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Comment by eagsalazar2 | Hacker News Reader

Not just FIRE people, but 99% of all retirees at any age end up doing nothing of note with their time. But, and I think you aren't saying otherwise, this is also true of everyone who still has to work, while they are working. Your job is just the thing you have to do (if you are lucky you actually enjoy it). Bottom line, most people don't actually have a purpose or strong passions in their lives. Being retired young doesn't make that more or less true but at least you have more space to confront that void and just maybe find some purpose or passion. If you are totally time strapped with career, family, and other responsibilities, then you really really have no chance. OTOH maybe our outside judgement that these people are wasting their lives is misguided. Subjective reported happiness for retirees is much higher compared to the working world.

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> Not just FIRE people, but 99% of all retirees at any age end up doing nothing of note with their time.

If you spend some years just chilling and and are actually happy, then sure, why not. But there are so many retired people who do nothing, and are not happy.

For example, my mother, my mother and father in law, my other father in law, my grandmother - all retired, and all do absolutely nothing but watch TV and moan about other people all day. And they are all very obviously not happy, yet suggestions for things to do or get involved in always fall in deaf ears - they'd apparently rather sit and do nothing until they die.

I really, really don't get it.

I think it depends on who you are. I can't fathom not doing something. I want to retire, asap, though not FIRE-levels, but i know what i want to do. I want to do exactly what i do in my current off hours, which looks a lot like work. Because it is work. I want to work, when i retire. I just want to work on whatever i want to work on.

Which is the rub. Passionate people will be busy, all the time. Without it.. well, i can't even envision how to live.

I think parents need to help their children find hobbies. Find passions. Develop passions. You don't _have_ to be excellent at piano or whatever. I don't care what it is, be it games, wood working, farming, etc - but i feel like it is essential to the human experience.

But.. i've got an isolated view. So.. YMMV.

This isn't an isolated view, but in my view, it does miss a lot.

Most people have an idea of what they would ideally do if given unlimited amounts of time. The reality is, in my experience, that most people cannot put the same level of work, focus, and dedication into their own projects that they can into the projects an employer pays them to work on.

For whatever reason, most people need the structure, constraint, judgment, or whatever that an external authority imposes on them. Having the skill and motivation is not enough to bring your highest work to your own purposes. There is a second discipline that involves self-accountability, which runs orthogonal to capacity for the work.

Who is advocating that most people should FIRE? It's an individual choice and we shouldn't be telling someone they can't do it because, well, "averages".

Nobody is saying "you can't do it." But "averages" is 100% a valid reason to consider why you shouldn't do something, particularly something unknown to most humans.

> I just want to work on whatever i want to work on.

This is exactly why I'm pursuing leanFIRE. Even if I hit the jackpot, I would still be toodling on personal software projects for the rest of my life. Not saying I'm any Michelangelo, but I would have to be trained not to write software. I'm just aiming to set my own priorities instead of working on things I'm not passionate about because I simply need the money.

I keep wondering if I shouldn't quit the day job and start a software shop, but even that sounds an awful lot like work where you trade one relentless taskmaster for another. I sure as shit don't want to have to worry about market share, I just want to make cool (to me) software.

In one of Dan Gilbert’s talks he cited some research around activities and how they correlate with happiness. Unsurprisingly people like sex and socializing. But “doing nothing” turned out to be about as enjoyable as work at the bottom.

One possible explanation:

Their dream was to sit around, do nothing, and judge other people. And they have achieved it.

I get it.

It's all explained by one simple fact: the average IQ is 100. In today's society, how many activities are there for 100 IQ people to engage in?

Are there animals to take care of? Is there land? Is there community to partake in? Are there things that need to be done by 100 IQ people?

When you build society optimizing for young people to work 8 hour days or giant factories and supply chains doing everything else, what is there for somebody at 65 to do but watch tv and wait until they die?

Young people barely even have children anymore and when they do, chances are their parents are still working, so by the time they retire, the children are 5-10 years old and playing on their own.

It's easy to blame the individuals for not joining a knitting club or whatever, but people are not built to do pointless activities, they are built to do activities that have purpose and those are not available in modern society unless you have high IQ or a talent in a specific domain.

