Don't Waste the Good Days
seths.blog
seths.blog
Take that vacation to Bali when you're young, and you are wasting your prime, strongest days that could be making you financially secure and/or independent. Go windsurfing for a year in Ibiza after college, and you're adding 5 years to your working life--retiring at 62 instead of 57. It didn't sound like much time when I was young, but today, as I turn elderly, I'm counting down the years until I can finally retire, and kicking myself for goofing around when I was younger. If I could do it all again, I'd have tried harder to get into big tech early, I'd have taken comp and 401(k)s and advancement more seriously. I'd have played fewer video games, traveled less, and relaxed on the beach less.
Life isn't short--it's LONG, and you have a brief moment in that life to maximize your preparation for the rest of it. Use it wisely.
This seems totally opposite of what old people say on their death bed. You sound so obsessed with money here. My guess is your probably very wealthy relative to the average peer and your too naive to realize it. You have to keep telling yourself this philosophy to justify not wind surfing in Bali.
You think your gonna wind surf when your 60? You think it's smart to spend your 'non arthritis' fingers on coding?
Compounding interest on money means, as previously mentioned, money you earn at 20 will be 10x as valuable compared to money earned towards a typical retirement age. With tech having strong early salaries and heavy stock compensation I think this is even more the case.
> You think your gonna wind surf when your 60? You think it's smart to spend your 'non arthritis' fingers on coding?
How about 40? Because if you start working at 21 in tech and you're aggressive about your career that's when you can retire.
Do experiences compound? Will I enjoy an experience more at 25 than 45? Maybe, and there's always some balance, of course. No one should work themselves to death.
But I worked obscene hours for my first 4 years of my career, lived with many roommates, and saved a lot of money. And I started years later than most, as I entered the market at 24 instead of 21.
It buys me great peace of mind to know that I am financially stable and independent, that I can take care of friends and family who are not, and that I have bought myself decades of retirement.
There are experiences you may be incapable of considering later in life. Doing stupid, immature shit is fun and forms a person in many ways. Some errors are also better made earlier.
I'm just saying that tipping the balance for a few years can be a really good tradeoff, and to counter the "deathbed" anecdote above.
As a generalising anecdote, some of the greatest people I have worked with had very non-traditional paths early on, and I find them to have a greater 'big picture' sense, more resiliency and more humour in the face of adversity. But are not as rich in their 40s as others.
Doing things that make you a happier, healthier (mentally and physically) person at age 25 my seriously pay off vs doing those things at age 45. In fact I strongly suspect they do.
It doesn't really have to compound. If you travel a few weeks every other year in your 20s or 30s it adds up to a lot more experiences than if you hadn't. When you get up to 40 it makes a meaningful difference.
Before the pandemic you could take a flight almost anywhere for less than $1000. Not using that opportunity ends up defining people, or at least their situation, whether they like it or not.
And don't get me wrong. I understand that it isn't always so simple. Still if I had to choose I would choose the version of myself that is willing and capable of traveling.
Could you go traveling when you are 40? Sure, but it isn't necessarily the same thing.
You might also have so much saved up you can buy private insurance for the rest of your life.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
Sylvia Plath
If yo can imagine yourself be satisfied with obtaining just one of those figs, instead of only being satisfied from having it all, you'd have a much better time alive.
It's the same root philosophy as finishing one project to completion, rather than start many but never finishing it to the end.
Sometimes it is those who are looking for a void to fill in life, because their childhood lacked a crucial element to healthy development that they end up looking for anything that could scratch that itch; and that itch is often nostalgia waiting to be found, perhaps falsely, because that void seeks something else to satisfy it relationally.
Or, as I've said about this before: why worry about what death-bed you wants? That person literally has no future, but you do have a future to worry about!
But if you want to see what's important now that's a decision, a seed for your future, and it's open to change and evolution. This cannot be more different from a real deathbed perspective. So taking this decision by imagining one of infinite possibilities of your future up to your distant deathbed makes no sense. Even meeting your future self wouldn't give good insights on any "road not taken". An imagined, relatively random, and distant future outcome can't help you decide what's best in the present more than flipping a coin will.
The people drawing these conclusions may have no future but they do have the entire past. When you ask for a game review you're more likely to go for one coming from someone who's finished the game rather than someone who played the tutorial. That deathbed conclusion is meant to pass on what were the best and worst parts, not what should have been done differently because finishing the game means you know the outcome of exactly one of the possible move combinations. So if most old gamers say a particular mission deserves attention it's not a guarantee it does but it's a strong indication.
Are they? I assumed they were telling you what has given the most fulfillment, what were their wisest decisions now that they can Monday-morning quarterback.
When I tell my kids my home has been my greatest financial asset and I wish I had bought a home earlier, I am not wishing to buy another home now.
> But they made the decisions they did for reasons that seemed good at the time…
Agree, but the point is that they have hindsight now and, had they this knowledge 50 years ago, they believe the calculus driving those decisions likely would have been different.
I wish I had asked my older relatives more about their younger days before they died and took those experiences with them to their graves. I am very much into recording our family genealogy for my children and future generations and I have lost a trove of valuable narratives because I turned to genealogy too late in my life.
I use it as another example of legitimately wishing I had made different decisions earlier in my life.
Because death-bed you is the one that knows whether what to present-you is the future worked out satisfactorily or disappointingly.
