Ask HN: Thoughts on being “boring”

From Bill Watterson's commencement speech at Kenyon College in 1990. I was lucky to read this when I was graduating and it changed my whole career path. I am now very happy and very boring:

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

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

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

>A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial.

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

>I still want to be creative.

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

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

I really like this essay [0] by cryptographer Moxie, specifically this section about starting a new career:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A lot of the "Entrepreneurial rah-rah, YOLO etc." are complete BS. Only a very very lucky few make it; the vast majority fail and suffer for the rest of their lives. I personally know of a couple of people whose entire lives (and their families) have been ruined because they kept trying to be "Entrepreneurial" and failing repeatedly instead of maintaining a steady job, saving money and taking care of their family. For the vast majority of us folks who do not have a financial safety net, a nice, steady, income-generating job is the safest bet. So keep your "boring" job, do your "entrepreneurial" activities on the side and if it takes off, then think about quitting your "boring" job but with a full knowledge of all the risks involved.

I work for boring non-tech as an IC. I might get to tackle some interesting problems but the work is boring.

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

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

To quote Kurt Vonnegut:

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

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

Be wary of advice from a successful entrepreneur. They've gambled and won. Unless you want to be an entrepreneur and you're also ok with the idea of failing and never becoming rich from it, their advice might not apply to you and your life.

If you want to be "exciting" (the opposite of boring) you'll always feel like you aren't living up to your potential; just like how power lifters always think their muscles are small and anorexic instagram models don't think they're skinny enough. Balance is much more rewarding.

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

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

There's a new series of Love & Robots coming to Netflix tomorrow, and while I've found both previous series somewhat hit and miss, the episode Zima Blue has stayed with me (someone here later told me it was based on an Alastair Reynolds story which I'd never even thought to google). I won't spoil the episode, but it powerfully captures for me something that has happened a few times in my life (heck, even now if I'm brutally honest): you're excited by some new hobby or opportunity, it almost instantly brings you floods of energy and creativity, maybe even public acclaim, and so you throw yourself into it. You spend more time on it, make a career out of it. That career blossoms, maybe you're running a business inspired by your former hobby. Except now you're not really doing your hobby anymore. You're in meetings, helping make a decision that helps the people who help the people who help the people who do the hobby. Sometimes your knowledge and enthusiasm for the hobby help you make better decisions, but you still find yourself wondering, 'what happened?' How did this thing that brought you so much joy stop being fun?

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

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

Here's my 30-something perspective. It's mostly settled for 10 years now with little change, as I'm very happy with it.

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

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

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

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

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

I’m also late 20s, have enjoyed some startup chaos, and have come to similar points regarding contentment derived from relationships and coming to terms with my limits and finitude. I’ve thought “Am I giving up? Am I just doing the easy thing so I can live comfortably? At the cost of my dreams/ambitions/yearning?” Which seems like what your mentor has named “boring”. But I don’t think it’s quite that simple.

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

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

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

Are you me?

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

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

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

Do you know the song "Simple kind of man" by Lynyrd Skynyrd? I think your dilemma is roughly what that song is about, but I also don't think you get to choose.

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

Life is like a river. You can build a boat out of driftwood, or just doggy-paddle around; fight the current or dive straight ahead. Ultimately you're going to end up where the river wants to take you, and there's no way to know where that is. The only thing you can control is what you do in the river, and whether you take the ride as a terrifying, inescapable path to the unknown, or a fun float on a sunny day. Your life is only the time spent in the river, so you don't have to worry about the destination. Everybody has their own way of passing the time. The only good advice I can give you, is to pass it in the way that you want to. Anything else is a waste of a good river.

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

Sometimes it can be overwhelming being told what your “potential” is. And just because someone said you have good ideas it doesn’t mean being an entrepreneur is right for you.

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

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

Find what's fulfilling for you.

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

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

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

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

I have spent my early and mid 20s working on copycat Startups. Some made money, some not. I have learnt entrepreneurship in the hard way like lack of funding, unreliable partners, rough market conditions and disruption by other solutions. It made me more mature and conscious in life, however I know I missed out many things my peers experienced: travels, relationships, marriage, kids, whatever makes a person happy.

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

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

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

Your mentor isn’t living your life. Your mentor will always advocate for difficult things that have a high chance of failure because they ultimately don’t have to suffer the consequences.

