"Creating a life that reflects your values and satisfies your soul is a rare achievement. In a culture that relentlessly promotes avarice and excess as the good life, a person happy doing his own work is usually considered an eccentric, if not a subversive. Ambition is only understood if it's to rise to the top of some imaginary ladder of success. Someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is considered a flake. A person who abandons a career in order to stay home and raise children is considered not to be living up to his potential-as if a job title and salary are the sole measure of human worth.

You'll be told in a hundred ways, some subtle and some not, to keep climbing, and never be satisfied with where you are, who you are, and what you're doing. There are a million ways to sell yourself out, and I guarantee you'll hear about them.

To invent your own life's meaning is not easy, but it's still allowed, and I think you'll be happier for the trouble."

I like to keep in mind this romantic i MaDe tRaVeLinG a LifEstYle BS is enabled by the folks who are typically working their asses off in shit jobs like grocery, warehousing, manufacturing, supply chains, transportation, hospitality, etc.

If everyone suddenly stopped their work to pursue this nonsense we'd all quickly find ourselves in a non-enjoyable situation. Life enjoyment is a societal gift offered by the margins of collective suffering. Sure, take your breaks where you need but keep in mind life enjoyment, retirement, etc. are all tremendous blessings and not entitlements.

Yes, if literally everybody became a rock climbing dirtbag we'd have a hard time feeding everybody our filling up the gas tanks for our vans. But I do not see this as an actual risk. We are almost certainly on the side of the curve where more of this activity makes society better, not worse.

The greedier thing would be to stay on and suck up more and more resources that you don't need and don't even make you happy.

> stay on and suck up more and more resources

As opposed to creating more value and enabling the company to hire 5-7 more team members? Maybe you view yourself as a zero-sum resource-suck, but I typically multiply what my company does through new ideas and creative pursuits.

Corporate profits are not necessarily the same thing as value. Showing ads 0.1% more effectively is not making the world a better place.

Of course not, but when a project idea I architect & develop results in a bunch of new team member hires that 1) I get to train and mentor and 2) are all putting food on the fucking dinner table for their families and getting to enjoy their lives through productive labor and 3) make the lives of our customers a little better I consider that a win.

Move on dude, I'm not even in advertising. Are you really going to keep making replies trying to argue that creating a new team from thin air by building a new product is a negative thing?

For someone who's so happy and joyful about all the value you get to create, you sure are bitter that anyone else might not choose to do exactly what you're doing.

People who take time off to travel or otherwise enjoy their life don't do it based on the charity of working people as you seem to assume. They already worked, created value, saved some of that value, then spend their stored value as they please. Why does that make you so angry?

"Nobody preaches about the sun coming up tomorrow. Nobody preaches about certainties. Believers preach about their world view not because they are certain, but because they are UNcertain"

I.E: What people like this are trying to do isn't convince you - it's to convince themselves.

If you choose another path, be it in work, decision to start or not start a family, from the mainstream you get pushback in many forms, because it's very hard for people to not want the choices that they make to be the _correct_ choices, and that must mean the _correct_ choices apply to everyone, right? We can all get trapped on the hedonic treadmill together!

There's a bit of this in the WFH/Office debate, too.

Best advice I ever got: If you want to be happier, get poorer friends.

Exactly. Odd that the parent commenter is bitter about the idea of people enjoying their money. You earned the money, and if you wish to spend it traveling/any other old thing... well why not?

Second, I'll invite you to go back and read that quote a few more times. Sit with it. There is more there. I am half-heartedly fanatic about it.

Third, I think you are overestimating this great society. Might it be creating this suffering instead of easing it? Is joy rare, only produced by capitalism, and built on the sufferings of others or free and abundant? Why are we all working so hard? Is it for ourselves and our neighbors, or do you hear the same giant sucking sound as I do while the profit of our collective labor goes to benefit a few barons and the negative externalities rain from the sky?

> It is not enough to fight for the land; it is even more important to enjoy it.

He does not literally advise you to hunt fish. He advises you to to enjoy the fruits of your work.

It's a 1 minute read, but two snippets more directly relevant:

"Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story."

and

"If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself."

I see everyone simply doing their best to get by and focusing on differing details at differing scales depending on what situation and inclination are. Your details are important to you. You can learn other peoples details if you talk to them for a bit. No one is boring - and everyone is - depending on your own viewpoint.

As for:"But I wonder if I'll do these things or if I will just work and be happy."

What the hell is wrong with being happy? :-)

It took a long time, and I went through years of staying with the same job, having highs and lows and thinking and reflecting, with a coach sometimes (I was lucky that one of the jobs had a coach for every employee) on work and the way it makes me feel, what I'm good at, and how that may be because of how I was raised, or the role I had to take or took in my family.

You are good at some things because you did them a lot. Sometimes those things match with what makes you feel good, sometimes they are that nagging thing you couldn't name but carried with you your whole life. I.e. I'm considered social, social glue, someone who gets a group to get along. But it costs me an inordinate amount of energy and I just now am learning the benefits of respectfully guarding your own interests, I feel just like the writer of this assay: [0]. Still growing up at 40.

[0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30906621

It's about rejecting the default career path which our society considers normal and desirable. The default path is the one where you go to school, enter a career, work the career until you retire ... etc.

I have been a lot of trouble lately figuring out why I'm so unhappy with my career. I knew I was on the wrong path, but I couldn't see the next step on my trail in life. This book made me see that there are plenty of people living happily off the default path. The books made me more determined to seek the pathless path.

I suggest reading it for anyone who is feeling listless in their career and needs a fresh new perspective.

I'm not sure what boring has to do with being entrepreneurial. There are people who are so work obsessed they seem 1 dimensional. Being obsessed with work can quickly make your personality boring. One of the most boring people I know is a successful (at making money, not anywhere else in life) entrepreneur. Talking to them is like getting a highlight reel of the news. "It's hard to find good workers, health insurance premiums are too high, schools aren't teaching job skills, etc"

>I still want to be creative.

I think if your mentor had said "Don't become passive, stay creative and curious" I could have agreed with that. As you get older, have kids, get hurt in relationships etc, it's really easy to lose all your personal interests, hobbies, and just get into a rut where you basically do nothing. You give up trying or learning at your job, and your spare time is just watching TV. Having hobbies, learning stuff, that keeps you creative. Leaving a job when you have clearly reached a point where you are bored out of your mind and you have stopped learning ... having some sort of a challenge at a job keeps you creative.

I joke with people that the pace of my hobbies and personal learning is basically "How to take two years to work though a book about how to learn something in 30 days." But it's better than not getting through it at all.

"...simply observe the older people working there.

