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One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. I was an engineer, I made a comfortable salary, but I rarely took a vacation,

• herodoturtle 5y ago
  > I never traveled outside the UI Beautiful typo :-)
  • guhsnamih 5y ago
    And I outside the terminal!
• bhupy 5y ago
  > Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. Isn't there an in-between? My wife and I both delay a little bit of gratification with the expectation that we'll have a better life in our mid-30's or early 40's. In other words, we're choosing not to live the life we want to have right now, because we're trading that off for a potentially better life X years from now (where in our case, X = 5-10 years). X can be whatever you want, and it's up to individuals (or families) to decide that for themselves. But once you do, delayed gratification is an important social concept; as evidenced by the marshmallow test administered in children. For adults, "rejecting the marshmallow" can mean working a little harder in your '20s, so that you may get 2 marshmallows when you're in your '30s — which for a lot of people is important as that's the age when they have children.
  • tidydata 5y ago
    Having children means sharing your marshmallows. It’s also a lot easier to chase a kid in your 20s than your 30s. It’s also maturing, enjoyable, and spending time with them is the best part of the day. Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know). The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful. Spending the prime years of your life slaving to a computer is something I think a lot of people will regret. So, no, I won’t listen to PG. My most fulfilling work is being a dad.
    • bhupy 5y ago
      > Not something many people say about work! Maybe when the work is truly meaningful (I wouldn’t know). The vagueness of "work" in this article is (IMO) a feature, and not a bug. Raising your children can be great work, to your own point. You can't half-ass raising your kids, as you well know, and it sounds like you get the most purpose and fulfillment from doing that. What PG appears to be arguing is that, whether you're doing a "great" job of it depends on: 1) how hard you work on raising your kids, 2) your natural ability, and 3) effort — and I trust that you satisfy all 3 of those preconditions, as a dad. > The notion that people need to work through their 20s for this unknown future prize is silly and wasteful First of all, to call it an "unknown future prize" is a bit of a mischaracterization. If someone were to argue that one ought to spill their lives into their career with no well-defined end goal, then I'd agree that it's silly and wasteful. But if you actually have a clear view of what a desired end goal looks like (it could be anything: a house with a yard in the Bay Area, enough money to retire early, etc etc), it can be entirely reasonable to defer gratification. Keep in mind that in the experiment, the child knows that there's a second marshmallow coming if they wait. Adults need to know what their second marshmallow is before delaying the first one. Second of all, I don't think it's fair to make such a sweeping generalization for how other people ought to live their lives. The neat thing about PG's post is that it's sufficiently abstract that it can apply to anyone, regardless of what they consider "great work".
      • tidydata 5y ago
• MetaWhirledPeas 5y ago
  Did you read the whole essay? He writes about finding out what's important. That doesn't have to mean (and probably doesn't mean) some mindless job. He also talks about constantly re-evaluating what the correct time commitment is for the given work, and that it's not the same for everyone nor for every task. Bill Gates not taking a vacation day wasn't trying to communicate that we all should be this way; it was evidence of the fact that big success requires hard work. True he doesn't talk much about leisure and retirement, because that's not what this essay is about.
  • dgb23 5y ago
    Your resonse is valid and interesting, even moreso without the first sentence! I think one thing that could be added is that the metric of success is not necessarily monetary. Financial success often depends more on socioeconomic conditions, rather than hard work. But intrinsic satisfaction seems to be based on truly earned achievement.
• samstave 5y ago
  SAME exact experience. I wish I wouldnt have been so driven in my 20s/30s. I made many millions *for other people* -- and as luck would have it, I left several companies a month or so before big aquisitions. SI spent years as a consultant, where I was brought in to focus on a specific project and get-it-built - so I never got stock in those companies - just had a high paying hourly rate... which obviously life happens, and all the material bullshit I acquired meant nothing and is now all gone and I am pretty minimalist. I worked with a guy once who would work for six months, then take six month off to travel - every single year. That was a good model... Also, I became a manager WAY too early in my career - so I had to focus on people/people-skills, which actually took time away from me going deeper on some of my technical skills/creative interests.
• colanderman 5y ago
  I'd love to, but... All my friends are like this too. Time off from work is no fun when all your friends have glued themselves to a monitor. It's impossible to even convince my most sun-loving friends with secure jobs to take a beach day. I don't find meaning in traveling alone so... drown myself in work it is.
  • hughrr 5y ago
    Find some new friends. Seriously. I know that sounds hard but your friendship choices always end up aligning with your work as you get older and that's not healthy. Literally you work to the work calendar. Eventually you get to the point that the first calendar you look at is the work one every time. At that point you are owned. Been there. Was stuck in the rut for about 4 years. Meetup is a great place to do that. Just turn up at random events outside of your usual comfort zone outside of your usual calendar cycle. Amazing the variety of people out there who are interesting and friendly.
