Ask HN: I've been slacking off at Google for 6 years. How can I stop this?
You remind me myself a few years ago: a talented, but bored slacker who didn&#x27;t see any point in investing any energy into that project. Turns out I was right: the project didn&#x27;t go anywhere after I left and investing any extra time would be a clueless thing to do.<p>So what&#x27;s changed since then? Have I found meaning in work? No! I&#x27;ve become a professional slacker who knows all these psychological tricks, knows what body language to use to make the desired impression, what to say and what not to say. My managers think I&#x27;m a high performer who also makes valuable social contributions to our team and this is reflected in pay rises. I see my mission at work in carefully educating the overly enthusiastic co-workers by dropping a few seemingly random hints or observations that make them think and challenge their beliefs.<p>Work is just work and unless you&#x27;re curing cancer, you shouldn&#x27;t put any effort into making some billionaires richer. Just do the minimum, get your paycheck and appreciate the fact that you don&#x27;t need to worry about money. Very few people in the world have this level of freedom.<p>But life is quite a bit more interesting than it seems. Learn applied psychology to understand what drives people. Learn about all these LLCs, corps, trusts and other fun stuff. Talk to a lawyer and try to start your own company. No need to leave your current job: you can use the gained knowledge to hide traces, while still being very legal and very cool. Even if you get caught, use the learned psychology tricks to negotiate: you may even find yourself in a VP position as few people can covertly pull this type of stuff. Even if it doesn&#x27;t work, there is nothing to lose: 50 years later the only thing you will regret is not taking the risk because of some silly non competes with a company that no longer exists. Learn some Buddhism and some Tiberian phylosophy: it gives a very interesting and different outlook at life. Learn how pilot an airplane: like I said, there is nothing to lose.