They are the future you. Do not think that you will be substantially different. Look carefully at how they spend their time at work and outside of work, because this is also almost certainly how your life will look. It sounds obvious, but it’s amazing how often young people imagine a different projection for themselves.

Look at the real people, and you’ll see the honest future for yourself."

I also think money is really nice, but should not be a means unto itself.

I used to bartend in a wealthy area. Lots of folks on this little town would get tipsy and start talking about how much money they have.

One of my barometers for life is to have things I'm more passionate to talk about than wealth accumulation when I'm tipsy in a bar.

[0] https://moxie.org/2013/01/07/career-advice.html

Everybody moaning about their "boring" job should read Taleb's description of Mediocristan vs. Extremistan first.

Having a child changed my perspective. All I care about is max compensation for least amount of time consumed by work. As long as my manager/boss isn't an awful individual and there is no micromanagement I will be happy.

Eventually we might stumble on an idea and build something that takes off but it is ok to go about life just making six figures. Some people work harder than me for half of my salary.

> What I had to say to you, moreover, would not take long, to wit: Practice any art, music, singing, dancing, acting, drawing, painting, sculpting, poetry, fiction, essays, reportage, no matter how well or badly, not to get money and fame, but to experience becoming, to find out what’s inside you, to make your soul grow.

I want to add to it that it doesn't matter where you find space for it – if your day job is 'boring', as in not giving you an opportunity for self actualization, you can find space for it in relationships and in hobbies, in sport and in art.

   failing != never succeeding

   failing => succeeding

Do good work, work that pays, that you're good at, that you can be proud of. Then go home. Switch off, and enjoy your hobbies. Learn an instrument, get good at cooking exotic foods, and find a workout routine you enjoy.

If you want to indulge your big ideas, read voraciously, and code up side-projects. Write a blog, or a book, or something like that. But don't try to make money from it. Betting your livelihood on your ideas puts too much pressure on, and you won't be happy. Most entrepreneurs aren't happy, not even the wealthy ones.

Advocating for a resigned alienation from one's work is advocating for living one's life for other people.

I don't buy it.

This is like having children: nobody would say they regret it even if they do and when pressed they will rationalize with a mental gymnastic the flexibility of which would be a yogi to shame.

I recommend finding a good work-life balance. Good work is a part of that. Working hard a good job with good coworkers is very rewarding. But putting all your eggs in the basket of your job is not.

This is what I've observed, anyway.

Do good work. But if not switch off, and if you are young, it might be better to get another boring job. There is so much distraction, huge marketing machines pumping out ads manipulating our psyche and FOMO inducing content on Instagram. People could easily focus on a second job and be forced to avoid all this.

I wonder if there are software engineers doing 2 boring jobs.

Framing that initial creative energy as "entrepreneurial" is a trap, and I see parallels in talk of the "growth mindset". The professionalisation and exploitation of the things that bring you joy, the mantra to "do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life", it all sets you on a path. You have to understand that that path is invariably _away_ from the thing you love. Remember the first time you played with a computer? The first time you wrote code, however dumb? Did you dream of one day working on enterprise middleware or whatever back then? The world demands that we put away childish things, and let's be honest, society benefits from us being productive adults.

But if something brings you joy, I think you should guard it extremely jealously. Separate it from your livelihood. If you want to go change the world, if you feel you have a mission, then fine, pursue it. But it's very rare that you'll still be sprinting when you cross the finish line.

I decided then what should be my guiding principle: build things, and don't become mainly a consumer of things.

That's very vague on purpose: "build things" can refer to writing, photography, build gizmos with electronics, inventing cocktails, woodworking, games theorycrafting, repairing broken stuff, and obviously developing things (that's my profession). Those have all been hobby of mine at some point, ranging from a few months to several years. I generally loose interest once I've learned enough or feel like it's starting to get repetitive or there is no way to progress without being a professional. And that's okay, those are hobbies.

Not being main a consumer doesn't mean never playing games, watching shows or socializing, but it does mean I'd rather not spend all my time on those. If I find myself spending too much time on those, I try to kick myself in the butt to build something instead.

Another decision was that I wanted to be my main job to be for societal good, and not a meaningless or morally questionable job. That means, for me, no banking, defense, ads at least. Despite not wanting to create a company, I ended up creating one (luckily when I was younger and had more energy and free time). Nowadays, I consider myself a regular employee with a weird "founder" status. This leaves me enough time to engage with whatever building I fancy at the moment.

As a consequence of those choices, there are a few things I had to make peace with: I'm never going to be really rich, I will stay firmly in the middle class (dev is a good position, but doesn't pay as much as in the states here). I will never be famous, I won't become an entrepreneur or businessman. Frankly, it's really okay: I don't want the stress associated with those, I'd rather have a happy life I can enjoy.

I feel that consumerism is a big and seductive trap that too many fall into, and it is quite easy to unknowingly fall way in.

There is nothing wrong with finding a state of being that is comfortable for you right now. Maybe this is what you need, right now. There is nothing that says this is how it will be from now on. You might quit and start something in 5 years, you might not. You might enjoy side projects or other creative endeavors alongside your job.

What you probably don’t want to lose is that creativity, that excitement. Again, that doesn’t need to look like a successful startup. It could look like a fun side project, a community effort you’re involved in, whatever. The point is, and I think this is a big realization for me from the past year (but what do I know I’m not even 30) is that you don’t need to put all your eggs in the job basket. It doesn’t need to be your primary creative outlet. I’m fact, it might be better if it isn’t tied to your livelihood.

Sorry if I’m way off the mark from where your head is at, but I hope thoughts like this are what you’re looking for. If not, my b!

I'm 28, and genuinely feel angry about the anti-corporate "the system is for losers, follow your passion" shit that was shoved down our throat as teenagers and young adults.

It's not a recipe for anything except burnout and depression. Staking your ego on being the "guy who knows a lot about technology/concept x" is even worse.

Stick with your job, and make sure to keep time for your wife (or husband) and kids. You won't regret it.

> the anti-corporate "the system is for losers, follow your passion" shit that was shoved down our throat as teenagers and young adults.

My experience is that I'm not doing something I love (to some degree), that's what leads to burnout and depression. I know from some experience.

And if I'm not also taking risks, I also become depressed and burnt out; I feel stagnated. Taking risks and failing is just much harder than it seems in the romantic stories, and certainly I need to moderate it to meet my tolerance for risk and failure, and I work hard to grow that tolerance and resiliance so that I can do more. Certainly you shouldn't stake your ego on its success - IME a sure way to make it unbearable - but in the effort, in doing the best you can, and in your growth. Risk is scary and failure hurts, but they are living, and I would miss a big part of the experience if I avoided them. There's no other way to grow, to learn about myself: what I love, what I don't, what I do well and don't; what suits me and doesn't. Also essential to the learning is not blaming others for my choices and their consequences - that is depression and, in a sense, burnout.