Maybe because nobody is around to listen to, or cares about, the old people saying in their death bed "maybe I should have worked harder"
Unlike everyone else, someone on the deathbed doesn't have to think about the future.
So maximizing income seems like pretty good advice right now, especially if we have bumpy economic roads ahead.
The good news is that thanks to a shift towards remote friendliness, holding a high paying tech job (which I'm assuming is something many on HN are capable of) while in Ibiza or Bali may not be as incompatible as it was for older generations, wifi permitting.
You should nevze give any weight to whatever strangers say on their deathbed because they actually could have done things the way they wanted but every living day actively chose not to do it. Regrets are bullshit.
No.
> You think it's smart to spend your 'non arthritis' fingers on coding?
Yes.
The other thing I've realized being old: if you're going to have kids, have them young. There is absolutely nothing on this earth which is as valuable as the time you'll have with your children. I've waited until late in life to have kids, and it strikes me now that it means I might not ever get to meet my grandkids. I'll have decades less time with my kids to pass on advice and support them. I think if there's anything I'd trade my youth for, it's spending time raising kids. I'd gladly work a few hard years in my 40s and 50s for that privilege.
Life is like good food: you'll want all ingredients properly mixed in at the right time (with some added randomness and creativity). Trying to eat the ingredients one by one in some order that you think will make the food better is almost guaranteed to disappoint.
This is entirely self-centered. The kids, instead, benefit immensely from having parents with experience, emotional maturity, financial stability, better work-life balance.
You might not get to meet your grand[grand]kids but this is a sacrifice parents should be willing to make to provide a good life to their kids.
For men, it's really not, until they are 40+, and if in good health, even 50.
Biology unfortunately or fortunately requires women to have healthy kids until a certain age, and the more women are aware of it the better for them (that is if they plan on having any)
Maybe it's just how you sounded - maybe you're telling people not to sacrifice their future for their present. But no one should sacrifice their present _completely_ for their future.
Mostly because, well, you don't know if you'll have a future. "Stay healthy" won't stop you from developing cancer, heart disease, etc.
This did not require a decade and a half of unhappiness! Did it require me to sometimes put aside my immediate wants for the sake of the future? Yes. Did it require some measure of frugality? Also yes. But I also had great times with friends. I got married and had kids. We took vacations, spent time with family, engaged in hobbies, etc.
There are some things I couldn't do while I was working hard. A gap year was out of the question. But those things are not necessary for happiness.
You can. If you earned a significant amount of your savings because of stock or an exit event then it was, likely, biased in some way. It is truly great for you to have had everything come together as described.
> Now I'm wealthy enough to provide anything my family could reasonably want for the rest of our lives, barring some kind of black swan event.
This is not the usual outcome. Plenty of people have burned out going for it. Sometimes multiple times. And some have struck it big with little to no effort, right place right time as it's said. There is no right answer to this topic that anyone else can prescribe. It's up to you and if you don't own the path and the outcome you will feel a level of "waste" if and when your life doesn't yield the expectations you've set.
Perhaps they are not necessary for happiness but I bet if you had took that 3-12 months to do whatever it is you wanted to do it'd be the time you look back at most fondly.
Compound interest is great but salary tends to compound as well. At least in the tech sector. I've gone from 60k to 200k in about 8 years. So even though I'm missing that nest egg saving today is way easier than it was in my 20s.
When I turned 22 in 2008, my mom surprised me with her having sarcoidosis, a disease which will turn functional cells into non-functional ones. Quite an issue when it starts in your lungs. A year later, my father surprised me with him having cancer.
Long story short, they passed away in 2013 and 2017. I should also mention that I have four younger siblings. I raised my little sister until the beginning of 2020, when she turned 18. And then, the pandemic hit.
Now, I‘m ready for everything I missed in my mid-twenties. Party like there is no tomorrow, make stupid mistakes and f*ck around (literally and metaphorically).
Yet that means I‘ll be unable to live a „normal“ life by our societie's standards, because I already should have wife and kids by the age of 35…
I now share custody of my son with his stepdad... There's not much "normal" about it, but it's the best thing I/we can do for him given the circumstances. Family is what you make it.
I would focus on enjoying life and doing what you feel is best with no regard for what seems normal.
You can also party and fuck around in your 30s. It's different than 20s of course, but still great!
Also, I'd try to refrain from comparing yourself go the "normal" life. You've clearly had a unique journey (beyond "normal" might be in TV shows), and I am certain you've learnt a lot through it.
You're clearly a legend for looking after your family in the way that you did. I am sure your brother's and sisters will appreciate it in the future if they've not made it clear already.
And thank you for your kind words. <3
It’s very likely I’d have more money if I went straight to work while I was younger instead of goofing off. I could probably have paychecks twice as big as I do now.
But you know what? My worst days in the place I live now are better than my best days in my home country. My money goes farther here. I feel like the things I do actually matter now. I had time to develop personal skills and I feel like a better person for it.
Want to pursue money and prioritize your last 5 years of life (and ignore the very real possibility you’ll die or become disabled before then)? That’s fine. But you’re not going to be a failure if you forgo that unless you’re defining success as purely moving up a massive corporate ladder.
You may have a grand plan to retire at 57, but what if you love the work you're doing then? What if you die at 56? What if your employer is ageist and fires you at 50? What if the economy collapses in 30 years time and wipes out your pension fund? What if your knees give out at 57 and you're confined to your house for your entire retirement?
