19 ms·

Be careful how you pay the bills

175 points by vitabenes 4y ago

adrianmsmith 4y ago
I think the fear of failure (of something we really care about) leads us to procrastinate and find diversions. I think "In order to do my passion X, I first need to do Y e.g. earn some money" is often just a distraction. The brain does this to us because if we don't do X we can continue to believe that we'll be successful at it if we do do it. Whereas if we do actually do it, we might fail, which will be hard to take. If you find yourself thinking in that direction, I think it's always better to just go ahead and do the X if at all possible. You'll fail, you'll learn, etc.
- throwk8s 4y ago
  > Whereas if we do actually do it, we might fail, which will be hard to take. It's hard to take because unless you've already got substantial financial security, you may end up broke, and may no longer have any readily available "for-the-money" job opportunities afterward.
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    Not OP but I read this as it’s hard for the ego to take. Even for bets that require little financial investment (i.e. digging deeper into physics) and occupy R&R time - failing can be hard to take. We like to believe we are the version of ourselves capable of doing anything. If you do nothing - you can die believing you wasted your potential. If you do something and fail to meet your own expectations, you can die knowing there wasn’t any potential there to waste.
    - allenu 4y ago
      This is so true. I think the fantasy that we have the capacity to do amazing things in our lives, but there's some external force stopping us, is a lovely, ego-saving one. I've always thought, I have some great ideas and if I'm ever able to take some time off, I can build something that will surely be successful. A few months ago, I decided that this is as good a time at any at striking out on my own, so I quit my job to pursue my own projects. With a few months under my belt, I'm realizing, wow it's not that easy. Doubt starts creeping in: Maybe I don't have what it takes. The fantasy I had is starting to crumble a little bit and I start to wonder, if I give up on this dream, what other fantasy can I fall back on when times are tough and I want to dream of a better future?
  - kitsunesoba 4y ago
    This is the big thing for me. I know full well that failure is not only possible but highly likely, and that the price is my financial safety net being expended. The ego hit isn't the problem, it's the resulting inability to pay bills. Thankfully I like my day job quite a lot so my strategy has been to try to drive down cost of living where reasonable and accumulate more padding than is actually necessary, so when I finally commit to doing my own thing I'll be able to fund multiple attempts, preferably with some downtime between each to prevent burnout. Success is still anything but guaranteed but I figure that my chances are better that way than if I were stressed and in a hurry trying to make things work before my bank account ran dry.
    - ModernMech 4y ago
      I feel like that’s reasonable, but I’ve never attempted it because I think I would do the same thing with money that I do with time; fritter it away until I get desperate enough to light a fire under my ass.
- mjr00 4y ago
  > I think the fear of failure (of something we really care about) leads us to procrastinate and find diversions. Absolutely, you see this all the time in creative fields. People want to believe they can be the next (insert their favorite musician/author/artist/etc here), and as long as they don't make a sincere attempt at it, the possibility will continue to exist. If only they had more money, or time! That's the only thing stopping them -- as long as it's not actually attempted, this thinking can't be disproven!
deleted 4y ago
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jacknews 4y ago
It's natural to work hard, in order to then spend time doing things you enjoy. But it's important to understand that to make a living at something, especially something like writing, you need to be good at it, not just enjoy it.
- BlargMcLarg 4y ago
  Software development is pretty much testament to the opposite, you can very much make a living being average or even below average. The passion industries are the ones requiring high amounts of dedication. For good reasons.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    The bar for many professions to earn a living (whatever that means exactly) is probably minimal competence--which may be easier for some in some professions than others in other professions. Then, as you say, "passion industries" probably require some combination of talent/hard work/luck no matter who you are to do more than scrape by--if that.
    - spoonjim 4y ago
      Minimum competence to earn a living as a basketball player is much higher than minimum competence required to earn a living as a software engineer.
      - ghaff 4y ago
        Tournament jobs is the general term. [1] It's also the case that some professions have a rather limited number of slots that offer someone a decent living of which professional sports leagues are a good example. Basically being the 300th best software developer (or engineer or chemist etc.) probably means you can get a pretty good job. Being the 300th best basketball player may mean you're a car salesman or teaching high school gym classes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory
f0e4c2f7 4y ago
I enjoyed the article and could relate to large parts. Check out Substack. Probably the most straightforward way for writers to make money today and you still own the content. Ghost.org is also interesting for creating a self hosted version. I think it's also good to have what you love at the core of what you do, but there may be other parts of the system / funnel that mostly serve to let you work on the thing you love (TikTok's, courses etc).
kneel 4y ago
Nat has a great podcast that he has recently restarted. https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com/ https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com/
sarchertech 4y ago
