This is Why I'll Never be an Adult

The truly financially successful people I know have figured out a way to outsource all of this type of mundane day to day thing, except for maybe something they enjoy as a hobby, like cooking. (I also know a weird guy who just likes ironing shirts.) It goes beyond this. REALLY rich people have executive assistants to do their mundane work related stuff too. But anyway, everyone I know who is rich has someone to clean their house, do their laundry, book them plane tickets, do their taxes, manage their money, field their phone calls, schedule meetings and other appointments, etc.<p>It's not lack of maturity to want to avoid all this crap... it's actually a big time sink and not anything that will get you anywhere in life. It's important to get done but as soon as you can you should pay someone else to do it. However, putting it all off to surf the internet is also the wrong approach. I look forward to the day when I'm rich enough to pay someone else to read hacker news and post comments for me.

I'm sure I'm going to get flamed and/or down-modded for taking the contrarian postion on this. Shame on me for choosing to accept the challenge of being an adult in our modern society.<p>If you think that going to the bank, doing your laundry, and answering emails in a timely manner is some sort of accomplishment or difficult, then you need to take a look in the mirror and realize that you are looking at the problem. It's called "being responsible for yourself". Tough concept for many people apparently.<p>I'm 39, been married for 12 years, and have two kids. I choose to be responsible because my kids can't do their own laundry or buy their own groceries. These are 5 and 10 year-old kids, not adults. Am I perfectly organized? Not even close. But I don't sit here and justify my failures like the girl who writes that blog. Yoda was right: do or do not, kids. There is no try.<p>Before you get all mad, I understand there are people who have mental or physical illnesses that makes doing these everyday, routine chores difficult. These people have my sympathies and understanding. The rest of us have no excuse. Yes, I include myself in "the rest of us."<p>Yes, much of every day life is not fun. I don't particular <i>enjoy</i> being a responsible adult, but if the alternative is the kind of ranting, over-the-top situations in that blog post (and on that blog in general), I'll take being a responsible adult. Grocery shopping is hard? Responding to emails is hard?!? Going to the bank is hard?!?!? This person who lives on the internet cannot order groceries online, answer emails or pay their bills online? Oh, that's right, they can never be an adult. Because it's too hard or something. Okay, back to Facebook and rating pictures of cute kittens. I'm sure there is a "responsible adult" out there who "cleans up" after this person. Resenting it while doing it too, I'm sure.<p>Don't blame it on TV or the internet or the poor diet North Americans eat or the "bureaucracy involved in modern city life". Millions of other people are in the same circumstances or worse and somehow manage to rise above it all, and have fridges with food, clean clothes, and money in their bank account. And they do it all by themselves too.

I get no satisfaction from doing something I've done before. Work sucks: if it's something I know how to do, I hate doing it, and I drag my feet, and it sucks. So I volunteer for things and get in over my head, and people get impatient with me while I get over the learning curve, and that sucks too. Nobody wants to pay me just to learn to do stuff I don't know how to do yet, but doing something I already know how to do feels like death. In other words, I'm either incompetent or I'm bored out of my skull, and often the results are the same. I've performed significantly worse at my job the last couple of years than I did five years ago, because I just don't care. I feel the same whether I do a good job or a bad job. I don't get any satisfaction out of doing a good job, because, well, what have I proved? That I have a high threshold for boredom? That's not something to be proud of.<p>The same principle applies to all the practical stuff in life. "This morning you have to go to the bank, wash the dishes, do your laundry, go to Home Depot, and file an insurance claim. If you don't, you're an irresponsible slob." "And if I do?" "Then you're not an irresponsible slob. Not because of those things, anyway. You've got a whole list of things this afternoon that you could possibly screw up but could not possibly accomplish in a way worth taking pride in."

My biggest problem is mail. I HATE getting mail. I wish there was some way to make it illegal to send it to me. Processing the endless quantities of crap every day probably detracts more from my happiness than anything else in my life. I most loath having to figure out if pieces of mail from my bank are important in any way or just another preapproved credit card that I will never need in my life.<p>The biggest effect is second order. If I don't process it immediately, it piles up on the desk where I normally study. Once it has piled up, it becomes a barrier to studying, and I stop doing serious learning too.

Baby steps. To dig yourself out of a rut, you need to set yourself small achievable goals. Once you achieve those, your confidence grows and you can move on to the next goal. If you keep trying to change everything in your life at once, you will probably fail and fall into the cycle shown in the article/comic. Baby steps.<p>Also, go to the gym. My mind is so much clearer and I am so much calmer when I exercise.

