Hi, I'm Michael Hrenka from Germany.

I've been studying mathematics and physics for almost 7 years. In Germany the average study duration until you get the diploma (more or less equivalent to the Master) is 6.5 years - but then, the German diploma in mathematics is one of the most valuable degrees (I know someone who made a mathematics Master in Japan and now tries to get the German diploma). It's hard to explain why I need so long to get my degree, but I guess in most parts it's that the education here seems to be optimized (not intentionally I hope) for minimizing motivation and maximizing incentives for procrastination. I seem to be rather susceptible to these problems, because I see mathematics as universal tool rather than as end in itself (I guess the latter view helps a lot to become very good in mathematics). Initially, I wasn't sure what to study. I considered studying philosophy, but then I started disliking the unclear thinking styles that are found in abundance in philosophy. So, I've chosen mathematics, because it's what I like to call "hardcore philosophy" (nothing is more "no nonsense" than mathematics).

Anyway, I've been pretty unsure what to do after I would get my degree. Here are my preferred job options in chronological order:
1. Computer game programmer.
2. Continue studying philosophy and psychology.
3. Science fiction author.
4. Actuary.
5. Blogger.
6. Life Coach.
7. Business/management consultant.
The last option now looks like a relatively good idea, because I would get a lot of money and experience which I could use for creating my own business (or charity) or changing to another interesting job. And there's perhaps the chance to change something to the better in different companies from a utilitarian perspective.

Over the last year I've dived into self-help / personal development / productivity / positive psychology literature to increase my energy/motivation/productivity/effectiveness/happiness. My experiments with time management and what I call "life gamification" were rather successful, unfortunately only until I started my own personal development blog http://BecomeUnrestricted.com a few months ago. Since that time my personal productivity scores have fallen linearly, which is something that's rather disconcerting. It takes an awful lot of time to find something that really helps.

Why am I writing that? I guess it's because I feel and think that living a utilitarian (or generally rational) lifestyle is rather demanding. You really need to make the best out of yourself to change the world effectively - and that's really not easy! Most of my ambitious projects have failed due to a lack of personal productivity.

Ok, now some general information about myself:
* I'm a moral anti-realist (without specified sub-type).
* I'm 99.9% utilitarian, because utilitarianism makes most sense and is conceptually simple and natural. And I want to live my life in some meaningful way, so being a utilitarian is also a pragmatic decision. The other 0.1% are mostly something like "I just want to live an exciting life".
* I would call my own version of utilitarianism Value Qualia Utilitarianism (based on subjective experiences which have emotional valence).
* I'm a vegan and recently had the idea to call myself animal hedonist instead of animal rights advocate, because that avoids the metaphysical/conceptual complications that come with the idea of "rights". I hope the idea that I prefer all animals to be as happy as possible is easy to understand.
* I'm a Singularitarian (flavor: cybernetic intelligence explosion) and want to facilitate the creation of a post-Singularity utopia in which all sentient beings have wonderful lives.
* I'm a modal realist (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modal_realism )
* On my homepage http://Radivis.com you can find some first drafts of science fiction stories I'm working on.
* Once I had a fancy spiritual experience which made me so happy that I thought I would die from happiness overload! Obviously that hasn't happened. But it increased my interest in philosophy.

Oh, and I'm really happy to have found this place. It's like something that's too good to be true, but is true nevertheless.

There is a thread related to the career question here: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=398
although your background and goals are a bit different.

I would say to get job that produces a pay check—preferably in an industry that you think is consistent with your beliefs and long-term goals.

Blogging and writing science fiction won't produce a paycheck anytime soon. Those are things that you can do in your spare time and switch to full time after you have a clear path to something that won't put you in the poorhouse. I can't evaluate the market value of your writing, although it appears to be written by a native speaker of English. I wouldn't rely on the accuracy of any market valuation of your writing unless it is in the form of a check--perhaps I am discouraging a literary genius, but I'll go with the odds.

Considering that my background is psychology (but not the counseling kind), I view the life coach industry with suspicion. Lay people consider psychology to be intuitive—meaning that they think they can understand the human mind by reading a couple books and reviewing what they know. This is not the case, but I think people enter the profession with an inaccurate understanding of the incremental benefits that are derived from life coaching and underestimate the likelihood of offering bad advice to people who are in bad emotional situations. With your education, you can produce higher value by working in your field.

I'm not aware of the particular work you would do in consulting, but if you can find a job and tolerate the travel it would be a good career move. You could move to a regular job after 5 years.

With the money that you can earn from your degrees, you could live simply and either donate your money or save it so you can quit your job in 15 years and support a future effort (writing a book, studying philosophy, etc.). During that time you can gain some clarity on your goals--your goals will change during that time.