I followed the author's links to the course they got started with, and it's all just very self referential. Buy this course I'm selling. It will teach you to do the stuff I did to make this thing that I got you to pay me for.
- kritiko 4y ago
  Yes, he's very much in the educational product passive income space. At the end of the day most "gurus" doing this seem to fall into it and it gets a bit recursive. Ramit Sethi seems like an archetypical influencer here.
  - allenu 4y ago
    I've noticed this too in the indie hackers community. Some people look around and realize they're part of a gold rush and then realize it's more lucrative to sell shovels. The more shovels you sell, the more successful you become, and the more you self-promote your success.
- nathanvanfleet 4y ago
  I skimmed. 4-hour workweek some years ago (I downloaded it) and I realized that it was pretty meta. The thing you're reading is the thing he's "teaching" you to do. This whole article smacks of that. "Wow my passive income was just too effective." I'm not crying that he doesn't have time to write. It sounds like if he really had that time dedicated to writing he would churn out more self help block posts or booklets anyway. He doesn't seem to describe any other sort of writing that he does? Just navel gazing, tallying his passive income etc? I kind of wish he had no time at all to write.
  - indemnity 4y ago
    This is 99% of the "creator" economy. Making content for the 99% who haven't become successful content marketers yet. Super boring in my opinion, and exploitative to some extent.
- spelunker 4y ago
janandonly 4y ago
So this author is anxious about not being able to pay the bills. And this hinders him from pursuing his true calling, which is writing. Well, if I had a side gig that raked in $2000 per month steady then I would be a writer for sure. I would just not try to live in Manhattan. Problem of thought money solved.
- plainnoodles 4y ago
  The problem is that the author probably likes manhattan for various reasons that you can't just move outside of manhattan, like: - family nearby - friends nearby - as a consequence of the above two: support network is in manhattan - enjoying the local parks/scene/etc I grew up in <midwest plains city> and then moved to <rival midwest plains city> for a long while after college, eventually moving back to my home city because that's where all my family was. It was a hard move in both directions and all things considered, I didn't even move that far. In city B, I missed my family and the stuff there was to do in city A. But after moving back, I now miss a lot of the things we did in B. And I don't even consider myself to be someone to particularly likes leaving my house! Advice that tells people to "just move" is pretty shortsighted, I think. I really doubt OP moved to manhattan just to be able to be snooty about living in an expensive city, or something, which is honestly how I kind of read these kinds of advice - though it's probably not a very charitable read of your argument, for which I apologize.
  - buscoquadnary 4y ago
    Ah so now it's transformed from I want to be a writer to I want to be a writer in Manhattan specifically, and I'm sure there are a lot of other caveats. Do you want me to tell you about someone who really has a passion for writing. Brandon Sanderson, he loved writing so much that in college he got a job at a desk clerk at a hotel at night just so he could write more. He writes "novellas" on his flights for fun just because he can, during COVID he wrote 4 more novels just for funsies to deal with the anxiety. A lot of people say they have a passion what they have is an interest. Anyone who has a real honest to God burning passion is going to be doing it regardless of anything else just because they love it. Alot of people think they have a passion but really they just kind of like the idea doing something that seems easier.
Alex3917 4y ago
I totally get the point of wanting to write things that benefit others, or even society at large. But why aspire to earn your living from writing? That makes less sense to me. E.g. given the choice, I’d rather get paid for having written software than for writing software.
cortesoft 4y ago
> My ideal work life is to write about whatever I want, however I want, and be able to turn that into a comfortable living. I am always torn when I read something like this. On one hand, I want people to be able to pursue their passions. On the other hand, I know that it is impossible for the world to function if everyone got to only do what they want. This person wants to be able to earn a living doing whatever they want, but they also want to enjoy the benefits of other people doing things they don’t want to do. They want to be able to travel, but that requires other people to do a lot of labor they probably don’t want to do. The boarding agent, flight attendant, and pilots likely all don’t want to be doing what they are doing while he flies. The person who cleans the plane and loads the luggage aren’t doing what they want to be doing. This is going to apply for so much of what the author is going to expect from others to support his lifestyle of doing whatever he wants whenever he wants. He wants to write while other people grow his food, provide his infrastructure, the services he requires. In the end, I don’t think it is a healthy goal for people to expect to not have to do work that they don’t want to do. Sure, it might turn out that you can support yourself doing what you wanted to do anyway (although even then you will probably have to do a lot of stuff that isn’t what you want to do, too), but I don’t think you should expect it or define success in life as being able to do that.
- iglio 4y ago
  What you say is true and necessary today with the limited deployment of automation in the world. However, it needn’t be that way forever: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Commu...
  - _wqdq 4y ago
    I'm rather ambivalent about it all myself, but just in case anybody else is curious I've found Nihislist Communism [1] to be the most coherently argued critique of FALC (and other utopian Marxist ideologies). [1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-nihilist-communism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-nihi...