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

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

There are lots of ways to be creative and keep your life interesting that have nothing to do with being an entrepreneur. You can consume or create any type of art, learn about things unrelated to your career, do outdoors stuff, participate in various communities, do charity work etc etc. And if you're making big money at your "boring" job, you don't have to worry about marketing these skills or even being very good at them, it can just be for your own fulfillment.

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

Reminder that advice about not being boring, being entrepreneurial, the idea that everyone should start their own business at some point, have active side projects they try to monetize, can't possibly universalize. Specialization and division of labor is the basis of civilization. The vast majority of people need to be boring and content to just do enough work to support their family and otherwise try to stay healthy and sane, via whatever habits that may or may not set the world on fire you find fulfilling and useful. A world of 8 billion entrepreneurs is a perpetual 8 billion wars of 1 against everyone else with nothing ever actually getting done.

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

This is exactly how I'm feeling at the moment. I was an entrepreneur all of my twenties, started a few companies, one of them is mildly successful. I left that company last summer, and now I'm freelancing and probably starting a new job at a small but "normal" company as a software engineer soon.

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

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

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

In the end 99% of people do boring things, first in teenage years well into 20s people have great ideas, they wanna change world and other nonsense until they hit reality and usually by 30s while having children they realize how naive they were and why were their parents boring, doing things like other people with no more great ideas anymore, just wanna live peaceful life with health and enough money.

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

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

I'm in my early 40s now, I stopped trying to be non-boring when it comes to my programming-related work after I started to realise that our work (i.e. the work done by us, programmers) is mostly used to do bad societal things: image "AI" is used in different bad places around the world for nefarious purposes, text "AI" is used to filter out and censor the opinions that some of us genuinely believe in, many "cool" data-processing projects help increase the inequalities among us (one of my first personal projects was to implement a "crimes" map for my city, about 15 years ago, the info in there would be used right now by middle-class people so that they would know where to purchase property and where not to purchase property, hence increasing gentrification and perpetuating said inequalities).

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

I don't think you need to worry about choosing one path over the other. If you want to do "non-boring" things, you can still do them while working for a more conservative/mundane company. The latter can provide a solid foundation for you to explore the former.

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

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

My own life has had phases. I will go through "boring" years where I prioritize safety, security and money. I will go through exciting years where I load up on risks in order to do something new and push myself. I have done gaps years and grind years, travel years and home years. Lonely years, family years. Poor years, rich years.

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

Become boring... to whom? Seriously. Becoming boring to others or the world is not a thing to worry about. Becoming boring to yourself is a different thing.

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

Join a hacker space.

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

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

- - - - -

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

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

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

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

>...I'm in my late 20s, just started my career proper as a developer. I got into a big tech position, leaving behind startups and the chaos of my early 20s, for now.

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

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

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

You can do great work at big tech companies. Sometimes startups and big tech are like two tribes and each group likes to pretend they are better than the other, but in reality everybody poops.

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

Advice from others is mostly to serve them.

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

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

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

I think it's possible to be a "boring" entrepreneur:

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

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

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

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

> A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial.

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

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

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

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

> A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial.

Your mentor wishes they weren’t boring.

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

> A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial

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

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

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

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

I wrote a blog about this actually - I also discovered it’s more valuable to enjoy who you’re working with, then what you’re working on

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

The one thing that strikes me about "boring" people is how seldom they are actually bored. They are finely tuned organs of consumption, able to discern the finest differences between states and measures, and are endlessly fascinated (and driven) by this consumption to consume more and more at finer and finer levels. They are the sensitive instruments by which the universe discovers itself.

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

Not everyone needs to be a 10x engineer that does everything all the time. It is good to take a step back and realise what you want to do.

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

"It seems like this forum is full of people who have traveled a similar path: starting with big ideas and hopes for their future, sometimes being able to achieve those but through a tremendous amount of time and effort. Or, have realized that a certain amount of money, free time and family is all they really need." -- I think you could replace "this forum" with "this world" and it would still be true. At this point in my life I don't mind admitting: I'm in the latter group.

> A mentor has advised me not to become "boring" and wants me to try to stay entrepreneurial. I still want to be creative

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

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

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

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

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

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

I empathise with this, especially:

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

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

Despite what HN tells you, you can actually live a fulfilling, interesting life without startups, side projects and blog writing. IT is fascinating and it has endless possibilities, but it isn't everything there is

A mentor has advised me not to become "boring"

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

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

I just turned 50 and I’d say I’ve had entrepreneurial episodes where I’ve tried ambitious things and also times I was more ‘boring’ and mostly thinking about paying back my HELOC.