  • nineplay 5y ago
    Travel alone. Please. Everyone I know who has done it has found it worthwhile. It's easy to find dozens of excuses to avoid going into the unknown. Don't let them control you.
    • pwinnski 5y ago
      YES! I was terrified to do anything alone before my mid-life divorce, but now I realize that traveling alone is absolutely amazing. Seeing movies alone is fantastic. Doing things alone is a radically different experience than doing them with other people, and I love both, for different reasons.
  • nickd2001 5y ago
    This is genuinely sad. Is there nothing you can do to prise them away from their monitors? Maybe you need to find some new friends too?
  • goodpoint 5y ago
    > drown myself in work it is. This is physically unsustainable. Our bodies and our minds are not built to sit at a desk and work 60 ours a week. Ignore that and you'll get all sort of issue ranging from back pain to mental illness. We don't need lavish vacations in fancy places. We need to stretch every hour, go for a walk in the park every other day, some hours for cultural and social life every day.
• mjfl 5y ago
  Traveling the world is a life goal for shallow people. It is a shallow experience.
  • arbitrary_name 5y ago
    Perhaps you'd like to elaborate? I find the experience enormously enriching: learning new languages, making friends, gaining a new perspective. It's very valuable to me and I'd be curious to understand your position more, because right now it just comes across as sour grapes.
    • mjfl 5y ago
      You don’t read a book by reading the first 10 pages. You don’t learn a culture by visiting a place for a week. You don’t make real friends in a weekend. I’ve lived in Los Angeles for 4 years and I still feel like I don’t quite understand the culture here, feel like I haven’t quite experienced the city. I don’t understand how anyone could visit here on a vacation and think they’ve really “experienced” LA. This is even more true for foreign countries. There’s also something weird to me about going to a place with lots of poor people, “helping” them for a weekend, taking a picture, posting it on Instagram, leaving, and somehow getting a warm feeling from that. The common denominator is a shallowness- none of these experiences are as deep or meaningful as the people who do it claim to themselves and others.
      • pwinnski 5y ago
        You know that when people say they want to travel the world, that doesn't always mean they want to to pose briefly in instagram-hot tourist spots, right? One could make a case for breadth or depth when it comes to world travel, but so far you're not doing that, you're just sniffing dismissively at a stereotype. I'm a fan of spending weeks or months in a place, rather than days, but spending years in any one place necessarily means seeing far fewer places. Breadth vs depth.
      • asauce 5y ago
        I don't mean to come across as rude, but maybe the LA influencer culture has you jaded? I can guarantee that not everyone wants to travel the world just for some instagram photos. I do agree with some of your main points. You can't learn a culture in a week, and "helping" poor people for an instagram post is definitely problematic. However being exposed to the different types of cultures around the world can be extremely valuable and eye opening. The world is a beautiful place with lots of interesting places to explore.
• hughrr 5y ago
  Completely agree. I've seen a lot of people not make it to retirement or get utterly ruined before they get there and then live on scraps. I had a near miss on this front which turned me. I'm a lucky one. Also never listen to an ideolog. I haven't met one that isn't wrong yet.
• austenallred 5y ago
  > Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. It really depends on what you're working for. If your goal is retire in 50s that's pretty achievable without working terribly hard (for most engineers). If your goal is to be as good at soccer as Lionel Messi probably not so much. Define what your goals are really well, then you can figure out what level of work is required to get there, then decide if that's a sacrifice worth making to you or if you want to adjust your goals. Of course, there's some unknown in there, but if you don't want to be incredibly rich and change the world it doesn't take the same inputs.
• DantesKite 5y ago
  I understand what you mean by health problems, because I too have health problems that limit my ability to work and play the way I dreamed of. But Paul Graham never recommends mindlessly working on things that don't interest you for the sake of some imagined tomorrow. He even recommends not to do it: "...if you think there's something admirable about working too hard, get that idea out of your head. You're not merely getting worse results, but getting them because you're showing off — if not to other people, then to yourself." That's a strawman version of what Paul is suggesting. " Are you really interested in x, or do you want to work on it because you'll make a lot of money, or because other people will be impressed with you, or because your parents want you to?" "The best test of whether it's worthwhile to work on something is whether you find it interesting" "Working hard is not just a dial you turn up to 11. It's a complicated, dynamic system that has to be tuned just right at each point. You have to understand the shape of real work, see clearly what kind you're best suited for, aim as close to the true core of it as you can, accurately judge at each moment both what you're capable of and how you're doing, and put in as many hours each day as you can without harming the quality of the result. This network is too complicated to trick. But if you're consistently honest and clear-sighted, it will automatically assume an optimal shape, and you'll be productive in a way few people are." "It's good to go on vacation occasionally, but when I go on vacation, I like to learn new things. I wouldn't like just sitting on a beach." Listen to PG kids. Not some misinterpretation of what he's saying. But I hope you can find the peace you're searching for. I really do. I understand the agony of not being able to get what you want.
