Here's something these posts never touch on: dealing with the inevitable routine and the boredom that comes with it. You always read that life is short, seize the moment, etc. and I call BS. I like to think I did all that, I'm well under 40 and have really travelled the world, succeeded professionally, lived in 10 countries, did everything I ever wanted to do. And now what? The problem with achieving things is that you run out of goals. I find it harder and harder to find things that excite me. I have no desire to network aggressively with "smart people" like these posts tell you to. What's the point, ultimately more opportunities i.e. money? That doesn't motivate that much anymore. I want that feeling back, the anticipation when I was about to go to a new place or have a new experience. That's the most precious thing there is and I miss it.
Related:<p><i>The days are long but the decades are short (2015)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065466" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26065466</a> - Feb 2021 (73 comments)<p><i>The days are long but the decades are short (2015)</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20903714" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20903714</a> - Sept 2019 (33 comments)<p><i>The days are long but the decades are short – Sam Altman</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668835" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20668835</a> - Aug 2019 (1 comment)<p><i>Sam Altman: 36 Life Lessons I Learned Before the Age of 30</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491492" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9491492</a> - May 2015 (3 comments)<p><i>The days are long but the decades are short</i> - <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440</a> - April 2015 (387 comments)
Should a prerequisite to every successful tech person advice list include "Be 99th percentile IQ or higher"?<p>All these people go to schools and work environments where they exclusively interact with incredibly intelligent people. Do they really know just how mediocre the average person is? Or is the average person implicitly written off with respect to any sort of prodigious success.
I'm always surprised by how often advice from extremely successful people tends to repeat itself, which tells me that there really is no "secret" to making it and living a great life that I don't already know.
It's like combining the advise of Schwarzenegger, Dr Phil, Yoda, a random tech bro's substack, life-hack Youtube stars, and more.<p>None of the advise is incorrect of course, it's just that the sum is unattainable and at times contradicting. It basically says: here's 20 balls. Now juggle them up in the air, don't let any of them drop.<p>That being said, your 20s are special. It's indeed the decade where you have the most energy versus the least responsibilities. Don't take your 20s in slow or tame mode.
On 5): The most transformative step in my journey up the class ladder was when money stopped being a source of problems and instead became a way to solve problems.
Don't know if Sam has young kids, aged parents or dependents who require extra help but if you do #1 will consume pretty much 100% of your life, if you're not independently wealthy. Good luck with anything else from this list.
It all comes down to being in the right network. When his Loopt startup failed he had to be in the right network to fail upwards. Most people lack that network. I think the IQ and the hard work bits are common.
It's a bit silly for me to raise this stance on this website, but I'm so sick and tired of tech luminaries giving life advice.<p>It's all so flat and tasteless. It lacks character, it assumes such basic goals for human beings as happiness or money. They all write like they're handing in some kind of flavorless college freshman's book report.<p>I don't know where the truly philosophical individuals are these days but they certainly aren't heading up tech companies.<p>Want life advice? Start looking into the history of philosophy and read it widely and deeply. The words are <i>powerful</i> and there's no underlying assumption that life is reducible to making it out the best way we can in the current dominant socio-economic structure; they actually suggest that, <i>gasp</i> dominant systems and structures might not be <i>serving people well</i>. People actually believed in this thing called <i>meaning</i> and thought about how to pursue it beyond fulfilling prescribed roles and desires.<p>It's so arrogant of these founders to suggest that their personal experience in capitalism is extractable to some set of general principles worthy of moralization. Worse, they do it with the literary style of a lemming. At least the moralists of the 16th and 17th centuries knew how to construct a pithy, catchy aphorism when they were dolling out vague advice. Sheesh.
All the timescales are short for me: seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, decades.<p>I am not joking. Now going to the gym is 'easier' vs 20 years ago, because an hour at the gym doesn't seem like much time.
> Summers are the best.<p>If you take nothing else from this repost, let this really sink in.<p>And for those of us in the northern hemisphere, you should have a plan by this point in the year for your work life to truly enjoy it when it arrives.