- jvalencia 4y ago
Damogran6 4y ago
Hopefully it just didn't make it far enough into the conversation, but your minimum income to survive should have $100-$300 a month in long term savings, so you're not forced to grind in your 70's. Can you make that Million dollar Idea and be independently wealthy for the rest of your life? Maybe, but hedge your bets.
meowzero 4y ago
It depends on the person, their stage in life, and many other factors why people do what they do. I went through something similar. I had to choose between chasing my passion or security. I chose security. Things get real when you get older, your body starts falling apart, you need to provide for family, etc. Even if you choose to follow your passions, the lure of security will come. The author gives an example of writers needing to write pulp novels, courses, copywriting, or any other boring stuff. And even if you do end up doing your passions and still live comfortably, is it really worth it? Would your passions become monotonous and cause you to seek other passions?
thenerdhead 4y ago
I've been inspired by Nat's journey for awhile. I always had the impression that he was doing quite well financially from all the self-help/teaching products, mobile apps, and SEO business he's built. I stopped following him when he got into crypto though. I don't quite understand the article's point if the money in crypto was "too good". Does that mean something crashed to the point of not being able to live sustainably off of? I wrote a little bit about this phenomena the article talks about of "distracted from distraction by distraction": https://jondouglas.dev/distracted-from-distraction-by-distraction/ https://jondouglas.dev/distracted-from-distraction-by-distra...
- 11101010001100 4y ago
  At least crypto helped you figure out that at the end of the day, it's just business.
andrewfromx 4y ago
"Jason needs to stop interrupting Sacks" very funny line.
- jasonmcalacanis 4y ago
  oh, hey
anewpersonality 4y ago
Interesting insight into the mindset of an internet hustler Does anything they do contribute to society?
sys_64738 4y ago
I thought this was going to be about the dangers of paying bills online. Clearly not.
GCA10 4y ago
Long-time writer here. Couple of thoughts. Yes, conjuring up the right words can be a b*tch, and it's so tempting to step away from the keyboard in favor of something that's simpler or more lucrative. But the magnet that keeps pulling me back -- and making it easier -- is this sense that people out there genuinely need the story or lessons that I'm trying to convey. Start with: Who's my audience? Then: What's my message? Then: Why do they need this? Get solid about all three of these, and a lot of good things happen. You'll press ahead with flawed but fixable first drafts. You'll come back and do the rewrite necessary to get it better. And when your confidence flags, you'll get revived by connecting with readers, friends, fans, etc. who want and need you to succeed. Writing may seem like a solo sport. In a lot of ways it is. But the more you can conjure up a community that cares, the stronger you'll be.
egypturnash 4y ago
So I got some bad news for you, dude. It sounds like you spent all this time not writing much, if at all. There's only one way to get better at a creative pursuit and that is to keep doing it. That means you're no closer to being good enough at writing to earn a living at it than you were when you started, never mind write anything "great". On the other hand it also sounds like you spent a lot of time learning to sell shit, and selling your stuff is an important part of making "creative work" worthwhile. The dude who draws "The Oatmeal" is a terrible artist, for instance, but his SEO skills sure have made him a lot of money with his bad drawings. So you might be able to make money selling shitty writing. Nobody will probably ever say "there goes a great writer" when you're about to die, though.
- enominezerum 4y ago
  The overall vibe I got from reading that post and a few more by Nate is "I found success, you can to, give me money to find out how." There are also quite a few posts arguing against typical financial wisdom. Things like "yea, I could have made some decent returns investing my money, but it permitted me to become who I am" and "you don't need a budget", which all just starts linking back to referral links and other things that make Nate money. The page about not needing a budget and that it eats into your productive time is extremely BS. Dude knows this, but it is something that will prey on financially illiterate people who are looking an excuse 'oh, this rich dude Nate said I didn't need a budget'. It also sucks because he then talks about automating credit card payments, if you don't have a budget and don't track your spending that is a HUGE recipe for disaster. Even some of this writings about wealth vs money, while thoughtful in how they convey the concepts, fail to account for other concerns. Pointing out that a job only pays you while you work, but something like real estate rental may generate wealth, ignores just how much more complication there is in the later. Which is my final complaint. I am not seeing the nitty gritty truth of just how much work is being put in in any of his writings. He touches on things briefly, but he doesn't really convey that there is a huge startup burden that is incredibly risky everytime you start something like building wealth.
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jll29 4y ago
> My ideal work life is to write about whatever I want, however I want, and be able to turn that into a comfortable living. It might be possible to find such a lifestyle; in fact, it is much easier than the other goal of the poster, namely to write something truly great. In fact, writing something truly great and writing to get a comfortable living may be contrarian goals.
readme 4y ago
Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here. It’s fun to drive up here in the Hollywood hills.
8bitsrule 4y ago
