For a long time, my plan was to "get rich" and then use my money to work full time on specific interesting tech ideas of mine. The tradeoff of time spent "getting rich", even if it took a decade, was worth it because of the free time I would have afterwards. With this in mind, I tried building various startup ideas and joining startups that could blow up big. Nothing really worked out, and I realized just how difficult it is to get rich in that way. In the mean time, I was trading what I really wanted to be doing for these failed attempts at things I didn't want to do, and meanwhile the years were ticking away.<p>It took me a long time to realize that the gamble isn't worth it to me. If my end goal is to be working on the interesting tech ideas full time, I need to make it happen regardless of my financial situation. So that's where I'm at now: consistently taking 1 step every night and weekend. It's much slower than my ideal hypothetical world of riches, but it is more fulfilling because it is real. I'm making actual progress now, as opposed to maybe-future progress.
About losing all motivation after financial independence, I've experienced it for myself. I'm not rich but I know how to live simply.
What do I do with my time? I spend so many hours consuming random content on the internet nowadays. I feel kind of bad for the girlfriend, who has to listen to me regurgitate the content back to her.<p>People looking in from the outside scratch their heads. Don't I have hobbies? Passions? I'd do X Y and Z, they often say.<p>Reminds me of this blog post:
<a href="https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/" rel="nofollow">https://philip.greenspun.com/materialism/early-retirement/</a><p>It's too bad Mike (the lackingambition.com guy) stopped updating his blog.
I can relate to this a lot. I am quite blessed to be multi talented and able to do various things easily. It gets to the point that I have too many hobbies and interests. But I think none of those hobbies can make me singularly focused. I become jack of all trades.<p>I am a software engineer by trade, doing regular web app business line applications. Work in FAANG salary. On the side I play music on weekend (acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass, and singing). I do martial arts around 3 days a week. I have my outlet of creativity such as building PC for gaming and crypto mining rig, building aquarium/terrarium/vivarium scapes. I read philosophies, religion, economies, etc. I play PC games, I ride my motorcycle for leisures. I think I'm decently good at all those activities, signaled by people who came to me and ask me to build their stuffs or play in their band or compete in their tournament.<p>I keep jumping and trying to find more things to do. I don't have kids yet, maybe when I do things will going to change.<p>My hobbies aside, right now I find no motivation on starting a new software project for learning purposes. I feel that I am stagnant now in my software engineering skills.<p>I used to learn programming languages as a hobby. Those aren't interesting to me anymore. I don't know what to do next. I want to learn deeper like maybe learning how to create a game engine, or compiler, or even going hardware, or try learning electrical engineering or mechanical engineering for DIY hobby projects, but maybe I would get bored and eventually stopped doing those.<p>I don't know what else to do.<p>First world problems.
I think that some component of challenge is required to live an interesting life, keep you on your toes, and keep you close to living at your edge.<p>I think some people will invent challenges for themselves, even arbitrary looking ones, if they are otherwise unchallenged at the time, just to keep themselves engaged.<p>All kinds of things can pose significant challenges: relationships, learning a new language, travel (um, thanks 2020), a sport, yoga...other stuff that pushes you outside your comfortable zone and where you are in the space where you actually have to think, react, decide again, and where you have limited information and don't know.<p>I don't think you <i>have</i> to do this, but you can try it if you're looking for that "ah i feel bored, or just too comfortable I wanna do something" kind of vibe.<p>I think an advantage is you don't have to care: is this <i>right</i> for me? Is this what I <i>want</i> to do (bigpicture)? Just pick something you don't know how to do, and try it, and for some of those things you might end up caring about becoming good at it or overcoming the challenges of it. If you can't even care about finding something challenging or that you don't know, you probably have some sort of mental illness or unresolved emotional issues or inner work you need to face and simply are avoiding that or don't know how to deal with that, and then you need to process that yourself or with some counselling to try to sort that out. But sometimes pushing out of the zone, especially doing something physical like sport or yoga, brings that stuff up anyway. So there's many ways to get forward.
Good point. I think though that being a entrepreneur and especially a manager is a lot harder than it looks. There is no real reason why a coder or a comedian would be good at starting a company. Yeah being the boss looks easy until you actually have to do it.
A related discussion, also in Comedians in Cars: <a href="https://youtu.be/UM-Q_zpuJGU?t=820" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/UM-Q_zpuJGU?t=820</a><p>Obama: How did you keep perspective?<p>Seinfeld: ...I fell in love with the work. And the work was joyful. And difficult . And interesting. And that was my focus.
I had a dream once that I was hired by a rich man.<p>I was given the freedom to hire the smartest people I could find and take on something challenging.<p>It paid only room and board for me and my family, plus a small equity share in whatever we created.<p>I would give anything for that dream to be a reality.<p>Please, if you’re reading this and you’re a millionaire, have some fun making someone else’s dreams come true?
> The death of George Floyd, the national reckoning over systemic racism and inequality, and the death of iconic U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg all focused attention on the rule of law<p>Highly doubt this caused the increase. There was a survey where only about 5% of non-elites (regular people) actually rate these issues as important.
This is gonna sound harsh, but I have never in my life met or seen a wealthy person become anything more than a dilettante in some new hobby / passion calling AFTER they acquired their wealth. There's nothing wrong with that, a lot of people enjoy being so-so at something they enjoy, as long as they get to dabble in that.<p>To become top-tier at anything, I believe you need more than just the lust. It take a mix of raw talent, discipline, passion, and drive - at minimum.<p>(Yes - there are probably numerous examples to disprove this, but I'll bet that the ratio is extremely skewed)
I suspect, this may be far too common for anyone who lives a "checkpointing" style of life, i.e. once I achieve this, I will pursue this ambition.<p>I've realized this sort of checkpoint-based planning is not helpful for the long run because naturally, times change, and with that ambitions change. If you haven't already had a taste of making progress towards the said ambition, and it happens to require a distinct set of skills, it becomes quite a mountain to climb.
I went into big tech to build up a warchest, and now I have no desire to build a company since I don't want to hire anyone. I'm going to "retire" and do some solo products around board games. I've got a secret weapon: <a href="http://www.adama-lang.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.adama-lang.org/</a>
It'd be really nice if "figuring out what you want to do" was a course you could take, external to school. Re-evaluating how to effectively spend your time is really hard to do, especially for those without friends or family to help them.<p>It'd certainly help those in extreme post- or pre-financial-independence situations find a motivator.
I’m going to go out on a limb and suggest this is an inverse romanticization of desire (where it elevates the virtue of anti-desire, or anti-ambition).<p>I’ve heard this argument countless times when people say ‘money doesn’t buy happiness’. That’s always been an inversion to me. Money absolutely buys happiness.<p>So here in this article you have two incredibly successful men inverting their desires, and romanticizing it as some kind of epiphany.<p>In other words, a brazen humble brag.