We need to each find what suits us. I'll just say that ironically, the parent is a bitter and burnt-out comment. Is the path of avoiding risk actually safe from that? IME, there is no easy path through.

> make sure to keep time for your wife (or husband) and kids

Agreed! Hopefully, that is a primary passion for anyone.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I run two actual, profitable businesses and aren't advocating for complete risk avoidance.

I'm criticising specifically the "I kind of enjoy playing the guitar, therefore music is my passion, therefore I must study music and get a job as a musician and if I get a regular day job and start a family then I've failed" attitude that's shoved down young people's throats.

Where do you see that message? People of that age that I know don't seem to think it. One person quit their engineering job and went to art school, but had no illusions. They found a steady, corporate day job using their art skills and setup their studio at home. Someone else has always loved playing bass and music, and quit their programming job to give it a try. Again, no illusions, but they are at least going to give it their all. I really admire that.

I feel you on this, although I'm less angry and more feel silly for falling for it. That said, there was some healing that I experienced in my adventures as a young rebel.

I get where you're coming from, but I think the fact that this take is at all interested says more about our culture than anything else.

I'm not an anthropologist, but I'd be very surprised if there were many cultures that told their kids to do more than "get married, have kids, spend your time doing something of value to your tribe/village/country".

Most free, advanced countries say more. A common theory is that it's a matter of safety - look up Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. Much of the world for most of history felt very insecure, with food and survival at risk, and couldn't fulfill their 'higher' needs. And that might explain why, in these insecure times, we see (IME) many preaching the more basic needs and against the higher ones.

I'm not so sure. Europe is pretty conservative, and people tend to play it safe. Japan is obviously even more so.

US is probably unique in its pushing the young to follow their dreams. This probably comes from its singular history - not so long ago, millions of regular American were starting successful ventures from scratch - whether it were farms in the wilderness of the West, or small businesses in towns. That was quite unique time and place in world's history, when the common man had actualy some agency and could conceivably start something from scratch with a good change of success. Meanwhile, Europe and the rest of the world was already mature, overcrowded and calcified, with little room for organic growth. Now, in XXI century, America in terms of opportunities is becoming more similar to rest of the world than to XIX century's past self - but the values and attitudes have not caught up to that yet.

How does encouraging people to find passions and live them communicate that they are beneath some median path? It tells them they are valuable, and that their passion is important.

Most people will end up with an ordinary life (the "median path") - you simply can't have say a hundred million extraordinary people in a nation of 300m. Unfortunately, with the current programming which shows being average/ordinary as something lesser, a lot of them are going to end up seriously bummed out by where they end up in life.

Does it?

>and that their passion is important.

Yes, but this is the point. Whatever passion young students have is unlikely to propel them through life and satisfy them.

What is that based on? I think it's quite the opposite: With some flexibility and creativity, you can make your life about something you're passionate about. I have little doubt about it.

I've had a few cushy jobs that would have set me for life with good money and work life balance, and I quit them because I was bored af and felt like I was wasting my life. I don't regret it at all, but I'm definitely "behind" lots of my peers who have been happy to settle. If you can find fulfillment in a "boring" life, do it. To some extend it's miserable always looking for more. But it's also exciting and I personally wouldn't want to "settle" and would be miserable if I did. As I say, i don't think it's really a decision, it will depend on who you are and what you prioritize.

Another song from the 1970's comes to mind, The Pretender:

Jackson Browne - Soundstage 1976 - The Pretender

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayOOKrynixQ

May 2021 last year:

Jackson Browne "The Pretender" (Live from Home)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jf-rrgiKwCE

this one with full text lyrics ending with the final verse:

>I'm going to be a happy idiot

>And struggle for the legal tender

>Where the ads take aim and lay their claim

>To the heart and the soul of the spender

>And believe in whatever may lie

>In those things that money can buy

>Though true love could have been a contender

....and if you can't figure out what to do in the river, that's fine too. Doesn't make a difference to the river!

Literally the most important thing you can do in life is find that balance that works for you. Being an entrepreneur isn’t for everyone and there’s no shame in that.

Maybe take a step back and think “what would I regret not doing when I’m 30?” It might be start a family, travel the world, write a book. Or it might be start a business. But don’t push yourself into that direction just because someone said you can/should do it.

For me, it was not fulfilling to be shut out of the private equity markets because I made too little as a wage slave. It was not fulfilling for me to not have the choice of hopping out to month long festivals, because I was merely earning UP TO 2 weeks of time off, or the unlimited vacation policy was just 2 weeks of time because the expectations from the manager were the same.

For others, wage work subsidizing some local recreational activities and eventual downpayment on a home is enough. Thats perfectly fine.

So for you, relationships are fulfilling, and maybe creativity is. But maybe wage work is too. In your situation, I would at least be prioritizing finding out (maybe by making a post like this as a start). But its better for me to know, than to not know. and I will do that at the expense of personal and professional relationships if a choice needed to be made.

One thing to know about both the entrepreneurial and creative side, is that the people you are inspired by always had a choice. They did not need a job to exchange time for food and shelter. Failure would not impact their life. Whereas for people reliant on wage-based professional attainment, the stakes are much higher and its not just a casual decision or path to take. If you fail at the entrepreneurial pursuit, you might actually be reliant on the wage work for the next decade - hoping - that nothing goes wrong to make you further reliant. Whereas the "fun" entrepreneurs have a survivorship bias in their favor because they can try and try and try again, in quick and simultaneous succession.

Usually not just a single thing, but if you go to some main ones its easy to get caught up in a string of things with other people that think its normal to keep going.

Art Basel in Miami last December was 1 week long, and surrounded by multiple other festivals. The energy stays there for some time, and next thing you know its New Years which has its own surge again.

Cannes Film Festivals is two weeks and goes right into the Monaco Grand Prix, and the opening parties in the party areas (St Tropez, Ibiza).

SXSW is the same way.

Oh, the seasonal Fashion Week's are actually the best example. NYFW goes into London Fashion Week, into Paris, into Milan. Then a month has definitely gone by. This happens in both February and in September.

There are a bunch of bullshit tech conferences if thats more your speed, just excuses to go to some cities with other people that want to party, or are kind of looking for deal flow, or are in sales at a big company. A lot of VC people wind up at those for their endless excuses to get on a stage and talk amongst themselves in a "fire side chat". You can invite them out more easily when you don't seem like someone that needs them.

Some entrepreneurial things worked out, some speculative things worked out, they're not mutually exclusive to me.

(When I do an entrepreneurial thing, I think of the shares I create as being part of my portfolio just like shares I bought from someone else. Its the same buy low, sell high mentality to me. Pocketing some/alot of the revenue is an option as well, if there is any revenue, ha.)

