What is the most important thing you could be working on?

Question

And if you're not working on that, why aren't you?I go first: 1. I believe that humanity will only survive long-term if we move to an economic system that is antifragile and importantly orients towards reducing rivalries. We should be building protocols that solve problems today and move us in this direction. The key seems to be to change the way we pay for things. I'm thinking about an open-source approach to all work where customers pay for future developments instead of past work. 2. I did work on it but got stuck because I wasn't confident enough to share it with the world and involve other people. This time around I will push myself to build in public.

NiagaraThistle · Accepted Answer

Cleaning my garage. If I do not, my wife is going to kick me out. Instead, I'll type up this comment and think about when I should schedule cleaning my garage...
Seriously, it's probably the small things that need to be done for someone else's happiness that are the most important things to do right now. Doing so, makes those around us happier and less stressed. And removes the mental load from ourselves so we 1. feel good about actuallay accomplishing sh!t we need to; and 2. can focus on these larger ideal projects.
Actually going to go clean the garage now...oh wait another interesting HN post...

cableshaft · Answer

Probably something with cleantech, as I think we're pretty much screwed long-term as far as climate change and that probably should be the top priority for most people out there, especially in the US, to work towards a massive reduction in consumption and resources. I did interview with a few places my last job search but the culture of the companies I interviewed at didn't sound great.
Seemed like I'd be in another overworked and underpaid situation if I was given job offers at those places (which I wasn't either, so hey, whatever). Instead joined a consulting firm with high growth for about 30% higher wage than the range I was being told for those other jobs and have now been there for about six months. Maybe in another six months I'll try interviewing for some more cleantech places and/or I'll be put on a client that is working on something in cleantech.
I do kind of feel like, I might have been put on this earth to bring a few game designs out there, though. One of my designs in particular was a popular Flash game[1] back in the day that I'm trying to bring back with a new version, and I've won awards for other designs in other game design competitions. I am working on that in my spare time but it's no income until they're out in the world (and realistically I'm unlikely to make more than a fraction of my current wage once they're out there either). I can't afford to do that full-time right now so it's still a spare time thing.
[1]: https://jayisgames.com/review/proximity.php

jaegerpicker · Answer

Food, I think that Climate Change and population growth will put a ton of pressure on our food systems. There are solutions in place but I think a ton of work should still go into those systems. I am in fact working on that issue, just not full time. I'm also going to be focused on open sourcing any of the work I do, including design and hardware. It's a fairly recent start to the project but I've never been more sure or engaged in this work as I am now. I can't do it full time yet as I have to (and very much want to) support my family. I'm particularly interested in automation of aquaponics systems and using technology to advance agriculture on a individual scale, ie not on a commercial scale. Aside from climate change, social justice movements will require food security at the family and individual level. I hope I can contribute to that in a small way.

andrewearls · Answer

Rivalry is a part of human nature. It can be leveraged in a positive supportive way (good sportsmanship) and it can be leveraged in a negative destructive way (war.) People can overcome rivalry through dedication and hard work, but this is a choice each individual would have to make. I love the idea of an economic system that supports open source software. I think Github has a sponsorship program that is attempting something like this. The way people pay for things is a big factor in the success of this economic shift. There may be some additional factors at play. eg. project diversity (differing opinions of project functionality), exposure of a project, reliability of the developers, and corporate undermining (companies re-branding and selling open source software)

arjun_krishna1 · Answer

Building a long-term human settlement in space (i.e. moon, mars).
I love the human experience and I believe that we need to get many more people and many more resources to extend the life-span of humanity. And currently the biggest blocker to that is that all long-term human settlements are on Earth.
I'm currently kind of working on it by working at a startup to collect capital (money/network) towards this.
To actually start getting traction on this I need to collect a lot of money, get investor trust and actually figure out how to make it profitable (i.e. what technology is needed, etc).