Mostly introvert. Early 40s. Living near Cambridge, UK. Working in a technology startup doing mathematics, software, engineering, occasional science.
I’m not sure my anecdotal evidence will be much use—I have few meaningful comparisons to report, and so far as I can tell the result of each comparison is “not much changed”—but I’ll give it anyway on the grounds that it’s better not to bias your results by suppressing things that seem boring or uninformative.
I’ve lived with my parents, before going to university (and between university terms as a student). I was in more or less full-time education all that time, so comparisons with later life may not be relevant. I don’t recall having any very impressive goals at the time beyond doing well in my studies. I did do well in my studies, and read a lot of interesting things.
I’ve lived on my own in university-provided accommodation, while doing postgraduate study. That was for only about a year. Motivation and happiness were fine so far as I can recall.
I got married at about the same time as I started my PhD, and have lived with my wife since then. My motivation and productivity have been very variable, depending on things like how well my work was going (there is of course a feedback loop here) and the health of my marriage (again, feedback loops; unhappy people are harder to live with). My wife is intelligent and nice but not particularly rationalist.
About 7 years ago two things changed simultaneously: our daughter was born, and I abandoned (a somewhat-rationalist version of) Christianity in favour of atheism. My wife remains a Christian. (So I suppose there’s less tribal affiliation now, in some sense). So far as I can tell, there was no particular change in my happiness or motivation or productivity at that point. It’s hard to isolate the consequences of those changes because they happened at about the same time—and, also at about the same time, I changed jobs and moved house.
In general I would describe myself as moderately happy, not very strongly motivated, and more productive than most people but substantially less than I could be if I were strongly “driven”. None of this seems to me to have changed dramatically over my adult life to date.
I don’t think I have enough insight into my friends’ and colleagues’ motivation to warrant trying to say anything about them here.
Mostly introvert. Early 40s. Living near Cambridge, UK. Working in a technology startup doing mathematics, software, engineering, occasional science.
I’m not sure my anecdotal evidence will be much use—I have few meaningful comparisons to report, and so far as I can tell the result of each comparison is “not much changed”—but I’ll give it anyway on the grounds that it’s better not to bias your results by suppressing things that seem boring or uninformative.
I’ve lived with my parents, before going to university (and between university terms as a student). I was in more or less full-time education all that time, so comparisons with later life may not be relevant. I don’t recall having any very impressive goals at the time beyond doing well in my studies. I did do well in my studies, and read a lot of interesting things.
I’ve lived on my own in university-provided accommodation, while doing postgraduate study. That was for only about a year. Motivation and happiness were fine so far as I can recall.
I got married at about the same time as I started my PhD, and have lived with my wife since then. My motivation and productivity have been very variable, depending on things like how well my work was going (there is of course a feedback loop here) and the health of my marriage (again, feedback loops; unhappy people are harder to live with). My wife is intelligent and nice but not particularly rationalist.
About 7 years ago two things changed simultaneously: our daughter was born, and I abandoned (a somewhat-rationalist version of) Christianity in favour of atheism. My wife remains a Christian. (So I suppose there’s less tribal affiliation now, in some sense). So far as I can tell, there was no particular change in my happiness or motivation or productivity at that point. It’s hard to isolate the consequences of those changes because they happened at about the same time—and, also at about the same time, I changed jobs and moved house.
In general I would describe myself as moderately happy, not very strongly motivated, and more productive than most people but substantially less than I could be if I were strongly “driven”. None of this seems to me to have changed dramatically over my adult life to date.
I don’t think I have enough insight into my friends’ and colleagues’ motivation to warrant trying to say anything about them here.