Also, turns out accredited investor status (and similar wealth thresholds for financial products) are "self-certifications", which is a euphemism for lying. Took me longer than it should have to catch on to that. The only exception being a Reg D 506(c) offerings, which require proof of accredited investor status. It also took me a while to understand that the consequence isn't on the individual, its on the person selling shares. And they want your money, they just need to check a box. The government says "you can check that box, if they say so". So, no sanction on them as long as they ask (for the most part), and you don't act like a poor person scrounging around for the money you said you had. Maybe one of those private investments hit, and never look back. Better than wasting 4-8 years of your life being paid in lottery tickets across a handful of companies, lottery tickets that have worse odds than the investors of the same company have purchased.

The second time was after some professional and speculative successes, and I realized that people expected me to be accredited. That was nice. So I “self certified” that I was accredited and got to participate in the rounds. No need to bother with extremely low float assets, although still an option.

All subsequent times I continued to self certify regardless of the economic reality, periodically it’s above the threshold in pure liquid assets, otherwise it was a stretch of the imagination and pure financial engineering. There are also much higher monetary thresholds like “qualified investor”. Everything higher is also a self certification. Its a dumb caste system so I have dumb solutions for it, its super effective. I took it waaay too seriously when I was younger, I just didn’t know the consequences and expected to be treated as a joke by super serious people, turns out nobody cares and capital games are all casual entertainment to the wealthy, show up if you’re interested, bring your own capital.

You still have to actually have the cash to invest. If you can’t come up with $25k minimum it’s going to be weird.

I signed up for some accredited investor sites after passing via the income rule and was kind of annoyed that it just causes people to call you who expect you to have $50k to invest like it’s pocket change.

Entrepreneurship can be extremely hard. Believe me. All the people who become successful in their 20s by starting a company is just a small fraction of whoever tried.

However entrepreneurial mindset is very applicable for most of the jobs and useful mindset in every aspect of ones life. Trial/error/retry, build-measure-learn like Lean, any Agile framework teaches the same: adapt to change. It doesn't matter if you are about to build an app or try out a new sport, you should always be open to adjust your strategy to approach things.

Don't be afraid of spending your 20's/30's in employment, whichever company, your brightest ideas will come later as you progress in life and career. You can still surround yourself with people who are wiser and more experienced regardless of your current occupation.

Take it from the guy who went on the risky route a few times - not worth it. I’m down a lot of money and divorced because of all that risk taking. (Risk taking is very taxing on marriages)

Boring is a lot more rewarding than people will have you believe. Don’t let others choose your path when they have no tangible investment in it.

When your friends win the entrepreneurial lottery, while you are still grinding to pay the mortgage in a dead end job, perhaps you would feel differently.

Our industry obsesses over successful entrepreneurs, and it's fine if that what you want to do, but don't let it blind you to everything else life has to offer.

It doesn't mean don't be an entrepreneur if that is something you find fulfilling. But don't do it because someone else told you that you should. As a piece of advice given in general to all people, it's flatly ridiculous.

When I was an entrepreneur, I was always afraid that going "back" to just being an employee would make me unhappy, make me lose "status" and respect from friends and family.

The truth is, that it's all bullshit. I don't care about status anymore. I learned that the most important thing for me is freedom (financial and geographic) and spending time with people I love.

That doesn't mean I don't want to work on interesting projects and maybe some time in the future have a small impact somehwere. It just means that it's not the most important thing for me anymore.

Do what you want, not what other people tell you to do, but sooner you realize the reality the less energy you will waste on things you can't change. Same goes for success stories if billionaries, for each of these there are thousands and thousands failures which are not promoted in media. You can do whatever you want but statistically odds are against you acomplishing something great.

Btw. I was living in China which was definitely not boring country, but that craziness and excitement and constant changes can be manageable only for so long, before you get tired of them and before I left I was saying boring is good, can't wait to be back in boring Europe. I'm glad to be back in boring Europe, which is changing slowly compared to rapid changes in China. What changes in China in 1 year takes in Europe at least 5 years.

All in all I'm employed at a boring and excellent technical job right now that, afaik, doesn't do anyone any harm (not even indirectly), and I'm totally happy with that. I'm also not wealthy and I certainly don't have the money to retire anytime soon, so, pluses and minuses.

When I was in college I was pretty entrepreneurial. Since graduating and starting my career over the past few years, I've built a good foundation for myself (getting my own place, saving money, and growing in my career in a way that's complementary to my personal interests), and I'm now ramping back up to the levels of thinking and dreaming that I used to do (if not moreso).

Edit: relating to your mention of the importance of relationships, note that you need to make connections with people that do the things you're interested in and keep your mind oriented towards that. I have entrepreneurial and creative friends. You have your mentor. You might benefit from meeting people that are closer to you in terms of how far along they are on the path towards what you're interested in - people to grow with and mutually inspire and encourage.

You don't have to do any of the above. It's your life. But if you are happy where you are at now, that's cool. If you feel ready later to chase the sun, go for it.

Just do what you enjoy doing, what makes you curious, gives you energy, drives you forward. Sometimes this will be a project of passion, sometimes this will just laid back daily routine.

You’ll be able to go there one evening a week and do that hobby project around people from different walks of life, and you’ll keep that entrepreneurial attitude via discussions with people at startups, consultants, etc that are using the same space. You’ll avoid being “boring” professionally by encountering all the wonderful things other people work on.

Then do a hobby the other nights — go dancing, join a band, play board games, whatever.

- - - - -

Maybe I’m just incurably naive — but I still view myself as working on “big ideas”. But I’ve come to two conclusions:

1. I’m okay making my life about that — in a way a lot of people don’t want to.

2. I’m okay with that being a lot of time/effort/heartache — in a way that a lot of people choose to avoid, because it’s easily cost me 6 figures pursuing that, rather than a stable Big Co job.

I think what’s most important is to live the life you want to.

Congrats on starting your career. Something has motivated you to choose the present path, I bet it's nothing random and was rather thought out.

Having a good start at your present age is a big deal, not only this gives you confidence and security, but opens up future avenues to pursuit happiness - be it in relationships or enterpreneurship.

Doubts will stay no matter how successful people are in their past choices. Just give yourself time to work out your present stage - this is a product of your planning! At some point you will have your new look on yourself and your priorities. And just as before, you'll figure out another plan for the next path.

There may be a time you want to go back to startups but don’t do so in the interest of not being “boring”.

You've learned a bunch of things which feel very real to you. Makes sense to live in accordance with your hard earned lessons. (Which I think any reasonable person would assess and determine these are completely acceptable beliefs)

The same is true about your mentors and his beliefs. But he's him and you're you.