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

This is not an either-or question. Start-ups are a "fast and furious" game, so you can go in and out of them. Successful start-ups only last for 5-10 years before exit, and unsuccessful ones last for even less time. I'm in late middle age. I've decided to found another start-up after a long period of stability while I got married and raised 2 children. During this period of "boringness" I made money so that I don't need a "friends and family" round, since I have the money myself to get the new business off the ground. Additionally, I developed skills that will make me much more likely to be a success at the start-up, since I know better what problems exist in my industry and have some ideas about how to solve them. The period of "boringness" will go quickly, especially if you have children, and will make you a much more effective start-up co-founder later on.

The way I see it, don’t get bored. Do things so you’re not bored. Having purpose helps tremendously, as well as being loved / part of a group and creating value for people / a group.

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

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

I first came across this old Chinese curse around 2006 "May you live in interesting times". It took Brexit and a pandemic for me to truly understand its meaning (and probably growing up - both myself and my now teenage children).

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

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

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

What I found is that I was worn out, as perhaps you seem to be, but that in becoming 'boring' I was losing my edge, my creativity and sharpness, as I lived a life that was not my passion. I refused to believe it was an unavoidable result of aging, something many of my peers used to rationalize it, but that doesn't mean it's easy. Here's what has worked for me:

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

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

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

“The man who follows the crowd will usually get no further than the crowd. The man who walks alone is likely to find himself in places no one has ever been before.

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

Being happy isn't boring. If you are happy getting paid to create nine to five and the only thing it costs you is the creative freedom you lose by having to work for others I think its probably a fair deal.

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

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

When I was younger I was in a similar position. Now, I've realised that there's a lot more to life than work and you only have so much energy to spend.

Spend your energy on what makes you happy.

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

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

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

At 50 and looking back, I do not regret ANY of the fun and traveling of my 20s and 30s. 40s has been work and children, which is fun in a different way. But don't let youth be wasted when you are young.

Well, if you had 100 million dollars, what would you do?

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

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

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

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

I think what your mentor meant was don't be bored. I have some misgivings about this advice though as I think it should be more nuanced. It's ok to be bored. With all the gifts modern society has given us, one of the costs has been over-stimulation.

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

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

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

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

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

There's two words that stick out for me here. "Boring" and "Entrepreneurial"

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

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

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

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

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

What an oddly judgmental piece of advice from a mentor. I'd take it with a pinch of salt and instead think in terms of problems instead of solutions e.g. what do you hope me to achieve by "not being boring"?

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

The first thing you need to do is accept that you can't have everything you're looking for and that you have to explicitly decide on the tradeoffs you're comfortable with. The best writing on this subject comes from Tim Urban, in this lengthy but worthwhile essay: https://waitbutwhy.com/2018/04/picking-career.html.

> I still want to be creative.

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

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

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

I went on a long walk this weekend asking myself this very question. There's so much pressure to try to excel at everything, to be extraordinary on every front. Since I live in a world that celebrates exceptionality, most of what I see online, in social media, etc. tells me I need to be fantastically rich and fit and creative and insightful and on and on and on.

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

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

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

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

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

If you have different goals competing for your limited time and energy (entrepreneurship, changing the world, building relationships, etc.) and you're not sure which to pursue, consider the values of self-actualization and personal agency and perhaps center yourself on them.

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

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

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

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

Mentor are just that. It's your life, follow it the way you want, whichever way feels right, and don't submit to FOMO.

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

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

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

You can pursue both excitement & smaller ideas as well! You can also pickup various other activities that are highly fulfilling, such as teaching (this could be mentoring juniors or teaching tech to college kids)

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

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

You need to make a living somehow. If you trust supply-and-demand, the things that people are willing to pay for are either going to be so novel that few people have thought of them, so boring or icky that few people want to do them, or so difficult that few people are capable of doing them. Most high-paying white-collar professions are a combination of 2 and 3, with degrees and post-college credentials used as a difficulty test. Professional athletes are the extreme case of 3. Running a business on your own can be 1, 2, and 3.

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

Time for relationships and for taking care of your body are essential. I would recommend looking into starting a family if you want to try that mini-game in this life (and plan for divorces and unexpected health issues).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I switched from 'exciting startups' to boring CRM for a decade, and TBH, it was very useful (and not actually boring). It was an opportunity to work in a smaller (150-700 person) company doing interesting stuff (mobile, cloud tooling, and then eventually post-sales technical services) but in an environment full of more grounded, less frenetically bouncing off the walls people...it gave you a pacing and maturity to actually learn more by not being so focused on externalities. The CV still looks good, the stuff I worked on still very relevant, but at a pace and with an atmosphere more conducive to accomplishing stuff I wanted.

