As with engineering, it's all tradeoffs. It's important to keep your "economic, social, and physiological" factors in check, and it's important to keep growing and keep pushing your limits to become better at the things you're interested in; the most important thing to do is to keep those things in balance, and adjust that balance when opportunities arise.
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.
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/