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You have no idea, or you have ideas and you second guess them, thinking them trite or meaningless? I legitimately ask, because I had the same problem for a long time. It wasn't that I didn't know what I wanted to do, it was that I couldn't focus on just one thing, and I couldn't figure out what the meaning of it was, why any of it was important.

When I realized that it doesn't matter for things to be important, I was able to get over my hangups and get to the things that I really, actually wanted to do. When answering the question of "what would you do if you had limitless resources", you have to discard cultural pressures, because cultural pressures apply an artificial restriction to the "limitless resources" conceit of the thought experiment.

If you find yourself not liking your answers then, you have to sit down and figure out why. Keep climbing up the ladder of "why?". Why does it bother you? And why is that reason important? Why do those conditions that make it important exist?



Most of the things that cross my mind are cliche and I know from experience I would not actually find them all that satisfying.

It's possible that I would keep doing exactly what I am doing now, which I don't know whether to consider a blessing or curse. Am I living my dreams, or do I have no dreams?


I did an exercise one time in which I had to write down, in as much detail, my "ideal" day. The exercise was structured around a conceit that there was a magical genie who would grant you everything you wanted, but only if you could describe it in detail, and only in the detail that you describe it.

I found it helpful. I learned a lot about what I want from it. It took me a while to finish and ended up being several pages long. It helped when I realized that the trick is to describe lifestyle, not possessions obtained or goals achieved. That's really the important thing.

I realized that most of the goals I had created were vague, barely thought-through assumptions that would supposedly make that lifestyle possible. But those two things aren't really connected.

So now, I do some freelancing for 20 hours a week and the rest of the week is mine. I've achieved 80% of my lifestyle goals and it was mostly about rearranging the things I already had in my life.

I spend the rest of the week working on projects that will hopefully get me the other 20%.




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