Also one last point: moaning about other people is what people have always done, especially when you're older and you're almost certainly experiencing chronic pain of some sort. Younger people moan just as much, they just have youth and belief that things will be looking up on their side - old people have neither.

Apart from the fact that average IW has been rising dramatically, I guess your not a Forest Gump fan.

I think 100 IQ people are more capable than you realize - but it comes down to their attitude.

Nitpick: Average IQ cannot increase by definition. The median IQ value is defined to be 100 IQ points and one standard deviation in either direction is defined to be 15 IQ points. It's normally distributed so median==average as well. People overall can become more intelligent and the average IQ value will still be 100.

I believe the comment you are replying to is referring to the Flynn effect [1] which shows a ~3 point rise in IQ per decade in absolute terms. That is, someone who is 100 IQ in 1950 would only be 97 IQ measured by 1960 standards.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flynn_effect

Yes, the score is always normalized like that, but the Flynn effect shows people getting smarter over time.

So intelligence is increasing while IQ stays the same, to be pedantic.

It makes perfect sense. It's very popular now to see everything as genetic. That is all our focus. We neglect how decades of being in the same environment with the same incentives wires the brain a certain way.

When you spend all that time disciplining yourself to work (against your own will) and having little time to develop your own interests, you become hard wired to do what is necessary.

When that necessity ceases to exist you no longer have the machinery to move yourself. A career and kids and church and a house and big yard to maintain can leave nothing left of you. It can erase your very identity as your brain is rewritten to subdue the self and pursue work, chores and favors over all else.

That's just my hypothesis anyway.

I think this is an unappreciated explanation, and is the biggest reason why I want to work towards some level of financial independence. I have no real desire to retire early, so I could take or leave that part. But being able to make decisions about how I spend my time without having to worry about my next paycheck seems like the obvious path towards long-term happiness. If a working environment becomes toxic I have the option to leave. If I feel like hiking the Appalachian trail I can go do it before I'm old and frail. If I'm tired of the field I'm working in I can take time off to study and do something else. If a loved one needs assistance I can go to their side.

Being compulsively tied to income generating work, and then all of a sudden being cut off from that seems like a surefire path towards unhappiness, since someone who has done that their whole life likely hasn't explored the mental space of what else they could be doing with their life.

On the other hand, being totally free from any restraints seems like it could be an almost worse curse. No pressure to complete any projects, to help anybody, to do something useful for the world. That also wires your brain in a particular fashion, and could be it's own version of hell. Perhaps this is sour grapes though :)

Totally agree,

I'd like only to add that, what many artists (and in general people who pursue their artistic passions) had, compared to the agerage workin-joe, is TIME.

The only way to understand your passions is by having time to observe your world, to reflect on people's actions, to contemplate nature. If you have to work (because you're the bread-winner and have 2 children already and an house to pay), your only glimmer of hope is to have already found your passion during your younger years.

Finally, your energy levels going on are never gonna be your current ones. Keep that in mind.

And I say that as a man who had a fair number of interests, never had time to really pursue them, and now has to to a work I hate and have no remaining passion at all.

I used to work for a company that had a newsletter. In the newsletter they listed deaths. There was a common theme that people would generally either die shortly after retiring or a long time after. Talking with some of the folks near retirement I learned that people who didn't find things to do generally died shortly after retirement.

Basically, we live for work and when many people retire they loose the thing to live for and die. It's sad.

Long ago I learned to not live to work. I work but I have so much more to life... retirement is just a point in time where I don't need to earn income to live any longer and I can have more choice in what I do.

I have often heard this. And even witnessed it some. But i wonder if the phenomenon is actually due to the fact that people who are in good health and well when they retire are more likely to stay active and those who are not in good health or don't feel well, tend to not stay very busy after they no longer are required to.

My father noticed the same thing and feared it would happen to him, so he kept working part time after retirement. When he finally retired completely, he died within a few years at a healthy (other than sudden cancer) age of 74. I’ve suspected there is something about the pressure of work that “holds” us together, though I can’t put my finger on it.

I’ll add on to the other responses and tell you that for a lot of people getting old sucks and the thing that sucks worse than getting old is being old. Constant pain. Lipoma pressing against your spine means no matter how you sit or lay you feel uncomfortable. It hurts to take a shit, it’s hard to get all the piss out and even when you so you have to clean up the floor and toilet because it dribbled everywhere. You can’t remember the last time you jerked off and don’t care to try because it started hurting every time you ejaculate more than a decade ago. You can’t stand for more than an hour before your back is on fire forcing you back down to your sitting position which is “only” uncomfortable.