  • nineplay 5y ago
    FTA > One thing I know is that if you want to do great things, you'll have to work very hard This is such a narrow definition of "great things" that it is useless. Great things in PG's eyes maybe, but I hope no one's life goal is to impress him. > "I never took a day off in my twenties," he said. "Not one." That quote makes me sick to my stomach.
    • bhouser 5y ago
      I still think you're strawmanning the essay (and I'm sorry you didn't figure out sooner what you wanted to do with your life - that really sucks!). Bill Gates knew what he really wanted to do and what interested him so not taking a day off was probably a no-brainer. If you had been able to realize earlier that travelling the world was what you wanted to do, then you could have put all your efforts into making that happen. I think the essay is suggesting that merely working hard without enough of that effort spent on the directional problem won't yield the results you want, ultimately. So I think the suggestions here taken holistically are useful to a theoretical-younger version of you.
• forinti 5y ago
  A nice compromise would be to get a job in Europe. I know I wish I had done that when I was young.
• gentleman11 5y ago
  You can be unhireable in your 40s in tech. What do you do to face age discrimination later?
  • danlugo92 5y ago
    Freelance
    • gentleman11 5y ago
      Any tips for getting started with that? I found out about the up work etc sites but heard you should avoid them. Is that true?
      • freelance-ta 5y ago
        Up work sucks, don't waste your time. Start by moonlighting. I started by creating a one person llc and a business account, and moving over my expenses. Even before making money the fees are offset by tax writeoffs. My first client was a friend that wanted some help w/ his startup, then my first big client was a former employer. The first quarter you make money you start filing a 1040.
  • caymanjim 5y ago
    I've heard this trope for decades, but the only time I've seen it manifest is when the 40+ people haven't learned anything in 20 years. Are there people in their 40s who've kept their skills up and still aren't getting hired?
    • jcims 5y ago
      >Are there people in their 40s who've kept their skills up and still aren't getting hired? Those are my people and the answer, at least for my cohort, is an emphatic no. They are extremely mobile and move from job to job with relative ease.
      • themacguffinman 5y ago
• M277 5y ago
  Genuine question, what if you're too poor to live the life you want in your 20s?
  • pwinnski 5y ago
    Then your best bet is most likely to adjust your expectations. Otherwise there's a good chance you will never have enough to live the life you want until it's too late to enjoy it. Figure out how to live happily now, is my advice. You don't have to be rich to enjoy your life while you're young. Not every experience worth having is expensive!
    • M277 5y ago
      Sage advice, thank you so much. I have actually been trying to apply it in my life in everything (with success thankfully), but I hit a wall lately when it came to marriage and relationships in general. I admit that this isn't just a me thing though, it's actually something that most of the youth in my country face.
• asauce 5y ago
  PG briefly touches on it here, but one of the biggest factors on being able to consistently work hard is reward. PG mostly talks about intrinsic reward in this article. We should work on stuff that is interesting to us, and brings us fulfillment. However, I believe that Paul is missing a huge component here, and that is extrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward complements intrinsic reward. Extrinsic reward allows us to push through the hard, difficult work that we might not be interested in, because we know the work will be rewarded. It is the light at the end of the tunnel for difficult work. PG, and Bill Gates were able to work so hard because they had internal belief that there was an extrinsic reward for all the work they were doing. In a perfect world, we would all be completely self motivated to work on every task, but this just isn't realistic. Especially in today's working work. People like PG, and Bill Gates are able to fully credit intrinsic reward, but fail to mention that the extrinsic reward ($$) validated the hard, gritty work they put in.
  • steaknsteak 5y ago
    This is something I struggle with, as someone who worked really hard in school but has become less productive as a professional. In school there are well-defined deadlines and discrete tasks with extrinsic rewards in the form of grades. Even though the rewards were "fake" in a sense, people cared about them so I was motivated to earn those rewards, partially due to competitive drive. In my professional life, that motivation has all but disappeared for me. I already have the comfortable salary I hoped for, and individual achievements aren't directly rewarded with more money in the short. So what else is left as an extrinsic reward that can provide that drive on a daily basis? I haven't found the answer to that yet myself. Sometimes I feel like I've been given too much too soon and that's removed my hunger to work. That plus existing in a collaborative environment instead of a competitive one.