> I would care a lot though if you told me I never wrote anything great. That’s what I’m most afraid to fail at.... Sounds like he's always taking care of the bills from others but running away from the bills he owes himself. Giving writing a real shot might mean giving up running each day until after there are at least a hundred words on that day's blank page. (36,500 words of first draft each year.) Prime the pump every day.
borroka 4y ago
From the blog posts, it seems to me that he is not very keen on writing. I could be wrong. But when you start finding an excuse a day not to do what you theoretically think you should do, maybe the theory is wrong. Maybe he likes the idea of being a writer, but without being a writer. Also, writing means many things. There are a lot of books, think of business books, that are written because it is the most effective way to provide a certain kind of information to a wide audience. Watching a video seems like a waste of time before, during, and after. Reading a book, most of the time, even if the information in it is ridiculous and of poor quality, does not seem like a waste of time. And there is "writing" like, say, Hemingway, James Salter thought about writing. Are we talking about "writing" the way Salter intended it or about "presenting information in a book"? Does "I like to write" means "I like to provide information" or it means "I like to use the written word specifically to present ideas"? Rossellini, the famous director, said that he was not just a film director, but an artist and disseminator using whatever medium he thought was the most appropriate in order to show his ideas or his view of the world. I have almost stopped reading recent books. I find them formulaic, winking at the "mythical" audience and what they want, which most of the time is cheap entertainment. There is an author I liked, Adrian McKinty, who had written a series of books set in Belfast at the time of the Troubles. It was a joy to read them. They were erudite and had a great rhythm. But he found himself forced to become an Uber driver to pay the bills--the books were not selling. Then, with the support of Don Winslow and Winslow's agent, he was able to break through with a book, The Chain, which was so formulaic, poorly written and full of the adjectives and adverbs that make college-educated people drool, that I found it hard to recognize him as the same author of the series set in the Troubles era. It was very good for him and disappointing for me. I am now reading novels written between the 1930s and the 1960s, and although each decade has its sins, I sense that most authors were not that much concerned about their audience, were not corrupted by literary agents and book clubs, but wrote what they, and not others, wanted to write.
- CA0DA 4y ago
  What books from the 30s-60s would you recommend?
  - borroka 4y ago
darod 4y ago
This feels a little click bait-ish. The problem wasn't covering his bills or writing. The problem was as he got more successful, he didn't optimized for just writing, he optimized for a lifestyle. And when the income didn't sustain that new lifestyle (bigger city, fine dinners, etc etc), he created another "distraction" away from his original goal to cover that. Wants create needs.
65 4y ago
This guy isn't a writer. He's an entrepreneur. He wants to be a writer because it has a social aura to it, it's a sexy career. But that doesn't mean he has the true mindset of a writer. At the end of the day he thinks like an entrepreneur. He's already does what he should be doing. On a personal note, I went through this multiple times in my 20s. I desperately wanted to be a graphic designer because I love design and thought being a graphic designer would be a really cool career. But I don't think like a graphic designer, I think like a programmer. I don't have that specific kind of creativity. So while I appreciate graphic design, my true talents are in writing code.
- the_omegist 4y ago
  Very interesting thought. As someone who often tries to figure out how I can apply my "programmer's mindset" to other areas of my life : can you give more details on how a graphic designer (would/should) think(s) vs how a programmer does? More specifically : how were you thinking vs how you thought you should have thought?
  - 65 4y ago
    For graphic design, it's a lot about visual experimentation and presentation. With programming, it's engineering a functional solution. Both solve business problems. I guess it's the difference between the person who builds bridges and the person who paints bridges.
    - the_omegist 4y ago
      Thanks. The analogy at the end made it clearer ;)
honkycat 4y ago
I have few friends who bit the "the office job is death" thing hook, line, and sinker. Only... it didn't work out for them. They are in shittier careers barely making it work while I took the middle path and and quite comfortable. And my conclusion is: the 9-5 can be hard, but honestly I don't really mind it. At this point I'm good enough at the career and landed a role I'm a good fit for, it's really more of a 12-4 job for me. Not counting meetings. I'm not... hustling. I'm not being ground down. I'm just gliding. I have a good 401k. i make great money. I can work from home. I can take a break and read, and go for walks, and go running, and play guitar, and pet my cat, and cook lunch at home and get my dishes done. I don't really want to travel Asia. Maybe for a week or so. As someone who HAS traveled extensively: Meh! It is tiring! I like my house with my mad-scientist-lab looking office and all of my experiments and guitar pedals and things. Maybe it is perspective coming from a working class family. My father embalmed bodies and dug graves for a living. Very mediocre money, long hours, and not everyone's favorite job. What I do is easy compared to that.
woojoo666 4y ago
I liked the quote from Turning Pro [0] that was mentioned: > Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us I've unfortunately experienced first hand the tendency to fall back onto paths that are easy, low risk, and comfortable. [1]: https://www.nateliason.com/notes/turning-pro-stephen-pressfield https://www.nateliason.com/notes/turning-pro-stephen-pressfi...