You're not giving up a year of fun aged 20 for 5 years of fun at 57 - you're trading a year of fun now for the potential of 5 years more fun in the future. Maybe that's a great tradeoff, but if definitely isn't a simple tradeoff. There are deep rabbit holes of probability to explore deciding whether it's worth the risk.
Asking a bunch of hypotheticals isn't a great way to make your point. Yes, as time goes on the chance of "bad things happens" increases. But we can also make a lot of assumptions. I don't plan to die at 57, I don't plan on being expendable at 50, I don't plan for economic collapse. They're all possible outcomes, but they're also not what I consider likely at all, or things I can reasonably prepare for.
The hypotheticals are the point. When you're thinking about how to live your life, to windsurf or to build your savings for example, you're considering hypotheticals because you have to make a choice about which one to do. All the others are hypotheticals because you end up not doing them. Planning is all about hypotheticals.
Looking bad at your younger self won't make you happy. Looking with envy at your older self won't make you happy.
Regarding your comment, I've never found someone saying "I wish I did things differently" and being happy. The sheer fact that they spend time regretting their past shows that their present self is not fulfilled.
I can be happy playing video games and relaxing, but maybe not fulfilled. I can work hard on interesting problems and feel fulfilled, but if that's all there is in my life I wouldn't say I lived well.
Confronted with death we look to our past for comfort. We're about to experience a total loss of everything and so, naturally, we search for meaning - "it can't have all been for nothing".
That's why the "death bed" thought experiment is interesting but also probably not the right way to frame things. It forces you to question life's intrinsic meaning and value but you should also think about how you feel right now, regardless of death or meaning or value.
I have yet to meet someone that would accept the offer. So if you do the math, they value their time at a shockingly high rate. I’d argue, trading the best years of your life for an early retirement is the same proposal.
Steve Jobs would have given his fortune many times over to have a couple extra years. Why trade the best years of your life for an uncertain future?
Offer someone 500m (hell, even 1m for many) for one year, and I doubt you'd find many who would say no. There's a margin at which you would be losing so much life experience that you wonder what you even live for (20y), while shorter periods (1, 2, 5, even 10y) aren't so defined.
Also, I read this as you lose 20y from the point of the deal (eg. 20yold coming back as a 40yold) rather than taking years off the end of your life, which I suspect is a more palatable interpretation for most.
This proposal could be thought of a couple ways. Maybe I prematurely age 20 years? That sounds pretty bad. I'm currently 42. That would make me effectively 62. With twin 3 year olds and a 6 year old. That doesn't sound fun.
But what sounds even worse is they won't graduate from high school until I'm 77. Decent odds I would die before then. Even with 10 billion. Fuck that.
The other interpretation could be: the world moves on but you "fast forward". Well, I likely get to see my kids as adults, but it all zipped before my eyes.
And that sucks too. Things moves so fast at younger ages, and so far from 0-6 each age is unique, different experience. And I would never want to fast forward over that.
Maybe if I were still hanging out, playing games, and talking with friends - sure. What's 20 years - maybe I'm a little worse at games. But kids change the whole thing for me.
Even with kids, parents that aren't well off often sacrifice their wellbeing for their family. For example, people that work two jobs for a total of 16-18 hours a day aren't rare where I live. They are aware this affects their health, shortens their life span and their time with kids, but they make the choice so that their family could survive.
> -5% interest rate on cash
You mean a property tax specifically on cash? Why?
I think the real problem is you’ve never met anyone who has any idea what to do with 10 billion dollars.
i think it depends on which 20 years are taken - the old ones, where you're unable to anything anyway, or the young ones, which you'd need to enjoy that 10 billion?
I would stop working today, would create my dream farm etc travel the world etc.
There's only one decade that you're going to be in your 20s dating other 20 year olds and going around with friends who are mostly unmarried.
As with anything there is a balance. Working too much or too little can cause problems.
This was true until I was diagnosed with terminal cancer.
It's possible to over prepare and not see the fruits of your labour.
I worked as a software dev for a large company for 3 years and it was a complete waste in retrospect. I now make much more money and curse every second I spent in that cubicle. The corporate ladder is a low-risk low-reward path that's generally unfulfilling. For a young person it's much better strategy to explore rather than exploit early on.
I've seen more than one person die with an unspent fortune, having worked at a menial job their entire life. Don't let it happen to you.
And even if it was ... Work is overrated. As a way to make money and altogether.
If you are in a place where they are giving you unfairly large amount of money for doing something ... sure, stay there for a while. Otherwise move. Don't think you'll be retiring at 57 or 62. Life is not that easy to predict. If you stay in the wrong place you'll never retire. And if you move to the right place in your life you might retire before you are 40.
> Due to compounding interest, a dollar made in your 20's is far, far more valuable than a dollar made in your 60's.
For me that doesn't sound solid as well. Inflation compounds too and black swan events of your life show up occasionally. In your 20's you earn so little that you can't save much, and just 10 lazy years into your career you'd be earning so much that you'd be saving many times more than you were earning in your 20s. If you don't burn stacks of cash to warm your soul, as you accumulate more knowledge and expeirience, money just starts accumulating on their own once you reach a certain age if you remained mobile and just went where their are paing best.
I don't think there's a single dying person on the planet that wishes they experienced life less in favour of making stacks.
Then, you have money and energy, but no time to enjoy these.
Finally, you retire, and have money and time, but the energy is gone.
Such is life.