Welcome, Mike!

Mike Radivis wrote:I'm a vegan and recently had the idea to call myself animal hedonist instead of animal rights advocate, because that avoids the metaphysical/conceptual complications that come with the idea of "rights".

I use the phrase "animal welfare" instead of "animal rights" for the same reason. "Hedonist" may be a better term if you have time to explain yourself, though outside of our circles, "hedonism" generally has a negative connotation.

Mike Radivis wrote:Once I had a fancy spiritual experience which made me so happy that I thought I would die from happiness overload! Obviously that hasn't happened. But it increased my interest in philosophy.

Fascinating. I would be interested to hear more if you care to comment.

As far as careers, I like rehoot's comment about making money either to donate or to allow yourself to retire in 15 years. That said, I do think you're an excellent writer and would give you better-than-average odds at success there.

Hi Mark,
Welcome to Felicifia!

I don't disagree with anything that Alan and Rehoot have said (you may notice this pattern persisting the longer you stay here). Like Alan, I call myself an animal welfarist. Like Rehoot, I think you ought to consider the way your job can contribute to your philanthropy.

Regarding your future career, the maths degree seems to be a key factor not yet discussed. You've said it's a valuable degree. A structured way to analyse it would be to consider what skills it gave you, what it qualifies you to do and how these jobs pay. From an Australian point of view, actuarial studies would seem to be a fairly high-paying job that involves maths. Consultancy can certainly pay well. But with consultancy, the challenge is to find customers. Often, again from an Australian point of view, you need a postgraduate business degree and a decade of experience before any business would hire you.

With regard to productivity, I highly reccommend Stayfocusd for the management of time spent online.

Thanks for your welcome comments. It's good to see that this forum is active and welcoming.

@rehoot and Ryan: Unfortunately it's very true that personal development blogging, science fiction writing, or life coaching usually won't suffice for making a living. Even in the most optimistic case there are only a few hundred science fiction authors world-wide who can live from their writing. Personal development blogging is even worse. Life coaching might be a bit better, but I don't feel like I'm talented enough to focus on that option.

In general, I find it interesting that it almost never gets mentioned that you could earn a lot of money with entrepreneurial activities. Sure, it's very hard, but in the case that it works out fine you might get very rich. Are there any expectation value calculations available?

Granted, it's easier to create a successful company if you already had some experience as employee in your field.

There's an important reason why I don't think a job as actuary would be a good fit for me. That job doesn't seem to be emotionally fulfilling or meaningful. The idea that I could use the money for some higher purpose is probably not enough to motivate me to go through work of opaque societal value. In that light, consulting looks more like a meaningful option. At least I would see that my work improves other companies visibly (unless something goes wrong). Of course, the societal value of consulting can be questioned, too, but at least companies like the Boston Consulting Group (they got my attention, because they are also looking for mathematicians here in Germany) make a rather positive impression. The problems of a consulting job are rather whether I'm good enough to get one and stay in the business and whether I'm able to endure the stress such an occupation comes with.

Perhaps it's good to mention that there are two kinds of consulting jobs. Either you do it on your own or you join an already existing company that offers consulting. My idea was to do the latter, because I think even with extensive studying I would hardly be qualified to do the first without any experience in the field.

Looking for job offers for mathematicians felt a bit frustrating to me. What you get is mostly this:
1. Banks
2. Insurances (actuarial work)
3. Academic positions
4. Consulting (rarely)
5. Some other job outside of Academia (very rarely)

I don't really desire to stay in Academia if that means that I need to do more crazy mathematics. It all feels too far detached from what I'm really interested in.

It's a good question what skills studying mathematics gave me. Because I don't feel like I've learned a lot of useful skills. What comes to mind is maybe the ability to solve ridiculously hard abstract problems and dealing with massive frustration without committing suicide (sometimes it's really that bad) - or alternatively learning when to surrender on a task that's just too hard (a really vital skill)! Also, some mathematical concepts are generally useful and enable clearer thinking. Oh, and understanding really advanced mathematics makes it easier to understand almost everything else (except maybe physics, because that lies in an uncanny valley between strict mathematics and unjustified optimistic simplifications and lacking clarity). Anyway, it looks like a lot of companies pay rather well for people with such skills.

Apart from all that, I have a rough concept for a new economical system that could be implemented as online service, or just for internal use in certain groups. If that worked out fine, it would solve a lot of problems of the current economic system and provide a significant source of income. It's basically a system in which every user can distribute reputation to other users. Every user gets a regular income in a digital currency which depends on the reputation of that user. I've been reluctant to work a lot on this idea, because it's often met with possibly justified skepticism. But now feels like a time where people really desire alternative economic approaches. The real reason why I haven't tested my system is that I'm not sure where to test it first. I would need a group that is eager and ready to try it.