175 points by vitabenes 4y ago

I think the fear of failure (of something we really care about) leads us to procrastinate and find diversions. I think "In order to do my passion X, I first need to do Y e.g. earn some money" is often just a distraction. The brain does this to us because if we don't do X we can continue to believe that we'll be successful at it if we do do it. Whereas if we do actually do it, we might fail, which will be hard to take. If you find yourself thinking in that direction, I think it's always better to just go ahead and do the X if at all possible. You'll fail, you'll learn, etc.

throwk8s 4y ago
> Whereas if we do actually do it, we might fail, which will be hard to take. It's hard to take because unless you've already got substantial financial security, you may end up broke, and may no longer have any readily available "for-the-money" job opportunities afterward.
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  Not OP but I read this as it’s hard for the ego to take. Even for bets that require little financial investment (i.e. digging deeper into physics) and occupy R&R time - failing can be hard to take. We like to believe we are the version of ourselves capable of doing anything. If you do nothing - you can die believing you wasted your potential. If you do something and fail to meet your own expectations, you can die knowing there wasn’t any potential there to waste.
  - allenu 4y ago
    This is so true. I think the fantasy that we have the capacity to do amazing things in our lives, but there's some external force stopping us, is a lovely, ego-saving one. I've always thought, I have some great ideas and if I'm ever able to take some time off, I can build something that will surely be successful. A few months ago, I decided that this is as good a time at any at striking out on my own, so I quit my job to pursue my own projects. With a few months under my belt, I'm realizing, wow it's not that easy. Doubt starts creeping in: Maybe I don't have what it takes. The fantasy I had is starting to crumble a little bit and I start to wonder, if I give up on this dream, what other fantasy can I fall back on when times are tough and I want to dream of a better future?
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  This is the big thing for me. I know full well that failure is not only possible but highly likely, and that the price is my financial safety net being expended. The ego hit isn't the problem, it's the resulting inability to pay bills. Thankfully I like my day job quite a lot so my strategy has been to try to drive down cost of living where reasonable and accumulate more padding than is actually necessary, so when I finally commit to doing my own thing I'll be able to fund multiple attempts, preferably with some downtime between each to prevent burnout. Success is still anything but guaranteed but I figure that my chances are better that way than if I were stressed and in a hurry trying to make things work before my bank account ran dry.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    I feel like that’s reasonable, but I’ve never attempted it because I think I would do the same thing with money that I do with time; fritter it away until I get desperate enough to light a fire under my ass.
mjr00 4y ago
> I think the fear of failure (of something we really care about) leads us to procrastinate and find diversions. Absolutely, you see this all the time in creative fields. People want to believe they can be the next (insert their favorite musician/author/artist/etc here), and as long as they don't make a sincere attempt at it, the possibility will continue to exist. If only they had more money, or time! That's the only thing stopping them -- as long as it's not actually attempted, this thinking can't be disproven!

deleted 4y ago

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jacknews 4y ago

It's natural to work hard, in order to then spend time doing things you enjoy. But it's important to understand that to make a living at something, especially something like writing, you need to be good at it, not just enjoy it.

BlargMcLarg 4y ago
Software development is pretty much testament to the opposite, you can very much make a living being average or even below average. The passion industries are the ones requiring high amounts of dedication. For good reasons.
- ghaff 4y ago
  The bar for many professions to earn a living (whatever that means exactly) is probably minimal competence--which may be easier for some in some professions than others in other professions. Then, as you say, "passion industries" probably require some combination of talent/hard work/luck no matter who you are to do more than scrape by--if that.
  - spoonjim 4y ago
    Minimum competence to earn a living as a basketball player is much higher than minimum competence required to earn a living as a software engineer.
    - ghaff 4y ago
      Tournament jobs is the general term. [1] It's also the case that some professions have a rather limited number of slots that offer someone a decent living of which professional sports leagues are a good example. Basically being the 300th best software developer (or engineer or chemist etc.) probably means you can get a pretty good job. Being the 300th best basketball player may mean you're a car salesman or teaching high school gym classes. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tournament_theory

f0e4c2f7 4y ago

I enjoyed the article and could relate to large parts. Check out Substack. Probably the most straightforward way for writers to make money today and you still own the content. Ghost.org is also interesting for creating a self hosted version. I think it's also good to have what you love at the core of what you do, but there may be other parts of the system / funnel that mostly serve to let you work on the thing you love (TikTok's, courses etc).

kneel 4y ago

Nat has a great podcast that he has recently restarted. https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com/ https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com/

sarchertech 4y ago

I followed the author's links to the course they got started with, and it's all just very self referential. Buy this course I'm selling. It will teach you to do the stuff I did to make this thing that I got you to pay me for.

