I get that this is satire but could you expand on why people who want to be healthy + productive "have it wrong" (which I feel your satirical comment alludes to?)
You're "taking the piss" at people who value working hard/long hours, reading, trying to be successful financially, taking care of their health/fitness, cutting ties with loser friends (drug addicts? bums?)
Some people who push these values on social media care way more about the image of being a "successful person" than actually doing what it takes to achieve success (which rarely involves bragging about how hard you work on social media).
They're at best untrustworthy sources and at worst snakeoil salesmen.
Speaking of the latter there's a special brand of cognitive dissonance being shown here.
If there were some surefire way to be rich and happy, etc. in a very short period of time. A system so simple that anyone could follow it then why doesn't everyone?
If you really believe that these habits would make anyone successful then you have to explain why everyone isn't doing it.
And they convince others and themselves that it's because most people aren't willing to do what it takes. They won't sacrifice their comfort or friends or whatever to the point that it takes to be successful.
If you do all these things are still aren't rich and retired? Well it must mean you haven't sacrificed enough or worked hard enough or whatever!
The real answer is that none of these habits are a guarantee of success. Are they good ideas? Sure! Like for sure eat healthy, get enough sleep, read books, and work out.
Like everything though there are tradeoffs, often on your time, and moderation can be the key for most people. There are other inputs into your success and there's no one size fits all plan that works for everyone.
> Some people who push these values on social media care way more about the image of being a "successful person" than actually doing what it takes to achieve success (which rarely involves bragging about how hard you work on social media).
Devil's advocate but
you can measurably tell if you are financially successful (from working hard/long hours) and our healthy fitness wise (from going to the gym/eating clean/going for a run/etc.)
you can also measurably tell if you are in a good headspace from meditation/yoga/reading
I'm the first person to poop on people who "do it for the Gram" but...
Most people I know who post about being successful are the same people who wouldn't want their image hurt by being caught in a lie.
aka... they aren't really "fronting", they are really "about it" when it comes to living a "let's talk about it" lifestyle
It can be really hard to tell someone's career or life trajectory in the moment or even in 1, 2, or 5 years.
I'm 35 now so I have the benefit of hindsight looking back on the decisions different people my age have made and while I'd be the first to caution against potential bias in data I can say definitively that the people who were into FIRE or grindset or whatever before those terms even existed have ended up markedly worse off by their own definition of success than people who took more traditional routes.
There are exceptions, I know one person who made millions on cryptocurrency for example. But he's the one exception to the rule I can think of.
The rest ended up no better off than their peers who weren't out there posting every motivational quote on social media or eliminating their social lives to write and ebook about credit card reward points.
So was it worth it? I doubt it. The ROI seems to be negligible or even negative to me.
It turns out there was no shortcut to wealth and happiness after all.
Those paths are much more risky, a few make it big most don't. But that's the trade off people willingly make, a small shot at making it big, or living a normal upper middle class fully employed lifestyle.
The way I think about it is, if you are on a deserted island, but you have made a nice life for yourself, shelter, water, food.
Do you risk pulling it all down to make a raft to sail into the unknown searching for somewhere better.
May people stay put and justify their stagnant lifestyle by how they are slightly ahead of the people whos raft sunk and had to swim back and start over.
Those people are the movers the shakers of the world, they take in the risk for something more in life.
Every time you fail you are failing upwards, learning skills you didn't have before becoming stronger and building better rafts.
Sometimes, some people fail down too, and it damages them. If you think that all failure is 'failing up,' I'd suggest you haven't really failed, and have just experienced setbacks.
But that's never how it's sold - "do all these things and maybe increase your chance of becoming phenomenally successful by 1%".
Almost by definition a tiny percentage of people will ever be "phenomenally" successful. And the ones that do probably would do so with or without these sorts of "tips".
And most people that do then look back on their lives and point to certain things they did that sets them apart. Like an old person healthy at 100 saying they studiously avoided beans and that's the sole reason they're still fit and well.
That's not to say the advice isn't sound, maybe it is, but if it's advice based on N=1 I'm not about to change my lifestyle.
- Focused on getting passive income streams set up through real estate, stock investment, content creation, retail arbitrage, etc.
- Were particularly frugal with their money and avoided travel, parties, 'lifestyle creep', etc.
- Attempted to min/max their careers by switching jobs every 1.5 to 2 years and negotiating hard each time.
Are:
- Still not retired in their mid to late 30s.
- On track to retire in their early 50s.
- Slightly behind their peers in terms of career progression.