At this point its pretty clear I'll never advance as far as I would like in my physical hobbies without sacrificing a lot in my other aspects of life.
Food and cooking is something I can't really explore beyond a interest and just being an eater. I think this ties back to travel too.
There are a lot of things that are really tied up in academia. I got pretty interested in philosophy of mind last year but my enthusiasm died pretty quickly when I realized there is really no where for me to take this hobby other then satisfying my own curiosity. Somewhat similar in programming, more paths seem unobtainable. I don't think I'll ever do something like work on operating systems, anything that intersects with electronics or cutting edge. I don't have the education or even a way to test the waters. This ties back to before with life's milestones, I don't know if i feel comfortable about a risky career switch when Im making tons doing what I am already.
thats off the top of my head
I always had an interest in traveling and was able to do some travel in my 20s and 30s, but nowhere near the amount that I had dreamed of. A trip at age 38 made me realize just how important seeing the world was to me and I left the US the same year. I have been living abroad ever since.
I've met expats who have been living abroad since their 20s and 30s, and others who didn't leave until their 40s, 50s and 60s. And I know plenty of people who have spent even 1-3 years abroad and are now back home and they are different people (in a good way I think) because of those years.
31 is a perfect age to do many things, including live abroad. If you're "making tons", you have more options to do this than many people. The only thing stopping you is yourself. If you want to do something, "just do it". There will never be a perfect moment, and you'll never be 100% comfortable before you take the plunge.
Are you not taking paid vacation?
Paid vacation doesn't impact your wages.
You are lucky if you can take advantage of compounding interest. A dollar you spend on food in your 20s is just as valuable as a dollar you spend on food in your 60s.
Also, interest rates are lower than inflation in many cases.
I have a good job and a bit of money invested (about a new cars worth maybe) but there is no chance that I can become "wealthy" or retire early just by saving.
Anyone can die any time if they're unlucky enough. Leaving much of the fun until you're old may thus be a very bad strategy.
I agree one should focus on productive activities already in their 20's, but meaningful leisure is important too. It's meaningless leisure that you do only out of boredom that people should restrict more - for me that would be social media, news and gaming.
The reality of life is that you don't know how long it will last, or for how long you'll have the physical, mental and/or emotional health to enjoy it.
You could make hay while the sun shines, only to get hit by a typhoon (literal or figurative) and find that no amount of money will restore your ability to enjoy life to its fullest. Wealth can't always buy health, and when your number is called for good, there's no amount of money you can pay the Grim Reaper to spare you.
My mom used to work with a man who was big on the "make hay while the sun shines" approach to life. He had his Hawaiian retirement planned out to the last detail and even though he was able to retire early, ran the numbers and delayed retiring by a few years so that he could further maximize his pension.
He did make it to Hawaii, but died less than a year into his retirement.
> Every morsel you make and save early means your retirement comes earlier. There will never be a more efficient time to earn those days of leisure that will come later if you stay healthy.
But what is "retirement"?
The biggest flaw I've personally witnessed with this line of thinking is that when you're young, your concept of "leisure" and what you'd do with "leisure time" is different than what "leisure" and "leisure time" is realistically going to look like as you age. Put simply, a day of leisure isn't the same at 25 versus 55. Heck, it's not even likely to be the same at 25 versus 40 for the average person.
While this doesn't mean that older people aren't able to enjoy life, even the healthiest people 50+ on average have various issues that people in their 20s and 30s typically don't have. These issues can make it more difficult and/or less pleasurable to engage in various activities, especially those that are highly physical or require peak mental acuity and stamina.
As an example, I'm an avid traveler. Elderly travel doesn't look anywhere near as pleasurable as young and middle-aged travel. And I've been to plenty of places where older people are highly limited in their ability to enjoy activities (i.e. you're far less likely to be able to trek 15km in steep, jungle terrain to catch a glimpse of a rare species when you're 65 than when you're 35).
I’m glad I got wasted and partied in my youth. I’m glad I travelled and saw different countries. I’m glad I dated a bunch and fell in love with several women. I’m glad I held a few jobs through most of that and have the career I do now. I’m glad I’m with my amazing wife and our two young kids bring joy and light into every day. I’m glad I sunk a bunch of time/money (once) into buying and fixing up a place.
A lot of these responses seem to imply it’s either/or. That’s not the case at all, and indeed I’d say doing any ONE thing for your life, even if it’s laying in a hammock on a tropical beach, gets boring after a while.
Mix it up. Variety is the spice of life. Savor the world in this one life you have. I’d say the one rule is not to F-up so badly you can’t recover from it.
Ultimately not everything in life went as I would have wanted, but if I compare my situation with others I think I can be well satisfied.
I don’t particularly mind the idea of working until 65 either, I’m going to be doing something anyway. As long as it’s interesting and I get rewarded enough to be happy, that’s fine with me.
Get depression and puff 10 years are gone and you life expectancy likely decreases too due to unhealthy living for 10 years.
Get a child and for the next few years there is only a child in your life, and after it is still a majority factor (if you are/have the chance to be a responsible parent).
Also don't count on you life post 70, it might be grate. But it's not unlikely to be but so grate even if you have money.
Lastly if you are working to hard and are too much used to working hard all the time you might not be able to enjoy it, either because you have to learn again how to enjoy life it because of health issues due to so the stress you put on your body.
There's probably a happy medium; virtue finds and chooses the mean, right?