• Godel_unicode 5y ago
  Investing your time is just like any other kind of investment; you are taking a variety of risks which have a variety of rewards. Pick the ones which line up best with your preferred balance of risk tolerance and goals. Don't over index on high-consequence/low-likelyhood risks, but keep them in mind as part of your overall strategy.
  • lanstin 5y ago
    Time is what you are made of. Money is a number in a database. Your sentence makes no sense to me. You have no idea what will happen because you almost touched the butterfly in your garden, or struck up a conversation with a stranger at the cafe. Your life is just process, just pure flow. Each moment lives on its own.
• csomar 5y ago
  > when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels I think that's where you went wrong. The backpacking at hostels is the best (as long as you pick hostels and fellow travelers that do not look like your typical backpacker haha). The thing is, now that I'm 30, I feel it's probably out of fashion. But these nights I spent in big-city hostels had the most fun, stories and affairs. > Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth.
  • sbaildon 5y ago
    Certainly not out of fashion. I’m approaching 30, and I’ve spent 2 and a half years in and out of a hostel in London. Fantastic life experience
  • bradlys 5y ago
    > You can do both. The thing is, you can backpack 1 month per year and still work really HARD for 11 months of the year. 1 month is enough to visit 3-4 countries, and have 20 something night out. Over 15 years, that's over 300 night out. Way too much. And you still worked very hard for most of your youth. Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status. What you're thinking about doing over the period of 15 years, I've done in about the span of a year. Life is too short to spend it inside working. You won't get your youth back - once it's gone, it's gone.
    • csomar 5y ago
      > Wat. 300 nights over 15 years is way too much? That is utterly insane to me. That means on average, you only went out 1 night every 2 weeks. If you had kids, I'd understand but for someone in their youth - that is nearly shut-in status. I think we need to agree on what's a night out. If you come back at home around 3AM and sleep at 5AM; I find it hard that you can work the next morning and keep at it everyday. It's possible to do that at weekends, but then you probably have errands to run at that. A month in another country avoids any onshore errands and also brings adventure. Sure you can go out every-night for 1-2 hours at your local pub/coffee. But these hardly bring any adventure or novelty; they are just part of the routine and honestly now, I couldn't care less about them. They are forgettable events: irrelevant. I'd rather be doing interesting work, or just sit down in front of Netflix.
• RhodoGSA 5y ago
  He's got an audience that he is writting too. He's talking about building great things, not how to live a full and happy life. While working at Tesla, we definitely all built great things but that's all we did. I left, took a 70% paycut to start my own consulting business and work 4-5 hours a week while being a 'Digital Nomad'. I've never been happier and guess what, that nagging feeling of 'I'm not doing real work' or finding 'idleness distasteful' goes away when you don't feel like the whole team has a gun to your head.
  • tempson 5y ago
    Bingo. Author is writing for his audience. On one hand I don’t care how his followers are following his words. On the other hand, I’m concerned that few years down the road, these founders/leaders will end up imposing these expectations on their employers.
  • horns4lyfe 5y ago
    How many of those founders will actually do something great, and how many will do the supposedly “great work” of building something designed to siphon off as much of people’s money and attention as possible in the pursuit of getting rich?
• csharpminor 5y ago
  I think you and PG are actually in agreement on this: https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1404321931491430403 https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1404321931491430403 It depends on what your life goals are. If you want to travel the world, do that. If you have big ambitions™ then work hard. Either is OK. This essay is not a call for everyone to work hard, it is a guide for those who choose that path.
• mmcgaha 5y ago
  There is room in the world for all kinds of people. If you love going to work every day, do that. If you love making something great happen, do that. If you love backpacking around the world, do that. Only two rules: don't let anyone tell you that your choice is wrong and don't second guess the decisions that you made in the past.
• alfalfasprout 5y ago
  I have to echo this. I know HN is full of people obsessed with a very different lifestyle but frankly... I think this piece misses the mark entirely. PG I suspect and many others derive intrinsic happiness from the grind. From achievement. Yet this is a very myopic way to live that for the vast majority of people will result in a fair amount of unhappiness. A far healthier and happier way to live is to live a balanced life. Work efficiently when you need to work, and be focused on your objectives. Don't waste time on stuff that doesn't matter. You can still be successful, grow yourself, etc. but without killing yourself in the process. And for the love of god... take time for yourself to enjoy the finer things in life. Take a walk and try to find the beauty in things. Go travel somewhere new! Enjoy some you time and treat yourself. I cannot disagree more with PG here, sadly. But that's all it is... a disagreement. Everyone gets to choose what life they want to live.