Personally: I'm an incredibly ambitious person but I've learned similar lessons as you and that ambitious energy has just found new paths to ground. Early 20s it was via work and social life (bars, parties etc), late 20s it was travel and hobbies, early 30s it's on psychological health and a partner to have kids with. I still work, but now only 6-8h/day. Then self care and dating.

> Most software is boring one-off applications in corporations, under-girding every imaginable facet of the global economy...

> It does not matter to the company that the reporting form is the world’s simplest CRUD app, it only matters that it either saves the company costs or generates additional revenue.

source: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2011/10/28/dont-call-yourself-a-pr...

I'd pick the option with the more compelling "why?" That's probably the most important question.

These are just your mentor's values, and your mentor's opinion on what is boring.

You are free to entirely ignore your mentor's opinions, and take the path that works best for you.

Please, don't let them guilt you into doing something that's not right for you. There are many, many interesting things to experience outside of entrepreneurship.

Big ideas are sometimes - perhaps even often - best realized inside big companies, with all the resources needed to make the desired impact. Your shift over to a big tech might be just what you need to make this a reality.

Your mentor wishes they weren’t boring.

Nearly everybody’s boring (myself included). Don’t sweat it.

Good observation. He is insecure about being "average". He's far from average, but has clearly risen to a place where he doesn't feel more successful/intelligent than his peers.

Whether boring is a bad thing is a matter of perspective.

Be what you want to be. Do what you want to do.

There is really no other option. You won't have the psychological energy to succeed any other way. Doing what someone else wants leads to a wasted life.

There is no such thing as "being boring." Boring is relative. Subjective. If you do what you want, you won't be boring to you, and that is all that matters.

The advice you've received, in this particular instance, is very toxic. Unless your mentor is saying: Don't do what is boring to you. Then, maybe it's valid.

https://softwaredoug.com/blog/2022/04/23/start-with-who.html

Claiming that being boring (as opposed to inflicting boredom) is a negative characteristic is like judging a scalpel on its ability to crush boulders.

In a technical sense one skill that can help realise these 'big daunting ideas' is to break the goals of a project into many 'micro-projects' that may seem more attainable in the short-term (ie. "I want to write some client/server application to do $X". Start by sketching out what APIs need to coexist in both sides, mock-up the business logic on paper, etcetera).

That mentor has an interesting definition of "boring". I agree about trying not to be boring, as so many in tech are boring, but that includes most entrepreneurial people in tech as well.

For me, being "boring" is about a lack of life exploration and participation. Meeting people, investing in relationships, trying new things, traveling, being part of communities, having interests, hobbies, being multi-dimensional, those are what make you fun and interesting, in my opinion, they are also what life is all about.

Sometimes it's hard to be interesting if you're going ahead trying to build a company, single product, single mission, lots of hard work, but it's always the same work, single track, single goal, that's very one dimensional. Because it's a lot of work and can be stressful, it's often all consuming, leaving no space for anything else. That means you can become quite a boring person.

Now sometimes the reward pays off, and after the grind you can expand yourself due to your new found money and connections, but some people just don't make it, or when they do they stay boring, they missed their good years, or they feel they're only good at business now and just repeat the same old same old on a new venture, but it's basically the same thing so they don't really experience new things or have anything more to talk about.

An alternative is to see work as a necessity of taking 40h to pay for all the other life exploration you want to afford. You can then be interesting outside of work, join clubs, travel, try new things, go out, meet people, even if online only, learn things, experiment, become multi-dimensional, have multiple things that define yourself, etc.

How any of this relates to your personal happiness and feeling of accomplishment and worth is only for you to figure out. Some people are happier being boring, and need traditional recognition to feel worthy, like being rich or traditionally successful at business for example. Others are happier focusing only on family. Others are happier being interesting, and having experienced many different things and constantly trying some more. And any combination of the above.

"People (myself included) are very limited and imperfect. The body requires a lot of maintenance and has limited energy. Money is really nice."

I used to really push myself with a million projects, coding and otherwise. But I was eating like crap and sitting down all day, and felt awful as a result. I can't live that sort of hyper-driven life if I'm going to exercise and eat right (which for me tends to mean time spent cooking).

Maybe you need a new mentor. Being boring has nothing to do with starting a business. Plenty of successful businesspeople are boring. Plenty of plain old working class stiffs are not boring.

As for the root of your question, do what you want. If that’s being “just” a developer, that’s fine. As long as whatever you do brings you joy, not much else matters.

I am working on another reinvention now and it will take a lot of time and a lot of work…. And I’ve still got some time and ability to work and a strong feeling of urgency because I don’t know how much I have left.

You’ll probably change intensities of focus on various things throughout life, I think we all do so don’t think there will just be one path and that’s it.

Anyway, yea, anything impactful usually takes time. I don’t know people who conquered the world overnight. Maybe you tried startups / big ideas and they didn’t pan out the way you imagined so you’re giving up on that a bit. If so you failed and learned what not to do that’s good - you tried. And in the end, trying lots of things keeps life not boring - especially when you « fail » and then try harder newly gained experience and hypothesis. Big ideas, relationships, hobbies - just try new things and don’t stay bored and I’m sure you’ll subconsciously guide yourself to where you need to be.

Boring is good. Boring is having a reasonable control over your live. Boring is being able to do the things you want, when you want (but within reason). Boring is having the control over my life to be able to do things other than work.

I have the time and freedom now to write and perform comedy, and I have started refereeing adult rugby games. Both of which give me great pleasure.

I think my point here is that you have to have some sort of boringness in your life (or perhaps, stability?) which allows the rest of you to be creative and exciting.

Most of all, I realized that I have a certain emotional capacity, including for stress, risk, failure, etc. - just like I have a physical capacity to how much I can carry, how fast I can run, etc. I need to work within that capacity, but still challenging myself, being careful not to use it as a limit or excuse. But at the same time, it's essential to life - to living it, to experiencing it - and I've worked seriously and very hard to grow it and strengthen it. (I think my peers have burnt out for precisely this reason - running out of capacity, most not even being conscious of it.) That has been transformational. There is nothing more important than understanding humanity an yourself on that level, IME. Probably the most fundamental suggestion I have is to love yourself (in a healthy way, and not to the exclusion of others); provide emotional support to yourself, because you are the one friend that is always there and has by far the most to give. Grow that inside you and you can love others much more, do much more, and experience the world much more and more intensely, before you reach your limits.

Second, I assumed (for my purposes) that there was no biological difference between myself and younger people, and then looked for other differences. Most of all, I noticed that younger people explore and try things, even when there seems to be no point. By epxloring - within limited time constraints, and more wisely choosing what directions to go - I've regained my edge and creativity. It wasn't that hard and reset my life.