A counterexample. My father died when he was 59 after a decade of ill-health. He'd had to give up many of the things that he loved doing as an individual (sailing) and with us as a family (caravanning, long walks, etc). This made a big impression on me (I was mid-20s when he died) and I resolved to focus on things other than wealth maximization but still retire early enough to (hopefully) enjoy my health.
I'm now 60. I retired two years ago after working 3 day weeks for the two previous years. I then transitioned to volunteering for a conservation organisation, and started career 2.0 totally independently of my prior experience / education (software). It was a blast!
Then, five months ago, I had a cardiac arrest - ventricular fibrillation, from which I was de'fibbed and had an ICD [0] fitted. It seems to be a genetic thing rather than lifestyle as my cardiac health is otherwise good. Because of the UK's rules, I lose my driving license for six months from the date of the VF episode. I understand why, as once the VF starts I have less than ten seconds of useful consciousness before passing out, and, if the ICD operates, I get a painful kick in the chest. Thanks to underinvestment, the UK's driving agency currently has a backlog of at least three months in reissuing licenses, so I will likely have nine months not being able to drive (which means that I can't do my volunteering).
My point? Don't assume that you will maintain your youthful vigour for ever as life can throw curveballs.
[0] https://www.bhf.org.uk/informationsupport/treatments/implant...
The propensity to deal with bullshit, crap that doesn't matter including other people's mission (e.g. startup founders), the internalization of the limited time we have makes the early professional/working years so much more valuable and hence something to maximize.
It's a different path but that pays off handsomely if things work out half as well.
He finally retired and had a stroke a year in. Thankfully he's still with us but with limited mobility. That trip to africa to see wild animals that he was waiting for retirement to do? yea not happening now.
My parents now see the wisdom of me traveling now. Travel and LIVE while you're young enough to enjoy it.
Yes. But you'll be earning relatively little when you're young so there won't be too many dollars left at the end of your fixed expenses to pull that trick with, besides, the interest rates are negative at the moment.
Whereas later in life you will likely make a multiple of what you make in your twenties, comfortably offsetting your gains.
Indeed, life is short. So while you're young and healthy, first and foremost ENJOY LIFE rather than to be focused on money and your old age all the time. Those will come anyway.
It's a fine line between having fun and enjoying life versus 'goofing around', but the big trick is to not look back with regret on what you could have done, but instead to appreciate what you have. If you don't your life will be an endless source of frustration.
I don’t think you understand it. The intent is to invest that dollar into a basket of investments for 40 years. The stock market is up this past year, not negstive.
Sure Interest rates are negative but OP did not suggest sticking it in a bank. Besides, inflation eats at the value of a dollar.
Compound interest does not apply to the stock market, it applies to savings.
The only way stocks can compound is if you re-invest dividends, and that's not 'interest'.
Inflation eats at the value of the dollar, but not at the value of real estate, so that's one way to make this all work for you: buy a house when you're young at the current low interest rates so that you have a chance to pay it off, and better make sure that you do this in a place that isn't subject to boom/bust cycles.
Mist young people can't afford that anyway.
Maybe if you have a wealthy starting points and high standards doing that is a problem.
But for most people retiring before the official retirement age is unlikely, especially given recent economical development.
Similar theire starting point is at a place where for many carrier path that year doesn't matter that much and if you spend it expanding your world view (e.g. work and travel, in the non luxus at all version) might even help you.
Sadly for many young people that's not the case.
There are physical health issues for some.
Mental ones for other.
Some have social issues, like taking care of their terminal ill parents.
For many their 30th and 40th will be full of stress and sometimes misery.
As a result many won't be able to fully enjoy their life in their 50+, to many health issues, to much baggage from the past.
After all, you only have one life.
i think there's a happy balance to be had, and that balance is determined by the amount of money you're making _right now_ (rather than future money).
If you're rich already, then you can push for more consumption over investment/work. It's true that you cannot buy youth.
The problem is when people want to live the life they cannot afford (meaning, they're eating into future retirement funds to live the dream life now), and then expect that the state to secure their retirement years.
You work for money, you live for yourself and you don't let some wannabe manager push you/guilt you into wasting your life at work.
Work, invest, take risks but simultaneously do other things. Work is pretty low in the totem pole of priorities.
I took the message as set your own direction and then sieze the day. Whatever you choose to do surf or work or both.
...capture the value of those ephemeral capacities directly yourself, whether in recreation or otherwise, rather than yield them to the capitalist capturing the surplus value of your labor.
No, it doesn’t.
Weighing potential compounding of deferred gratification forms of capture when compared to recreational capture against nearly guaranteed degradation in some of the capacities to actually enjoy things and the risk of gambler’s ruin is an issue, sure, which the upthread paean to deferred gratification ignores the latter side of, but “capture for yourself, recreationally or otherwise” includes capture for deferred gratification that doesn’t yield the lion’s share of the value to a remote capitalist via wage labor.
Okay, so it's the same "100% good, some fraction less than 100% bad" argument from before, but instead of being applied to your time, it's being applied to your potential earnings? That line of thinking is also flawed, because even though you theoretically capture 100% of the value when you work for yourself, the value you generate might be less than the value you generate when working for someone else. For instance, working on your own SaaS startup might allow you to capture 100% of the profits of the company, but you also have to take on a bunch of unrelated responsibilities (marketing, sales, accounting, legal, etc.) that you're not good at. For someone who's core competency is just programming, it's plausible that they make more working for themselves than trying to strike out on their own. Not to mention, the risk profiles of "working at MANGA" is entirely different than "working on your own SaaS".
why would someone give you recreational leisure if you don't have the equivalent money to pay? Who will grow the food you eat, produce the electricity and water you consume etc?