  • megameter 5y ago
    I think on some level, barring the "stuck-in-bed depression" cases, we all work hard, but the work is nothing like a startup or a coding challenge. It's more often things like going on a walk and identifying the birds, going to the bar and getting better at telling stories or playing pool, seeing patterns in watching daily traffic or weather. Things you absolutely could go deep on, but just can't justify as "character building exercise" because they won't directly lead to you acquiring property or power. And that's where the alarm bells start to come in; if you get anxious about that, you can get stuck on the idea of work and cut yourself off from a balanced set of interests, and this hits young people especially hard because they don't know what the balance could look like, or they observe media(including HN) where the balance is clearly defined towards one extreme, think "I will become that" and treat it as a masochistic exercise. I believe this to be a deep affliction of the online world particularly since, without trying you can stumble into media containing the "best" of everything.
• sethammons 5y ago
  My brother in law said: I have two feet and they are working now, not sure about later. Quit his job, and my sister did the same. They sold their house and staring working at a wildlife refuge in Alaska in summers and traveling by camper in the lower 48 in winter.
• matwood 5y ago
  > One of my greatest regrets is how much time I wasted on 'work' in my 20s and 30s. In my 20s I was similar. A 'long' vacation was a long weekend in Vegas with friends. Fun, but not much of a vacation. I was fortunate to meet my wife in my early 30s who pushed me to slow down a bit and take at least 2 consecutive weeks off a year (sometimes even twice) in a time zone that made work near impossible. We've been to many places across Europe spending 3-4-5 days in a single location, which is long by American standards. > when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels There is a lot of room between staying in hostels and traveling in style. It's possible to travel relatively cheaply and still be comfortable. I know some hostels are nicer than others, but tbh nothing about staying in a hostel sounds vacation like to me. > Don't listen to PG, kids. Live the life you want to have now, not the life you think you'll want to have several decades out. It's hard to know. If I didn't work as hard in my 20s would I be in the position to take off 2-4 weeks/year since then? IDK. Hindsight and all that... Finally, I think the most important thing people can do is learn to enjoy the day to day. Even if you're working hard, learn to appreciate those fun moments with your co-workers or those moments with your dog when you come home. Not everything has to be about the big adventure. As I get older I'm learning to find happiness in all sorts of mundane things, even something as simple as sitting the backyard with the sun on my face.
  • maigret 5y ago
    In most countries in Europe everyone gets 5-6 weeks a year plus public holidays and often flexible days off. You don’t have to “work hard“, just work. I spent my twenties learning skills and working well but not too much. Could have gone a bit further in my career by working harder but not that much further. Looking back I think that was the right compromise. As developers we are fortunate to have a lot of choice for interesting and well paid jobs, so there should be space for an interesting life besides that.
• eloff 5y ago
  I feel like you could be talking about me. I'm 37, and I worked very hard through my twenties and thirties. I kept telling myself there was time to live later, when it accomplished my goal of starting a software company. That still hasn't worked out, although I haven't given up. > When I'm successful, when I'm stable, when I have the money to travel in style and not backpack around and stay at hostels. That's the exact line I've been telling myself. My wife and I want to travel for a couple years before we have kids (and it's getting to the point where we have to stop delaying that.) We've set a year from now as the hard deadline to start. Because otherwise we'll just keep pushing it back until we're too old to enjoy it or something happens and the dream becomes impossible.
• quickthrower2 5y ago
  I feel for you there as I’m sick myself in a way that means even working is a challenge. My suggestion for you and possibly advice for myself is if you can’t “travel” then move. For me I imagine working 2 years from New Zealand outside of a city, somewhere beautiful to be a cool thing to do. You need to travel to get there but then you can stay put for the most part, doing short trips when it suits. I think world trips are overrated. I did some backpacking in SE Asia and in some ways it feels like IKEA: a bunch of sheep following the same path around doing the same things trading money for a buzz. It’s interesting to see places but boring at the same time, everyone wants to “party” If I had the time again I’d trade those 3 months travelling for a year in NZ, Tasmania, some parts of Eastern Europe or US and very slowly travel while working remote. Really wish I could have had that idea planted in my head. Final thought: if you are a coder it can feel quite bad looking back on your years because most of the code you write has probably been replaced! So I cope with this by thinking of it like I am a gardener and most of my veggies have been eaten. So what? My work was useful and helped people.
• jelsisi 5y ago
  I feel incredibly grateful that as a 20 year old I get to read these comments.