The problem is what happens after you become boring. We gain a lot from exploration, risk, failure, learning, etc. without even realizing it, and those skills and benefits ebb away. You don't need to live a wild life to do it, but keep growing in a serious way. Many I know are aging but stopped growing and the difference is heart-breaking.

Creativity in living is not without its attendant difficulties, for peculiarity breeds contempt. And the unfortunate thing about being ahead of your time is that when people finally realize you were right, they’ll say it was obvious all along. You have two choices in your life; you can dissolve into the mainstream, or you can be distinct. To be distinct, you must be different. To be different, you must strive to be what no one else but you can be . . .”

There are other things in life worth investing your time and money, take the money and joy you get from work and apply it to other parts of your life.

This doesn't mean you will become stagnant or boring it means the opposite. So far you have only tried scaling yourself vertically (focused on your specialty) with the money and stability you have achieved you can now scale your self horizontally.

I love this way of putting it! Scaling myself horizontally, yes. But only into a handful of other verticals, I think. Or perhaps following some power law of investment.

Spend your energy on what makes you happy.

When it comes to work, I prioritise a high money/effort ratio. I get paid well at a megacorp but I work normal hours and take it pretty easy while working. That's not to say I'm lazy but I'm not crazy ambitious like some of my colleagues.

Entrepreneurship really needs a lot of time, risk and dedication, so it's not for me.

I also want to be creative but I do that outside of work. I have a lot of varied hobbies.

For me, I would build something. A certain thing. And I realized that it's easier to get a job and get paid doing that instead of building/buying a team. I can be a billionaire later, but I won't necessarily be able to do what I really want to do.

Another angle is that I won't have the energy to be a developer when I'm old, but I can always do (senior) management 20 years from now. The entrepreneur route locked me out of development; I was making some sketchy decisions like coding stuff instead of buying.

If you just want free time and family, go for it. Family can also be a limited period - many people don't want kids past a certain age and only want to see their kids grow up. You're not going to play blocks with your son when he's 25. After that, you can go and chase material stuff. Many new careers start at 50. A lot involve family. An option is semi-retiring at 25 and then really get into hustling and stuff at 50, once you have the resources, skills, and connections.

Financial freedom is often completely separate from your life goals, and not a subgoal. In fact, many people switch their goals and become boring because they focused too much on financial freedom. The trader who makes $100k per month hits financial freedom... do you think he'd do his childhood dream job as a janitor at Disney World? Most likely he'd aim for making $120k next month.

I would write, interview people for my YouTube channel, and finally learn to make great music. I would buy a house and throw parties where I'd dress up in wizard robes and read ancient Sumerian texts to my friends with incense burning over delicious offerings. I'd get people together to play summer camp games on the weekends. I'd help my siblings and cousins do whatever they want to accomplish and see the world. I'd volunteer. I'd get in great shape.

As someone who is 17, from my (perhaps naive) perspective, do you know if you will even be alive at 50? Or will you have the energy/health to make an impact? A family now is good and all, but putting off making - ideas, impact, change - sounds like a recipe for disaster.

This is because, in some ways, nothing ever changes. Ideas will inevitably be remixes. Impact will just be percentages, non-unique contributions to systems. Change is reversible (see e.g. US Supreme Court).

But having an important part in someone's life is non-fungible.

If you do have all these conditions, then go for it. But otherwise, it might be best to wait, as age doesn't really diminish them.

Also if you are raising kids, then the hedge is that you've probably raised multiple people who can bring the same impact or more. In many cultures, family companies like Samsung are quite common. Samsung did trading and only entered electronics when the founder was 50. But it was with Lee's children that Samsung became a major power.

When I'm bored, my mind is clear of any extracurricular thoughts or ideas, and I come up with creative solutions to the “problem” of being bored. One of my hobbies is distance running and it bores me. But almost all of my great ideas have come to me while running. I'm free from the weight and worries of the world

According to two studies detailed in Harvard Business Review, focusing on a mundane task allows your brain to “daydream” and ultimately boosts creativity and problem-solving afterward. Essentially, part of your subconscious mind will start working on things that have not been at the forefront. Your mind is literally reorganizing and optimizing its structure, creating new connections between neurons. [1]

When I've been banging my head against the wall trying to solve some technical problem, I go for a run and forget about my stresses and worries

If people perceive you as boring when you are fulfilled with life, in the words of the Dude, "That's just like their opinion man."

1. https://hbr.org/2014/09/the-creative-benefits-of-boredom

Reg. Boring: It's all going to come down to how YOU define it. Folks on HN (and life in general) is filled with people who can get fascinated and infinitely obsessed with things that most other people would find boring, and make a lot of money doing it.

I have my own small business, and am currently building a second. I'm thoroughly enjoying the technical, product and people challenges that come with it, even though the products themselves would likely make some people eyes glaze over. I don't have a sexy funded startup, I don't post walls of inspirational text on LinkedIn or go on Podcasts. No one really knows who I am. I'd say overall I'm pretty boring, and it's bloody great.

So perhaps the takeaway there is "Make sure you don't find yourself or what you do boring".

Reg. Entrepreneurial: This is the main issue I have with what he said tbh. What does that mean, especially these days? If it means going out on your own and starting you own business, I'd never disparage anyone from giving it a go, but it's definitely not the "smart" thing to do. Statistically you're going to be happier and wealthier by just having a well paid 9-5 job.

Either way, you've got plenty of time to figure out what it all means for you. Enjoy the journey :)

I'm in my late 30s and I find that energy ebbs and flows through life and career. Sometimes you are excited and energized and you can channel that for change. Other times you are down for whatever reason. Take care of your self, and learn how you do your best work.

If you managed to find a boring well-paying and low effort job then congratulation! You have just freed yourself from money while having enough focus left at the end of the day to pursue a creative interest.

Now is the time to start writing a novel, pick up hyperrealistic drawing, do some fancy cooking, start an indie movie, make a zen garden, etc.

The world is your oyster and you have all the time and confort you need to become the best in the world at something.

I needed a couple hours to think about what actually matters to me. If I get to the end of my life, which things will make me feel like it was well-lived?

I settled on two. My two may not be the same as your two, but you probably don't actually have a lot more than two.

I want to be absolutely as extraordinary as I can be at those two things, and I'm content to be forgettably mediocre to passably decent at everything else, if it means succeeding at those two things.

Granted, this is a new perspective for me, but I'm hopeful that this will help me own my decisions and let go of the stress of expectations.

If letting go of the things that don't matter to you strikes other people as insufferably "boring," but you feel you're living your life well, seek out other friends and mentors who will encourage you toward the goals that really matter to you.