I too suffer from this, and am looking for a sustainable way out. This must be how obese people feel about their weight. If anyone else has solutions please post away. Strangely, the solution that's made the biggest difference in outside-work lifestyle for me is writing tests before code at work. More tests means less debugging, which means less stress. Most of my relapses happen after a stressful day of debugging under deadline.

Taking a day to set up online bill pay, and paying other people to clean your house and do your laundry is one of the best decisions you can make. It seems expensive, but when you really look at the benefits to your life I really think you end up better off.

Is this author serious? I don't consider answering emails, doing laundry, keeping the house clean, paying the bills on time or doing other tasks like going to the bank to be much harder than breathing or tying my shoes in the morning. These are simple necessary tasks. They are done routinely and can be done without much thought or effort. I'm seriously concerned for someone who has this much trouble with these basic parts of life.<p>Is this a mental disorder? or just laziness to a level I haven't seen?<p>I agree with the author's choice of title though. If I had to imagine someone who has trouble with such simple tasks, a child is what I imagine.

Let the robots do it. Or at least, I planned for robots to do it. Right now, I don't have a proper screwdriver for dismantling the RC car so I can start building my first robot. I have everything else like an iron solder, leads, three cooper wires spool, a light sensors, and an arduino, LED. I am missing a vaccum cleaner(to dismantle), sonar and other useful sensors, etc.<p>I am also working on my web application development skill like mad so I can develop an RPG for real life.<p>One thing I already accomplished: Feeling like a ninja using emacs because I make an effort to learn one new thing everyday about emacs.

Problems common to most of us, I think, though I can't say I've ever framed them as a matter of adulthood so much as a matter of motivation. Having something to look forward to, something that feels like a net gain to one's subconscious cost/benefit analysis, is probably the most important factor when it comes to deciding whether or not to get out of bed in the morning.

In case anyone doesn't know of her alots yet: <a href="http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html" rel="nofollow">http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...</a>

I won't pretend to know much about responsibility, but creativity like that needs to be nourished.

Discipline: I'm not sure if I don't want it because I don't have it, or if I really just don't want it.

"Life is like highschool with money." — Frank Zappa

I think this <i>is</i> adulthood.

Sometimes I get the feeling that the combination of school, drugs, the Internet, the standard american diet, and lack of exercise has left the vast majority of the population with some form of mild brain damage. Although the fact that most Americans are basically retarded, we live in a police state, and society is collapsing doesn't help much with the motivation either.

"Go to the bank"? Who does that any more?<p>I'm in India, and it is running on close to a year since I <i>had</i> to physically visit a bank. And even then it was something something so mundane that it could've been done over the 'phone, but I just happened to be right in front of a branch.

This just reminded me to look into online grocery/misc shopping -- my plan is to analyse my shopping/use patterns and then try to automate that. I can't agree with this post enough -- I really hate grocery shopping.<p>I don't mind running necessary errands, except for when I have other things (coding, projects, etc) on my mind. The 'real world' of unswept floors and dirty dishes becomes a distraction that weighs on my mind when I need to focus. I wish there was some way I could delegate these tasks, but even if I had the money for that, a lot of this stuff just seems too personal to let someone else handle.

I also let a few emails unanswered for days sometimes. I don't know what the perfect solution to avoid that happening again. But i'm sure it starts with answering them.

the best time saver if you don't have a dishwasher: use throw away cutlery &#38; plates. saved me a lot of time.<p>people that don't hate doing chores, simply look at them like a game. It does make them feel good, to have everything under control, a clean house, all bills paid...and i think you can train yourself that you will also feel that way and you will want to have everything neatly done. It's like going to the gym, if you go for a while, you will miss it when you stop going.<p>But i don't want to train myself to give annoying, boring things a meaning.<p>i guess it all changes when you have kids, then you have to do that stuff.

I try to strip things down to the essentials:<p>1. the things I must do (like eat, or die)<p>2. the things I should do (like exercise, or get unhealthy and weak and scrawny)<p>3. the things I want to do (to be me, natural, happy)<p>If I can't put a task in one of those 3 buckets, I usually don't do it at all. Or at least, it's a lower priority.<p>4. everything else. blah. meh.

The copyright notice at the bottom of the comments is great too!

as long as daddies check is arriving every month...