If you are reading this do yourself a favor and take your body’s health seriously right now before it’s too late. Exercise every day, get that 30 pounds of fat you jokingly call your dad bod off before it’s too late, go to the doctor and fucking do what they say instead of nodding and convincing yourself you know better and don’t really need to do that. Oh and brush and floss your damn teeth. The above story doesn’t have to be your story but if you sit at your computer all day everyday and don’t take care of yourself it very much can become your story.

Shudder...

I think it is depression. And once you are depressed, it is hard to find activation energy.

Plenty of depressed people will tell you about friends being frustrated at them "not snapping out of it".

Aging is as big problem or probably even bigger, than having a job. I'm sure your grandmother wouldn't just watch TV if she looked and felt like a 20 year old girl. She would probably go party, hang out, get drunk, travel and socialize all the time.

Chronic illnesses at any age suck as much as having aging as a chronic illness.

> go party, hang out, get drunk, travel and socialize all the time

This is the 20-something version of being idle. Minus the travel, which isn't a given.

Being 20 doesn't mean you want to do something productive or meaningful with your life. There's plenty 20 yo that party, socialise, get drunk and never amount to anything. The reason it's just a phase is that it's not all trust fund kids and most need money (a job) to live.

If a baby would come out it, that is just as productive as a job (though more and more people do abortion nowdays).

I don't see why working/producing is anymore meaningful than partying / socializing. I think people can find meaning in their life in different ways.

>but at least you have more space to confront that void and just maybe find some purpose or passion

This is what I'm talking about. It's likely much harder to do this when you retire at a normal age after having lived most of your life. But if you retire in your 30s or 40s? Or your 20s!? Good lord.

Think of all the great companies that get started and then snapped up by the big boys because the founders want to become millionaires. Imagine if there was zero pressure to take an exit when offered. I believe our world would be in a better place. I don't want to just highlight companies, but companies can scale and affect change in a way that just volunteering or simple philanthropy cannot in our society.

That's why I think so called "Lean FIRE" is such a bad trap. You're giving yourself very little margin to explore new purposes and passions. It's a much bigger bet that you're going to be satisfied watching TV and going for day trips to Niagara Falls the rest of your life.

> but 99% of all retirees at any age end up doing nothing of note with their time.

Define "of note"

In my experience most retired people do productive things until their bodies confine them to home or an assisted living.

Most retired people I know of keep doing the things they were doing as hobbies before. Gardening, teaching kids piano, racing cars, etc. Most retired people I know are more active on the things they love in retirement. Sure they're not doing Elon Musk things but they don't have that budget either.

> Not just FIRE people, but 99% of all retirees at any age end up doing nothing of note with their time.

This is exactly why I think FIRE is a great thought exercise even if you don't actually care to do it. Given enough money to live for the rest of your life without the need for a job, what would you do with your time?

I don't see FIRE as literal retirement but as 'taking the bull by the horns' in terms of doing what you really are passionate about without having to worry you'd end up old and destitute. If I could FIRE I'd still do software development but I wouldn't do boring digital plumbing work and go through corporate cringe culture. And no, right now I could not do that because I have responsibilities that need me to slave away at a corporate job. It's sad when I think about it but I think I adapted and just go forward with it. FIRE seems like a liberation from all that.

This is mostly nitpicking: What you describe is the idea of FI (financial independence), no RE (retire early). In my impression, this is actually what by far the most FIRE-achievers turn into sooner or later (well-known examples: chooseFI, mad fientist, MMM). Or maybe the retired ones don't talk about it on the internet...

They generally have better things to do than blog about financial strategies, yes.

I’m 37, nearly five years out of the game, and I’m busy, every single day. My time is fully absorbed in building up a homestead, and my list of projects is many, many years long yet, and as diverse as shredded encyclopaedia.

I can’t see myself running out of things to do before I myself run out. I occasionally tell people snippets of what I’m up to here or on Twitter, and people ask if I have a YouTube or a blog. I don’t have time. Or inclination, to be honest. I do this for me.

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