kritiko 4y ago
Yes, he's very much in the educational product passive income space. At the end of the day most "gurus" doing this seem to fall into it and it gets a bit recursive. Ramit Sethi seems like an archetypical influencer here.
- allenu 4y ago
  I've noticed this too in the indie hackers community. Some people look around and realize they're part of a gold rush and then realize it's more lucrative to sell shovels. The more shovels you sell, the more successful you become, and the more you self-promote your success.
nathanvanfleet 4y ago
I skimmed. 4-hour workweek some years ago (I downloaded it) and I realized that it was pretty meta. The thing you're reading is the thing he's "teaching" you to do. This whole article smacks of that. "Wow my passive income was just too effective." I'm not crying that he doesn't have time to write. It sounds like if he really had that time dedicated to writing he would churn out more self help block posts or booklets anyway. He doesn't seem to describe any other sort of writing that he does? Just navel gazing, tallying his passive income etc? I kind of wish he had no time at all to write.
- indemnity 4y ago
  This is 99% of the "creator" economy. Making content for the 99% who haven't become successful content marketers yet. Super boring in my opinion, and exploitative to some extent.
spelunker 4y ago

janandonly 4y ago

So this author is anxious about not being able to pay the bills. And this hinders him from pursuing his true calling, which is writing. Well, if I had a side gig that raked in $2000 per month steady then I would be a writer for sure. I would just not try to live in Manhattan. Problem of thought money solved.

plainnoodles 4y ago
The problem is that the author probably likes manhattan for various reasons that you can't just move outside of manhattan, like: - family nearby - friends nearby - as a consequence of the above two: support network is in manhattan - enjoying the local parks/scene/etc I grew up in <midwest plains city> and then moved to <rival midwest plains city> for a long while after college, eventually moving back to my home city because that's where all my family was. It was a hard move in both directions and all things considered, I didn't even move that far. In city B, I missed my family and the stuff there was to do in city A. But after moving back, I now miss a lot of the things we did in B. And I don't even consider myself to be someone to particularly likes leaving my house! Advice that tells people to "just move" is pretty shortsighted, I think. I really doubt OP moved to manhattan just to be able to be snooty about living in an expensive city, or something, which is honestly how I kind of read these kinds of advice - though it's probably not a very charitable read of your argument, for which I apologize.
- buscoquadnary 4y ago
  Ah so now it's transformed from I want to be a writer to I want to be a writer in Manhattan specifically, and I'm sure there are a lot of other caveats. Do you want me to tell you about someone who really has a passion for writing. Brandon Sanderson, he loved writing so much that in college he got a job at a desk clerk at a hotel at night just so he could write more. He writes "novellas" on his flights for fun just because he can, during COVID he wrote 4 more novels just for funsies to deal with the anxiety. A lot of people say they have a passion what they have is an interest. Anyone who has a real honest to God burning passion is going to be doing it regardless of anything else just because they love it. Alot of people think they have a passion but really they just kind of like the idea doing something that seems easier.

Alex3917 4y ago

I totally get the point of wanting to write things that benefit others, or even society at large. But why aspire to earn your living from writing? That makes less sense to me. E.g. given the choice, I’d rather get paid for having written software than for writing software.

cortesoft 4y ago

> My ideal work life is to write about whatever I want, however I want, and be able to turn that into a comfortable living. I am always torn when I read something like this. On one hand, I want people to be able to pursue their passions. On the other hand, I know that it is impossible for the world to function if everyone got to only do what they want. This person wants to be able to earn a living doing whatever they want, but they also want to enjoy the benefits of other people doing things they don’t want to do. They want to be able to travel, but that requires other people to do a lot of labor they probably don’t want to do. The boarding agent, flight attendant, and pilots likely all don’t want to be doing what they are doing while he flies. The person who cleans the plane and loads the luggage aren’t doing what they want to be doing. This is going to apply for so much of what the author is going to expect from others to support his lifestyle of doing whatever he wants whenever he wants. He wants to write while other people grow his food, provide his infrastructure, the services he requires. In the end, I don’t think it is a healthy goal for people to expect to not have to do work that they don’t want to do. Sure, it might turn out that you can support yourself doing what you wanted to do anyway (although even then you will probably have to do a lot of stuff that isn’t what you want to do, too), but I don’t think you should expect it or define success in life as being able to do that.

iglio 4y ago
What you say is true and necessary today with the limited deployment of automation in the world. However, it needn’t be that way forever: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communism https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Commu...
- _wqdq 4y ago
  I'm rather ambivalent about it all myself, but just in case anybody else is curious I've found Nihislist Communism [1] to be the most coherently argued critique of FALC (and other utopian Marxist ideologies). [1] https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-nihilist-communism https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/monsieur-dupont-nihi...
jvalencia 4y ago

Damogran6 4y ago

Hopefully it just didn't make it far enough into the conversation, but your minimum income to survive should have $100-$300 a month in long term savings, so you're not forced to grind in your 70's. Can you make that Million dollar Idea and be independently wealthy for the rest of your life? Maybe, but hedge your bets.