Where did I refer to anyone giving you anything? I referred to immediate capture of the value of your own present and non-durable capacities.
When you’re old, you’re cash rich and time poor.
But when you’re young you’re healthy, which is more important than both.
If you’re in your 20s and not hitting the gym regularly, start now. Wish I hadn’t left it so long, it will change your life.
Our society is a nightmare lol
It's only half the story, though. Moderation and balance are the real key. Overwork is not good in the long term. But underwork can also be a problem, even when employers let it slide.
Starting in my 30s, my friends who operated in the extremes of overwork or underwork started to diverge from everyone else. Overworked people were burnt out and had few friends and social connections left. Underworking people were often first to be laid off and slowly fell behind in their skills relative to everyone they were competing against for jobs.
Most of them found balance and got back on track, but I know a few holdouts who went all-in on the vagabond life of traveling the world and having fun, as well as a few who have just disappeared into their work and have basically lost social skills at this point.
Balance and moderation aren't really that difficult when you make them a priority. Especially in this job market where employers aren't squeezing employees as hard because everyone has so many alternate opportunities.
Looking back, the pandemic gave me an excuse to overwork since I was really determined to jump into SRE/ops world of things from helpdesk after slogging away in life sciences after graduation.
I've gained alot of weight (now I'm back to my pre-covid weight), lost hair, and lot of my social connections got strained. Fortunately I am still 30 so hopefully I'll be able to correct my past decisions but I'm finding out that correcting the direction of your decision becomes more difficult as you get older.
Your bit about moderation and balance seem to be aligned with what Sam Altman's advice on life before 30 (especially points 3, 4, 9, and 29).
Telephone Booth (number 905 1/2) BY PEDRO PIETRI woke up this morning feeling excellent, picked up the telephone dialed the number of my equal opportunity employer to inform him I will not be into work today Are you feeling sick? the boss asked me No Sir I replied: I am feeling too good to report to work today, if I feel sick tomorrow I will come in early
I’ve f’in had enough. And that’s me, the wife and our two kids- not quite school age. No I haven’t FIREd. No I’m probably passing up a raise and a promo (or maybe not). Super linear growth requires super linear decision making. You either follow the sheeple or decide enough is enough and make some drastic change. Im not getting these years back and for the life of me can’t understand those who say, I’m gonna work till I’m 55 and then I’m done.
Anyways HN fam- I’m already done.
Here’s to 2022
See y’all in Penang.
Life in an American suburb is a series of goalposts. Every few years, a new school. Then you go to college, find yourself, and discover that a career is more of the same: every few years, a new promotion/job/grant.
When I realized that, I figured that my joints and back would be at least as ageist as my future employers, and quit. Having watched a lot of Top Gear in school, I bought a dirt bike, modified an old pickup into a mini-RV, and went on a tour of the US' forests and national parks.
It was incredible. Exploring such an enormous and diverse area presents you with a lot of new perspectives. Of course, it was a terrible financial decision which I couldn't really afford, but I'd do it again in a heartbeat.
As I enter my 30s and start to see my peers get seriously hurt by activities like skiing and climbing, I find myself scaling back my "see the whole world" ambitions. Maybe I played things too safe, but I'm definitely glad that I didn't stay in my rut.
Anyways, it's nice to have a chance to contemplate your place in life and society while you're still spry enough to shurg off a few falls. Even my grandmother took an ill-advised teens-20s road trip across the iron curtain. A good walkabout should be a basic human right.
Then what? I like to imagine that if there is a secret to human happiness it must be something which was available to all the ~hundred billion humans who lived before air travel, boats, cars, cheap foreign holidays. Life would be awfully unfair otherwise.
https://www.gocomics.com/peanuts/2019/08/14 I've also holidayed casually enough to know that me alone in a foreign city isn't as exciting as it seemed before leaving, and that the limitations are in me, not the city.
We might all benefit from a stipend to take a long leave for continuing education or travel every decade or so. Many innovations have sprung from the intersections of diverse cultures and fields of study.
Any chance you know any readings tackling this idea?
Yikes.
I would hope if you're planning to take an entire year off - you have AT LEAST $70k net wealth...
You need to invest in a company - but IIUC you could just buy ~$70k shares of Indonesia Telecom (i.e.), live there for 3 years, collect dividends, and then cash out when you're done.
Under normal conditions, I wouldn't want to invest ~$70k in some Indonesian large cap I know nothing about.
But if I wanted to live in Bali for a year, this is a pretty easy way to do it...
You can setup a company here which entitles you to a KITAS.
It's not as hard as it sounds, and much easier than a foreigner staying in the USA, however it will vary a little depending on your country of citizenship.
Quality of life per dollar is also much better. It's common to eat out 3 times per day outside - and don't havd to be rich or willing to burn lots of money - many locals eat outside because it's good and cheap - 2-3 dollars for good quality even vegan meal.
Quality of medicine is also good and much much much cheaper than usa - actually many Indonesian fly to penang to get better quality medical service.
Cost of living even with family it will be probsbly like 1/3 of typical expenses in western world.
If you can work remotely to us or eu company and stay on business visa (mtep) or malaysia my second home visa (now unfortunately out of reach for most of people) them that's the best of 2 world.