While those who joined big tech, worked hard, and let their equity compound are basically on pace to retire at the same age while also getting to spend their youth traveling, partying, and generally enjoying life.
Plus, I've found the people who were hyper focused on retiring early or achieving financial independence to be less happy and more self-critical about their financial decisions.
I believe that one reason for this is that FIRE, passive income, entrepreneurship, etc. attracts people who are looking for shortcuts.
This means that they are optimizing for the short term, which is counterproductive to success in any area of life.
Back in the 2010s we saw this with niche sites, ebooks, info products, etc.
It worked for some but it's probably safe to say that learning to code and getting a tech job would have had better ROI for most people who went down that route.
At the moment we are seeing this in the crypto space, where you have all these guys in their 20s who are "investing in crypto" (gambling) because they want a Lamborghini ASAP.
They would likely be better off learning to code and getting a tech job, but they can’t see it at the moment because they don’t have the perspective that comes with time.
> While those who joined big tech, worked hard, and let their equity compound are basically on pace to retire at the same age while also getting to spend their youth traveling, partying, and generally enjoying life.
I though joining big tech and riding raises and promotions is basically the mainstream way to FIRE these days? Side hustles are ridiculous small potatoes in comparison.
I think you have a somewhat distorted understanding of what FIRE means, or at least one that is different to my own understanding of the term.
I think of FIRE as essentially trying to optimise lifestyle and work in order to quickly reach a point where you don't need to work by paying attention to your income and expenses. This doesn't necessarily imply extreme frugality, and I think the mindset should actually make you more likely to go into big tech or the like because increasing income has a bigger impact than decreasing expenditure on for most people.
For sure there are people in the space who are trying to sell people on the idea that drinking coffee or not is the factor in when they will retire - but these people are fundamentally hucksters I think.
I've personally not done any of that and just became a home owner but it has only been possible from crypto investments in which I got extremely lucky. It had absolutely nothing to do with my tech career or how much extra work I do outside my 9-5.
If they built passive incomes, minmaxed their earnings and were financially frugal, they would have more income and less outgoing. How come they aren't financially retired by now - what went wrong with that plan?
>Plus, I've found the people who were hyper focused on retiring early or achieving financial independence to be less happy and more self-critical about their financial decisions.
I also wanted to comment on this.
What I have observed about FIRE folks is that they start optimizing everything for FIRE.
This isn't a healthy way to live, certainly not in the long run, and it's not like this goes away once they reach FIRE.
Here's an article where Mrs. Money Mustache shared how uncomfortable she was about her parents taking her and their son to the movies, then to an ice cream place.
It's really tempting to assuming the things you think are important are what actually result in success. Nobody sees all the possible lives they could have had.
Daily jogging seems like a healthy choice when you wheren’t hit by a car etc etc.
Add in all the actual lying and it's easy to get an incredibly distorted view of reality.
Avoiding jogging (in lieu of gaining obesity/any various degree of issues that come from lack of exercise) in fear of getting hit by a car seems irrational, wouldn't you agree?
You should strive for "perfect". If "perfect" is healthy and healthy means go for a run (with risks), you have to weigh it against the alternative (don't run, be unhealthy).
If you want to give useful advice it’s worth considering what might happen to those reading it not just your lucky history of avoiding problems. Avoiding jogging outside in favor of a treadmill is a net increase in safety without negative health impacts. Replacing it with an elliptical further reduces risks etc.
On the other hand if you want sell a lifestyle then treadmills etc are boring. Which is why a major reason so much popular advice is terrible.
> If you really believe that these habits would make anyone successful then you have to explain why everyone isn't doing it.
Everyone else isn't doing it, because it's really, really hard to stick to the habits.
Same reason why everyone else isn't walking with a ripped physique and six-pack. It's simple, just work out 3x a week and count your calories. Why isn't everyone shredded?
Nothing wrong with living a healthy lifestyle (healthy diet, working out, taking care of your mental health) and being ambitious about your career.
But these brofluencers (Andrew Tate being the latest one) just regurgitate and compound the same ol' to new levels. They mostly cater to young, impressionable, and desperate kids - promising that if you just follow these easy steps, then luck will come your way. And the whole hustle porn community fetishizes working every single waking hour ("the grind") doing something that everyone else is doing - your edge is to basically worker harder and cheaper than anyone else.
It's always the same "bro, just start a drop-shipping business for passive income, create your own brand of [saturated market item], also do [FX/Crypto/options] day trading. It's all about grinding, I promise bro - but first, buy my super alpha prestige mentoring package for $3k" spiel.