Self-actualization is tricky to define but it's basically the process of identifying whatever comes to you most naturally or has a tendency to emerge organically from your life experiences, and then pursuing it more fully.

The benefit of this approach is that whatever it is you end up doing, you tend to do it better, with more commitment, more creativity, and more satisfaction than if you had done something else.

It might change over time and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. Other people may or may not like it. But in the end society's assessment of what you've done with your life is just noise compared to how you feel about it internally.

Listen to your thoughts... your unconscious, internal mental chatter. And if it's telling you to go a certain way, just do it, if it's the right call you'll probably end up doing something great, if it's the wrong one you will confirm that with experience and gain wisdom in the process.

Every decade or so you'll notice you're changing, you're not the same person. It's okay, it's part of life. Getting children for example will deeply change your perspective in life on what is important and what is frivolous society dreams.

As you're moving into a position of more stability, you might be wondering if this is it. And that's a normal thing to think about. The sudden feeling that a block falls into place demands whether or not this is a good thing after all. Shift your focus towards other things that may spark your interest. Working fast and hard is only a facet of modern life.

Do whatever makes you happy, or head in that direction and don't sweat the details. If however you feel you're headed in the wrong direction, then don't be afraid of bold moves. That's what never settling means; I don't think it means keep chasing your tail like wild pup. If one good thing falls into place, it's an opportunity to shift focus onto something else and try to excel there too.

You could independently pursue smaller ideas that would lead to a greater fulfillment in life.

That being said, you can be entrepreneurial within big tech companies & run pilots for self made projects (gmail was created this way).

To be happy as a person, your best bet is arbitrage. If you can figure out where your talents and training can make 1, 2, or 3 easier than they are for the average bear in the long term, (sometimes far easier), then you've alleviated the biggest burden and can spend more time on what you truly care about at that time. Alternatively, you can have the difficult part of your day-job also address something that you care about personally, and then you're meeting other emotional needs through work in a way that most people don't.

What do you mean arbitrage here tho?

My ideal situation would be to have paid off house, enough money for the kids private school - then spend my time building stuff I want to build irrespective of whether it's useful or not.

Some of these are small, some of these are big. It's easier to make money off the small stuff - they require less resources (time, money) and they either fail or start bringing in money early on.

I got to the point where some projects were able to make more money than I could make working and I used it to try to make a startup around some big ideas (raising money). That failed - and then I lost the revenue from the small stuff as well.

I spent the next years starting small projects bringing little revenue (enough to live on, but not developer salary level) and I coasted through BS jobs that pay well and don't require too much energy. I also relocated to a LCOL, low tax, good quality of life location.

I'm using the money from working to buy / build my dream house and I'm expecting I'll need 2-3 more years of developer salary income to get to the point where I have a paid-off house and enough money in the bank to be safe.

At that point, I think I won't bother anymore with the high paid BS jobs and just try to grow my revenue by building small stuff I care about. Once I have enough passive revenues to be comfortable, I'll start looking into the big hard ideas.

Something I've been doing for the last 10 years is to note every business / tech idea I have and prioritise them according to various parameters. In that way, whenever I have time for another side project I can pick a small idea and start working on it. It worked pretty well and it's fun to see old ideas coming back to life (or see someone else in the market bringing them to life) and notice patterns in your ideas.

If you're required to work in order to live, you're missing out on a certain degree of freedom. Building your own project allow you to minimise or delegate that always-on responsibility and give you more choices with what you're going to do with your life.

Your cushy job may be golden handcuffs but it's still handcuffs.

....so now the 'trick' is to be blending both into something that stays interesting (to at least me), but also not requiring me to bend into unnatural shapes to maintain, with any new place I go. In my case that makes me very ideal for startups heading into their first stages of organizational maturity (they want to stop operating from the proverbial seat of pants and start scaling some kind of process).

You can't get bored when you're always too busy or tired.

The opposite may mean you're dead, just like the Benjamin Franklin quote:

"Some people die at 25 and aren't buried until 75."

- Career-wise*, work with good people on something important, maybe switch it up every 3-5 years. That is under your control and steady. Professionally, daily wins/losses, keeping up with joneses, etc. don't matter when you can point to these. Likewise, your trajectory is largely kept on lock by your peers as well. Skipping out on any of these causes problems like you're finding. Doing lots of tiny things doesn't add up after a point, and instead distracts from getting anywhere on the good ones. Working with bad teams, bad companies, and bad projects make it hard to progress as well. So line up the basics and no longer a concern -- just progressing on the mission largely takes care of the rest.

- Same-but-different home-wise.

*This kind of advice doesn't apply to ultra-political orgs like FAANGS or say banks.

https://mcconnellsoftware.github.io/success-criteria-21-year...

Just do what makes you happy.

Be with people who you like and who like being with you.

In my case, it was important to balance having a job I enjoyed with a family life that left me plenty of time with children, and never to work at a job that I thought would embarrass my family.

YMMV, but the point is I never ended up in a position where I had worked 20 years and found no fulfillment, or burned me out, or left me divorced, or left me with children who didn’t want to hang around me.

Boring companies are what the world runs on. Your contributions at a boring company, even if not revolutionary, can still have a real impact on the lives of millions of people.

And as with any job, it’s important to consider the main reason most of us are working for a company at all: you need money to survive.

I think the big tech company salaries are an incredible gift we’ve been given in our industry, and we should enjoy them while we can. You never know when the job market might change or you might have health problems that prevent you from working.

Have easy days without challenges. Find the ratio that works for you.

I wouldn't abandon failure because it's unpleasant in the moment. "Boring" people, to me, are folks who fear failure. "Exciting" people are folks who find different ways to fail at stuff (that is, they very rarely fail at something for the same reason twice).

If you want to be "exciting", find stuff to fail at. Ideally you'll get better at those things over time, but honestly it's not really necessary if your goal is to experience excitement in your life.

What are you aiming for in life. Find someone like that to model.

It can take time working back from where you want to be in the future, you'll have a lot to learn, things you didnt consider will appear, other people may try to sidetrack you for their own reasons which can mean sacrifices.

Above all else try to plan ahead, maintaining physical fitness is good for the brain because the aging process will get you to some extent potentially making your job/aspirations harder.

The longer version, which might get you thinking a little more than the aphorism, is in the famous graduation speech by David Foster Wallace: "This is Water" [0] (you can also read a transcript [1]).

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PhhC_N6Bm_s

[1] https://fs.blog/david-foster-wallace-this-is-water/

It's pretty boring for other people if I were always at work (which is almost mandatory to succeed as an entrepreneur I guess).

I'm quite happy with my not super exciting but exciting enough work-from-home job: I can put my stuff down and go play with my kiddo once it's been enough for the day. Always around the same time, so people can depend on that and I can plan other cool stuff in my evenings and weekends pretty reliably.