Typed from a hammock on a tropical beach.
The news.yc crowd may not be all too different from your managers and co-workers. They are but a similar people in a different setting.
Jk, its the freedom from having to be present that makes retirement worthwhile. I still love tech and I still want to blog, read and talk about tech. I just don't want to waste my life on bullshit meetings and work that is meant to impress some management.
But, eating that food for an entire year would get old quickly, especially for young kids who are (presumably) groomed on American food.
Make those deeds count. Start that company. Take that year off to travel. Do the big memorable things, not the long tedious slog
You’ll still feel young when others are retiring
You’ve probably heard the old analogy that there is an imbalance of our time, money, and energy depending on what stage we are in throughout our lives. If you haven’t, it’s the idea that when we’re young, we have no money. When we’re middle-aged, we have no time. And when we’re elderly, we have no energy.
Work will always follow Parkinson's Law which is an old adage that work will expand to fill the time allotted. If you do not choose to take control over your time, your work can take over your life.
Our time is precious. It’s the one resource we cannot replenish, yet we treat it like disposable income or energy.
Rather we should say No to more things(especially work related). It’s the single word that will give you time, money, and energy. No gives you more autonomy and allows you to consistently follow through with your routine or spur of the moment activities. This simple word is the difference between seeing your outcomes and reaching your goals yet nobody does it. Yes lives on as a commitment. No is a decision.
The thing about sayings like this - they're not just a thing you do, they're a practice you develop and a flow that you become more skillful at adhering to. I've been through hell and back following what's felt true to my creative instincts, and as brutal as it's been, along the way I've by necessity internalized what meaningful work means to me and what freedoms I'm (not) willing to sacrifice.
It can be a brutal path, but (at least in my experience) every level you become more skillful at it and the flexibility and sense of trust in yourself translate in powerful ways to creative and professional potency. If you intentionally hone them in that direction.
My 2c, at least. It's a worthwhile journey.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regret_%28decision_theory%29
Happy New Years yall!
Regardless, the unlucky can generally do better by being diligent versus not being diligent. It's the part you can control.
They also talked about income smoothing, which is essentially a justification for, under some situations, spending more money that you "should" earlier, because later, you'll be older & less able to enjoy it -- and hopefully later you'll be making more money too anyway.
I guess this works if you are self-employed and or live alone
This is an attitude more than anything I'd say, the "follow the calendar" mentality doesn't have to apply to you unless you choose so.
Taking longer (unplanned) amounts of time away from the keyboard is a different issue, though. If your work is truly isolated from the team and it's getting done on time, then it shouldn't matter when you're doing it. In fact, your employer wouldn't even know if you were at your desk or not as long as the work shows up.
In practice, though, most people's work isn't actually fully isolated and asynchronous. If other people need to work on something with you or ask questions, it's a huge pain to play ping-pong with messages back and forth every several hours or even every day to solve things that could have been accomplished in 5 minutes of synchronous chat.
This is why most remote companies will try to avoid creating teams that span too many timezones. Collaboration and teamwork plummet when real-time communication isn't a thing and nobody can ever predict when others will be available without scheduling meetings long in advance.
I know it's not popular on HN, but in my experience few engineering jobs are truly asynchronous and isolated like this. Flexing schedules here and there is honestly enough to do most things that people want and need to do on a regular basis anyway. It's the people who are disappearing for entire days (e.g. taking vacation days without actually declaring a vacation day) who cause the problems.
You have to be online on messaging services/contactable by email with quick response during normal hours, making it very hard to do much else in this time.
Covid has meant more people working remotely, but hasn't changed working schedules that much from what i have seen here at least.
I can shift to free days which can even feel relaxing. But that means gifting my employer the best hours of my free days too.
When detached from the rhythm of the processes where you work together with others, it's easy to start slacking, or to start overworking, unless you have another source of rhythm. I've seen people critically dependent on the lunch break to have their lunch; without the external signal, they complained, they tend to forget about it, to the detriment of their health and mood.
If I don’t want to work, I take PTO and the meetings happen another day.
If I want to go for an all-day run or bike ride, I let my partner know my plan and when I’ll be home and whether I’ll pick up dinner. Once I came home to find she left a note on the fridge saying she was doing a spontaneous century on her bike and could I get her a soda.
Does this stuff happen all the time? No. That’s why it can happen.
The guy worked hard and earned his year off, don’t dismiss it by calling it privilege. He has the skills and intelligence and hard working habits to earn the year off, this is not privilege. Successful people aren’t successful because of privilege, that’s just a label for an excuse by those who aren’t successful. You get what you earn in life.
No, because this is privilege. To be born in a rich country. To have family structure to study and go to college, to have a stable job and a successful career after graduation. To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand. Or to open a business that is successful.
People underestimate A LOT how much of a role luck plays in successful careers. Sure hard work is necessary, but you can very well burn out and still be unsuccessful.
If you can't see this, maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you from what most people go through in life.
Luck is something that happens to a lot of people, including the unsuccessful ones, but few of us, successful or not, are willing to admit that we burnt some chance, or several of them. It is easier to blame someone else or something else (absence of necessary luck) for unsatisfactory results. It is easier to attribute certain satisfactory results in other people to their luck, without discussing the effort necessary to exploit that luck or even recognize a lucky set of circumstances and act on them (because these tend to be fleeting).