And if you're not driving a lambo, living in a mansion with your super model by the age of 30, you just didn't hustle and grind hard enough.
These communities tend to obsess over things like productivity - everything to save up space for the grind.
Valuing hard work, reading and trying to be financially successful is something completely unrelated to trying to do 18 hour work days, skimming several books a day, and running the hamster wheel off the peg and into the frying pan. Hard work is often what is required to be successful, but just mindlessly toiling away is not the key ingredient to success.
Also, what good is a friend who wouldn't come to your aid in the hardest of times?
I'd say you'll probably spend more money on medical bills I'd you were to work 18 hour days 5 days a week for any meaningful amount of time. Or one might be sorely mistaken about what constitutes 18 hour work days - does that include travel and eating time too?
That schedule seems untenable even in the fairly short run. If you really need to work 90-hour weeks, six days of fifteen hours (and just one day off in stead of two) feels much more like something you could keep up for at least a month, perhaps even more.
If nothing else, 18-hour workdays leave at the most five hours for sleep (and only one for everything else, like mealtimes and hygiene), so you'll be pretty damn bushed come Thursday and Friday. 15 hours of work would leave seven for sleep, and double your everything-else time to a luxurious two.
> 2. I wish I hadn't worked so hard.
>
> "This came from every male patient that I nursed. They missed their children's youth and their partner's companionship. Women also spoke of this regret, but as most were from an older generation, many of the female patients had not been breadwinners. All of the men I nursed deeply regretted spending so much of their lives on the treadmill of a work existence."
As an example, let's talk about the "I missed my children's youth". You imagine an alternative life where you would have spent more time with your children, most likely idealized. But in reality, maybe it wouldn't have been a better life. You did things when you weren't with your children, some of them good things or at least leading to good things, these would be lost in your alternate life. And is it that much a difference seeing your children 4 hours instead of 2, maybe it will just make you regret not having 6 hours, a problem is if you are framing your alternative life in the context of your real life.
You only have one life, you can't see alternate realities, you don't know which are the better ones. But one thing for sure, if you regret "not living true to yourself", rest assured, nothing is more true than the life you actually lived, it is in these alternate realities that you are not yourself.
Don't take advise from the dying, take advise from the living. If someone has decided to spend more time with his children and feels better now, it can be valuable advise, because it is real life, not a fiction.
Where I live, dads spend much more time with their kids than their dads ever did, thanks to a shifting culture.
I'll hear them nag occasionally about not being able to play enough golf (they're also very young dads, and that gets better with time). But I know them well and I do not feel a single one of them is miserable because they spend too much time with their kids - they are very deeply fulfilled.
I'm sure the opposite is still perfectly possible - men that would prefer a traditional model where they could focus their time in energy on work, while the woman or extended family takes care of the kids. But this is not what I'm observing around me, in my small universe.
You also may not believe in regret, but regret very much exists - it is a universal human emotion, of which deathbed regrets are a particular case. Projecting what we will think about our lives in our final moments is as old as the stoics, and a very valuable exercise for many people.
Indeed, maybe a dying man may never have had the makeup or propensities to live the alternative life he fantasises on his deathbed. But if you believe in free will at all, then their insight is no less valuable.
Maybe you don't but as everybody is caught in his own world it doesn't matter...
What this thought expresses in my opinion is: I wish I lived a more balanced life!
what everybody seems to miss as it does not fit in the grand dream beeing sold: chance is the largest part of being successful. you can tip the scales marginally by working hard, but in truth the most important part is just luck...
This list has been circulating forever, following the publication of the book, and I believe they should be called "top five very theoretical and after the fact and with no empirical evidence they are regrets and they would do something different if in the same position of the dying".
Now, think of those who like to eat until they are full, those 7k calorie meals. There are many such cases, especially in the United States. After such a large meal, which would frighten weaker stomachs, if they were asked, "Do you regret eating like that?" they would almost certainly say yes. But they would do it again tomorrow, some would say because they have a medical condition, others because they love to eat and don't mind having problems with walking, diabetes, and all the assorted ailments that go hand in hand with overeating, or alcohol, or any combination of the two.
In a moment of tremendous weakness, of fear of crossing the Acheron, when asked "do you regret working so hard?" even the laziest worker the world has ever seen, the anti-Stakanov, would say, "yes, I do, it's one of my biggest regrets."