meowzero 4y ago

It depends on the person, their stage in life, and many other factors why people do what they do. I went through something similar. I had to choose between chasing my passion or security. I chose security. Things get real when you get older, your body starts falling apart, you need to provide for family, etc. Even if you choose to follow your passions, the lure of security will come. The author gives an example of writers needing to write pulp novels, courses, copywriting, or any other boring stuff. And even if you do end up doing your passions and still live comfortably, is it really worth it? Would your passions become monotonous and cause you to seek other passions?

thenerdhead 4y ago

I've been inspired by Nat's journey for awhile. I always had the impression that he was doing quite well financially from all the self-help/teaching products, mobile apps, and SEO business he's built. I stopped following him when he got into crypto though. I don't quite understand the article's point if the money in crypto was "too good". Does that mean something crashed to the point of not being able to live sustainably off of? I wrote a little bit about this phenomena the article talks about of "distracted from distraction by distraction": https://jondouglas.dev/distracted-from-distraction-by-distraction/ https://jondouglas.dev/distracted-from-distraction-by-distra...

11101010001100 4y ago
At least crypto helped you figure out that at the end of the day, it's just business.

andrewfromx 4y ago

"Jason needs to stop interrupting Sacks" very funny line.

jasonmcalacanis 4y ago
oh, hey

anewpersonality 4y ago

Interesting insight into the mindset of an internet hustler Does anything they do contribute to society?

sys_64738 4y ago

I thought this was going to be about the dangers of paying bills online. Clearly not.

GCA10 4y ago

Long-time writer here. Couple of thoughts. Yes, conjuring up the right words can be a b*tch, and it's so tempting to step away from the keyboard in favor of something that's simpler or more lucrative. But the magnet that keeps pulling me back -- and making it easier -- is this sense that people out there genuinely need the story or lessons that I'm trying to convey. Start with: Who's my audience? Then: What's my message? Then: Why do they need this? Get solid about all three of these, and a lot of good things happen. You'll press ahead with flawed but fixable first drafts. You'll come back and do the rewrite necessary to get it better. And when your confidence flags, you'll get revived by connecting with readers, friends, fans, etc. who want and need you to succeed. Writing may seem like a solo sport. In a lot of ways it is. But the more you can conjure up a community that cares, the stronger you'll be.

egypturnash 4y ago

So I got some bad news for you, dude. It sounds like you spent all this time not writing much, if at all. There's only one way to get better at a creative pursuit and that is to keep doing it. That means you're no closer to being good enough at writing to earn a living at it than you were when you started, never mind write anything "great". On the other hand it also sounds like you spent a lot of time learning to sell shit, and selling your stuff is an important part of making "creative work" worthwhile. The dude who draws "The Oatmeal" is a terrible artist, for instance, but his SEO skills sure have made him a lot of money with his bad drawings. So you might be able to make money selling shitty writing. Nobody will probably ever say "there goes a great writer" when you're about to die, though.

enominezerum 4y ago
The overall vibe I got from reading that post and a few more by Nate is "I found success, you can to, give me money to find out how." There are also quite a few posts arguing against typical financial wisdom. Things like "yea, I could have made some decent returns investing my money, but it permitted me to become who I am" and "you don't need a budget", which all just starts linking back to referral links and other things that make Nate money. The page about not needing a budget and that it eats into your productive time is extremely BS. Dude knows this, but it is something that will prey on financially illiterate people who are looking an excuse 'oh, this rich dude Nate said I didn't need a budget'. It also sucks because he then talks about automating credit card payments, if you don't have a budget and don't track your spending that is a HUGE recipe for disaster. Even some of this writings about wealth vs money, while thoughtful in how they convey the concepts, fail to account for other concerns. Pointing out that a job only pays you while you work, but something like real estate rental may generate wealth, ignores just how much more complication there is in the later. Which is my final complaint. I am not seeing the nitty gritty truth of just how much work is being put in in any of his writings. He touches on things briefly, but he doesn't really convey that there is a huge startup burden that is incredibly risky everytime you start something like building wealth.

deleted 4y ago

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jll29 4y ago

> My ideal work life is to write about whatever I want, however I want, and be able to turn that into a comfortable living. It might be possible to find such a lifestyle; in fact, it is much easier than the other goal of the poster, namely to write something truly great. In fact, writing something truly great and writing to get a comfortable living may be contrarian goals.

readme 4y ago

Here in my garage, just bought this new Lamborghini here. It’s fun to drive up here in the Hollywood hills.