No, I'm not traveling the world anymore, true...

What? I can't get the grocery store clerk to help me find wheat tortillas. How do you find a mentor? How does that relationship work? I am super curious.

You definitely could if you asked.

This was my calculus professor whom I then did undergrad research with (ML just before deep learning became the hotness; not my major).

I actively stayed in touch and developed the relationship, eventually working with him in multiple projects/startups.

There are many paths to develop this kind of relationship.

One thing I have read that I think makes a lot of sense is don't ask anyone to "mentor" you. Just grab coffee/lunch and ask them questions. When they give you something actionable, go away and act on it. Then come back having taken action before asking for more advice. Do this a couple dozen times and you now have a mentor.

Turns out that focusing on what's right in front of you and ignoring "big ideas" (which are often more practical for aesthetics and performative identity over material reality) actually frees you to pursue what you really want. By trying to worry too much about "big ideas" I was actually being lazy/anxious about doing the actual work to figure out the "interesting ideas" that I actually wanted to pursue, "bigness" be damned.

Often times, just writing your thoughts can clarify your thinking.

It's a bit like solving a bunch of math problems with paper and pen. You'll be surprised what you discover that way.

You won't necessarily always discover the answers you're looking for, but you'll find questions you want answered.

And that's a starting point for where to go next.

My mentor is also a friend. Not sure about my other friends and family. They all seem to love me and just want me to be happy.

> yourself

I'd like to create some things. Maybe businesses, maybe not. It's pretty great that I made it to where I am, though, especially given my background.

You still believe, and have proof, that just about any one human can achieve incredible things. You know this because you have some hero who forewent significant parts of their lives in exchange for the mere lottery ticket of succeeding in the thing you admire them for. Many just like them failed at that same shot, and we are left without much reverence for the invisible graveyard of the almost-Jobs, almost-Gandhis, almost-Curies, et. al.

If the world was set up with immense reward in mind for those who change it for (let's not quibble on definitions, but:) the better, maybe human superstructures would have a lower baked-in resistance to change. Maybe. But the meager quantity of right-tail prizes available mean that most would hardly sacrifice a little comfort, let alone the sum totality of their possible lives they could live, for what? A lance lofted at a windmill.

If you wanted to give up everything and chase your big ideas, which at a young age, or even long from now, or tomorrow, you could. You could, seriously. And because you're on this forum you're probablistically understand risk scenarios enough to gauge the odds of success in exchange for your massive sacrifice.

I think about this all the time, too. Your average person will hardly give up the tiniest comfort, but how could we judge them or ourselves for it? It's not nature's fault nor ours that this same selfishness is how we killed to eat for all these millennia.

Anyone with too firm of an answer to this whole riddle fancies themselves a hegemon.

> The forgivable hubris of one who outshines most of their peers intellectually while still in a small-pond environment?

Yes, but more than that--the loathing of a bright young mind for the dirty and low world he found himself in, not yet tempered by wisdom which says "seek beauty in all things; do not cry for the dawn, but enjoy the pleasures of the night".

Escapism is a powerful drug, and boy did I want to escape. And I did, but getting out was just a first step. Getting over took longer and needed more focus and patience than I had... And so many detours have been taken. Yet, here I am, capable and much more mature, if less eager. But my heart is larger and less full of spiders. I walk more gently.

In a hundred years, we will be transformed, I think, into a more fantastical world, to our eyes now, but the steps there will all be vain and grumbling... and no one will be able to appreciate it when kingdom come is here, because dirt will still get in everyone's fingernails, and nothing will ever be so good as advertised.

I'm content, I'm curious about life and death, and sleeping dreams. Waking dreams, too, are available but, I think, less within our grasp. I'll sleep now and pray for beautiful dreams.

You don’t have to take risks and financial sacrifices to be interesting. And being an entrepreneur isn’t the end all solution to happiness, no matter how many Steve Jobs movies they crank out.

You will find that most people are not at all content with their lives, so if you are, you are in a great position.

For now just enjoy the money, the relationships, take care of your body. You will need all of these when you go into your creative mid-life crisis bout.

Then just work and be happy. Why chase other's ideas of interesting? You know what's boring? Hollow shells living lives they don't want.

Weight training 3x week takes around 270 minutes. Add rowing / swimming 2-3 week for some 30 to 60 minutes. That's ~330 minutes a week, nothing.

Then you start taking into account that you hate physical exercise (I've tried group sport, gym, running, swimming, walking etc...) and you start treating it like a job and instead of being relaxing is another chore. So not only I'm doing something just for maintenance, but it feels like work (in my case, it is work) and while I'm sweating at the gym I'm not doing something I'm really interested in and after the supposedly beneficial exercise my mental energy is too depleted to do the things I really want to do.

I'm never been more miserable than when I exercise regularly: "nothing" you say, uh?

Exercise causes you to release endorphins - it's normal for people to feel better or experience positive effects after exercise.

Maybe it's the type of exercise. I would start by walking / light yoga and try to add up to it until you hate it.

We're animals, we're meant to move and your health will suffer if you don't.

Exercise is also a job to me.

I started doing this again today!

I have also enjoyed biking, but I don't feel very safe doing it in the city.

Also, hiking and group outdoor games. This requires effort to set up, so it will take some time before I can do this regularly.

If by this you mean make babies, maybe later.

I can illustrate this with an example. Having started my career shortly before the pandemic, I realized that it was pretty unlikely I'd be able to build out my network or get sufficient investment as the pandemic trudged on. The social and physiological factors mattered less, so I chose to double down on my job and skipped a bit of the social and physiological maintenance I could have been doing.

As a result, I got really good at my job and accelerated my career and made a ton of impact. I got my career into a place that I'd be comfortable coasting at for the time being. And now I have the time to focus on those other factors, now that people are out and about and these things are beginning to matter again.

Being entrepreneurial will mean different things throughout your life. Until you have a network and the resources and the skills necessary to start your own thing, you may want to spend time building those things up rather than starting something from the outset and learning everything the hardest way possible. In 2018, Harvard Business Review suggested the average age of the successful startup founder was 45,[1] and YC's Winter 2018 stats show that the average applicant/founder age was ~30.[2] So at least there's some indication that you have some time between now and then.

And there's nothing wrong with taking smaller steps towards your goal. If you're looking to build up experience, you can work at a startup or start an open source project or look for leadership experience. You can do creative things without it necessarily being immediately entrepreneurial.

tl;dr: take it easy, work on making yourself more ready for opportunities, and adjust how you balance your life based on the opportunities that are actually available to you and actually worth taking.

1: https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

2: https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/yc-winter-2018-stats/