noodles for several days a week, and to save money, I took a 22-hour slow train (which resulted in my first train ride being a nightmare where I threw up the whole way; thankfully, high-speed trains came along later, or I would never ride a train again in my life). These experiences seemed very hard, right?

However, I could sit in an office in the summer, enjoying air conditioning and typing on a keyboard to earn an income. Those with similar backgrounds to mine might only be moving bricks under the scorching sun, and at that time, their income was generally not higher than mine (though it may not be the case now), so I didn’t feel it was that hard.

Life and Work

We cannot disregard people; striving is not wrong. The mistake lies in magnifying this point too much. Too many motivational quotes tell you that not succeeding is simply because you didn’t work as hard as others. The most common examples include stories of people working at 4 AM, buildings lit up at 2 AM, and Harvard study rooms filled with people at dawn, which is truly anxiety-inducing.

Seeing them work hard makes me feel I must work hard too. But what do you want to achieve through your hard work? Or is it simply because you see others working hard, so you feel you must do the same?

I remember many years ago, after finally being discharged from the hospital and resting for over a year, I no longer needed to take medication. Guess what the first thing I wanted to do was? I went bungee jumping and skydiving because having just brushed past death, I felt life should be about taking risks, especially since I didn’t know how long I could live.

So, do you think I would pay special attention to my health and not push myself so hard afterward? Not really. Last year, I once again pushed myself to the point of illness and underwent surgery, experiencing a profound sense of loneliness.

Many times, we have various choices: what kind of job to choose, what kind of partner to choose. We can stay up late for work, we can play games all night, and we can party with friends until dawn. We can also live healthily and exercise, among other things.

Many people will tell you, for example, that Steve Jobs died young while Wozniak lived authentically. You can excel in everything, but not in health.

Everyone has heard the saying that a person must die; some deaths are heavier than Mount Tai, while others are lighter than a feather. Sima Qian endured pain to complete the “Records of the Grand Historian.” Yue Fei once encouraged himself to be like the famous generals Guan Yu and Zhang Fei from the Three Kingdoms: “One death is nothing to speak of; I want future generations to know the name of Yue Fei, comparable to the achievements of Guan and Zhang.” Ultimately, he was killed by Emperor Gaozong of Song on New Year’s Eve.

Petőfi once said, “Life is precious, love is even more valuable. If it’s for freedom, both can be sacrificed,” suggesting that life may not be that important after all.

To say something that may not align with conventional views, whether it’s life or work, even if we escape sudden death, we cannot guarantee that one day we won’t be hit by a falling beer bottle from a high building while walking down the street.

Regardless of the choices we make, living our lives with clarity is the most important thing.

Recommendations:

How to understand your strengths and weaknesses?

How to make fewer but correct decisions.

You should be responsible for your own life.

You may need to plan for your own obsolescence.

How the economic machine operates.

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