8bitsrule 4y ago

> I would care a lot though if you told me I never wrote anything great. That’s what I’m most afraid to fail at.... Sounds like he's always taking care of the bills from others but running away from the bills he owes himself. Giving writing a real shot might mean giving up running each day until after there are at least a hundred words on that day's blank page. (36,500 words of first draft each year.) Prime the pump every day.

borroka 4y ago

From the blog posts, it seems to me that he is not very keen on writing. I could be wrong. But when you start finding an excuse a day not to do what you theoretically think you should do, maybe the theory is wrong. Maybe he likes the idea of being a writer, but without being a writer. Also, writing means many things. There are a lot of books, think of business books, that are written because it is the most effective way to provide a certain kind of information to a wide audience. Watching a video seems like a waste of time before, during, and after. Reading a book, most of the time, even if the information in it is ridiculous and of poor quality, does not seem like a waste of time. And there is "writing" like, say, Hemingway, James Salter thought about writing. Are we talking about "writing" the way Salter intended it or about "presenting information in a book"? Does "I like to write" means "I like to provide information" or it means "I like to use the written word specifically to present ideas"? Rossellini, the famous director, said that he was not just a film director, but an artist and disseminator using whatever medium he thought was the most appropriate in order to show his ideas or his view of the world. I have almost stopped reading recent books. I find them formulaic, winking at the "mythical" audience and what they want, which most of the time is cheap entertainment. There is an author I liked, Adrian McKinty, who had written a series of books set in Belfast at the time of the Troubles. It was a joy to read them. They were erudite and had a great rhythm. But he found himself forced to become an Uber driver to pay the bills--the books were not selling. Then, with the support of Don Winslow and Winslow's agent, he was able to break through with a book, The Chain, which was so formulaic, poorly written and full of the adjectives and adverbs that make college-educated people drool, that I found it hard to recognize him as the same author of the series set in the Troubles era. It was very good for him and disappointing for me. I am now reading novels written between the 1930s and the 1960s, and although each decade has its sins, I sense that most authors were not that much concerned about their audience, were not corrupted by literary agents and book clubs, but wrote what they, and not others, wanted to write.

CA0DA 4y ago
What books from the 30s-60s would you recommend?
- borroka 4y ago

darod 4y ago

This feels a little click bait-ish. The problem wasn't covering his bills or writing. The problem was as he got more successful, he didn't optimized for just writing, he optimized for a lifestyle. And when the income didn't sustain that new lifestyle (bigger city, fine dinners, etc etc), he created another "distraction" away from his original goal to cover that. Wants create needs.

65 4y ago

This guy isn't a writer. He's an entrepreneur. He wants to be a writer because it has a social aura to it, it's a sexy career. But that doesn't mean he has the true mindset of a writer. At the end of the day he thinks like an entrepreneur. He's already does what he should be doing. On a personal note, I went through this multiple times in my 20s. I desperately wanted to be a graphic designer because I love design and thought being a graphic designer would be a really cool career. But I don't think like a graphic designer, I think like a programmer. I don't have that specific kind of creativity. So while I appreciate graphic design, my true talents are in writing code.

the_omegist 4y ago
Very interesting thought. As someone who often tries to figure out how I can apply my "programmer's mindset" to other areas of my life : can you give more details on how a graphic designer (would/should) think(s) vs how a programmer does? More specifically : how were you thinking vs how you thought you should have thought?
- 65 4y ago
  For graphic design, it's a lot about visual experimentation and presentation. With programming, it's engineering a functional solution. Both solve business problems. I guess it's the difference between the person who builds bridges and the person who paints bridges.
  - the_omegist 4y ago
    Thanks. The analogy at the end made it clearer ;)

honkycat 4y ago

I have few friends who bit the "the office job is death" thing hook, line, and sinker. Only... it didn't work out for them. They are in shittier careers barely making it work while I took the middle path and and quite comfortable. And my conclusion is: the 9-5 can be hard, but honestly I don't really mind it. At this point I'm good enough at the career and landed a role I'm a good fit for, it's really more of a 12-4 job for me. Not counting meetings. I'm not... hustling. I'm not being ground down. I'm just gliding. I have a good 401k. i make great money. I can work from home. I can take a break and read, and go for walks, and go running, and play guitar, and pet my cat, and cook lunch at home and get my dishes done. I don't really want to travel Asia. Maybe for a week or so. As someone who HAS traveled extensively: Meh! It is tiring! I like my house with my mad-scientist-lab looking office and all of my experiments and guitar pedals and things. Maybe it is perspective coming from a working class family. My father embalmed bodies and dug graves for a living. Very mediocre money, long hours, and not everyone's favorite job. What I do is easy compared to that.

woojoo666 4y ago

I liked the quote from Turning Pro [0] that was mentioned: > Sometimes, when we're terrified of embracing our true calling, we'll pursue a shadow calling instead. That shadow career is a metaphor for our real career. Its shape is similar, its contours feel tantalizingly the same. But a shadow career entails no real risk. If we fail at a shadow career, the consequences are meaningless to us I've unfortunately experienced first hand the tendency to fall back onto paths that are easy, low risk, and comfortable. [1]: https://www.nateliason.com/notes/turning-pro-stephen-pressfield https://www.nateliason.com/notes/turning-pro-stephen-pressfi...