Some of my friends did not continue studying after middle school and sometimes say, "I would have/should have continued studying," regardless of the fact that at that time they were not inclined to open a textbook even with a gun pointed at their head. But in their minds, if they had a chance to go back in time and armed with motivation that they did not have at the time, they would study, of course they would.
But they only like the idea, not the action. They are the same people. And it's the same for those five regrets, the "if I had $10 million, I would give $9.5 million to charity." But they don't have that $10 million.
>but could you expand on why people who want to be healthy + productive "have it wrong"
First, because both healthy and productive have long become a rat race.
In that sense, it's not about some e.g. obese person wanting to lose weight anymore, or about some lazy person wanting to get their act together and be more productive, but increasingly about an obsession with dieting and working out, or with working all the time to "make it" and hustling constantly.
Second, because for many those aren't even their own goals, just things instilled in them by influencers, productivity and health peddlers, the media, and co, as a substitute for a meaningful work and a balanced way of life.
Third, because even those dubious goals are often not followed anyway, instead people obsess with productivity and health "porn", todo systems, micro-managing their day (or meals), measurbating, and so on, as opposed to a simple, natural approach to those things.
But obviously, it's not that you have fun eating because you're unhealthy, it's that you're unhealthy because you eat stuff for enjoyment.
Similarly, being unproductive isn't fun in itself, but having fun means almost by definition not being productive. If a hobby is productive, it's not really a hobby.
The more interesting take to me is that to live a meaningful life, you probably want to do a lot of things that are not labeled "productive", and take paths that are not labelled as "healthy".
For most of us the core of our life doesn't fit into neat categories, and trying to throw away stuff that aren't "productive" wouldn't help.
Not who you're replying to, but the problem I see with productivity porn is that it completely ignores the luck involved in success. We all have agency, but some people will work more hours and take more ice baths than everyone else and still end up poor and irrelevant. Some people are better off realizing they don't have "it" and taking a more relaxed approach to life.
> doing them all at once to the detriment of the others.
a situation comes to mind
a father who has to ignore his wife + children because he's addicted to "the grind/hustle" of working 12+ hour days and traveling... so he can make money... for his wife + children
is there true net detriment in that case? i'm sure the wife + children appreciate the extra income?
> i'm sure the wife + children appreciate the extra income?
Probably appreciate the money and resent the guy. Also, the wife also probably wants a professional career for herself (or to pursue activities away from home and the kids) -- so old-fashioned of you to guess she will want to play the housewife.
The children would probably prefer a father who was available.
If this guy is ignoring them, as you put it, that marriage will probably not end well, and the family itself will be tested.
If the guy is going to spend 12 hours daily away from home working, then "hit the gym", read 5 books a day, then travel a lot for work, maybe he doesn't want a family; maybe he could just donate a portion of his money to random strangers.
It depends, there's obviously a happy medium between the two extremes. Optimising for family happiness, sure. Optimising for making money and expecting that to return family happiness, probably not.
I'm fine with these things insofar as they are factually in service to a substantial undertaking. The routine cannot be the undertaking, nor am I impressed by such a routine in search of an undertaking. The camera should only be on the routine, the 'secrets of success', rarely as a glimpse behind the scenes. As a rule, the camera should be on the worthy venture.
It's like people who spend so much time optimizing their perfect productivity system that it doesn't leave any time for doing the things. Their entire life is about managing the productivity system.
Talking about the work !== doing the work. 9 times out of 10 you're better off doing something, anything, than worrying about productivity. Go do stuff.
Doing every productivity hack and good habit in something like Ferris's Tools of Titans is literally a full time job if not more.
If you abandon your drug addict friends and bums that only shows that somebody with a stronger character wouldn't fear aquiring their attributes nor would aquire them.
I'm open for different opinions, but in my view, being more productive for its own sake is fundamentally misinformed. Being productive means being more efficient at producing output. To get there, you need to put effort into optimizing your process. This effort is only worth it if you know that you NEED more output, in order to reach some OTHER goal. More efficiency in of itself is a misaligned goal. It doesn't lead to happyness. In fact, it seems to me, most of those gurus, and their followers seem to be about boasting their productivity dick. It's like flaunting money: a status symbol that doesn't make you happy in of itself. If you're making honey because you think just simply having money will make you happy, you'll be leading a miserable life.
That's not what the article is about but it relates to what you said.
You're "taking the piss" at people who value working hard/long hours, reading, trying to be successful financially, taking care of their health/fitness, cutting ties with loser friends (drug addicts? bums?)