But retiring in 15 years really looks like the most likely way to success. It's probably not too late to start working on really interesting problems in 2026.

Btw: I'm already using Stayfocusd. It's a really useful tool.

@Alan:

Alan wrote:"Hedonist" may be a better term if you have time to explain yourself, though outside of our circles, "hedonism" generally has a negative connotation.

I guess that depends on the age of the target audience. A lot of young people don't think there's anything wrong with hedonism.

My spiritual experience happened to me when I was 18. At that time I loved listening to trance music (yes, it really helps). And I played the tactical online shooter Counter-Strike with my own clan. It happened on a day when I was a bit frustrated about our loss in an online match. I decided to lay down on my bed and listen to my favorite trance song (Deep Down Below by RMB) and suddenly I had these visions of alien planets, beings, galaxies, civilization. The diversity and scope was so large that it absolutely dwarfed all problems on this tiny little speck of dust. So far, so great. I felt absolutely relieved, but it got better: For a short moment I felt connected with an intergalactic network of pure unconditional and incredibly intense love. This created a feeling of happiness that was absolutely amazing. But it got even better: I suddenly had the ability to increase the amplitude of my happiness just by deciding to do so. Soon I reached a level of ecstasy that was very far above of every "normal" emotional experience I ever had. Yes, it was really so intense that I feared my body wouldn't be able to deal with it. I actually felt that only my body set a limit to the intensity of that feeling - like if I had reached an absolute limit of happiness possible for humans.

Ok, so I decided to stay in that state of incredible bliss for about 15 minutes. Then I started to think about what to do next. I decided to look for a purpose in life that reached beyond personal happiness. For that task, I found it appropriate to turn off my insanely intense feeling of happiness. Anyway, in the months after that experience I had the ability to reach similar states of ecstasy quite easily. (It looks like I've lost that ability by now, but I'm not too sad about that.)

After an intermezzo in which I settled on a highly questionable philosophical belief system (due to some more or less subtle factors positive and negative emotions balance out each other almost perfectly), I found back to utilitarianism (after about 2 years). After all, a lot of other sentient beings are considerable less lucky than I was.

Btw: I don't believe my visions were "real", but rather feel they were exceptionally vivid creations of my unconscious creativity which reacted to my own long held wishes and desires.

This exceptional experience might explain why I am a bit not normal in my mind. I mean that in the most positive sense possible.

Interesting post (and rewelcome to the forum). My one comment is quite base after all that

Mike Radivis wrote:My spiritual experience happened to me when I was 18. At that time I loved listening to trance music (yes, it really helps)

Any recommendations? I'm not as into it as I used to be, though that's in part because it was so hard to find new tracks I wanted to listen to. I'm mainly into the euphoric stuff - anything by Johan Gielen (esp as Airscape), Jon Vesta's Gull, Flaming June, Carte Blanche etc.

Very interesting post indeed. Transcendence is not something I have any competence or authority talking about, although you might be interested in Sam Harris's writing on the topic.
Re the pursuit of self-efficacy, you may want to contribute to Rehoot's thread

Re entrepreneurial activities, I wouldn't dispute the possibility that you could make a fortune. With regard to choosing a career, Will Crouch is working on an project called High Impact Careers. The idea is that giving what we can to the right charities is a tremendous start. But even better than that is if we get as much as we can, so we can give more and get more done. So watch this space!

I have rarely listened to trance music for almost a decade now. At the moment I'm more into future pop and similar genres. My favorite is VNV Nation. Assemblage 23 and Code 64 come next. Deine Lakaien, Ashbury Heighs and Solar Fake are more "gothy" bands that also produce some great music. But it's all not very close to trance.

That High Impact Careers project sounds rather interesting. But I'm generally a bit skeptical about suggesting people to go into jobs that make them feel like they made a rather unpleasant choice. It often turns out that staying in those jobs is not really sustainable in the long run. If you don't plan to stay in such a job for decades anyway, it might be tolerable (or not, only trying out will tell).

Mike Radivis wrote:I'm generally a bit skeptical about suggesting people to go into jobs that make them feel like they made a rather unpleasant choice. It often turns out that staying in those jobs is not really sustainable in the long run.

Good observation, Mike. Yeah, I think the main message could be to say that if people are naturally inclined toward more remunerative jobs, they needn't feel obligated to force themselves into ordinary "do gooder" careers. For example, I tend to enjoy statistics and programming more than, say, organizing social events sponsored by nonprofit organizations. So I was glad to realize that I could still make a big impact by donating money rather than working for a nonprofit directly.