We are more of a rationalizing species than a rational one, and we are really good at framing things in a way that strokes our egos.
Being smart sometimes has downsides, eg existential crises etc
Life is not fair.
I mean, your statement “To be lucky enough to choose a career that is in demand” just misses the mark so entirely. There’s NO LUCK INVOLVED!! People on HN didn’t pick their major/hobby out of a hat. The picked tech because they love it and it pays well, and they have the intelligence to do it well. If someone chooses to be a street musician, they can’t blame “privilege” when they can’t take a year off.
“maybe this is your privilege that is blinding you” - no, maybe your rose colored glasses are blinding you here. Not everyone can take a year off, the world is unfair, and some people will live better lives than others. Deal with it.
I think "rose colored glasses" may not be the expression you were looking for. The person you are replying to is not ignoring inequity, they are acknowledging it. Sure people will always live better lives than others, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't work towards a more fair world.
Recognizing that the playing field isn't level, and that outcomes aren't controlled only by the amount of hard work you put in makes it easier to push towards a better world.
I don't know about you but it was certainly luck for me. I was lucky to be born where, when, and to whom. Tweak any of those variables a bit and I'd be in a completely different career. A few hundred miles east and I'd be living on a farm instead of a suburb of Big Tech City. A decade prior and I wouldn't have had access to computers in school. Different parents and I might not have had the same encouragement to get into tech. It's an incredible amount of luck when you actually think about it and don't just jerk your knee when someone uses the term privilege.
This is literally what privilege means. It's not an insult.
There are literally millions of people who deserve / have "earned" this privilege, but aren't given it. The word lucky comes to mind.
To take an extreme example: how hard do the children of Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Sergey Brin, etc have to work to "earn" their fortunes and success?
I wish there were words to convince you of how profoundly incorrect you are about this.
Unfortunately, it will probably require years and pain instead. Maybe your own pain, or if you're more fortunate you will develop empathy for others.
In the meantime, some people say that reading Ayn Rand helps -- after the initial rush of affirmation, you grow to realize that she's just another writer of superhero comics. As that slowly percolates into your awareness, you start to understand humans and society are really quite complicated things, which can help you become a more tolerant person.
Therefore, wage labor should be abolished.
“Communism is free time and nothing else!” - jehu (https://therealmovement.wordpress.com/)
not the worst way to enter the new year.
"Getrichclick" is not the sort of resume I want to see from someone offering advice.
This should be the point of civilization and society. We should be working to free everyone to be able to go surfing when able.
I dislike that some people get to be "privileged" enough to be able to do so as much as the next guy, but I also dislike when people act like it's wrong to aspire to this.
The problem isn't that this is bad advice; the problem is that our civilization currently prevents this for most people, and instead aims to convince the 99% that they are the essential workers who can't go surfing.
This isn't bad, it means that you're an adult. If everyone lived this Peter Pan lifestyle we wouldn't have anything you'd call a civilization, we'd just have a bunch of grown up kids.
A community consists of interdependent people, it's not just a room full of individuals. Defining freedom in opposition to responsibility is an adolescents idea of freedom. That's a valid perspective in youth, not when it's time to be a person others can rely on.
…and?
It’s a lot easier to sit there and watch the Colbert Report deliver a sick burn than it is to care and work towards change. Online karma points are the equivalent of gambling reward spikes. It’s all gamified bullshit.
Lo and behold, most people do not want to make the sacrifices necessary to have this life.
Being a grown-up is about making these choices.
I guess I’ve never formalized my thinking about this, but I believe it’s a sad outlook on humanity if the goal is to partake in pleasure at will. There seem to be much more fulfilling pursuits. Maybe I’m taking this the wrong way.
For some, that's surfing. For others, that's building a rocket to Mars.
My point is that ideally we build a society where as many people as possible get to choose what they find fulfilling, and pursue it as much as they wish.
The problem we have right now is that opportunity, training, and investment for many things are restricted to the very few.
I agree that an exclusively hedonistic outlook on life is empty, but so too is letting the very few enslave the others to their dreams.
But then what of the work that nobody wishes to pursue, but is required? Like farming for food, generating electricity and water, and many of the modern comforts?
I'm sure everybody wishes to pursue their own passion, regardless of the value of that passion to _someone else_. But this is why it cannot be done today, because there isn't enough wealth and energy and resources to allow for this. The star trek style replicators don't yet exist.
One of the oddities of modern work is that the lowest paid jobs are mostly those nobody wants to do.
Sure, we're not at replicator level, but farming of many crops require far fewer people than many imagine.
Personally I find that many things that could be automated are not yet automated because humans are cheaper. Think cashier, waiter/waitress, and so on.
In white collar work land, an amazing number of jobs could be automated, but are not yet because it's cheaper to use humans. These are the people who essentially just move numbers from one computer to another with a small amount of work in between.
Maybe what we understand as middle class is actually just a well-fed pleb.
Real middle class probably should have control of their day at least, so we have almost no middle class.
I think that has always been the case - the middle class is what civilization rests on for productivity and creation of goods and services. They are the most exploited bunch, but some smart ones have managed to save and invest enough to escape that middle class, and into the financially independent class (which may be previously called the landed gentry).
With very rare exceptions, everyone has free time (and weekends count), but many of us (myself included) waste it away.
(e.g., like I'm doing here)
If anything, we should aim to betterment for our lives, and I bet nowadays many people browsing this website have this. In the future, even more people will be able to! :)