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

Here's something to think about: Your best creativity comes when you're bored.

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

Inspired = In Spirit

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

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

Less is more, especially later:

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

- Same-but-different home-wise.

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

These are my thoughts, 20+ years in to a software development career (25 now! Jeez!), you might find it of interest?

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

"Be yourself, everyone else is taken."

Just do what makes you happy.

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

When I was your age I determined that the best way to avoid these situations was to figure out my core principles, then operate from there. If a job isn’t consonant with my beliefs then I avoid it. I am the self-employed type in general but have worked some wonderful jobs too.

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

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

The occasional exciting startup changes the world, but most don’t. Jumping from exciting failure to exciting failure might make for a fun career, but is it really fulfilling?

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

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

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

Don't worry about being entrepreneurial, just find challenges you enjoy. They can be work problems, learning new technologies, new physical goals, creating a startup, learning a new hobby, etc.

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

Happiness is not found in relationships, happiness is found in the disinterested pursuit of supreme excellence. Good relationships, like good food and exercise, help with (mental) health and motivation, but they will never be enough by themselves

Just to be a bit contrarian to the excellent existing comments, there is no achievement without effort, and there is no effort if you're never challenged.

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

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

Do you want to be like your mentor?

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

Probably best to build a bucket list so life doesnt become too boring with just work, prioritise them, have some contingency backup and then see what you think you can achieve.

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

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

There's a truism: life is what you make of it.

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

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

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

Things change when you have significant other people in your life: partner, kids etc.

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

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

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

"A mentor has advised me"

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

Any goal worth realising involves both exciting and boring components. It sounds you're doing all the right things, and just optimised in a way you didn't expect.

Political instability, the decline of post-war culture, and the ascendency of the Global South is going to define your lifetime if you live long enough. The, "big ideas" are mostly bullshit. Read, "The Hero with a Thousand Faces" by Joseph Campbell. You're not Luke Skywalker, Neo, Harry Potter, or Elizabeth Swan. Do what you want and be free. You're not the main character and if you can realize that at some sincere level without killing yourself you'll be capable of everything. You'll be an actual human being. You'll be the breadth of the evening sky.

If you don't know what to do, it helps to write what you're feeling.

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

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

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

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

Your mentor might think you're boring, but what do your friends and family (and yourself) think? They're the ones that really matter.

I don't want to seem condescending, so I have to ask you to please bear with me: what led you to believe that those big ideas are achievable? Sheer youthful exuberance? The forgivable hubris of one who outshines most of their peers intellectually while still in a small-pond environment? Perhaps in our youths, we were not informed that world-changing ideas require not just the eurekan spark, nor the 99-percent perspiration of genius, and nothing so easily roadmapped as the once insightful, now trite 10,000 hours... but instead, the near-zealotry required to fight a sort of tide. It's the tide of a world which has naturally evolved against constantly reshaping itself in the image of each incoming wave of fresh youth with ideas that are reminiscent of "if I ran this place..." It's not entirely dissimilar from your body, which cannot tell a good mutation from bad, and so we're left with the onees who slip or muscle past our defenses, tiny fragment by fragment over eons.

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

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

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

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

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

Your mentor almost sounds black and white. There are plenty of interesting, genuine people at “boring” companies.

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

My friend, if you find your life to be meaningful, and more importantly you are satisfied with it, then shut all outside voices telling you that you are living it wrong.

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

If you can enjoy the boring life, by all means do so. Some of us are cursed to want something else.

I think when you are 40 you will get midlife crisis and start becoming entrepreneurial/creative/out of the box again.

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

My take would be to pick a comfortable job that ideally aligns to your values, that does not draw too much energy to be able to be creative outside work without any string attached. And maybe the comfortable job will allow some creativity too.

> But I wonder if I'll do these things or if I will just work and be happy.

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

> The body requires a lot of maintenance and has limited energy

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

Be boring, start a family, focus on obligations and responsibilities.

Advice is only worth what you pay for it. Trust yourself, hombre.

Boring is subjective.

being "not boring" has U shape returns. it will cost you everything you have before giving you more than you ever expected

In my 20's, I tried so many different things! Now, later in life, I failed at everything and regret nothing.

Sometimes, boring good.

Nurture your hobbies

big ideas are fascinating only because they are not realized. It's 99% of the time either stupid or not practical.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I love HN. Y'all are fantastic.

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